Youtube comments of Dale Crocker (@dalecrocker3213).

  1. To the pharmaceutical industry the pandemic was not a health issue. It was a business opportunity.
    3100
  2. We don't need a public enquiry. We need a Task Force. Immediate action is required.
    1200
  3. America doesn't even have a special relationship with America anymore.
    1200
  4. The Labour Party has completely and utterly lost touch with the very people it came into being to protect. It's a tragedy.
    1100
  5. Warmongering liar. Who cares what he thinks about anything?
    915
  6. The fact that a vast number of people believe this claim to be totally untrue shows the depths to which America has now fallen.
    905
  7. Mindblowing! And it might actually be possible. Let's go Brandon!
    714
  8. Perhaps we should have a "Race Grifter of the Year" contest with Megan Markle and Ngozi Fulani as the leading contenders.
    713
  9. Quite a thing when Elon Musk has more concern for the people of Britain than the party supposed to represent them!
    671
  10. Andrew's impression of Starmer makes him look more human than he actually is!
    628
  11. I think we can be forgiven for thinking that maximising drug company profits has been the main driving force for the way the pandemic has been handled.
    623
  12. Donald Trump must be one of the most defamed people in the history of mankind.
    588
  13. If the kid isn't a Muslim the police should say so. ASAP!
    579
  14. It's impossible to get away from the fact that the entire pandemic response has been stage-managed to create maximum profits for drug companies. Politicians all over the world have been suckered or bribed into pursuing policies specifically tailored to this end.
    547
  15. Time for someone in authority to release details about the suspect. Even if he is a Muslim.
    523
  16. The Church of Woke permits no heresies. Thank you Douglas Murrayl Well done again Sky News Australia - one of the few sane MSM news outlet in the English-speaking world.
    514
  17. CNN = panic-stricken desperation.
    504
  18. Conceit, ignorance and narcissism. These people are psychos.
    499
  19. This just proves that the rules were a load of bollocks and those at the top absolutely knew it.
    440
  20. Owen Jones is wrong about everything.
    394
  21. Scotland has demonstrated exactly what happens when ignorant people hitch themselves to the waggon of extremism.
    379
  22. When will people realise that these conferences aren't about beating climate change - they're about who makes the most money out of it - and how!
    365
  23. The pandemic was not a health care issue. It was a business opportunity.
    341
  24. What is really terrifying is how so many people are falling for these blatant lies.
    336
  25. We are getting to the point where being called a "right-wing extremist" is badge of honour.
    329
  26. It is time for the UN to be consigned to the dustbin of history - as was the League of Nations before it.
    326
  27. Tip of the iceberg!
    324
  28. How did Canada end up as a Stalinist state?
    323
  29. Whatever else results from this conflict, naval warfare has changed forever.
    305
  30. Are you still allowed to hate people because they're total prats?
    300
  31. Believing that fossil fuels are bad is as bonkers as believing Zelensky is a good guy. Give up both ideas and we might just survive the present madness.
    298
  32. Fauci is obviously one of those guys who, according to President Lyndon Johnson :"It's better having him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."
    285
  33. Judging Putin by the standards of the Washington Press Corps is probably quite a serious mistake, I would have thought.
    276
  34. Zelensky's "Victory Plan": I'm going down - and you're all coming with me!
    271
  35. There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Fear of Islam is entirely reasonable.
    268
  36. There is no such thing as the EDL. Time has moved on. The British working class continues to be oppressed by a muddle-headed ruling elite, and these recent demonstrations were a genuinely spontaneous expression of the dissatisfaction which ordinary, decent people feel.
    265
  37. Auntie has died her hair pink and identified as non-binary. She's become a pompous, self-righteous bully in her old age. It is really most unbecoming. I think, at the very least, we should stop giving her money to pay for her new lifestyle.
    260
  38. She mentioned the Taliban carrying their American weapons exactly as Americans are trained to do. Could these men have recently been members of the Afghan military perhaps?
    259
  39. This is genuinely frightening - not only the sentence itself, but for the support it is receiving from the brainwashed masses.
    247
  40. How about reporting on the excess deaths among younger people - not from covid but as a result of treatments being withdrawn due to covid hysteria?
    245
  41. What right do other countries have to interfere with another country's domestic affairs? This is just one more reason why Britain was right to leave the EU.
    234
  42. So who're the "fascists" now?
    231
  43. Not far right, just not far wrong.
    230
  44. Sad days for the left. Biden revealed as the dangerous, bungling incompetent we always said he was, and the Capitol "insurrection" revealed as no worse than a student demo. A brief gloat is justified I think.
    229
  45. He doesn't think much about anything any more.
    227
  46. Viciously greedy drug companies and paranoid politicians is not the ideal combination for safeguarding public health.
    225
  47. It would be very helpful if "journalists" would stop referring to these understandably incensed working-class people as "far right."
    222
  48. The Democrats seem to have missed the whole point of staging Soviet-style show trials. You're supposed to win.
    221
  49. Congratulations to GB News for being the only media outlet in the UK to cover this story intelligently and objectively.
    213
  50. There is no shortage of beds - only of staff who are forced to isolate because of absurd regulations, or even to quit because of equally absurd vaccine mandates.
    211
  51. Who cares what the EU thinks? You helped start this war, you shouldn't be allowed to help stop finishing it.
    207
  52. Sky News barking up the wrong tree yet again.
    194
  53. The big question is: do the police and other authorities favour the Islamists because they believe their cause - or because they are scared of them?
    193
  54. If I was black I think I'd really hate to be patronised like this.
    193
  55. I wonder if the excellent Black reporters on CNN ever worry that they might have been hired for their skin colour, rather than for their abilities?
    193
  56. MPs are expected to lie occasionally. It is a political necessity. Johnson though has abused the privilege and brought the House into disrepute. Dawn Butler's brave action could be a very significant nail in his coffin. And it was damned stylish too.
    193
  57. This isn't going to be like 2008. It's going to be like 1929.
    190
  58. If Farage could overcome his aversion to Tommy Robinson Reform might stand a chance of picking up working class votes - the working classes in this country are virtually disenfranchised.
    176
  59. Macron is as mad as a box of frogs.
    175
  60. Surely egos should be put to one side and a coalition of right-wing parties should be formed under a single banner? It might be our only hope.
    174
  61. The "scientists" appear to have gone mad. UK hospitalisations are currently fewer than they were in October before Omicron was even heard of, and in S Africa where Omicron now accounts for 98% of all cases, hospitalisations are 91% less than experienced in previous waves.
    174
  62. These crumbs are not the whole loaf. Georgia might be finding "lost" ballots but the evidence of false ballots and Dominion computer "errors" is being totally ignored.
    173
  63. Bridgen speaks for truth and sanity. No wonder the cheats and liars seek to silence him.
    172
  64. I continue to be astonished by how many Americans continue to be conned by bollocks like this.
    172
  65. This smells like another gamechanger which will change absolutely nothing.
    169
  66. What a time to have idiots in charge of this country.
    168
  67. Biden's biggest mistake is getting up in the morning.
    167
  68. Spot on as usual. The amount of pro Zelensky information being pumped out to the gullible masses is frightening.
    167
  69. It's called Prat's Theory. Once a prat gets appointed to a senior job he/she then hires other prats and within a couple of generations the whole industry is staffed by prats. This is what s happened in journalism. The prats in this instance are conceited, whining left-wing knowalls who think they are there to make the world in their image, rather than simply to tell us lesser mortals roughly what's going on.
    158
  70. Watching this guy trying to resist the temptation to blame everything on Trump was like watching an alcoholic staring at a bottle of vodka.
    158
  71. Andrew Bridgen is a superstar.
    157
  72. There is a strong case for treating Muslims as RCs were treated in Reformation times. In both cases their loyalty to their country is in question and they should be required to prove it very clearly before being allowed the privileges of citizenship.
    157
  73. The situation today is utterly different to the situation in 1939. Putin isn't Hitler and Russia isn't a defeated country labouring under the effects of an ill-considered peace treaty. Any similarities are entirely spurious and giving weight to them is not only foolish but extremely dangerous.
    156
  74. This warrant is about as terrifying as a threatening BBC TV licence letter. If it ever arrives in paper form I hope Putin does with it what I do with threatening letters from the BBC.
    155
  75. Stop press: a new clinical study based on 8,000 cases has proved that hydroxychloroquine if administered in the right doses at the right time can reduce Covid 19 deaths by almost a third. He was right about that too. The Democrats and their lackeys who have deliberately suppressed this drug have blood on their hands.
    153
  76. Dressed to kill. Pensioners, that is.
    152
  77. I consider the view expressed here as an incitement to violence by spreading misinformation. Times Radio ought to be prosecuted.
    150
  78. There are very strong reasons for being vaccinated after infection. Those reasons come in $$$ signs to the drug companies, who are milking the pandemic beyond all the bounds of avarice.
    148
  79. Senior health officials in S Africa say that all the cases they have encountered have been very mild, which is an encouraging sign.
    148
  80. The nightmare begins.....
    147
  81. Boris Johnson is widely believed to be Jeremy Corbyn in a fat suit.
    146
  82. An ignorant child to replace men who bravely conquered the unknown? Says it all really, don't it?
    145
  83. I can't help feeling that this is somehow symbolic of the state of the nation.
    144
  84. We are governed by hysterical children, afraid of their own shadows.
    143
  85. I wish journalism could evolve as fast and as efficiently as covid does.
    143
  86. If we could get rid of Starmer ASAP please?
    142
  87. At last Biden is tackling inflation.
    142
  88. There is an absolute correlation between being left-wing and being fearful of covid and eager to embrace all restrictions without question. It's a psychological oddity.
    137
  89. This wasn't a debate, it was a stitch-up. Harris had clearly been programmed with the questions beforehand and was working as a part of a team along with the moderators. Trump's role was as the bear to be baited.
    135
  90. If this does turn out to come with immunity at little inconvenience the drug companies are going to be really, really pissed off.
    135
  91. Could there be any clearer illustration of the fact that the wrong man is in the White House?
    134
  92. This is how Fauci spells $cience.
    134
  93. Trump's security detail at the RNC was all male, and not one of them under 6ft.
    133
  94. They just push an agenda. They are not journalists.
    133
  95. I started a keto diet about a year ago to deal with the onset of type2 diabetes. I also fast about one day every month. It's no hassle. Bacon and eggs, strawberries and cream, whole roast chickens and half legs of pork can fill you up quite a bit! My blood sugar levels are now normal and I'm off the medication. I've also lost around five stone in old money. My BMI is spot-on Agriculture has created a carbohydrate addiction in humanity. While a hunter-gatherer diet (plus cream!) might not be for everybody it certainly works for me. What you eat seems to count for more than how much you eat.
    129
  96. So MP's are not allowed to step outside their constituencies except when attending Parliament, is that it?
    127
  97. How very medieval.
    124
  98. Well, that didn't amount to a hill of beans.
    122
  99. If the police had handled this better, none of this would have happened.
    122
  100. I don't see where desperation comes into this. Putin is matching move with move and seems to continue to be winning. The desperation is on the West's side, I think.
    122
  101. NATO and the UN have both outlived their usefulness and must be replaced - or radically reformed at the very least.
    121
  102. This cannot be allowed!
    121
  103. No, no a thousand times no!
    118
  104. Who are the "fascists" now?
    116
  105. Socialism and the British working class gave up on each other many years ago.
    115
  106. They are playing with fire.
    115
  107. And the repression continues.What have we come to when reasoned debate on this issue is banned both in Parliament and in the public sphere?
    113
  108. It wasn't Russia which fought the Germans in Kursk - it was the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a part.
    113
  109. This government will do anything to distract from its own guilt.
    112
  110. Because it's none of their business, any more than it's yours.
    112
  111. How very appropriate that Sky should hire a Barbie doll to voice its opinions on the Ukraine conflict!
    111
  112. Something like 60,000 prison places would be made available by deporting foreign inmates and releasing those held on drugs charges. This would leave plenty of room for those convicted of being rude on social media.
    111
  113. The Willow Tree must be blacklisted. Locals should refuse to darken its doors.
    109
  114. The bellowings of a dying dinosaur.
    109
  115. Russia's economy is so intertwined with crime that its actual nature can never be determined. All one can say is that its people seem to be suffering but little hardship and its oligarchs are growing richer by the day.
    109
  116. Have a heart. He needs the money to supply Ukraine with weapons and pay to house and feed illegal immigrants. Let's get our priorities straight, eh?
    108
  117. This makes my stomach turn. An actor taken over by his role and dragging the world into oblivion.
    107
  118. Good to see Biden tackling inflation at last.
    105
  119. I'm a bit worried the Chinese might know something we don't.
    105
  120. This is a great idea, and one which should have been obvious years ago. They can been anchored offshore and the migrants kept as virtual prisoners. A great deterrent.
    105
  121. Oh look! The crooks say there were no crooks there!
    105
  122. Net Zero is Nut Zero.
    105
  123. Infrastructure isn't civilians.
    104
  124. This is heartbreaking. As the covid threat melts away, watching the BBC is like watching a child having its favourite toy taken away before bedtime.
    103
  125. Well done America! Your crackpot foreign policy has thrown two heavily-armed opponents into each others' arms.
    102
  126. Western "experts" and Vladimir Putin seem to be fighting two entirely different wars.
    100
  127. Actually the Trump hotel was undamaged, largely due to the fact that the Tesla was so solid it absorbed the blast. I think there might be a message here.
    100
  128. So does this mean that old people are going to die of Covid 19 this year rather than the flu? You can't die twice, although you can apparently die of two things at once.
    100
  129. We are witnessing the swift collapse of a short-lived empire. History repeats itself continually.
    99
  130. A voice of sanity. It's about time we saw through the climate crisis con.
    97
  131. These are bold assertions by Douglas Murray. Another Douglas - Douglas Macgregor- has an opposing view, insisting that Ukraine is losing soldiers at a rate of between six to one and 15 to one Russians, and that Ukrainian armaments are depleted while Russia retains very healthy stocks. Col Macgregor is an experienced combat soldier who maintains contacts with military experts met with during his time stationed in Europe, both as a military commander and in a diplomatic capacity. Who to believe, I wonder?
    97
  132. How about a debate on X with Musk as the "moderator"? No earpieces. No advance notice of questions. No muted mics.
    97
  133. You can bet your bottom dollar that many of those who have died "with covid" did so because pre-existing conditions were not being properly treated.
    96
  134. The Omicron wave in S Africa appears to have peaked - and could do so here very soon. There are probably many, many more cases than those officially recorded since symptoms are so mild. Enough people with immunity through infection means the virus cannot find routes to non-immune people, and so dies away. If this should happen counselling sessions should be set up to enable paranoid journalists, scientists and Labour party members to be guided through what will undoubtedly be a deeply traumatic time. Paranoia is addictive, and withdrawal symptoms can be severe.
    95
  135. Encouraging to see so many sensible comments here. Clearly we are not all being fooled by American propaganda and the ignorant/biased media.
    94
  136. Starmer's vision for the country's future seems to be it becoming a vast dormitory for foreign immigrants, covered in wind farms and powerlines, governed by European bureaucrats and with Islam as the new state religion.
    93
  137. Everything's going to be OK. The Taliban have just announced their support for all efforts to avert Climate Change.
    92
  138. Trump has a great sense of humour. Your panellists clearly have not!
    91
  139. The trouble with Dodgy Dave is that one always suspects that he has some personal interest going in these matters.
    90
  140. Patriotism is not racism: discuss.
    90
  141. Can we have a Couldn't Care Less Day please?
    89
  142. So a non-committal type of ruling from a fairly pointless judiciary then?
    89
  143. He's not blaming the victim. He's blaming America.
    89
  144. We can only hope that the Ukrainians are sufficiently intimidated to get rid of Zelensky and agree to talks on the future of Crimea and the Donbass.
    87
  145. When the NHS say "beds" they don't mean things with four legs and sheets. They mean the whole kit and caboodle -including the staff needed to look after the patient IN the bed. Staff are missing because they are being forced to self isolate. In fact the number of patients isn't high for this time of year.
    86
  146. The tragedy is that Putin's initial request for regional autonomy for Donbass would have contented him. Tens of thousands have died to no purpose and Russia will almost certainly end up with more than he asked for then.
    85
  147. This ostentatious support for Zelensky's Ukraine is the biggest mistake Britain has made since Suez.
    85
  148. And with good reason. Compromise simply plays into the hands of the fanatics.
    85
  149. Islam scares me shitless.
    83
  150. If it's not illegal then it ought to be.
    83
  151. Leftists screaming for his death convince me more and more that evil and insanity are corrupting their minds.
    82
  152. They only go for the geese.
    82
  153. Correction: America and its puppets lose - not the whole world.
    82
  154. Such laws are normally only used it times of war. They are an admission that the government IS at war - with a substantial proportion of the people it is supposed to represent and protect.
    82
  155. Reform is looking better and better. One is so unused to hearing politicians speak the truth.
    81
  156. Another gamechanger, eh?
    81
  157. That would be because Mr Parker has been told to keep his mouth shut, or else.
    81
  158. But US defence undersecretary Victoria Nuland has told a senate committee that such biolabs do exist. What work is carried out there has not been revealed, but the very fact that Ms Nuland told the committee that the US was concerned that Russia might get to them is pretty telling.
    80
  159. They're having riots in Bangladesh too. The Prime minister has just resigned. Only sayin'
    80
  160. All three people on the top platform were clearly drugged up to the eyeballs. Can't say I blame them.
    80
  161. Free speech has no limits. Repression does.
    79
  162. He sounds like a carnival barker trying to get people to come in and see a freak show. What a contrast to Putin's considered and informative speech earlier in the day.
    79
  163. Labour is actually encouraging them while merely pretending to do anything about them.
    78
  164. This is spine-chilling. An actor taken over by his role and turning the real world into a horror movie.
    78
  165. So it looks like Russia didn't do it then-?
    77
  166. "Unfounded claims and downright lies?" A fair summary of The Independent's editorial policy, I'd say.
    77
  167. He would be called Tristram, wouldn't he? You couldn't make it up.
    77
  168. This wasn't a debate it was a bear-garden with Trump as the bear and Harris and the "moderators" as the dogs yapping at his heels.
    76
  169. Support for Ukraine is utter madness.
    75
  170. Is Times Radio running a contest for the guest who can come up with the daftest fantasy?
    75
  171. Believing you can make something real by simply believing it is the essence of Socialism - which is a religion, rather than a proper system of political governance.
    75
  172. Interesting fact: a YouTube comment I posted drawing comparisons between this incident and the Kennedy assassination has been accepted in the UK and Australia - but deleted in the US.
    74
  173. Everyone who has ever worked in the NHS knows about these extended tea-breaks when you are shepherded off to listen to some overpaid race grifter talking crap.
    74
  174. There are 10,000 foreign nationals in British prisons and 50,000 drug offenders. Just sayin'
    74
  175. These crippling increases are due to two acts of insanity which seem obvious to most ordinary people, but not to politicians. 1) Hysterical over-reaction to the pandemic, the staggeringly dreadful results of which are now becoming only too clear. 2) Green madness and the suicidal plunge to net zero carbon. It is notable that both these measures have a number of things in common. 1) Over-reliance on grossly inaccurate computer predictions. 2) Over-reliance on very narrow range of scientific opinion. 3) Opportunities for vast profits by unscrupulous speculators. 4) The imposition of restrictions on traditional liberties. 5) Constant misinformation from a controlled media. The obvious conclusion is that humanity is being deliberately manipulated. The Great Reset is real. The New World Order is real. We are being led up the garden path by megalomaniac psychopaths.
    73
  176. Young and middle aged people are experiencing all sorts of serious health problems lately. It is, of course, entirely coincidental that this trend has coincided with the mass roll-out of an inadequately tested, largely ineffective and more or less unnecessary new medical procedure.
    73
  177. Why this panic over "cases" when hardly anyone is dying any more? Nearly 1,500 fewer people died in July this year than in July 2019. Covid is running out of victims - but the Government seems hungry for more. WHAT IS GOING ON?
    72
  178. Old fraud and young fraud meet to discuss fraud.
    72
  179. Might I suggest that the UK sets up a similar facility somewhere? British Antarctica might be a suitable location.
    71
  180. At least the Russians have got the leader most of them want.
    71
  181. Anyone who knows anything about global warfare knows that Sky's analysis of the situation in Ukraine is roughly the same as that of a woke 12-year-old girl.
    71
  182. What's bizarre? This is comedy gold! Trump 2020!
    70
  183. The old saying "Cheats never prosper" sort of comes to mind.
    70
  184. The Tories are in full retreat. They leave behind a poisoned chalice.
    70
  185. Even when everyone is vaccinated the virus can still infect and kill. So what's the plan?
    70
  186. What blind conceit. What difference is there between China supplying Russia and America supplying Ukraine? Are we really supposed to believe that we are supporting freedom and democracy while China is supporting tyranny? Is it not the the truth that each side is seeking profit and power and that each side is utterly indifferent to the death, pain and suffering these ambitions cause?
    70
  187. To get to actual facts: as of December 2 there were just 42 patients in the covid ward in Pretoria's main hospital at the centre of the outbreak. Only 9 were admitted because of covid. The rest had tested positive after being admitted for other conditions and were asymptomatic.
    69
  188. If we had listened to common sense instead of to the "experts" we'd be a whole lot better off.
    69
  189. I'm seriously wondering if wokeness should be classified as a notifiable disease.
    69
  190. Footballers abasing themselves to a sinister political movement is not a good look. I was reminded of athletes doing the Nazi salute at the 1934 Olympics.
    68
  191. The best "plan for change" would be to get rid of this shower ASAP.
    68
  192. Feeling anger when the police protect terrorists is entirely understandable.
    68
  193. Saving a couple of billion in this way will just about cover the cost of housing and feeding the undocumented welcome guests arriving on our shores. Old buggers dying of cold and being replaced by healthy young Muslims seems to make economic sense.
    68
  194. The EU has been a dreadful mistake, both economically and geopolitically. Unfortunately its dying throes will bring much grief.
    68
  195. It's going to be hard to break people of their Ukraine addiction.
    68
  196. His objectives were to regain Crimea and Donbass and keep Ukraine out of NATO As far as I can see these are being achieved, and will almost certainly be totally achieved within a few months.
    68
  197. We must withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights IMMEDIATELY, and ignore it on the meantime anyway. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the ECHR supplies a route map.
    67
  198. No. America did.
    67
  199. You left out the bit about Hamas being judged to have committed a war crime by taking and keeping civilian hostages.
    67
  200. Thank you for an excellent presentation. I was moderately obsessed with the Shroud some years ago and I thought I might share one or two theories from the books I read at the time, and which may be of interest. One non-divine explanation of the image is bilirubin staining. This is the yellow stuff produced by the liver in jaundice cases. It can also be produced in cases of severe trauma and the idea is that the image is basically a sweat stain, made semi-permanent by the presence bilirubin in the sweat. There are photographs of the images of hands impressed on bedsheets by patients with severe liver conditions. And there is no doubt , of course, that crucifixion is an extremely traumatic business. You don't just hang there. The intense pain of the nail driven through the foot causes the victim to pull himself up by the arms - which of course causes intense pain from the nails in the hands. Some accounts suggest that in the initial stages at least this causes a quite rapid up and down jerking motion which can go on for some time. It may also be accompanied by erection and ejaculation, as occurs sometimes in hangings. The lungs flood with fluid, as happens during many traumas as well as in heart surgery when patients need to have the chest cavity constantly drained. The Roman soldier's spear thrust was to drain this fluid to prevent Christ from drowning in it, and thus dying too soon. Equally well, breaking the legs prevents any motion and thus the victim does actually drown. Christ's legs of course were not broken and the comparatively short time in which he was hung on the cross leads to the theory that he was taken down while still alive and revived by Joseph of Arimathea.... but that of course is a totally different story!
    67
  201. Like the Nazis, BLM seeks power through racial discord.
    67
  202. It only took the Nazis one generation to indoctrinate an entire population. The Marxists have had at least three.
    67
  203. They've got what they want, now they must defend it
    66
  204. The greatest scandal in modern history now needs the greatest cover up.
    66
  205. Why, oh why, oh why has Newsmax - so wise in many other respects - gone down this insane road with regard to the Russia/Ukraine war?
    65
  206. It wasn't "just the flu." But soon it will be.
    65
  207. Meanwhile in Sweden....
    65
  208. Would they like to apologise to me for making my great grandfather get up at 4am and dig ditches in the freezing cold all day? I'm short of a bob or two at the moment, so a bit of reparation would come in handy.
    65
  209. Three generations of brainwashing are having an effect. Marxism brooks no contradiction.
    65
  210. A true hero! What would he have done if Boris, Whitty and Hancock had dropped by for a pint??!!
    65
  211. But she was speaking the truth. Are you so far gone you can't recognise truth and honesty when you hear it?
    64
  212. The coronavirus is evolving. This poxy government isn't.
    64
  213. Me too(Haha) As a Brit I started looking into US politics because of Trump. I vaguely thought the Dems were OK and the GOP right wing thugs. Was I ever wrong! The US Dems are a sick, conceited cabal of self-righteous, self-seeking liars and manipulators. And they're not even very good at it!
    64
  214. One just wonders.......so many younger people dying suddenly these days.
    64
  215. I was waiting for Santa to come down the chimney with a sack full of missiles.
    63
  216. The good news is that the UK death rate is practically the same this year as it was in 2019, according to UN figures. How can this possibly be if we are enduring the greatest health scourge since the Black Death?
    63
  217. It almost becomes irrelevant now. Whatever we have suffered - and the reasons for it - will disappear in the economic chaos resulting from taking sides in the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
    63
  218. "What a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive,"
    63
  219. Do you think that getting a foreign power to train and equip a 600,00- strong army and to allow your country to become a base for nuclear missiles seven minutes flight from your capital doesn't count as a threat?
    63
  220. You don't learn do you? Trotting out dubious allegations against opponents just doesn't work. Its sooooo old-fashioned!
    62
  221. I wonder what the legal position is regarding the Ukrainian's activities in the Eastern parts of the country over the past eight years?
    61
  222. No matter what he says, the figures for the "second wave" are full of unanswered questions and apparent anomalies. Have we been taken for a ride? We deserve to know the truth.
    61
  223. Too much blood and too much money have already been spent on Ukraine's lost cause.
    61
  224. What kindergarten does Sky get these "former generals" from?
    61
  225. Dead parrot. (the story is getting very, very thin.)
    60
  226. Time to talk. A ceasefire is entirely possible - but probably not as long as Zelensky remains in charge.
    60
  227. Describing the eminently pragmatic if somewhat ruthless Vladimir Putin as a "frothing lunatic" does little to advance this already very dubious case.
    60
  228. If my auntie had bollocks she'd be my uncle.
    59
  229. So odd that the more left-wing you are the more covid-paranoid you are, the more pessimistic you are and the more controls and restrictions you want to see. Plus of course there are marvellous opportunities for virtue-signalling! Political divisions really do seem to be based on personality traits as much as anything.
    59
  230. Purely out of interest Brazil is number eight on the list of covid deaths per capita. Neighbouring Peru, where draconian restrictions backed by armed police have been in place, has twice as many deaths per capita.
    59
  231. He went straight in instead of lining up. A lesson for today.
    59
  232. How much longer can this amazing scam continue?
    58
  233. Trump said he was going to drain the swamp. There are certainly some very ugly things left flapping in in the mud.
    58
  234. He's right. There really is no alternative. Time after time the Israelis have tried to form civilised relationships with the Arabs and time after time these overtures have been met with violence. Until the Arabs entirely reject Hamas and other extremist terrorists they must - tragically - accept the terrible consequences of their decision.
    57
  235. We could do with something like the AfD in this country. Reform just doesn't crack it.
    57
  236. Is America finally coming to its senses?
    57
  237. There is no disgrace in speaking the truth and defying Socialist totalitarianism.
    57
  238. The remnants of the Azov Battalion are sealed inside the steel plant's underground catacombs - a short distance from hell.
    56
  239. You can't drain the swamp using swamp creatures to do it.
    56
  240. It can. You just have to convict him of something serious first. Such a bribery or starting wars for profit.
    56
  241. We really need to find a simple word or phrase which covers the rioters. "Far right" and "racist" aren't at all accurate.
    56
  242. China sure has balls.
    55
  243. Is it OK to say that Churchill was THE major figure among those who saved the world from Fascism?
    55
  244. The enemy were killed in large numbers and their fortress was destroyed.
    55
  245. So is Ukraine.
    55
  246. Ukraine isn't exactly unarmed. America alone has spent some $13 billion on providing it with weapons and training.
    55
  247. It says more about the absurdities of the US judicial system than anything else.
    54
  248. Australia is building a whole mountain of future grief with these hysterical, knee-jerk reactions. It's time for the government to face reality instead of trying to hide from it.
    54
  249. The greater shame is that the government is taking no steps to investigate the manifest problems relating to covid vaccines, which could easily be as needlessly tragic as the blood scandal. Will we have to wait another two or three decades for that day of shame?
    54
  250. Absolutely the right guy. A true sceptic is needed to question the profit-based health industry.
    53
  251. Over the many months I have enjoyed watching Times Radio videos they have been wrong about almost everything. I doubt this offering will be an exception.
    53
  252. These ridiculous protests are doing incredible harm to race relations in this country. Black people are being cynically manipulated by Marxists into accepting a totally false scenario. The left has lost the allegiance of the working class and now finds new cannon fodder in these idiots.
    53
  253. The government didn't get one single thing right when dealing with the pandemic. Not one single thing.
    53
  254. It is quite clear that in Sir Keir Stalin's New Britain treating the sick and elderly must take second place to providing decent accommodation to the thousands of brave and healthy young men who have risked their lives and their I-Phones in making the perilous journey to our shores.
    53
  255. Science seems riddled with politics. The authors of The Great Barrington Declaration, calling for a new approach to the coronavirus pandemic, are constantly accused of "working for a right-wing think-tank".
    53
  256. This level of denial is not a good look.
    53
  257. The idea that these are "forced evacuations" scarcely stands scrutiny. Ethnic Russians (and many Ukrainians) have been leaving the area in droves for years. This town is on the front line of the eight year war between Ukraine and Donbass separatists. So disappointing to see Sky Aus taking on the kiddy's storybook version of this conflict.
    52
  258. The Tories will have to think again about allowing a democratic vote by party members to decide their leader.
    52
  259. Behold the results of America's Communist-infiltrated education system! Was Joe McCarthy right all along???
    52
  260. I'm sure many Ukrainians are now wishing they hadn't listened to their Uncle Sam.
    52
  261. The big question now is who'll be the next woke muttonhead to lead the poor Kiwis down the garden path?
    52
  262. What a splendid, imaginative solution.
    51
  263. Hang on a minute, I though Trump was supposed to be senile and couldn't string two words together?
    51
  264. Viva Trump!
    51
  265. The roadmap is simple. A complete U-turn before he drives us off a cliff. Boris is good at U-turns, so there shouldn't be a problem.
    51
  266. What an entirely rational and reasonable person Vladimir Putin appears to be.
    51
  267. Ukraine got suckered. Tough.
    51
  268. Yup a draw. Much like WWII in a funny kind of way.
    51
  269. Since so many "conspiracy theories" seem to turn out to be truths, perhaps "replacement theory" isn't so far of the mark after all.
    51
  270. What is so sickening is that those responsible for this war are sitting comfortably at home in the US and Europe, only mildly peeved because their investment hasn't paid off as much as they'd hoped.
    51
  271. What a grifter this guy is.
    51
  272. Oh no! Put her back in her box PLEEEESE!!!
    51
  273. Very interesting and informative. Thankyou. My theory, for what it's worth, is that all this was happening inside John Dee's head. He obviously had an incredible brain and it is possible that a part of it invented the whole language, the conversation with angels and so on - but on a subconscious level. As there are attested cases of multiple personalities unknown to one another occupying a single person, Dr John Dee, the courtier and scholar, could not acknowledge the existence of this other self and so he needed another individual to focus upon. His scryer. He was thus able to deal with the material his subconscious other self was producing by imagining it to have an exterior reality, conveyed to him via Kelly and the others. It's all about trying to find meanings in numbers and arrangements of symbols which look as though they ought to be there, but in fact aren't. Dee had a split personality, crudely put, and his rational personality refused to recognise the irrational aspect, and so he was forced to exteriorise it in this manner. I enjoyed the video very much and the above is merely a suggestion, of course. I have one very minor criticism: although the sequence of illustrations was generally apt and excellent they did show the Elizabethan spy network reaching Australia a couple of hundred years before it was discovered and Dee arriving in London by train a couple of hundred years or so before they were invented.
    50
  274. We must be grateful to the protesters. If none of them get ill we will know the pandemic is over. If they do get it and suffer and die then.... Oh well. Too bad.
    50
  275. Russian oil is getting everywhere. They're winning!
    50
  276. What's wrong with being offensive anyway?
    50
  277. Am I alone in feeling sad that Simon doesn't like Laurence?
    50
  278. YES!!!
    50
  279. Trump's Mount Rushmore speech could go down in history as the turning point when Marxist infiltration of our institutions was finally recognised. Australia, the UK and the European nations need to follow his lead. This cancer must be excised.
    50
  280. We're broke - yet spending more than £12billion on the mad adventure in Ukraine.
    49
  281. Whatever this madman's motives were we can be absolutely certain that his Muslim upbringing and mindset contributed to his "reasoning."
    49
  282. Is there no limit to the sheer contempt the modern Labour Party has for the British working class?
    49
  283. Labour has solved the NHS problem. All it has to do is get rid of old people.
    49
  284. Immigration, lockdowns, covid vaccines... what more do you need to know?
    49
  285. No. The justice system is.
    49
  286. The dragging down could well be in the opposite direction.
    49
  287. But he isn't. He is very, very tough indeed.
    49
  288. It may be an extravagant metaphor, but it contains more than a grain of truth.
    49
  289. I recently bought some new underpants. After one wash the elastic went and they ended up dragging uncomfortably at mid-thigh. As a recent Conservative voter I feel much the same about Boris Johnson as I do about those underpants.
    49
  290. I'm still waiting to hear about someone unvaccinated getting Omicron.
    49
  291. The BS detector has gone into overdrive. Ordinary Brits know they are being conned - as this comments section will clearly show.
    48
  292. A dinosaur bellowing in the swamp.
    48
  293. If it is true that this was done at the requests of the organisers of the event, then these organisers should bow their heads in shame. It will affect their cause very badly. But perhaps that is exactly what was intended.
    48
  294. I have great fun haunting the comments sections of loony left US YouTube channels. The amount of repetitive and insane insult levelled at Trump is unbelievable.
    48
  295. We must escape the European Court of Human Rights immediately, and ignore its provisions until we do.
    48
  296. And should the Zelensky regime be held responsible for the deaths of all ITS political opponents?
    48
  297. Apart from the fact that this was the funeral of a soldier and a great many of the mourners were apparently military men, I find it odd that these Russian "atrocities" always seem to happen when Zelensky is on a begging mission to get more armaments. Again, something stinks here - as in several other cases in which we are unequivocally told that the fiendish Russians are committing a war crime.
    47
  298. Another obvious PR stunt. He knows that it's all over in Mariupol, but by going on like this he'll be able to say that he did his best to save civilian lives. In reality, he couldn't care less. If there are any civilians in the Azovstral works chances are the Azov Battalion are executing them right now, and making it look as though the Russians did it.
    47
  299. So who told them what Putin's war aims are? The same people who told them the Taliban would take two months to reach Kabul?
    47
  300. There is no climate crisis.
    47
  301. If Omicron is what it seems to be we should welcome it with open arms.
    47
  302. Time to play "Guess the Ethnicity"!
    47
  303. Perhaps he should give up his day job.
    47
  304. Hollow words from a hollow man. America just died of shame.
    47
  305. Starmer looks like a mouse waiting to see if the cat's going to eat him, or mess him up a bit first.
    47
  306. It would be if it was true.
    46
  307. It is clear to everyone not blinded by prejudice that the Labour government is committed to putting the interests of immigrants above those of native-born Brits. Whatever twisted ideology has lead to this situation it is clearly so entrenched that only the very swift removal of the government will prevent further serious outbreaks of violence.
    46
  308. How unlike that shining beacon of courage, truth and honesty that is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who never lies and absolutely does not have billions of dollars stashed away in offshore accounts.
    46
  309. Isn't Islam wonderful? You don't get a choice about becoming a martyr.
    46
  310. Could be him next.
    46
  311. The WHO, like all UN organisations, seems to have been taken over by Communist/globalist factions. America would be justified in seeking to dismantle the entire tower of thieves and idiots.
    45
  312. There are no heart issues on the list of symptoms so far detected. Unlike with vaccines.
    45
  313. To these people lying is a way of life. They wouldn't recognise truth if it bit them.
    45
  314. He'll be laughing on the other side of his face before long.
    45
  315. But this was known from the very first minutes of the attack! The cluster bombs exploded in the railway station while the booster rocket fell to the ground some considerable distance away, after the cluster bombs were launched from it. It was a Ukrainian booster rocket and it landed south west of the station; meaning that it came from the southwest. From territory occupied by the Ukrainians.
    45
  316. When will they learn? Restrictions just give the virus time to regroup. We must bite the bullet and allow natural immunity via infection to put paid to this mess once and for all.
    45
  317. Why waste a missile? Putin could buy him at half the cost.
    45
  318. But it is no longer about Republican v Democrat. It is about MAGA v the Uniparty.
    44
  319. I'll let it sink in that anyone could believe such foolishness.
    44
  320. Every cent has the potential to mean the needless waste of yet another life. Think on that.
    44
  321. It's just Allah's way of smiling on them.
    44
  322. Bumping off OAPS and replacing them with cheap labour from the third world makes sound economic sense - if your computer is programmed by the WEF, that is.
    44
  323. Zombies voting for a zombie President while other zombies look on.
    44
  324. Are we really, really, really sure we want to "combat" Omicron? It seems so much nicer than its relatives and when it replaces Delta (as it certainly will) it will bring joy to everyone except pharma company directors and shareholders. It seems both pathetic and uncivil to try to stop it.
    44
  325. The clown is only acting as bagman for the Washington hawks after all.
    44
  326. When this is over -and it will be soon -we will have to face the appalling long-term consequences of our hysterical over-reaction to this infection.
    44
  327. This is what it's been about from the very beginning.
    43
  328. Naturally enough the college will now review the endowments made to it by Rhodes and other imperialists and ensure the money is returned to the third world nations from which it was stolen.
    43
  329. These restrictions are just pissing in the wind - and the politicos know it. Johnson and Starmer are just seeing who can piss the highest.
    43
  330. The energy crisis is the result of two insanities: the nonsense of man-made global warming and support for Ukraine against Russia.
    43
  331. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
    43
  332. The ceasefire is no more or less than what it appears: a sign of Russia's genuine commitment to its recovered religious identity.
    43
  333. Putin is playing chess. This is a pawn sacrifice.
    43
  334. Objective assessment will reveal that many of these restrictions have been actively harmful - and not only because of their economic and social effects. They have made the pandemic last longer and have resulted in more deaths.
    43
  335. When did this become a war crime? After America ran out of countries to do it to presumably.
    43
  336. I never thought I would find myself in much agreement with the Supreme Pontiff - but in this case he is absolutely right.
    43
  337. Russia's terms for complete withdrawal are entirely reasonable and should be met immediately. Any continuation of this totally avoidable war will be the fault of Ukraine -or whoever happens to be pulling its strings at the moment.
    43
  338. Starmer seems increasingly out of touch with reality.
    43
  339. I'm a quarter black. Can I go in for the first fifteen minutes?
    43
  340. The situation in Gaza does rather remind one of the situation in Germany towards the end of World War II. Civilians died in their thousands - but then again they had freely voted for an extremist regime which had carried out many acts of aggression.
    42
  341. It wasn't so much a land grab as a take back land grab.
    42
  342. Great to see that with war raging and millions dying from drugs, both legal and illegal, the good 'ole US of A still maintains the spirit of justice for which it is famed worldwide.
    42
  343. Mariupol is now looking a great deal better than it was under Ukrainian occupation.
    42
  344. The mosquitoes in Russia are really terrible at this time of year.
    42
  345. They don't just eat them either.
    41
  346. America has been interfering in the politics of practically every country in the world for at least 100 years.
    41
  347. Like the Boston Tea Party and the storming of the Bastille this was a symbolic act heralding a new era.
    41
  348. Faced with the damning truths constantly exposed by Times Radio, there is no doubt that both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin should retire immediately from public life.
    41
  349. The elucidatory prognoses of contemporary pedagogues are frequently so amorphous as to be chimerical.
    41
  350. Which direction was Campbell's moral compass pointing to when his lies led to the deaths of over a million people?
    41
  351. Lockdowns didn't work. Death rates in these countries are horrendous. In Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, there have been just 883 deaths. In Uganda, with a population of 43 million there have been just FOUR. Both these countries use hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against malaria. People take it small doses a couple of times a week in order to mitigate the worst effects of the illness. Other countries where malaria is dealt with in this way have experienced similarly low death rates from Covid 10. There is no mystery in this. The treatment works in the same way by preventing infection from spreading.
    41
  352. With such a ramshackle and readily manipulated electoral system in the US no result is above suspicion. This one included.
    41
  353. From what I can tell what he said wasn't racist anyway. The trouble is we are now at a stage where we can't even mention black people except in tones of extreme veneration.
    41
  354. At least. they didn't chuck Nigel in the river
    41
  355. He's right of course. The Democrats have abandoned democracy - as well as any sense of decency.
    41
  356. Even if Trump loses he will win.
    40
  357. Is it even POSSIBLE for this crap government to make any more mistakes?
    40
  358. If the possibility for fraud exists, then fraud will be committed.
    40
  359. Greta is back! Covid must be over!
    40
  360. I still can't work out who's being conned and who's doing the conning. Since they're all making a packet I don't suppose it matters much.
    40
  361. Hasn't Joe Biden told him that black and brown people don't know how to book appointments?
    40
  362. Advertising for a modern Jack Ruby even as we speak.
    40
  363. The sooner we see sense and get out of this mess the better. Why we appointed ourselves "cheerleaders" in this insane adventure is beyond me.
    40
  364. Harris won the debate or rather the forces of evil did. But winning a debate doesn't mean winning hearts and minds.
    40
  365. His reservations about some medical procedures are well founded. In many instances the desire for profit has outweighed all other considerations and actual harm is being caused.
    40
  366. Politicians of all stamps are going to come out badly from this -and deservedly so. Cuts to fire service budgets, over-regulation of fire-prevention measures and misplaced environmentalist concern for the habitats of plants and animals have all contributed to the tragedy.
    40
  367. This is utter fantasy. What a clown show the UN has become.
    39
  368. All expert opinion points to the floodwater pouring out into the sea in less than three weeks. As usual the Ukrainians are milking this for all its worth
    39
  369.  @Frack_Black  The truth isn't silly. Blindly believing everything you're told is silly.
    39
  370. Elon Musk didn't get where he is today without knowing which way the wind is blowing.
    39
  371. Ukraine needs to face a new reality. It has hitched itself to the wrong waggon. It must accept this and take the consequences.
    39
  372. These unfortunate death were collateral. Ukraine, meanwhile, is constantly shelling civilian targets in Donetsk. Perhaps Sky might report on that.
    39
  373. How do you know what Hamas says is true? They don't have much of a reputation for speaking it.
    39
  374. Sir Sausage seems terribly keen on war.
    39
  375. They will be saying some really hurty words to that nasty Mr Putin.
    39
  376. Labour is as dead as Monty Python's parrot.
    39
  377. Sterling and stylish performance by the Russians. A joy to watch!
    38
  378. These children have not been abducted. They have been removed from a war zone for their own safety. To attempt to disguise these humane acts as some kind of sinister plot is crude propaganda of the very worse kind.
    38
  379. The case is based on these four states unconstitutionally extending mail-in ballot provisions. Other states didn't - meaning there are thousands of disenfranchised voters. Actually the Dems cheated like hell, but it's hard to nab the slippery bastards on that one.
    38
  380. Another blatantly misleading headline!
    38
  381. All fur coat and no knickers.
    38
  382. Confused, insane and utterly pointless. A pig's breakfast cooked up by a committee putting crap data into crap models and expecting miracles. You might as well try reading chicken entrails. Perhaps they do.
    38
  383. Can we REALLY assume that NATO and the US will risk their own annihilation to avenge Britain?
    38
  384. A gobbsmackingly objective piece of reporting from the BBC - just for once. Good journalism is not dead after all. Have a biscuit!
    38
  385. Odd how sexual deviation and political ignorance so often go hand in hand.
    38
  386. So that's why they're winning?
    37
  387. BLM are no different to drug dealers hanging around school gates. They start off offering a bit of harmless ant-racism before getting on to the hard stuff - undiluted Marxism.
    37
  388. No. A patriot and a leader.
    37
  389. More and more there are echoes of Soviet Russia the Biden government's way of doing things. Even the Capitol cops' uniforms look the part. The hearings could be out-takes from "The Death of Stalin."
    37
  390. If the CIA isn't out there stirring trouble I'd be much surprised.
    37
  391. These are not "anti-racism" protests. They are field exercises being carried out by Marxist revolutionaries.
    37
  392. Why exactly are the UK, the USA and EU countries applauded for supplying weapons to Ukraine while Iran doing the same for Russia is regarded as some kind of moral failing?
    37
  393. He did, didn't he? Kissed the guy's firefighter uniform.
    37
  394. The more troops Zelensky sends to Bakhmut, the more of them get killed. This sounds like an act of desperation. It has echoes of another charismatic leader over-ruling his generals in order to maintain his delusions.
    37
  395. It is, at worst, an extravagant metaphor. But it contains more than a grain of truth.
    37
  396. The main result at this stage seems to be considerable losses for little appreciable gain.
    37
  397. The face of pragmatic common sense. in fact.
    37
  398. This is a death wish. Underestimating Putin is suicidal.
    36
  399. Hitler was a pretty good speaker too. Charisma speaks volumes to people who don't have any.
    36
  400. You shouldn't be so dumb as to obey them in the first place.
    35
  401. The BBC exists to tell people what to think.
    35
  402. Fact-checked Kamala lately?
    35
  403. The dog ate his homework.
    35
  404. It seems to be working reasonably well.
    35
  405. Please, please, PLEASE someone tell Bozo Bojo he isn't Winston Churchill!!!
    35
  406. The Democrats seem to have missed the point of staging Soviet-style show trials. You're supposed to win.
    35
  407. So the crime is made to fit the punishment, rather than the other way around?
    35
  408. The government has shown weakness in not standing up to this cheap political trick. This obsession with "racism" is pathetic. I don't see how what was said was at all racist . Why are we forbidden to even mention black people except in tones of awed respect?
    35
  409. She took his advice then. Hope for her yet.
    35
  410. Labour's obsession with facemasks is assuming fetish-like proportions.
    35
  411. SSH. I think your satire has passed unnoticed among some here!
    35
  412. Suggested replacements: Soros House and Thunberg House. Might be a bit of money in it too.
    35
  413. The Yanks don't need panto when they've got this. The courtroom even looks like a cheap stage set- and the acting is really terrible.
    34
  414. This is a funny world Sky is living in. Almost a parallel universe complete with a population of aliens. Rupert must have more dosh invested in Ukraine than is wise under the circumstances.
    34
  415. Utter hogwash. Spread panic: make money.
    34
  416. There can be very little doubt on the evidence as it stands that this was a set-up - and a pretty clumsy one at that.
    34
  417. I don't suppose one is allowed to refer to pots and kettles in this day and age.
    34
  418. Either Starmer is even dimmer than many suspect, or he has a major personal investment in the continuation of this conflict.
    34
  419. An interesting side-note is that he wore the Black Sun Nazi emblem, a symbol also employed by the very brave and lovely Azov Battalion of Ukraine.
    34
  420. Facts have no place in the modern world.
    34
  421. The allegations of fraud might just possibly - just possibly - be mistaken but they are by no means "baseless." There is a wealth of circumstantial evidence none of which has been properly addressed, let alone found to be false.
    34
  422. No. It's how frightened children behave.
    34
  423. I think I finally understand the Aboriginal concept of "dreamtime."
    34
  424. Teacher training colleges are Marxist training camps. It's in the curriculum. Margaret Thatcher was apparently about to shut them down before she got the boot.
    34
  425. I've been asking around everywhere for someone to name me one of the lies Trump told. No results so far.
    33
  426. This is leadership. Wise up Boris.
    33
  427. The first invasion was in February. Hardly Springtime.
    33
  428. You can't truce with fanatics.
    33
  429. Yet another reason for making peace with Russia, instead of backing US warmongers.
    33
  430. The long-established Democrat tradition of ballot-harvesting the votes of the poor and disadvantaged must come to an end - meanwhile in Maricopa...
    33
  431. Why is there so much ignorance about medicines? Many useful treatments are banned or hard to get hold of because they are cheaper than the stuff Big Pharma churns out. Cannabis was only banned because it was cheaper than booze. It's the same thing behind it all - greed.
    33
  432. Socialism has failed 'This is sad but true. The world now needs a modest, pragmatic system of governance, individually tailored to fit the needs of individual countries.
    33
  433. The horse throwing its rider and bolting wouldn't have anything to do with the missiles being thrown at it by BLM thugs would it? Naah. Of course not. Dominic Cummings ordered it to be struck by a traffic light so it would bolt and trample peace-loving demonstrators.
    33
  434. There ought to be a law against Emily Maitlis.
    33
  435. Socialism and lockdowns have a great deal in common- neither of them work.
    33
  436. I really do wonder what the West's response would be if Putin nuked some symbolic target and then threatened to do the same if we didn't back off. Would we REALLY go in with all guns blazing or, meekly and sensibly, go to the conference table?
    33
  437. And yet everything they do seems designed to prolong it.
    33
  438. The main question is whether or not the scammers took advantage of an accident - or actually deliberately released the virus.
    33
  439. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
    33
  440. If this was a genuine strategy by the "far right" then someone out there knows what they're doing.
    32
  441. STOP PRESS: The Office of National Statistics has just released provisional death figures from all causes for July. There were 38,179 deaths registered That is 1,435 LESS than in July 2019. Deaths where Covid 19 was an UNDERLYING cause amounted to 2.6% of the total. No deaths were recorded where it was a primary cause.
    32
  442. The EU helped start the war in Ukraine. Now it's going to help escalate it.
    32
  443. These reports are probably just wishful thinking. Putin could flatten every city if he wished to, as happened in Chechnya and Syria. This is a cautious campaign. designed to minimise damage and losses on both sides.
    32
  444. There are no rights, only privileges.
    32
  445. There is an elephant in the room.
    32
  446. You don't think Ukraine lies too?
    32
  447. What on earth makes a deadbeat like Kier Starmer think he can tell Donald Trump what to do?
    32
  448. Odd how cheap medications which may provide an alternative to mind-bogglingly profitable vaccines are constantly mocked by the shill media.
    32
  449. Martyrdom is what they want, not some poxy prison sentence.
    32
  450. I'm sure Wagner's members are very, very worried indeed. I doubt they will be able to sleep nights after this.
    32
  451. He had plenty of reasons.
    32
  452. Who exactly was terrified by these terrorists?
    32
  453. Time to tell him he's on his own.
    32
  454. Ukraine has lost what must be one of the bloodiest and most unnecessary wars in recent memory. And like most wars in recent years it has been entirely the result of American greed and incompetence.
    32
  455. "Defeat a man in battle and his reign is over. Make of him a martyr and his reign will last forever."
    32
  456. These figures are utterly meaningless when you realise that if George Floyd had been killed in the UK his death would be on the list of coronavirus related deaths, since his body tested positive for Covid 19.
    32
  457. The insufferable smugness of the BBC never fails to amaze.
    32
  458. Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan?
    31
  459. $250million?? Small change .I bet Zelenski's insulted.
    31
  460. This is madness.
    31
  461. You forget Dominion machines. They will vote for him too.
    31
  462. We need an alliance with Russia - not a war.
    31
  463. The war is over having followed an entirely predictable course. Hundreds of thousands have died to no purpose, sacrificed on the altar of greed.
    31
  464. The rioters are the oppressed British working class.
    31
  465. Perhaps they didn't do it then.
    31
  466. But WHY???!!!
    31
  467. How about cutting it out completely? How's that for an idea?
    31
  468. Thank you Simon for so clearly coalescing and confirming my instinctive views in this matter.
    31
  469. The Ukrainians have taken virtually undefended farmland of no great value. The Russians have taken very heavily defended and extremely valuable mineral-rich land. This is about geology, not geography.
    31
  470. This is so utterly pathetic that anyone could be forgiven for believing this excuse for a government is actually in league with the people, smugglers -rather than trying to defeat them.
    30
  471. The Tories show every sign of being run by a woke PR company. No good will come of this.
    30
  472. I can't get over the Orwellian title of the job he's chucked in - Minister of State for Efficiency and Transformation.
    30
  473. God save us from actors who get taken over by the part they're playing.
    30
  474. Trouble is, when this remark was first made there was a Churchill waiting in the wings. Today there isn't.
    30
  475. No excuse - but plenty of reasons.
    30
  476. What a fascinating discussion. I was reminded of an old film starring Anthony Hopkins as an English professor working in a US university who got into terrible trouble for the innocent use of the word "spooks."
    30
  477. Every time this guy put his foot on the accelerator was a moment of freedom and common sense in a crazy world.
    30
  478. It's looking more and more as though these restrictions do more harm than good in the long run. The only way out is for as many healthy people as possible to become infected and recover and so set up cordons of immunity. The restrictions only inhibit this process
    30
  479. This is, to say the least, an optimistic view.
    30
  480. The slave trade had nothing to do with the British Government. It was a multi-national private enterprise. It might be possible to trace the descendants of those who profited. Many of them work for the BBC.
    30
  481. YouTube makes it impossible to criticise Hamas in comments sections. Is their new algorithm a Nazi?
    30
  482. Since the floodwater is expected to all pour into the sea within three weeks "genocide: might be going a bit strong. Ukraine seems very fond of the word "genocide: Perhaps it has something to do with them helping the Nazis exterminate the Jews or even their own recent attempts to de-Russianise Crimea and Donbass
    30
  483.  @David-jw7km  It took them eight months and they incurred huge casualties. Two year later the Russians regained it in three weeks.
    30
  484. Since Israel is not committing genocide, this ruling is fairly irrelevant. Hamas, on the other hand, was found guilty of committing a war crime by taking civilian hostages.
    30
  485. As a pensioner I feel entirely comfortable with the idea that my winter fuel payment may be cancelled in order to help offset the cost of accommodating and feeding illegal immigrants, or undocumented welcome guests, or whatever they are now called in Newspeak. My grandchildren won't be getting any presents this Christmas as a result, but I have explained to them that the amount of money saved will be in excess of the costs of providing sustenance and succour to these brave unfortunates, and there might be almost as much as a million pounds left over to provide outreach centres for sexual deviants and other worthy causes and, as educated young men and women, they too approve the policy.
    30
  486. How many are Muslim?
    30
  487. As ever, sanity has a long haul ahead. Thank goodness there are a few Republicans with the courage to stand up against this madness.
    30
  488. These guys just need an enemy to justify their existence.
    30
  489. Time to put up a disinfection cordon and start digging graves I guess.
    29
  490. I get the feeling that Putin, far from being mad, knows exactly what he's doing.
    29
  491. Jacinda just wants covid to be nice and behave itself - same as the Taliban.
    29
  492. Not far right. Just fed up.
    29
  493. They could always ship the unvaccinated off to Poland. There is a historical precedent.
    29
  494. He is also a climate change nutter. I have vivid memories of him waving that forged "hockey stick" graph and trying to tell everyone that 97 per cent of all scientists believe in global warming.
    29
  495. They should have told their husbands and fathers to stop supporting Hamas then.
    29
  496. They've seen through you, that's why.
    29
  497. When the law becomes corrupt, it is time to get rid of the law.
    29
  498. Greta is very well-connected.
    29
  499. This is one case when the police ought to release information about his origins and ethnicity - simply to prevent wild speculation.
    29
  500. Who cares about CASES. The more the merrier. Each one is a step towards herd immunity. It's DEATHS that count. STOP PRESS: The Office of National Statistics has just released provisional death figures from all causes for July. There were 38,179 deaths registered That is 1,435 LESS than in July 2019. Deaths where Covid 19 was an UNDERLYING cause amounted to 2.6% of the total. No deaths were recorded where it was a primary cause.
    29
  501. This is simply par for the course at parish council meetings. I was a local newspaper reporter back in the days when reporters went out and reported, rather than sit in front of computer screens rewriting handouts. Allegations of criminal activity and fraud were far from uncommon. Procedural wrangling occupied a considerable part of many meetings. Parish clerks, aware of these possibilities, usually inserted an item on the agenda upon which all could agree. Generally this involved the perennial problem of dogs shitting on the pavement. Afterwards everyone went down the pub and had a good laugh.
    29
  502. We have imported chaos.
    29
  503. Gonzalo Lira? Jeffery Epstein? And Tommy Robinson is lucky to be alive.
    29
  504. Gonzalo Lira?
    29
  505. Perhaps not all women are as keen on having abortions as some people seem to think.
    29
  506. American left-wingers are quite puzzlingly unsophisticated.
    29
  507. ..and the cover-up continues. You ain't foolin no-one.
    29
  508. This puts farting cows in perspective!
    29
  509. Starmer and Zelensky are just bit players. Trump's meeting with Putin is what matters.
    29
  510. We really need to be able to define the degrees of racism - and somehow put a stop to the crude utterances of those Reform supporters who allow their feelings to overcome their common sense.
    29
  511. Francis Drake actually provides an object lesson in anti-racism. He started out as a slaver, sure, but he teamed up with a gang of runaway slaves in Panama who helped him fight the Spanish. He appears to have realised then that black people were not inferior at all since several of them joined his crew as free men and from that point on he offered freedom to any slaves he captured, often setting them ashore wherever they liked. This is the true lesson: we are all instinctively racist. It is an evolutionary imperative for adults to be suspicious of strangers who look different. Discarding such notions in a common cause is a mark of a civilised human being. Get that story on the bloody plaque!
    29
  512. So that's 100,000 adults in a few years who can think for themselves, then.
    28
  513. And of course Ukraine never has violated a ceasefire, or reneged on a treaty, has it? Not once. Ever.
    28
  514. Why? America thinks much the same.
    28
  515. They don't want the entire country.
    28
  516. The civilian deaths are incidental. These drones are a cheap way of destroying infrastructure. The panic they may cause is just a bonus. Russia has tried to keep civilian deaths to a minimum throughout this conflict.
    28
  517. The government didn't get one thing right in dealing with the pandemic. Not one single thing.
    28
  518.  @johnfw1973  I'm not pushing it as a theory, but there is actually nothing physically impossible in it. The spear wouldn't have collapsed the lung, by the way. That would have defeated the object of the exercise, which was to prolong life, not shorten it. The books in which the suggestion is made propose that Joseph managed to drug Christ up with painkillers and also to bribe the guards to allow him to be taken down before he expired. This is, of course, the basis for the Da Vinci Code nonsense. The suggestion is that Christ and Mary Madelene sailed across the Mediterranean and started a family, the descendants of which are still alive today. The Lord and Saviour bit comes later. The true sequence of events will almost certainly never be known but it is quite likely that initially Christ was used as a symbol of non-violent opposition to Roman rule ie "Look what the Romans did to our guy, but he rose from the dead and he'll be coming back soon! Watch out Romans!" We know how much St Paul had to do with pinching the Christ symbol from the Jews and sharing it with the Gentiles, but the story of the Apostles is far more unclear and thus far more interesting! Speaking in tongues is a subject well worth investigating for example.
    28
  519. Watching Times Radio is like watching a fish floundering in a puddle.
    28
  520. I don't know who Starmer is working for, but it certainly isn't the people of Britain.
    28
  521. Starmer is a magician! He just waved his wand and the "far right" disappeared in a puff of smoke!
    28
  522. There is no such thing as "international law."
    28
  523. Where are news channels getting all these retired generals from? Is there a Rent-a-General agency? Can you hire them for weddings and Rotary Club meetings?
    28
  524. Are there any civilians in Gaza?
    28
  525. It's now an era of hope.
    28
  526. The Chinese have great respect for old age.
    28
  527. Note: teachers have the lowest covid death rate of all occupations Children of course don't die at all.
    28
  528. The odd thing about Johnson is that he is an enormous disappointment to most Conservative voters - but God's gift to Labour.
    27
  529. This does Ukraine more good than it does Russia. Odd how these Russian "atrocities" seem to occur whenever military aid to Ukraine looks like drying up.
    27
  530. I'm slightly worried that the Chinese might know something we don't.
    27
  531. I don't think Putin has made a mistake or underestimated his opposition. He is moving forward slowly but inexorably in order to capture Ukraine with the minimum damage to property and loss of life.
    27
  532. In Russia nuisances like this are rounded up and sent to die for their country. There are worse ideas.
    27
  533. Nobody wants to go down with the sinking ship. It's the post-election leadership which is important.
    27
  534. Especially since a) they probably won't work on Omicron and b) they won't even be needed if they did But hey, it's just another billion quid or so down the tubes.
    27
  535. I'm fascinated to know if these weapons are free gifts or if payment is expected some time in the future.
    27
  536. The idea that either Biden or Harris are anything other than fronts for the people who REALLY rule America is clearly absurd. Trump was the only President - probably ever - who owed no allegiance to anyone other than the American people. Which is why he had to go.
    27
  537. Good for them.
    27
  538. It's like Prohibition in America. In attempting to destroy Russia's trade in oil, sanctions have actually increased it. If there is a demand, the market will meet it.
    27
  539. The idea of Starmer "warning" Putin just creases me up!
    27
  540. Asylum seeker has become synonymous with cynical opportunist. This was clearly not the intention of those who coined the term to define those escaping the horrors following the collapse of nations in post-war Europe.
    27
  541. None of this would have happened if America hadn't bullied Ukraine and its allies into rejecting Russia's entirely reasonable treaty proposals.
    27
  542. Although there are several studies indicating that lockdowns may slow the spread of the virus there does not seem to be one which demonstrates that they reduce the death rate in the long run. This seems more to be determined by the number of people available to die - predominantly the frail elderly. I'm getting on a bit myself and I'd like to think that if I was even more bored and gaga than I am I would willingly surrender a few months of existence to stop this insane nonsense destroying the lives of the young and healthy.
    26
  543. Once again it is clear that he wasn't suggesting any such thing, but just asking as a non-medical person if it would be possible.
    26
  544. I love the conceit of the Americans. They say they know what Putin is up to, and when he doesn't do it they say he's failed!
    26
  545.  @okaycomp  You can't prevent old people from dying. It's just a habit they've got.
    26
  546. Bleeding hearts and Muslim votes about sums it up.
    26
  547. What's "far right"about protecting one's children from sexual perverts?
    26
  548. Old ocean liners can be purchased remarkably cheaply. They could be moored anywhere within British territorial waters such as around the Falklands, for example.
    26
  549. Is it just me or does anyone else get the feeling that no-one is very scared of America any more?
    26
  550. Who bloody CARES!!??? It's the number of deaths and hospitalisations that count and these are going down, down, down. Why don't you share these figures with us?
    26
  551. The melting of sea ice is nothing new and does not threaten the survival of the planet. There was a similar situation in the 1920s.
    26
  552. Will Palestinians stop killing Israelis if Israelis stop killing Palestinians? Answer: No. Will Israelis stop killing Palestinians if Palestinians stop killing Israelis? Answer: Yes. That says it all from my point of view.
    26
  553. Give up. Give Donbass it's independence. Don't think of joining NATO. Stop being a hero.
    26
  554. What a totally trustworthy and unbiased assessment of the situation from a man whose whole life has been dedicated to telling the truth without fear or favour.
    26
  555. Without the coronavirus figures this list would be considerably shorter. I hope someone does a detailed analysis as just quick look shows names going back to the 1960s and others whose deaths were due to natural causes or suicide. Nasty cheap tricks like this show just how shabby the BLM case is.
    26
  556. And why should he care? Why should we be taking sides in a territorial dispute between two gangs of oligarchs?
    26
  557. He already has, more or less.
    26
  558. Poor Mr Putin has been humiliated so much by Times Radio he might have to see a psychiatrist.
    26
  559. We do seem to have some very, very mad generals and other military types in this country.
    26
  560. Trouble is, anyone who replaces her will know they are not going to last long either. The way things are going internationally it will require a miracle worker to even appear to get us out of the shit. I doubt many ambitious Tories want to pick up the poison chalice. We are due for a Labour government and the next General Election will almost certainly provide one. Best of luck Keir!
    26
  561. Most countries screwed this up - and Australia more than most.
    26
  562. Thank you for this. Now subscribed. Re-assuring to have my own (very unpopular) views confirmed by an expert
    25
  563. I love the smell of tear gas in the mornings.
    25
  564. While having every sympathy for these unfortunate people the world needs to realise that there are people living in frontline villages in Donbass who have been living like this for literally years. And it is Ukraine firing off the missiles and the artillery shells.
    25
  565. I think I hear the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped.
    25
  566. Thank God someone knows this!
    25
  567. It's a class thing. Farage is just an anti-EU Tory. Tommy Robinson is council-estate working class, as are many of his supporters. It's saloon bar v. public bar, real ale v lager, rugger v soccer, white van v Jag. The visceral distrust of the monied middle class towards the oiks is of ancient origin and still runs deep in this benighted land.
    25
  568. Russia wants Odessa far, far more than it wants Kiev (which it doesn't really want at all.)
    25
  569. The fact the casualties are so few supports the view that these attacks are primarily designed to cripple military capabilities. Which they are doing.
    25
  570. Temperatures in Australia were frequently much higher before 1910 than they are today. When do official government records now begin? You got it. 1910
    25
  571. Apart from BLM of course.
    25
  572. You are not allowed to see the evidence and they are not allowed to present it.
    25
  573. No wonder he's laughing. He's got away with stuff like this for decades and it's too late to catch him now.
    25
  574. Well it does make a change when a conspiracy theory turns out to be untrue. It's usually the other way round.
    25
  575. Watching Sky News is giving me an itchy arse these days. Is Putin responsible or is it the CIA?
    25
  576. Why is everyone so keen for Ukraine to win anyway?
    25
  577. Did Israel turn a blind eye? It could cynically be argued that 700 civilian deaths is a reasonable price to pay for the chance to destroy Hamas and conquer Gaza - and still keep on the right side of world opinion..
    25
  578. This must be pretty low down on his list of sins. Just look at him! He is like some illustration from a Grimm's Fairy Tale.
    25
  579. Opportunism.
    25
  580. Whale have to see.
    24
  581. If he gets a peerage he will be in politics forever - perish the thought!
    24
  582. Why do they not take their protests to living individuals and institutions guilty of white on black racism? Could it be because there aren't any?
    24
  583. You can get scientists to say anything you want them to if you make it worth their while.
    24
  584. Greta is a star who will one day escape her handlers. She is just an actress on the world stage and I don't believe for a single moment she believes a single word of what she is paid to say.
    24
  585. The man's a nightmare, however he looks.
    24
  586. America - making the world safe for hypocrisy.
    24
  587. It's a shame we can't ban him.
    24
  588. There is no room for compromise. One side or the other must be utterly defeated or rendered entirely ineffective. Our only hope is that future generations of Islamic children come to reject the religious fanaticism of today's lunatics. Christianity went through this in the Middle Ages. Islam must catch up.
    24
  589. Every contribution we make extends this unnecessary war, resulting in more death and suffering.
    24
  590. Plus every paper and TV news channel except this one and possibly the Daily Telegraph.
    24
  591. I must be insane then.(And it wasn't neck. It was neck, back and shoulder.)
    24
  592. America.
    24
  593. Diversity is our strenģth.
    24
  594. It appears he is correct. All former Presidents remove documents for their personal libraries and to aid them in producing their memoirs. The process is administered by a government body and Trump has clearly been liasing with this body. Any breaches of protocol will br purely technical. This prosecution is an utter disgrace.
    24
  595. You just can't blame Russia for this one. At the moment it doesn't need an excuse to step up its military activities. This analysis is just plain bonkers.
    24
  596. As an interesting corollary referencing an earlier form of transport there was once a black lock-keeper on the Grand Union Canal at Harefield, Middlesex. His lock was called Black Jack's Lock. He has no plaque. Instead the lock has been renamed Jack's Lock in the interests of racial harmony.
    24
  597. XR supporters are either mad, stupid or in it for the money. This one is mad.
    24
  598. And what has any of this to do with the charges Trump faces? Next to nothing.
    23
  599. Trump's going to eat Starmer for breakfast. I've just seen the video of him arriving at Trump's front door and he looks like a mouse caught by a cat.
    23
  600. Unlike Ukraine of course. If they had adhered to the Minsk Accords this dreadful war would never have happened.
    23
  601. Ukraine has been conned into sacrificing itself in the cause of American imperialism and greed - isn't that what you mean?
    23
  602. Next step: bring to court everyone involved in this disgraceful fiasco.
    23
  603. This would be an act of insane folly.
    23
  604. What exactly are the Chinese going to do with this information? Try to get us to change our building society or gas supplier?
    23
  605. Every word he says is true. This false prosecution is just another nail in America's coffin.
    23
  606. "Cases" up - and winter deaths beginning to decline. Practically nothing we have done has altered the predictable progress of this disease. What we HAVE done is light a fuse that will lead to an explosion of poverty and death in the Third World and won't do the rest of us much good either.
    23
  607. I do wish Sky News Aus would stop importing crap from its loony left namesake in the UK.
    23
  608. One of the many absurdities voiced by the many absurd commentators this channel seems to attract is that Bakhmut has no strategic importance. It is one the key fortresses in Ukraine's lines of defence against the complete take-over of Donbass. That is why it is so heavily guarded.
    23
  609. Further support will not "relieve Ukraine's suffering" - it will prolong it.
    23
  610. Thirteen years in this case.
    23
  611. At least the Russians got the leader most of them seem to want.
    23
  612. He is so right. The more we know about the status of individuals who have died the clearer the picture will be. I hope the ONS will provide this information.
    23
  613. What for?
    23
  614. Our jails could be emptied of something over 60,000 prisoners at a stroke if all foreign criminals were deported and all those incarcerated on drugs-related charges were released.
    23
  615. The BBC and much of the rest of the MSM and the civil service are red-rotten to the core. Their ideology will pervade our lives no matter who is "in power" in Parliament.
    23
  616. True. He has played a significant role in two of the 21st centuries greatest scandals - Ukraine and the pandemic response.
    23
  617. The Ukraine Parliament has just called for a meeting to discuss Zelensky's impeachment. He should resign. His day is done.
    23
  618. Pretty instant karma. Epic failure following epic fraud.
    23
  619. There have been two main drivers for the progress of the pandemic: the greed of drug companies and the knee-jerk stupidity of politicians and the media. Let's go Omicron!
    23
  620. The population of London is 15% Muslim. Just sayin'.
    23
  621. Twenty years from now will we be debating the delays in the far, far, greater sums of compensation being demanded for those who suffered and died as a result of the gross mishandling of the covid epidemic?
    23
  622. Make a treaty with Russia and we won't need an air force.
    23
  623. Unity doesn't mean being nice to your opponents. It means uniting against them.
    23
  624. Has anyone out there heard of the General Theory of Reflexivity, as promoted by George Soros in his book "The Alchemy of Finance"? More and more we see the influence of these techniques in world affairs. These manipulated tensions in the US are a prime example.
    23
  625. Who'd have thought the EU would be instrumental in creating wars?
    23
  626. Of course they're lying. And they know you know they're lying. But they don't care!
    23
  627. This is obviously the result of a public school education. Dividing people into categories with absurd signs of distinction between them must become engrained in the psyche somehow, "Members of Bolton House can only undo the top buttons of their frock-coats on Thursdays and Saturdays between 10am and noon." "Liverpudlians are entitled to two items of tuck at weekends. This must not include fruitcake." "Manchester House boys must raise their left hands to their foreheads when meeting a member of staff, but their right hands should this occur on a Sunday." And so on.
    23
  628. The only way he might do it is to order a full-scale forensic investigation into how the election was conducted. And that ain't likely.
    23
  629. This is so very true. Let's hope we can learn from our very many mistakes -starting by recognising exactly what it is we are dealing with.
    23
  630. This speech will one day be used as an advertisement for Donepezil.
    23
  631. You mustn't talk about that nice Mr Zelensky that way,
    23
  632. Masks are pure PR. You might as well try to keep mosquitoes back with a chain-link fence. And have you ever wondered why you can smell a fart through your jeans?
    22
  633. It isn't the virus that kills you - it's the body's over-reaction to it. The same thing is now happening on a national scale.
    22
  634. He's pissing beside it, not on it. What's the betting he didn't even know what it was?
    22
  635. Well, he's really got to go.
    22
  636. Not a debate. Political theatre with Trump cast as villain.
    22
  637.  @johnkitching2248  Ok, if you push me: how about Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Which it clearly isn't.
    22
  638. Only someone with a poor grasp of English, no sense of irony and no sense of humour could possibly regard this ancient remark as racist. Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of them about.
    22
  639. The ECHR is a clownshow.
    22
  640. I know! And when America does it EVERY DAY too!
    22
  641. The rules were for mugs anyway. That guy's pullover is more of a crime.
    22
  642. You can put off the inevitable for just so long.
    22
  643. The more of these nutjobs refuse to have children the better. It's nature's way of removing conceit and idiocy from the gene pool.
    22
  644. Meanwhile in Texas all restrictions have been lifted and cases continue to decline.
    22
  645. It is important to remember that it was not the pandemic itself which caused these and other problems. It was the hysterical over-reaction to it.
    22
  646. We have brought this upon ourselves with our support of America's proxy war of greed in Ukraine.
    22
  647. More of a rebirth.
    22
  648. Coherent and unrelenting as ever. Unlike politicians in so-called "democracies" Putin has no need to massage the facts to get votes and appease the media.
    22
  649. Government scientists obviously have no idea how people behave. Sadly, Boris doesn't seem to either.
    22
  650. In Germany towards the end of World War II thousands of civilians died as the bombs fell. They had freely voted for an oppressive and vicious regime and had made no bones about supporting that regime. Anyone see any similarities here?
    22
  651. The bits that he wants and has a right to, certainly.
    22
  652. Job done. This guy is a military genius.
    22
  653. It's now only a question of time before Russia reaches the Donbass border. That achieved, I imagine Putin will want to talk peace.
    22
  654. One would almost thinks US arms manufacturers WANTED this war to go on longer.
    22
  655. I guess he might have had a real $20 bill to buy his smokes with, instead of a fake one. That would have helped.
    22
  656.  @CJJK-1  Why shouldn't Russia have an army?
    22
  657. Big congrats to the Russian pilots! Fantastic show!
    22
  658. Jim Dale is one of the wettest climate change fanatics on record.
    22
  659. The true numbers will never be known. There are too many political factors at play.
    22
  660. Does this mean that Britain is no longer a constitutional democracy? If so, should the Queen offer to abdicate?
    22
  661. Wishful thinking. Putin flattened cities wholesale in Chechnya and Syria and could do the same in Ukraine if he wished. This looks like a cautious campaign, designed to minimise damage and losses on both sides. After all, Putin will want a compliant Ukraine after it it's over - not a decades-long civil war.
    22
  662. Funny idea of morality.
    22
  663. He is absolutely correct. A bad law with no means of enforcement is no kind of law at all.
    22
  664. I hope trials can take place anyway. Even if it means that Fauci and others are pardoned automatically they could still be found guilty and the nature and extent of their crimes exposed to public view. Which would be something.
    22
  665. Whatever his motives turn out to be, one can say with absolute certainty that his Muslim background had a great deal to do with it.
    22
  666. She talked more sense than most British commentators and "experts". Astonishing the BBC let her on.
    22
  667. He's absolutely correct. Ukraine foolishly allowed itself to be led by the nose into this war. They had a chance to stop it at Minsk.
    22
  668. We still don't seem to know the effects of Omicron on non-immune people and the elderly or otherwise vulnerable. These are easily the most important questions at the moment.
    22
  669. It was Ukraine that did this. The evidence is overwhelming.
    21
  670. The ship has returned to port undamaged.
    21
  671. Cases,, cases -what's this obsession with CASES??!! Eventually around 80% of the population will probably test positive for Coronavirus with 99% of that 80% experiencing few if any symptoms. It's deaths and hospitalisations that are important -and they are dropping dramatically. Just eight deaths reported yesterday, along with the news that the health secretary has finally realised that the number of deaths has been vastly exaggerated due to excessively random reporting and even some deaths being reported twice. Time to dust down the climate change scare I think. This one's starting to run out of steam.
    21
  672. Might a case be made for re-introducing ritual human sacrifice to this country?
    21
  673. Lost his fuel allowance.
    21
  674. All Russian men have completed at least a year's compulsory military training. Two million of them have also been on regular retraining exercises, at least once a year. It is these reserve soldiers who are being called up.
    21
  675. This looks like the final deranged act of a lifelong warmonger.
    21
  676. Why throw good money after bad?
    21
  677. This is why Putin trusts this man. He found a military genius running a restaurant. How weird is that?
    21
  678. I'm in two minds about this but the more the Ukrainians bleat on the more it looks like it was them.
    21
  679. If we go on like this the pandemic might be over before the vaccine is out. And that would never do.
    21
  680. One can only hope that a new Republican-controlled Congress can forestall such madness. Supplying Ukraine with weapons to attack Russian territory will be interpreted as an act of war on the part of the US, with the direst possible consequences.
    21
  681. "A minor inconvenience", according to George Soros.
    21
  682. Prince Charles is a simpleton. There is nothing unusual in this as far as the British monarchy is concerned and it is an essential feature of the strength of the system that the Crown holds sway, whatever the inadequacies of those who wear - or are about to wear - it are.
    21
  683. This must be the shortest rant in the history of rants.
    21
  684. They don't much exist. You are suffering from paranoia and intellectual inadequacy.
    21
  685. Glad to see Sky News Aus on top of this one. Sadly though I don't suppose it'll be long before Upstairs pulls the plug. Rupert must know how much $$$ can be made by manipulating the carbon bond market.
    21
  686. This is a class struggle. This is ordinary people v the ruling class.
    21
  687. To be fair, being American she's probably not entirely sure where Europe is.
    21
  688. I'm about ready to throw up. There's only so much sanctimonious bilge the human body can take.
    21
  689. That's because Phil is his own man, thinking for himself, instead of merely being paid to follow the instructions of those who pay his wages.
    21
  690. Boris has finally lost the plot. In trying to please everyone and save his reputation he has ended up pleasing no-one and made himself look a fool. These regulations are bonkers and will have no appreciable effect on death rates, since most people likely to die are dead already or hopefully by now kept secure from possible infection.
    21
  691. Putin is clearly lining up to give a Zelensky fanboy a bit of a slap. Why is the UK rushing to volunteer?
    21
  692. It's going to be a hard job breaking people of their Ukraine addiction.
    21
  693. What do they want exactly? Does anyone know?
    21
  694. So it's not just American banks that are being forced to crash.
    21
  695. The decrepit leader of a decaying empire making empty gestures to an abandoned ally. How very Roman.
    21
  696. How far right do you have to be to be called "far right"?
    21
  697. And, like all religions, this one has been seized upon by politicians and con-artists as providing a quick route to power and profit.
    21
  698. What makes him think it wants to?
    21
  699. I do wish BLM could come up with something more up-to-date to justify their tantrums.The distant demise of George Floyd doesn't really hack it.
    21
  700. It looks very much as though Ukraine has given up on Donbass and is merely attacking Kursk as some sort of gesture of defiance.
    21
  701. The future of the UK and Europe is being decided by a vaudeville act, then? Boris und Ursula and their Magic Masks!
    21
  702. These protesters are neither far right nor racist. They are just fed-up with being patronised and sidelined by the lefty media and arse-licking politicians.
    21
  703. Why would Russia be running low in missiles? Sanctions have failed entirely to stem the flow of technical components and they are being manufactured to order.
    21
  704. This lady is no stranger to a bit of fibbing - especially in misinforming Parliament about the ongoing progress and viability of the horrible HS2 railway con. If it turns out to be a "he said--she said" my money's on Spencer.
    21
  705. We had something similar in the UK a few years ago after a small time gangster was shot by police and fires and looting followed. A few weeks afterwards CCTV coverage and tracking devices were trawled and there was a glorious knocking on of doors.
    20
  706. We didn't have to worry once. Now we do, having stupidly supported conman Zelensky.
    20
  707. Zelensky must go. The method is his choice.
    20
  708. The puppet needs oiling.
    20
  709. It could mean a revival of true Conservatism.
    20
  710. Many thanks from the people of Donbass who have been fighting for their freedom for eight years - from Ukraine.
    20
  711. It is foolish to dismiss this dreadful possibility. America's unwarranted interference in Russia's complex relationship with Ukraine has upset the balance of threat which has staved off the nuclear holocaust for more than 70 years.
    20
  712. Compared to this the Kursk fiasco is masterpiece of strategy and forward planning.
    20
  713. What a thoroughly decent guy. Let's hope his obvious abilities will ensure he gets an equally worthwhile job before long.
    20
  714. The Minsk agreements weren't honoured either. All trust has gone which is why there is a war.
    20
  715.  @johnkitching2248  It's called irony. But since you are probably a leftie you are likely to be immune to such subtleties.
    20
  716. Why should we put humanity's very existence at risk by supporting one side in what is basically a turf war between two kleptocracies?
    20
  717. Two conmen in perfect lockstep.
    20
  718. It really is fascinating watching these fairy tales unfold on American TV.
    20
  719. Deaths from ALL CAUSES continue to decline and are below the average for the past five years, This must mean that people who should have died today can't do so because they are dead already. Protect the vulnerable and the very elderly. AND LET THE REST OF US GET ON WITH OUR LIVES!
    20
  720. A fair trial is impossible. But who cares? This is just a circus anyway.
    20
  721. ..or what he offered them.
    20
  722. Israel is not "committing genocide" anyway.
    20
  723. She's pretty spot on. The political pressure to vastly exaggerate the impact of Covid 19 is overwhelming. The UK is now approaching herd immunity and death rates from ALL CAUSES were this week lower than average for the past five years. This clearly seems to indicate that the virus is primarily a "culling" mechanism and the only real impact is that generally people who were on their last legs anyway have died a few weeks earlier than would have been the case otherwise.
    20
  724. Sitting Bull also signed deals with the US.
    20
  725. Never forget that religions are an absolutely wonderful way of making money. "
    20
  726. I wouldn't worry too much. Russia is a world leader in nuclear technology and exports both expertise and nuclear fuel all over the world. It knows what it's doing.
    20
  727. This does somewhat remind me of Obama's greatest achievement while on office - catching a fly between thumb and forefinger during some talk show or the other. Clip please ! Enormous meme potential!
    20
  728. These figures need a good, long hard look and detailed analysis. What does "coronavirus-linked" even mean? Is there a definition?
    20
  729. Zelensky must now look to his future.
    20
  730. If Biden does this it will be the best thing by far he has done as President.
    20
  731. ..and so wrong!
    20
  732. YouTube too. The poor algorithm has to do what it's half-crazed coders insist upon, I suppose. Being good at maths isn't really enough to make a whole human being.
    20
  733. Is it me, or does the monster not look a bit like Huzma himself?
    20
  734. This is 2024 'not 1974. You are living in the past.
    20
  735. In the past, people with such strong convictions have sometimes set fire to themselves in public places in order to gain support for their cause. Just a thought.
    20
  736. Hamas, like Ukraine, has no shame in using civilians as human shields.
    20
  737. .... and was instrumental in starting the war in Ukraine.
    20
  738. Russia just launched an ICBM for the first time in the history of warfare. Storm Shadow ? Fleabites!
    20
  739. How on earth did Ukraine and the rest of the world get conned by the actor Zelensky? It really is time to bring down the curtain and start to deal with reality again.
    20
  740. There's a YouTube channel which claims that both the Vikings and the Stuart dynasty were black.
    20
  741. Just assuming Russia wins and joins with China, India and other Asian countries in forming a powerful military and economic bloc - where does that leave Australia?
    20
  742. Why is it so important that Ukraine wins?
    20
  743. Keeping Muslims and lefties on board without losing Jewish money is something of a balancing act. Not exactly Joe's forte.
    20
  744. Free gear, two tier Kier Stalin has stopped my measly £200 winter heating bonus , sent to prison teenagers and old ladies for daring to express doubts about the wonders of multiculturalism and now seems intent on provoking a heavily armed, militaristic nation into declaring war on us. Not bad going.
    20
  745. It has to be said that Russian propaganda us generally of a far higher quality than the Western variety. It stands up better to criticism too.
    20
  746. Hot air and freebies!
    19
  747. Zelensky himself now admits the strategic significance of Bakhmut, stating that losing it will allow Russia to advance and try to take all Donbass. Why do our our armchair generals persist with this absurd fantasy that it is purely symbolic?
    19
  748. Farmers on the ground know what is going on. We need to listen to them - NOT to bureaucratic jobsworths pushing the insane climate crisis agenda.
    19
  749.  @StuSaville  So why, if their purpose is so innocent, has US defence undersecretary Victoria Nuland told a senate committee that there are fears what might happen if the Russians get to them?
    19
  750. I'd be interested to know if the deadlier Delta variant may not have evolved if we had left things alone in the first place.
    19
  751. Why does Time Radio continually insist that Putin is "embarrassed" or "humiliated" by one thing or another? He's not some little old lady, constantly worried about what the neighbours think.
    19
  752. Call his bluff then. I dare you!
    19
  753. I've just had a wicked thought, of which I am deeply ashamed. What if Omicron only infects the vaccinated? It's entirely possible, and as far as I can gather in a continent with a mere 6% vaccination rate all cases have been among vaccinated people in southern countries.
    19
  754. Now if they were from Pakistan.....
    19
  755. The dam breaking due to previous damage combined with the reservoir becoming overfilled.
    19
  756. War fever gripping the armchair warriors. Makes me sick.
    19
  757. All clearly a clever tactic designed to inflame Southerners and provoke the race war BLM needs to set the scene for a Marxist revolution.
    19
  758. Listening to Professor Clarke, whatever doubts I may have had about the existence of parallel universes are immediately removed.
    19
  759. BLM = Brainwash, Lie, Manipulate
    19
  760. Platitudes and promises. Don't these politicians realise how increasingly irrelevant they are becoming?
    19
  761. Another slimy scheme bites the dust.
    19
  762. This is only the first shot in what could be quite a long war. Hopefully this will give time for the Right to form itself into a coherent and viable government contender.
    19
  763. Zelensky, like many con-artists ,is coming to believe his own spiel.
    19
  764. The fact is the vaccines are not particularly effective or long-lasting. The UK was the first in Europe to start a programme, and is the first to see the effects wearing off.
    19
  765. Arms for Ukraine is looking more and more like donations to a jumble sale. That nice Mr Zelensky must be terribly disappointed.
    19
  766. Too busy regaining Donbass.
    19
  767. Boosters are just spinning out the agony. The whole vaccination programme has turned out to be a huge disappointment, geared more towards drug company profits than public health. Natural immunity is the only answer - as personified by Dennis Prager who has done, at 73, what much younger people should have done months ago . He caught covid on purpose, beat it quickly with therapeutic drugs, as now not only immune but helping protect the vulnerable by that fact.
    19
  768. I worry about what might happen to children when they reach puberty.
    19
  769. And from her bank account.
    19
  770. I can see this catching on.
    19
  771. If he does apologise will he also apologise to me and millions of others whose ancestors suffered starvation, cruelty and deprivation on the land and in mines and factories to help keep his family in luxury?
    19
  772.  @ChristopherNips81  Democracy in the US is a total sham. It's been on its last legs for decades and this fraud of an election has killed it off completely.
    19
  773. The wheels are starting to come off this whole crazy cart, and not before time. All we are doing is backing one set of crooks against another set of crooks and it is both futile and dangerous.
    18
  774. But teachers have the lowest covid death rate of all working adults.
    18
  775. Flee or die. Not much of a choice.
    18
  776. The myth of the Magic Mask is coming to an end. Return to sanity is imminent.
    18
  777. He is, in considerable part, responsible for the war in Ukraine. This alone should make him an utter pariah in the eyes of civilised society.
    18
  778. Being anti-Trump and pro-American is a contradiction in terms.
    18
  779. Any news on the Chinese?
    18
  780. It wasn't an assault on democracy. It was a last-ditch defence of it.
    18
  781. But I'm far more worried about Islamification and creeping totalitarianism than I am about Russia. Russia will only invade or harm Britain if we go on annoying it in the stupid way we seem to be doing.
    18
  782. This would be people capable of thinking for themselves and not falling for media brainwashing.
    18
  783. This reminds me more and more of the famous Dead Parrot sketch in Monty Python.
    18
  784. There is no Ukraine deal. Keep up.
    18
  785. Odd how these examples of detective work all back the Ukrainian version of events. Could the BBC apply the same forensic skills to the Kramatorsk station bombing, the Mariupol theatre bombing and the bodies in Bucha?
    18
  786. Trump has a trump card. If he fails to get the nomination he could threaten to stand as an independent, so ensuring a Democrat victory.
    18
  787. Wriggle away. Those in the know know!
    18
  788. Anyone who is prepared to voice this truth about the Ukraine war well deserves to reach highest office in the land.
    18
  789. He should get us to wear them over our eyes so we can't see boxes full of forged ballots being pulled out from under tables in the middle of the night.
    18
  790. This is such a total lie. All antibodies disappear in time otherwise we would be stuffed to the gills with them! They are replaced by a small number of T cells which have memorised the genetic code of the invading virus. If it reappears they multiply in huge numbers and set out to deal with new invasion. Science knows this. What it doesn't know is why so many in the media are so intent on terrifying us with falsehoods about Covid 19.
    18
  791. We are not at war with Russia - and nor do we want to be. This constant provocation by people who ought to know better will result in tragedy if it is allowed to continue.
    18
  792. I wonder what Putin might consider to be reasonable exchange for a few acres of swamp, forest and thin soil?
    18
  793. As is the case with the NHS, uncontrolled mass immigration is placing unbearable pressure on resources not designed to deal with such numbers. We are literally in the shit.
    18
  794.  nielslund641  These are now proved to be faked and are mostly of the Ukraine Himars attack in December.
    18
  795. No. It's exactly why they should.
    18
  796. Is America finally coming to its senses?
    18
  797. Incredibly powerful. This interview should go viral.
    18
  798. Sending people to prison might possibly stop the riots But it will add greatly to the resentment which caused them.
    18
  799. He was advertising Alan's Snack Bar.
    18
  800.  @gameofender4463  It's a dilemma though. Personally I think Reform should be cunning enough to rehabilitate TR in the eyes of those who are blinded to his many virtues by his several faults. This way they might keep the votes they hope to gain from disaffected middle-class Tories as well as bringing in votes from TR's working-class supporters who don't usually bother to vote because until he came along there was no-one to truly represent them.
    18
  801. This is all so grimly predictable. The longer Zelensky holds out, the greater the cost will be to his country.
    18
  802. You can push people just so far...
    18
  803. There are no parallels whatsoever with the current situation.
    18
  804. At the same time Russia has launched a massive attack on the Donbass front. We can probably expects a ground assault on Kiev to be launched from Belarus in the immediate future.
    18
  805. Difficulties doesn't imply mistakes.
    18
  806. I really would like to know by what method these figures are obtained. They seem to be more or less plucked out of the air. I'm astonished that anyone could actually believe them.
    18
  807. Have the guts to interview Tommy Robinson GB News.
    18
  808. Nigel has said that Tommy Robinson is "not his cup of tea" But a Talking Pints with Tommy would be really great TV.
    18
  809. Quit the ECHR now!
    18
  810. There can be no peace as long as the Zelensky regime remains in power. That is a hard fact which cannot be ignored.
    18
  811. He means it too.
    18
  812. What funny ideas you have. Russia is the world leader in nuclear technology. They build nuclear power stations all over the world and their armaments are kept in very good trim.
    18
  813. Mine too. Now I use a Toytown analogy with naughty pixies and teddy bears. There are only seven naughty pixies in Toytown but they do over half of the naughty things, which is why Mr Plod gets so angry with them etc etc.
    18
  814. There are no such things as human rights. There are only privileges, and when a privilege is abused it may be withdrawn.
    18
  815. The proportion of deaths to "cases" is ridiculously small. As a proportion of deaths to population it is almost negligible. This is clearly not the universal plague we were warned to expect. We'll just have to go back to being scared of global warming I suppose.
    18
  816. How is everyone so sure that booster doses are going to save us all when they haven't had them in S Africa yet?
    18
  817. Sanity at last! Make him Prime Minister!
    18
  818. It's quite obvious that military support for Ukraine is drying up. This venture has cost the West many billions more than anticipated and still shows no sign of a return. Ukraine will just have to see how far false promises and grandstanding gestures will go towards protecting it from the Russian onslaught.
    18
  819. The EU would poop its pants and go to Russia begging for mercy.
    18
  820. Russia will have gained its stated military objectives within a matter of weeks. The only question then will be what it plans to do next. Will Putin sue for peace or listen to his hawks and go for Odessa? Britain's role this sorry affair has been utterly shameful. Our politicians have been partially responsible for the needless deaths of many thousands.
    18
  821. DON'T PANIC!!!! That's the big lesson.
    18
  822. Interesting fact: a peer-reviewed study just carried out in Belgium has just proved that hydroxychloroquine, if taken in the correct LOW doses cuts down the death rate by almost one third.
    18
  823. I think we really ought to take this seriously. For some bizarre reason Britain is up to its neck in this distant war and we could well end up becoming a sacrificial victim.
    17
  824. What risk?
    17
  825. This man is ill. How has he escaped from treatment?
    17
  826. This could be over in minutes if Ukraine would simply agree to Russia's very reasonable and realistic demands.
    17
  827. WHO SAYS THEY DON'T?
    17
  828. I always knew Starmer was snivelling nonentity. Putting him next to Donald Trump just proves it.
    17
  829. If only life was as simple as you are!
    17
  830. We are with you in spirit.
    17
  831. An orchestrated non-event. The UK left must do better. Yawn!
    17
  832. Gullibility is an essential feature of the Biden administration.
    17
  833. Won't it be dreadful if it's ever discovered that all these lockdown rules have been utterly pointless anyway? Could easily happen
    17
  834. Going green is "lucrative" to use Johnson's own word. And that's all there is to it.
    17
  835. So nothing at to do with decades of virtually uncontrolled immigration , two-tier policing and putting the interests of foreigners above the interests of native Brits then?
    17
  836. Farage is either being utterly naive or is simply playing to the gallery.
    17
  837. Fun fact: insurance companies are now considering finding ways of selling limited liability insurance to anyone who wishes to ignore lockdown restrictions. Says a lot.
    17
  838. Ukraine does not come to an end. It just continues in a different form - something which it is very much used to.
    17
  839. If he wins in November we'll know for certain this time that the election was fixed.
    17
  840. America will hail him as a hero, promise him the earth and then cast him aside as yet another failed investment.
    17
  841. And the bodies of tortured civilians will certainly be piling up in Kherson right now as the liberating forces deal with collaborators. It is the way these people are.
    17
  842. Why not just be nice to Russia?
    17
  843.  Jack Richardson  There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence of fraud. Certainly enough to justify the tremendous doubts so many people have as to the validity of the election. The US has become a banana republic practically overnight.
    17
  844.  @Yumenga  He neither lied nor incited. The establishment has brainwashed you.
    17
  845. Oncologists report a worrying increase in cancers over the last couple of years. Some have called for mRNA drugs to be banned. Just sayin'
    17
  846. You're flogging a dead horse BBC. And the horse didn't die of Covid 19.
    17
  847. Taking this prominent role in this matter is, I feel, just one of several serious mistakes Starmer will be making in the coming weeks and months.
    17
  848. It was lovely.
    17
  849. The difference of of course was that you could unstrap your seatbelt and get out of the car.
    17
  850. Actually it's because it's ongoing case and even comments could be seen to potentially affect the outcome.
    17
  851. What's up? Hasn't Unilever paid its BLM protection money?
    17
  852. I can never say anything like this in comments sections - or even be allowed to share these excellent videos on them. But it's good to know that they are there. Great stuff, Andrew!
    17
  853. Won't put up with shit no more.
    17
  854. If they change the name I hope locals will never darken its doors again.
    17
  855. Musk is on our side. Starmer isn't.
    17
  856. Why don't we just form an alliance with Russia? I'm sure they'd be delighted to have us.
    17
  857. I can just imagine the squirming apologies if Russia wins.
    17
  858. Ukraine did it.
    17
  859. The party's over It's time to call it a day They've burst your Pretty balloon And taken the moon away It's time to wind up The masquerade Just make your mind up The piper must be paid
    17
  860. Sanctions have backfired big time. Russia has taken one or two hits in one or two areas, but the black economy is thriving.
    17
  861. His performance simply hardened views on both sides.
    17
  862.  @seandenny6430  One of the 50 or so times was in that "very fine people" speech itself. He denounced white supremacists several times - but CNN and the rest love little mushrooms like you -kept in the dark and fed bullshit.
    17
  863. He never said it.
    17
  864. Greta being let out of her box is a sure sign that Covid is over.
    17
  865. This is surely an act of desperation by Ukraine.
    17
  866. Well you're clearly not one. Neither Putin nor Trump is in any way unstable.
    16
  867. Muticulturalism cannot exist when one culture denies the rights of other cultures to exist. Islamism does this.
    16
  868. Utterly disgraceful. What naivety. Good job there won't be a crowd there to boo and throw things when this happens.
    16
  869. It is winning and is bound to win. Best to settle quickly.
    16
  870. Russia's demands have always been clear - and reasonable, many would say. Zelensky is just a front man in a turf fight between rival gangsters and it is his conceit and stupidity which have led to this tragic situation.
    16
  871. This is no more or less than many people have been saying for months - ever since the pandemic began in fact. Dr Campbell seems too decent a man to consider what is probably the horrible truth - that pharmaceutical companies and politicians with investments in these companies have been deliberately fixing trials. Why? Because hydroxychloroqine, and indeed other treatments, if proved to be effective would reduce the need for the expensive vaccines being worked on and which are set to show huge profits. The wickedly false Lancet paper was just part of this process. And it will continue despite the evidence presented here.
    16
  872. Greed.
    16
  873. It looks as though the first invasion was just a softening-up operation for the real thing. Seems to be working.
    16
  874. What's wrong with conspiracy theories? The history of humanity is, in large part, a history of conspiracies, most of which turn out to be true. As in this case.
    16
  875. Tim Wilson - Professor of Wishful Thinking.
    16
  876. RickKivari The idea that carbon emissions cause climate change is actually pretty shaky in my view. The experiments suggesting that they do are based on models of the make-up of the atmosphere created well over 100 years ago and little altered since. A cyclic change, based on a combination of proximity to the sun, the changing nature of the sun and atmospheric pressure seems more likely.
    16
  877.  @treehugger8846  Do you not think it possible that considering the astronomical numbers of viruses in the world (many times the number of stars in the observable universe, it is alleged) that all viable mutations must have already occurred many times over and that, according to evolutionary imperatives, one only comes into prominence when circumstances alter to favour some slight variation? Just asking for friend.
    16
  878. I don't think it at all extremist to compare women wearing these outfits to letterboxes. On the other hand it IS extremist to cut the throats or blow to smithereens anyone who might offend you by doing so. Islamists and their apologists need to get a sense of proportion and realise that many people in this country regard this religion as somewhat sinister and somewhat absurd. Learn to live with it.
    16
  879. If this is so then Dems should surely be praising Trump to ensure he gains the candidacy in 2024.
    16
  880.  @applesandpairs1564  Not for Ukraine, apparently.
    16
  881. For "international law" read: "American law."
    16
  882.  @kev897  It's rather useful if the drugs work. Which in this instance they didn't - or at least not very well - while at the same time seemingly killing lots of otherwise healthy people.
    16
  883. Before we all get in a panic it is worth remembering that "records" only go back to the 1970's or thereabouts. Readings before then are often discounted by a process of homogenisation - because they were taken on unreliable equipment or because they don't fit in with the theory, depending on your point of view.
    16
  884. No it doesn't. It just means he puts his country first.
    16
  885. So that's what Labour are up to!
    16
  886.  @katdoe192  I'm actually 75 and a bit of a stickler for accuracy.
    16
  887. It was a gesture and a warning. The objective was not to destroy but to frighten. These things can apparently carry six tactical nuclear warheads which can be spread over a wide distance in a matter of seconds.
    16
  888. It's not our problem Ukraine has brought this upon itself and it could win peace in an instant if it agreed to Russia's entirely reasonable demands.
    16
  889. Russia been predicting these sanctions and working out ways of circumventing them for years.
    16
  890. Trump is not a career politician. That is what is meant.
    16
  891. Ukraine hasn't exactly been minding its own business though. And Crimea is Russian and the Donbass should be allowed to decide whether to look to Moscow or Kiev for leadership.
    16
  892.  @nadinemagrath5787  THERE! THERE!
    16
  893. A dinosaur floundering in the swamp.
    16
  894. Watching Times Radio increases my belief in the existence of parallel universes.
    16
  895. Granting Russia the return of territories taken from it by a poor treaty is NOT appeasement. It just shows the weakness of the pro-Ukraine argument to constantly and absurdly compare this situation with German expansionism in the 1930s. If the argument is right, it should stand up on its own. And it doesn't.
    16
  896. It's certainly not Ukrainian.
    16
  897. While the Ukrainians were gloriously wasting resources recapturing a few muddy fields, Wagner was taking the few remaining buildings in the city itself.
    16
  898. NATO is on the way out anyway. It will probably be defunct before Ukraine gets a chance to join.
    16
  899. Perhaps he doesn't have much to be accounted for.
    16
  900. I think "Rightist" would be a fairer description of those of us who oppose unlimited immigration and are fearful of Islamification.
    16
  901. A hero.
    16
  902. Having someone on Times Radio talking about a propaganda flop is just too funny for words.
    16
  903. There's no doubt that Russia deploys a better class of lie than Sky.
    16
  904. Nothing starling about it. Europe is now forced to buy American bottled gas at three times the price Russia was charging.
    16
  905. You just have to self-identify as a black lesbian and they are duty-bound to give you an interview. If your appearance is questioned and you don't get the job you can take the police authority to court and sue for discrimination and emotional damage.
    16
  906. The thing about sanctions is that people have to obey them.
    16
  907. Maybe Britain ought to crawl out of America's backside and join BRICS!
    16
  908. I wish someone could explain when these records started. Also, how can it be the "hottest year on record" when results from thermometers used before the 1970s have largely been discounted because they often give the lie to this claim. It's a scam.
    16
  909. Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk have a great deal in common - guts and insight, for starters.
    16
  910. Without Trump the Republican party is a big zero. Just another bunch of cynical opportunists like McConnell lining up to feed from the trough
    16
  911. If Trump pulls the US out of NATO then the UK should quit it too. It stopped being a defence alliance more than twenty years ago and is now little more than a marketing tool for the arms industry.
    16
  912. There's a bit of a difference between advancing and walking into a trap. All the territory between the current front line and Russia's serious entrenchments 20-30 kilometres away is laid out nicely as a killing ground. Russia's long term strategy is now painfully clear. The dregs of Ukraine's army is set to be destroyed unless something can be done to save it.
    16
  913. The unholy alliance between the left and Islamic extremism really is a puzzle.. Perhaps it is simply a matter of both factions having huge chips on their shoulders.
    16
  914. Whoever hit the Kerch Bridge did the citizens of Ukraine no favours.
    16
  915. The Seven Grifters of the Apocalypse.
    16
  916. waxed link How curious it is that you believe the MSM is biased to the right! I'm very right-wing and it seems exactly the opposite to me! I have to go all the way to Sky News Australia to get coverage untainted by socialist self-righteousness and pomposity.
    16
  917. In your dreams.
    16
  918. I thought all the flags represented the dead people who voted for them.
    16
  919. And one with question marks over their general cognitive abilities.
    15
  920. If you want an illustration of what happens when you put idealism before common sense - just look at the charred ruins of Los Angeles.
    15
  921. At least his wife will be well-dressed when she visits him in Strangeways.
    15
  922. Cheating is such an integral part of US "democracy" that the Dems refused to believe that Trump won in 2016 without it. We are now back to normal.
    15
  923. The trouble with letting the police do their job is that quite often they don't seem very good at it.
    15
  924. I'm thinking more 1929.
    15
  925. Once again, Times Radio welcomes a visitor from another planet.
    15
  926. I'm in my seventies. My parents were racists in the innocent way of the times. Most of my teachers were racists. People who were not racist were regarded as weird as a rule. My generation fought hard against this- and we pretty much won. Seeing racial hatred being deliberately resurrected for political gain sickens me to the core.
    15
  927. Kherson has been annexed so this makes them Russian citizens in Russia's eyes.
    15
  928. Of course he´s disappointed. Having been rejected by most of the white working class, Labour needs to keep ethnic minorities in a condition of perpetual resentment in order to have any support at all.
    15
  929. I suggest you trade in your crystal ball for a history book.
    15
  930. There are people in prison for doing nothing at all. It's nothing to be proud of.
    15
  931. It is childish fantasies such as this which start wars, not prevent them
    15
  932. From Wikipedia: "Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting."
    15
  933. Democracy shamocracy.
    15
  934. No it doesn't. Russia has never deliberately targeted civilians. Those who get killed are simply in the way of military activity.
    15
  935. The damage is not being done by the pandemic, but by the hysterical over-reaction to it - much of it fuelled by the BBC and other media. Covid 19 is proving in itself to be no more serious than flu epidemics in the not-too distant past - which were worse because they killed children, which Covid 19 does not.
    15
  936. Nothing new here. Owen Jones is wrong about everything.
    15
  937. What planet is he living on? The government's own latest figures - actually released this very day - show that death rates are now back to normal and that only a tiny fraction of them since July have occurred in people who have tested positive for Covid 19. There is no second wave. We might well already have achieved herd immunity.
    15
  938. So a demonstration of a new weapon capable of delivering six tactical nuclear devices across a vast distance within minutes isn't a response, in your book?
    15
  939. The greatest con-trick in history. And people are still falling for it!
    15
  940. The Ukraine president is a former stand-up comedian. Boris is at home.
    15
  941. In my view he didn't go far enough. There would be no war in Ukraine without the West trying to muscle in via the EU and NATO and Putin has responded in the only way a truly patriotic leader could.
    15
  942. The natural disaster in Turkey and Syria should not be mentioned in the same breath as the entirely man-made disaster in Ukraine.
    15
  943. If we aren't allowed to insult and threaten politicians we may as well give up on democracy.
    15
  944. Hang on. The number of cases doesn't drop just because a lockdown is announced does it? Won't we have to wait a week or more to see if works? I don't get it.
    15
  945.  @busterofcoviddeniers  Fox=slightly less panic-stricken desperation.
    15
  946. The communities in Donbass seem very divided, but am I right in thinking that the majority have voted for independence?
    15
  947. Right on! This horrific situation is the result of a gross miscalculation by Washington warmongers. Support for "poor little Ukraine" is utterly pathetic. The only possible results are victory for Russia or nuclear disaster.
    15
  948. And a massive brain in her head.
    15
  949. I don't go to raves and concerts as a rule - but if a band called Herd Immunity was playing I might consider it.
    15
  950.  @davidmurphy8190  Possibly. But what about the direction the missile was clearly fired from.? There is also some evidence that the serial number is in a sequence from which the Ukrainians have already used missiles on civilians in Donbass. All in all the balance of probability points firmly at Ukraine being responsible for this outrage.
    15
  951. Would he like to donate his gardener's old boots as well?
    15
  952. It is obviously a mere coincidence that the driver of the car is a BLM supporter and a Black Nationalist of that the town is only an hour or so's drive away from Kenosha.
    15
  953. Again: "small strategic value" ??!!! Bakhmut is a heavily fortified feature of the triple line of defences created by Ukraine to keep the Donbass rebels from reaching the border. Once it is lost there is very little to prevent Russia from attaining one of its prime objectives: the capture of the entire Donbass region.
    15
  954. History will show lockdowns to have been one of the greatest public health disasters ever created by man.
    15
  955. And who did her ancestors steal it from? The idea that the continent of North America was owned by particular tribes since time immemorial is utterly ridiculous. Land has been fought over generation by generation ever since humans arrived. The various waves of invasion owe nothing to morality - only to the survival of the fittest and fiercest. We now have a chance to ratify this process. Harking back to absurd concepts of land ownership are sentimental nonsense and utterly destructive of national unity.
    15
  956. The probable answer is that many senior British politicians and government officials are in the pay of investment companies such as Blackrock, which have a vested interest in promoting the Ukrainian cause.
    15
  957. New variants are unlikely to evade immunity provided by Omicron and are unlikely to be more virulent. Plus of course the measures we have taken have no effect anyway. Scotland's only answer is to rigidly close its borders and seal everyone in their houses. I'm sure some of their politicians quite like this idea .
    15
  958. No good will come of this.
    15
  959. He's been doing that for more than twenty years - and with considerable success too.
    15
  960. George Floyd's post mortem apparently revealed he was Covid 19 positive. I think this means that if he had been killed in the UK his death would have been recorded as coronavirus related and entered as such on the official death toll.
    15
  961. This could explain a lot.
    15
  962. Zelensky does.
    15
  963. So this video is fake too? How clever.
    15
  964. I think the Donald gave this guy a lesson on how to wind up reporters, and what fun it can be!
    15
  965. At last! Someone on Times Radio who talks sense and an interviewer who knows how to interview!
    15
  966. He is entirely correct in everything he said.
    15
  967. No. Anyone who supplied Ukraine with weapons has that.
    15
  968. The Challenger is probably the best tank in the world. But the small number which can be sent to Ukraine make it unlikely for this gesture to have any significant impact.
    15
  969. The IPCC report is a cross between a religious tract and the script for a sci-fi film. We shouldn't be frightened of what he says - but very, very scared indeed of the processes which have led to it being even considered as something upon which future economic development is based.
    15
  970. Having strong opinions does not justify causing mayhem.
    15
  971. What is means is that the ICC is a complete waste of money and space.
    15
  972. In fact Ukraine had a large and well-equipped army, in which the US and other NATO countries had invested billions of dollars since 2014.
    15
  973. If he'd got rid of all the ridiculous restrictions in the first place he wouldn't be in this mess.
    15
  974. Race-baiters take note.
    15
  975. What a star this woman is! And the guy is an utter plonker,
    15
  976. All now depends on just how much fighting power Ukraine has left. It's probably not much, and Russia will be able to absorb it. Russian defeat is well-nigh impossible in the short or medium term and the West should really begin thinking about peace terms instead of encouraging the suffering.
    15
  977. Russia has scarcely even begun to dip into its total armoury,
    15
  978. So breaking through the first two lines of Ukrainian defence and now being well on the the way towards breaking through the third - and last - isn't a "decisive gain" then?
    15
  979. Was that the corpse or the undertaker speaking?
    15
  980.  @Sdjejdijdjxudhd  They'd better star now by questioning the insane guff their parents are pouring into their innocent ears.
    14
  981. It's the flu! The death rate is low, it specifically targets the elderly and the frail and it's going away fast. Left to its own devices Covid 19 would burn itself out and give us herd immunity in a matter of weeks.
    14
  982. Why?
    14
  983. Or Ukraine get out of Russia!
    14
  984. Have we managed to blame Trump for this yet? Or possibly Putin?
    14
  985. The whole world doesn't. Only those unaware of the complexities and background to this situation. Ukraine did it.
    14
  986. Or get them to give up. Russia's peace terms might be surprisingly reasonable.
    14
  987. Where does the slavery come in? Ukraine has ben fighting for the unalienable right of the United States to possess all the oil in the world.
    14
  988. Why?
    14
  989. What a load of bollocks. It's a pity the woman who was shot WASN'T black. We could have had a proper riot then.
    14
  990. Yup. An Islamist autocracy provides a fine example for Labour.
    14
  991. Trump is an ordinary Joe who happens to have inherited billions. He's gone on to do what many ordinary Joes would do: play golf, build skyscrapers, marry beautiful women and - oh yes - become President as a sort of afterthought. The fact that he's so good at it is what really riles the politicians and their media lackeys.
    14
  992. Why should he apologise for telling the truth?
    14
  993. Sanity and decency are fighting back.
    14
  994. I think there could be a market for a ten-pin bowling alley where the pins are modelled on Jacinda Ardern.
    14
  995. Speak for yourself.
    14
  996. That vital aid can be replaced - without it being used as a cover for aggression and undermining the stability of foreign nations.
    14
  997. This is all starting to wear a bit thin, Greta my girl.
    14
  998. The way things go in Ukraine, Medvedchuk could end up as President once all this is over!
    14
  999. His regard for "science" must be sorely shaken by now.
    14
  1000. Size isn't everything. The territory Russia has regained is sitting on trillions of dollars in mineral wealth. It's not swamps and potato fields, like Kursk.
    14
  1001. Biden cheated. Trump won. Now the cheats and liars are having to reinforce their depravity, as cheats and liars always have to do.
    14
  1002. What exactly is wrong with this conversation? Two politicians having an innocent chat is all it amounts to.
    14
  1003. Shouldn't have started a fight you can't finish, should you, citizen?
    14
  1004. I am so glad that Times Radio's expert predicts that Trump will add trillions to the US national debt. This is the clearest possible indication that it will not, in fact, happen.
    14
  1005. As a multi-millionaire oil trader with long and deep relationships with the governments of many Moslem countries, Duncan cannot be objective on this issue. And nor is he.
    14
  1006.  @jamesmorrow1646  Which is why people are going to freeze to death. The current warming phase has little or nothing to do with CO2 and Russia has considerable justification for its activities in Donbass, which is predominantly Russian and has been systematically exploited by Kiev.
    14
  1007. There seems to be an insurmountable gap between the war being fought inside these experts' heads and the war actually being fought on the ground.
    14
  1008. The end is nigh - and all so damned predictable. Just think, around half a million people have died to no purpose.
    14
  1009. Because the President and Congress said so.
    14
  1010. The big question is: does Omicron convey immunity? If it does and the symptoms range from mild to unnoticeable the sooner everyone gets it the better!
    14
  1011. This is the decent view - abortion as a last resort, and something to be undertaken with regret - not some kind of triumph for feminism, worthy of celebration.
    14
  1012. It's a good plan - but it will only work when Zelensky faces up to reality.
    14
  1013. Why are senior C of E clergy always such buffoons?
    14
  1014. Zelensky's "victory plan" appears simply to take down everyone with him.
    14
  1015.  @Overwatch17  No. Peace can happen once Ukraine and the West accept that parts of Ukraine are actually Russian.
    14
  1016. Oh yes he does!
    14
  1017. True heroes! The BLM rabble can expect more of this.
    14
  1018. Kemi has a simple answer available. Join Reform! I'm sure Nigel would be delighted to forgive and welcome her.
    14
  1019. Global warming is getting out of hand. At the time these pictures were taken the Arctic was bathed in sunshine and Inuits were wearing Hawaiian shirts and speedos.
    14
  1020. Crimea is not Ukraine. It is 60 per cent Russian and was only joined on to Ukraine in 1954 simple because of the difficulty in gaining access across the strait where the bridge now stands,
    14
  1021. We wuz conned.
    14
  1022. Guilt and fear lie behind the Dem's actions. They cheated and they know it and although they think they've probably got away with it, a quiver of doubt still remains.
    14
  1023. Ukraine is nowhere near winning. Russia is nowhere near desperate. Get real.
    14
  1024. All Ukraine has to do is accept Russia's entirely reasonable terms and it'll all be over.
    14
  1025. At least it seems as though the failures were due to simple incompetence, and not something more sinister.
    14
  1026.  @ItsGulfofMexicoDump  I've always been biased in favour of the truth. Sorry.
    14
  1027. As all lives must.
    14
  1028. Does anyone remember Max Headroom? I often wondered what had happened to him in old age.
    14
  1029. These are just a tiny fraction of all hospitalisations and deaths. And no-one is saying if they are BECAUSE of Covid 19 or simply that people have incidentally tested positive. The plot thickens
    14
  1030. Well I cheered, so that makes up for it.
    14
  1031. Splitter!
    14
  1032. The fact is that at least three-quarters of those who have died from covid would almost certainly have died anyway, being the most elderly and infirm among us. It is simply not the universal plague that was initially feared. The enthusiasm of governments to seize upon it as an excuse for repression and control is far, far more terrifying.
    14
  1033. I have the faint hope that Putin will be content with the annexation of Donbass and a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO.
    14
  1034. The very fact that Russia held back seems to indicate that some kind of deal enabling them to retain the port and airfields was already on the cards.
    14
  1035. Watching Times Radio is like watching the creation of an alternative universe.
    14
  1036. Why?
    14
  1037. The agreement has always been on the table. As it is Russia is on the way to achieving its objectives and more - and half a million people with have died to no purpose. Thanks a bunch America.
    14
  1038. The Coalition of the Impotent is more accurate. they may be willing, but the flesh is weak.
    14
  1039. I think you have to face the fact that you have not elected a Labour government.
    14
  1040. This incident summarises the tragedy of this needless war. Russia's initial peace demands were entirely reasonable, but Ukraine shot them down and its people are now paying the price.
    14
  1041. The UK needs a strong right-wing coalition or party if it is to survive as a nation. Good luck to the Dutch in showing us the way.
    14
  1042. Quite the contrary. Look forward to peace in both Ukraine and the Middle East.
    14
  1043. The paranoia junkies and the virtue-signallers will never surrender their security blankets. Fear and self-righteousness make a fierce combination.
    14
  1044. Well, it might stop the countryside being so racist.
    14
  1045. Freezing civilians is incidental to these attacks. In fact they are likely to strengthen Ukrainian resolve. Their purpose is to severely restrict military activities by cutting supply lines and impeding movement of men and materiel. In this they are being remarkably successful, although the media never mentions this.
    14
  1046. If US police forces do get defunded and broken up could we hire some of them to come over and sort this lot out?
    14
  1047. Politicians should refuse to answer race-baiting questions. They are an insult to black people.
    13
  1048. It's about time the West realised the game is up and stopped prolonging the agony.
    13
  1049. King Charles the Absorbent.
    13
  1050. Whenever one of our 17 GPs arrives at our local surgery for a monthly visit we strew the driveway with rose petals. Those of us who have managed to convince the receptionists that we might actually be dying can sometimes be allowed a brief conversation over the telephone some hours later. These are genuinely cherished moments.
    13
  1051. He's a close friend of Trump - that's why.
    13
  1052. Talking of burning books.......
    13
  1053. The perpetrator is obviously insane - but is his insanity made worse by religious delusion?
    13
  1054. If they agree to Zelensky's request it will mean World War III. No question.
    13
  1055. When it comes to reporting the war going on in his head he is absolutely spot on.
    13
  1056. Many of them will welcome the Russians with open arms.
    13
  1057. The ES is comparing itself to a newspaper. Trump simply DIDN'T compare himself with Churchill, did he?
    13
  1058. So all the more reason for all fit and healthy, double-vaccinated people to become infected as quickly as possible. It's a social duty.
    13
  1059. If the Ukrainians did it though it makes perfect sense.
    13
  1060. Ukraine/Donbass could have been a "frozen conflict" too. That's what Putin wanted. Instead NATO and the EU decided to build up Ukraine's army and try to syphon the country's wealth away from Russia. Moldova can think itself lucky it has no gas and oilfields.
    13
  1061. We will now see whether Bakhmut is "strategically unimportant" as Zelensky groupies claim, or in fact the gateway to the conquest/liberation of the entire Donbass.
    13
  1062. Censorship is fascism. People are entitled to decide who to believe or otherwise. Denying them this right is both an insult to their intelligence and the first step on the road to autocracy. It is disgusting and disgraceful that our young people have been brought up to believe that such behaviour is not only OK but commendable.
    13
  1063. The war can only end when Ukraine cedes Crimea and Donbass. The sooner it does, the better for everyone.
    13
  1064. That's because they weren't abducted. They were removed from battlefield areas for their own safety. Their parents had to pretend they had been abducted, or they would have been punished as Russian collaborators.
    13
  1065. You are fretting needlessly. Russia couldn't care less about you.
    13
  1066. This is a serious mistake. Not only will it have very little impact of the military situation in Kursk, it will also encourage Russia to step up its bombardment of Ukraine in response.
    13
  1067. What crimes? Defending his country?
    13
  1068.  @garethhanby  UK deaths in 2020 :9.413 per 1,000. UK deaths in 2019: 9.318 per 1,000. This is exactly in line with the percentage increase which began around 2013. I think it's you who are missing something. This is not just a disease, it is an exercise in social manipulation.
    13
  1069. The only consolation I can draw from this idiocy is that it might lead to the downfall of Britain's present government.
    13
  1070. Or with just another leader fighting to save his country from US imperialist aggression.
    13
  1071.  @dpelpal  You do get around, don't you dear?
    13
  1072. In Nazi Germany people reported Jews. In Soviet Russia they reported "hoarders" and "saboteurs". Fearful, unthinking conformists are always with us to support repression. Like global warming the coronavirus doesn't seem a bit as bad as fearmongers predicted, but that won't stop the instinctive bullies and the instinctive cowards and bootliickers from making life a misery for the rest of us.
    13
  1073. Gonzalo Lira?
    13
  1074. Does this new rule apply to the trenches the Ukrainians are currently frantically digging all over Bakhmut?
    13
  1075. Thank God NATO is not at war if this is the kind of analysis its senior commanders are capable of.
    13
  1076. More madness. these lockdowns kill more people than they save! Any number of scientific studies have shown this yet still the blinkered, power-crazed politicians continue dragging us toward death and ruin!
    13
  1077. The huge burden placed on the NHS by the consequences of the mishandling of the pandemic are only just beginning. It will simply not be up to the task, whatever the government does or does not do.
    13
  1078. Musk knows which way this debacle is going to pan out.
    13
  1079. Isn't he wearing a lovely suit? I wonder how much that cost.
    13
  1080. What rambling?
    13
  1081. He's really addressing the possibility of the regular Russian army not backing him up.
    13
  1082. Jaywalking?
    13
  1083. No. The world is in a mess because we didn't stop acting. And the more we act, the messier it's going to get.
    13
  1084. The reason I have several comments in this thread is that I am trying to beat YouTube's new fascist algorithm.
    13
  1085. Trump and Vance were absolutely right. Zelensky is too used to being fawned on. He has failed miserably in everything he has done and it is time for him to go.
    13
  1086. So being human and decent is bizarre now, is it?
    13
  1087. Other way around.
    13
  1088. Perhaps the unrest has stopped - or perhaps this is part of a long-term strategy to weaken opposition.
    13
  1089. The "far right" sitting at home watching this on the telly and laughing their socks off!
    13
  1090. The voice of reason.
    13
  1091. The BBC gets sillier and sillier. As an analysis of the current emergency this piece would make the efforts of the average ten-year-old seem profound. What happened to objectivity? This starts out with an opinion and massages the facts to fit it. That is not journalism. It is propaganda.
    13
  1092. But what right do we have to risk the lives of our own people by helping it resist?
    13
  1093. I can't help feeling that a working relationship with another very significant world leader is of greater importance than liking a pop star.
    13
  1094. And about how drug companies twist information to increase their profits - and the utter gullibility of those who fall for it.
    13
  1095. I sincerely hope the Russians will respect their pronouns when they are captured.
    13
  1096. And of course it will tell us that things are much, much worse than we even thought, and that global warming is very, very serious and that unless we all do EXACTLY what we are told we are all going to die in incredible pain and anguish. You read it here first.
    13
  1097. The law is that the corrections must be in the same position and the same prominence as the original article. But it takes a lengthy court procedure to prove the original article was untrue.
    13
  1098. Political expediency and the pursuit of profit characterised our wonderful government's reaction to the pandemic. Now we have soaring all-cause death rates in all age groups.. Heads should roll.
    13
  1099. Dangerous for Trump, you mean?
    13
  1100. It is entirely possible that Israel ignored the build-up to this attack in order to exact a terrible revenge and drive Hamas out of Gaza..
    13
  1101.  @AngryGnome87  So what? War isn't about being fair. It's about winning.
    13
  1102. Good luck to Donald in dealing with this latest sordid misuse of the tainted US judicial system.
    13
  1103.  @larsbjrnson3101  Its widespread interpretation is. They weren't Ukrainian nukes. They were Soviet nukes stationed in Ukraine which could only be fired from Moscow. The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty. It is merely an agreed record of events. In any case there was no direct link between the security "guarantees" and the removal of the nuclear weapons. This was simply part of the general distribution of Soviet materiel in Ukraine. They preferred to hold on to tanks and ships and let the nukes go.
    13
  1104.  @devirama1  All Ukrainians speak Russian - many as a first language. And many of them ARE Russian by ethnicity and culture.
    13
  1105. Take your brain out of the washing machine.
    13
  1106. Do you include the people of Donbass, oppressed by Ukrainian Nazis since the 1990s and actually murdered and tortured by them since 2014?
    13
  1107. The party's over It's time to call it a day They've burst your Pretty balloon And taken the moon away It's time to wind up The masquerade Just make your mind up The piper must be paid
    13
  1108. "How are we going to get out of this mess we've got into?"
    13
  1109. Even without immunity the case against Trump is farcical.
    13
  1110. And Zelensky won't countenance talks except on HIS terms - terms which are utterly ridiculous. Putin's proposals, on the other hand, are entirely reasonable, and always have been.
    13
  1111. Next: 1) Excess deaths caused by lockdowns. 2) Heart attacks, stillbirths and infertility caused by You Know What.
    13
  1112. Just one of the very many side-effects of lockdown madness. Lockdowns have brought more death and misery to the world than Covid 19 ever could.
    13
  1113. Still are.
    13
  1114. The world outside your bedroom window perhaps.
    13
  1115. Who are we supposed to be defending ourselves against exactly?
    13
  1116. You can start sticking the noughts on the end of the Omicron cases as of this moment. It will take over from Delta within two months.
    13
  1117. As a cartoon character who draws cartoons Professor Wilson can't be blamed for thinking everyone is a cartoon. They aren't. And Donald Trump is nothing like the grotesque figure the Prof has drawn in his imagination.
    13
  1118. Not going too well so far, is it?
    13
  1119. Russia probably isn't so bothered about Syria as once it was.
    13
  1120. The answer is old age. The majority of deaths occur in the very elderly who are too frail to resist covid, vaccinated or not. In the US clinical obesity is another factor.
    13
  1121. She's a lefty agitator. They're all the same.
    13
  1122. Give up. Give Donbass independence, Stay out of NATO. Not hard is it?
    13
  1123. Events have overtaken this video. Wagner is now in the centre of the city and the heavily-defended steelworks has fallen.
    13
  1124. Please, please, please get him back as leader before the election. As they fail so will he and it might well end his career.
    13
  1125. It's worth noting that the alleged instigator of the "Pork Pie Plot" represents the ultra safe Conservative East Midlands seat of Rutland and Melton. Her predecessor, Alan Duncan, who more or less ran the Foreign Office for years, quit because having experienced Bozo as Foreign Secretary, he knew that his premiership would swiftly run into major fuckups after a period of agonising incompetence. She and Duncan remain in touch. Those MPs whom you might regard as Johnson's supporters (including Rees-Mogg) are not generally his supporters at all. They are just making the noises expected of them until such time as, with great regret, they will be forced to withdraw their allegiance "in the interests of party unity."
    13
  1126. The photographer was already there.
    13
  1127. I wonder if this jab will reduce the number of heart attacks as much as another recent jab appears to have increased them. Will they balance out?
    13
  1128. About right, really.
    13
  1129. And most other viral infections the world has ever known.
    13
  1130. Other experts say lockdowns have been the greatest public health disaster in living memory. Who to believe?
    13
  1131. Storm Shadow will make little to no difference to the progress of the war. Yet again another Western super-weapon will prove to be an expensive irrelevance.
    13
  1132. This guy isn't fighting the same war. Is he really ex British military? God help us.
    12
  1133. Come back Russia, all is forgiven.
    12
  1134. And suffer the consequences. Which will be very, very serious indeed.
    12
  1135. There is no need to repair the relationship. Zelensky has to go. He has been an obstacle to peace ever since he allowed himself to be the puppet of US investment interests - interests which are entirely uncaring whether or not tens of thousands of foreigners died on their behalf.
    12
  1136. Waaah! The nasty ole Orange Man set me up! Bwaaah!
    12
  1137.  @PEdulis  Wrong on every count. The virus will inevitably find a way around every pathetic obstacle we put in its path. Evolution and nature make it so. The only real solution is via immunity through infection. If we had gone down that route from the start the pandemic would have been over months ago.
    12
  1138. Timing just a LITTLE suspect. Did the terrorists get their instructions from Allah or from Uncle Sam?
    12
  1139. It is, of course, entirely possible that Israel has covertly engineered these attacks in order to justify a massive response which will enable it to crush all Palestinian resistance, perhaps forever.
    12
  1140. Lyndon Johnson once famously said of one of his aides that it was better having him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. Seems Trump feels the same way about Fauci.
    12
  1141. Lets be optimistic for once and hope this is the virus' Christmas present - a variant which is much more transmissible, but much less virulent.
    12
  1142. It's a highly fortified city which is the key to the northern Donbass.
    12
  1143. The spooky music doesn't any impact to this latest daytime soap from the Democrats. When can we expect to see coverage of Ilhyan Omar's postal ballot fraud, by the way?
    12
  1144. But where does Ukraine end and Russia begin? That's what they're fighting over.
    12
  1145. Pound plummets. Rouble soars, Makes yer think, dunnit?
    12
  1146. Poor Starmer looks like a mouse meeting a big, fluffy cat.
    12
  1147. People really ought to try to pay more attention to Putin's version of events. They make a great deal of sense and bear little relation to the Hitleresque land-grab notion which Western politicians and media constantly try to foist on us.
    12
  1148. Risking the lives of tens of thousands of European just so international companies can get their hands on Ukraine's mineral riches would be pure folly.
    12
  1149. A victory for common sense against misguided and dangerous idealism.
    12
  1150. The current UK death rate is around 17% above the five year average for the time of year. Less than half can be attributed directly to covid. Covid will go away, more or less, but these other deaths - caused by lockdowns - will continue to mount year by year.
    12
  1151. Wanna save money? Close down the news division which has become a disgrace to journalism.
    12
  1152. If Ukraine had accepted Russia's treaty proposals in December, none of this would have happened.
    12
  1153. Palestine has never been a country in any real sense of the word and there are no such people as the Palestinians.
    12
  1154. No human brain could have conceived this. It is the work of a badly-programmed computer. They must have let Professor Ferguson out of his box.
    12
  1155. These "global shocks" are both entirely fictitious anyway.
    12
  1156. Because it got what it wanted. This is looking more like an ideological war than a trade war.
    12
  1157. It must be love that makes the dear old Prof so off target. Russia has already won this war. It has broken through the extremely strong Ukrainian defence lines in the south and can now take the third or so of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands with comparative ease. It really is all over bar the shouting.
    12
  1158. It's going to be a long, cold lonely winter for Ukraine - and probably for much of Europe too.
    12
  1159. Obviously it was Sir Keir Starmer having another go.
    12
  1160. When will this self-centered idiocy end? Babies in third world countries are dying of malnutrition to give decrepit western 90-year olds a few more months of miserable existence. Young people are being denied the chance and challenge of facing the world while politicians and pundits bicker over a disease which is now no worse than any other of the threats to health which beset us. This is shameful cowardice on a national scale.
    12
  1161. So far only the Telegraph and the Mail seem to be carrying this story - even though it happened (allegedly) several hours ago.
    12
  1162. If she wants to play the race card, then the fact she is not really an "African American" should enter into the discussion, don't you think?
    12
  1163. They have every right and justification. They believe the election was stolen from Trump and no-one is prepared to properly address their many very real complaints. Democracy is now officially dead in America and when democracy dies this is what you get.
    12
  1164. With this move Ukraine has admitted defeat.
    12
  1165.  @PerceivedREALITY999  Makes sense to me. There will probably never be a Palestinian state, largely due to the criminal activities of Hamas.
    12
  1166. They must have womental problems. Perhaps its even due to womenstrual tension.
    12
  1167. Newspapers are entertainment. The mistake would-be intellectuals make is in assuming that they represent a serious assessment of reality.
    12
  1168. Using abortion as a means of contraception is just savage - and hypocrisy too.
    12
  1169.  @andrewsmith78926  That's true enough, but with the stamp of approval to counteract his besmirched reputation Tommy could well be instrumental in persuading working class people who never vote - because they see no point - to go to the polls.
    12
  1170. Sex and the Stockholm Syndrome - an intoxicating combination for Left-wing masochists!
    12
  1171. He's no better.
    12
  1172. Meanwhile Ukraine's military strength is being bled out on the southern front, where it really matters.
    12
  1173. This is all it ever was. Because it's complicated and hard to explain people don't realise that "net" zero is simply a way of making money from an artificially created shortage: ie permissions to exceed imposed carbon emission limits. Funnily enough, a very similar scam is used to make money from carbon in another form: diamonds, which are so commonplace and easy to produce that you could pave your driveway with them quite cheaply if the supply wasn't restricted.
    12
  1174. Telling the truth is a crime in America now is it?
    12
  1175. You think America is a democracy???
    12
  1176. Trump is supposed to be a conman - so he recognises a con when he sees one.
    12
  1177. Remember when they used to say "the war will be over by Christmas?" In this case it might well be true.
    12
  1178. Google? Hah! Most of this is untrue, and some of it directly opposite to the truth. Russia has certainly been put through a hard time, but seems to be surviving remarkably well.
    12
  1179. Name one lie.
    12
  1180.  @makeracistsafraidagain  No. It's entirely true. Just check it. Russian nuclear reactors are currently being built in 14 countries worldwide. Along with neighbouring Tajikistan it is the world's largest supplier of processed uranium.
    12
  1181. Where does this 70,000 figure come from? According the Office of National Statistics 51, 264 people have died with Covid mentioned on their death certificates up until July 17. More precise definition is now being sought and the number of deaths where Covid 19 may have been an underlying cause is likely to be less. The government has made an utter balls up of dealing with this -as have most governments. But the figures are all over the place. Where do these extra 18,000 come from? Are they heart and cancer patients who have died due to lack of treatment? I only ask because I'd like to know.
    12
  1182. It's a very nice place, especially at this time of year.
    12
  1183.  @jorgeenchilada  I think you just started World War III and nuclear holocaust.
    12
  1184. Tory landslide - and the climate crisis con-artists all in a heap! It's a joy to be alive.
    12
  1185. Omicron in S Africa has peaked leaving a total of under 5,000 people hospitalised, many of them kept in purely for observation. Only around 250 have had to go on ventilators. This in a country of 60 million only about a quarter of whom are fully vaccinated and where many have damaged immune systems due to AIDS. Ley's hope the doom and gloom scientists and the profiteering drug companies have finally had their day.
    12
  1186.  @mick3839 No. The fraud appears to have been massive, as evidenced at various state senate hearings in recent weeks, coverage of which by the MSM has been minimal. Here are just two examples of what has been going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    12
  1187. The reason isn't hard to find - it's called money.
    12
  1188. He's a crook, as well as a puppet, a liar and a fraud. Got a nice smile though.
    12
  1189. Love him or hate him, Elon Musk is what the world needs right now. The human race is at a crisis point and new ideas and new attitudes are needed to break the mould.
    12
  1190. Did you miss Iraq and Syria?
    12
  1191. Surely it's not where they were born, but where their heads are which is the problem.
    12
  1192. There are no scientific reasons for any of these restrictions. None.
    12
  1193. I know the meaning of fear. I believe everything I am told. I do everything I am told. I wear a mask. I am smiling behind it. I am happy.
    12
  1194. If Israel did this (which remains in doubt) it is no worse than what Britain and America did in Germany in World War II. There are other similarities too. In both instances the civilian populations supported regimes dedicated to the extinction of Jews.
    12
  1195. The more Zelensky goes on the more I'm convinced it was him wot dun it.
    12
  1196. The jury's out on this one. At this stage blowing the dam would arguably be disadvantageous for both sides.
    12
  1197. Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    12
  1198. He's not a judge - he's a political activist.
    12
  1199. What happens to the missiles the Ukrainians use to shoot down drones? Just askin'
    12
  1200. Shot, not killed. Another great clickbait thumbnail from ES.
    12
  1201. I doubt it is against the law, but if it is the law must be changed immediately. Far, far more than Ukraine, Israel is a country fighting for its right to exist. It deserves all the support we can give it.
    12
  1202. Nailed it! I've come to much the same conclusions myself - to have them confirmed by such an eminent academic as Dr Ayyadurai has, I must admit, made me glow inside! I hope I'm right too in my support of the findings of Drs Michael and Ronan Connolly whose study of data from weather balloons has strongly indicated that carbon in the atmosphere neither retains heat nor reflects it, but instead is part of a mechanism which disseminates it in directions best suited to maintaining the thermodynamic stability of the atmosphere. Any congratulation yet again to Sky News Australia - a true beacon of light and sanity in the ocean of filth and corruption which used to be journalism.
    12
  1203. They know. The concept of patriotism remains strong in Russia.
    12
  1204.  @tonymccaul7159  This may well be true, but the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. Pretending that it is has been a major platform for NATO expansionism, which is in itself a vehicle for American commercial expansionism. Another objective is the reduction of Russia to the status of a second-rate power which can at the same time be held up as the permanent enemy the military/industrial complex needs in order to continue making vast profits from the American taxpayer.
    12
  1205. Don't forget the racism angle. Many of those "lunatics" out in the sticks do indeed resent the very high melanin count in the current Tory hierarchy.
    12
  1206. The city is taken. Why deny it?
    12
  1207. Starmer's actions have certainly led me to consider that Replacement Theory might actually be a thing.
    12
  1208. I wasn't aware that Ukraine was fighting my behalf. I thought it was fighting on behalf of international corporations who want to get their hands on resources which belong to Russians.
    12
  1209. It deserves her.
    12
  1210. For a minute there I thought Old Joe was gonna sniff his hair.
    12
  1211. Why?
    12
  1212. Annihiliation?
    12
  1213. Seriously underestimating your enemy is not a good idea. So far Ukraine has thrown considerable armour and manpower against the Russians and not even made a dent in their first defence line.
    12
  1214. It's nauseating if you find the truth nauseating.
    12
  1215. Ukraine did it. The evidence is overwhelming.
    12
  1216. This dreadful old gangster is probably more responsible than anyone for this war. He initiated massacres in Donbass, banned it from exporting coal and then bought up all the coal, selling it in anonymously in Kiev while pretending it came from South Africa, and so making a fortune for himself.
    12
  1217. How wonderful! As right-wing conservative I tune into this channel to find people to argue with or, failing that, to mock. Now I find someone who intelligently and articulately expresses views which I cannot help but endorse from the bottom of my heart.
    12
  1218. This clearly illustrates the hypocrisy, stupidity and pointlessness of these rules. The only good they might have done is to possibly get Boris the sack for breaking them.
    12
  1219. As well as big tech the Guardian and the BBC, and indeed much of the media, are becoming increasingly Soviet in style and outlook. Trump is again demonstrating that, unlikely as it may seem, he and those who back him are among the few voices of sanity and freedom to be heard in the West today. Who'd have thought?
    12
  1220. George Floyd was a violent criminal and ex-jailbird who had just been arrested on suspicion of drunkenly entering a convenience store and buying cigarettes with a forged $20 bill. He also was a very large man. I would suggest that these factors have more bearing on his unfortunate death than the colour of his skin. The play book for these protests was obviously written some time ago and was waiting for the right sort of incident to start the pages turning. Antifa and Black Lives Matter are regressive terrorist organisations and if you fall for this trickery then more fool you.
    12
  1221. All he needs now is an out-of-tune guitar and a styrofoam cup.
    12
  1222.  @Taladar2003  They're quite sensible. Without this rule the level of Parliamentary debate could descend into pointless chaos and become no more than an exchange of insults. Johnson though has abused convention and Dawn Butler has very cleverly called him out.
    12
  1223. Here come the clowns.
    12
  1224. Newsnight was chilling. I thought I was in Soviet Russia watching something put out by the KGB.
    12
  1225. So bloody what?
    12
  1226. The wheels are starting to fall off America's latest mad adventure, thank God. Anything that prolongs the greed and madness must be avoided at all costs.
    12
  1227. Yes! All we need now is for Trump win in America and there is hope for the world.
    12
  1228. There is both method and humour in his madness though. It's just that you have to be a special kind of person to see this.
    12
  1229.  @everTriumph  Russia colonised Crimea in 1783, after taking it from the Turks. The population is at least 70% Russian. It was only stuck on to Ukraine in 1954 by the Soviet Union, for administrative and logistical reasons. Very few Ukrainians live there and are almost outnumbered by Tatars and Greeks. It is Russian.
    12
  1230. Boris seems to be getting a bit of an adrenalin rush out of all this!
    12
  1231. Peace is impossible as long as Zelensky remains in power.
    12
  1232. More fantasy. Do these people believe that simply saying something makes it true?
    12
  1233. In fact, the Ukrainians have now shut down their own independent mapping service, since it actually recorded the considerable Russian advances currently taking place.
    12
  1234. C'mon man. This was more like a university sit-in than a riot.
    11
  1235. You're there with your little clicker, are you?
    11
  1236. It will be interesting to see how much of this money reaches the front line in the form of useful weaponry - and when.
    11
  1237. NATO doesn't have to invade - it just gets its minions to do it, same as the bosses of any other protection racket would.
    11
  1238.  @sassy6498  A study of the history of Ukraine, Russia, the US and NATO leads one to certain inevitable conclusions which this lady has encapsulated perfectly.
    11
  1239. Del Boy Boris has just bought a billion quidsworth of dodgy vaccines he's got to knock out a bit sharpish, that's why.
    11
  1240. Poor, poor Harry! His upbringing has obviously left him unprepared to deal with a glib, delusional creature like this one.
    11
  1241. The Americans will greet him like a hero and promise him the earth. When he has gone they will do their sums and realise that their investment in Ukraine has not paid off. The only way to make up their losses will be to send Halliburton in to clean up the mess.
    11
  1242. Crimea was liberated in 2014.
    11
  1243. The bungling old fool must have been shoed in for some purpose. Perhaps it was to create more lovely, never-ending, money making wars.
    11
  1244.  @UniversalAwareness101  Not this week though.
    11
  1245.  @dogpoofairy2517  Plus lots of dead people and a computer program.
    11
  1246. Ukraine has held up Russia thanks to the input of billions of dollars in equipment and training from the US and NATO. Without out it wouldn't have lasted five minutes.
    11
  1247.  @gordonlinton3555  The available facts point firmly to Ukraine nationalist extremists in the armed forces being responsible for this outrage. They have been committing similar atrocities just a few miles away for eight years, and the missile was one of theirs.
    11
  1248.  @HR_8035_YEA  Your figures are wildly incorrect. The Ukrainian army at the time outnumbered and outgunned the Russian invasion force to a considerable extent. Furthermore, there was never any intention capturing Kyiv and Kharkiv, and nor is there now. Ukrainian territory outside the immediate area of Donbass and the land corridor to Crimea is only valuable to Russia as areas in which to attempt to reduce the Ukrainian armed forces. Putin will consider the war to be won when the entirety of Donbass is under Russian control and defended against Ukrainian and NATO attack.
    11
  1249. He was carrying a gun in that left hand a split second before the shot was fired. Look at that left hand in the last frame and decide for yourself if it looks as though he was ready to spread it, or whether he still had the gun it and was preparing to aim and fire. His street name was "L'il Homicide". Many boys of his age are used to carry out gang killings in Chicago because they only get light sentences if caught. He and a man in his early twenties had been seen shooting at a car just minutes before.
    11
  1250. Shameless manipulation. Sickening propaganda for a false cause.
    11
  1251. This glib assurances that "Biden Won" have to compete with actual evidence of extensive vote-tampering as laid out in great detail in the numerous cases currently before US courts. The BBC is disgusting.
    11
  1252.  @jayrose4748  Vaccinations are far from 100% effective - and not very long-lasting. To place total reliance on them is dangerous.
    11
  1253. The ONS isn't what it was.
    11
  1254. What has to happen is that the Medieval insanity of extreme Islamism has somehow to be shed by new rulers. It is a difficult task, and one can only hope that a new regime in Syria will be capable of achieving it.
    11
  1255. There is a limit to hospitality. It doesn't include gate-crashers.
    11
  1256. As Nelson Mandala once said: "Personally I enjoy being offensive."
    11
  1257. If this was going to work there would be some justification. But it isn't. Covid will come, and it will rip through Australia's vulnerable population like wildfire.
    11
  1258. And the constitution says you can't prosecute the President whenever you feel like it.
    11
  1259. And the rest!
    11
  1260. This makes so much sense. All that is needed now is for the verdicts to be overturned.
    11
  1261. Time to ditch the nonsense of green energy and "net zero" and start drilling for gas and oil and digging for coal again. When are people going to realise than the "climate crisis" is an utter con?
    11
  1262. The more nature is defied, the worse the consequences. Sweden still stands out as a beacon of sanity.
    11
  1263. There are people in other parts of Donbass who have been living in cellars not just for eight months but for eight years. To escape shelling by Ukraine, not Russia.
    11
  1264. And the Hamas thugs will have the lot.
    11
  1265. You can't rule a country like Russia for more than 20 years without having your wits about you. In this case he is doing absolutely the right thing in allowing the Ukrainians to waste resources on a pointless gesture.
    11
  1266. Kursk is a sideshow. This war is about the possession one of the most mineral-rich pieces of land in he world - the Donbass.
    11
  1267. I so much hope that some enterprising child is already making masks of other pupils to wear as they go through the gates. Please tell me this would work.
    11
  1268. Excitable, isn't he?
    11
  1269.  @bedandbreakfastman11  He is certainly very divisive - but a great performer when he's not too stoned. His talk to the Oxford Union long ago was a masterpiece of reason and logic. Right now he's the man many people have been conditioned to hate. Handled properly though he could turn that hatred into respect.
    11
  1270. I know the feeling.
    11
  1271. A perhaps unlikely saviour - but a saviour nonetheless.
    11
  1272. Labour seem to be discovering something rather similar.
    11
  1273. Putin will not allow it. Peace is possible and soon - but not as long as this foolishness remains on the table.
    11
  1274. Villages?
    11
  1275. There´s more chance of her marching down the Mall carrying a BLM placard.
    11
  1276.  @onlineonlineaccount2368  It's an open contest, certainly. I think we need to fix the rules though. Citing race for personal advantage would be the main criteria and Nigel could actually be disbarred since his objections are to illegal immigrants, regardless of race. What is coded racial dogwhistle language, by the way?
    11
  1277. But ultimately subject to Moscow. It was a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The term "semi-autonomous" sort of gives it away.
    11
  1278. Who are the Soviets? The term ceased to exist more than thirty years ago.
    11
  1279. Trust neither - but Putin deserves respect.
    11
  1280. I suppose have to thank Putin for giving beleaguered Boris and bumbling Biden a chance to try to redeem themselves. It won't happen, but never mind, eh?
    11
  1281. Putin will stop of his own accord once we have the sense to grant him his very reasonable demands.
    11
  1282. The legislation exists. Let us employ it to the full.
    11
  1283. I'm not entirely sure how further antagonising Putin is going to prevent World War III. I would have thought the exact opposite is likely.
    11
  1284. Not long enough.
    11
  1285.  @vr360experiencetheordinary  Did he though?
    11
  1286. His choice of words may not be precise, but what he is saying is essentially correct.
    11
  1287. Russia will reply with a proper missile attack. What then?
    11
  1288.  Justin Rolland  Give it time. The market is clearly artificially inflamed at the moment, which provides a good hunting ground for hedge funds. The Bidenites are as unsophisticated in their fiscal thinking as they are in most matters. The scene is set for a swift crash and burn for many over-valued stocks with consequent large profits for leveraged investors.
    11
  1289. I had lunch with Vladimir Vladimirovich yesterday, and he assured me that he was quite well and looking forward to being a guest on Times Radio some time in the not-to-distant future.
    11
  1290. Catastrophic for Zelensky and his cronies in America perhaps - but wonderful for the people of Ukraine (what's left of them.)
    11
  1291. That is literally untrue.
    11
  1292. Instead of indulging in fantasies, why not give us an update on the situation on the Eastern front, where the actual war is taking place?
    11
  1293. They seem to be replacing all our 90-year-olds who have died of covid on practically a one-to-one basis. God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.
    11
  1294.  @patrikfloding7985  What is it then? A brave little nation fighting for democracy against an evil tyrant? Give me a break.
    11
  1295. That beat the algorithm!
    11
  1296. If this is democracy, it's going nowhere.
    11
  1297. Don't forget folks, as long as cases keep going up and deaths stay level we are getting closer to herd immunity!
    11
  1298. And this is why the EU is finished. They have tried to turn a trading bloc into a political entity. And it simply will not do.
    11
  1299. Very stylish performance by the Russians! The aerial equivalent of a middle finger.
    11
  1300. When the ground hardens the Russians will attack from the north and step up their attacks on the Donbass front. Does Ukraine have sufficient forces to defend both Kiev and their front line?
    11
  1301. Great. They can now both go down together. No more NATO. No more EU. Safer, freer world.
    11
  1302. The death-to-case ratio, after 14 days, is less than 10% of what it was at the start of the winter wave in September. Something has changed and lifting restrictions is a gamble well worth taking. If it works out well Labour's doom and gloom whingers will lose even more credibility, and if it doesn't Johnson will have to go. Win. Win.
    11
  1303. Two acts of madness, both heavily supported by Sky: hysterical over-reaction to covid hysterical support for Ukraine. These are the principal reasons for this dire situation.
    11
  1304. One of the things I'm enjoying most about Times Radio's coverage of this conflict is how silly propaganda has become transformed into wishful thinking. It's almost seamless. It really is remarkable. Well done!
    11
  1305. Johnson's sins in this regard pale into insignificance when compared with his role in triggering the war in Ukraine.
    11
  1306.  @igorigor1496  Russia invaded, remember? Do you think they would have done so if Ukraine had agreed to Russia's very reasonable peace terms and granted independence to the two Donbass breakaway republics? And can you imagine who persuaded them not to? And why? And what with?
    11
  1307. His rhetoric has changed significantly since shredding the Ukrainian army and destroying the country's infrastructure.
    11
  1308. Cultists.
    11
  1309. These are battle-hardened troops for the most part who will be useful in helping to defend Donbass and Crimea from Ukrainian attempts to regain them
    11
  1310. If the weapons and ammunition flowed as freely as the optimism, then Ukraine might have a chance. But even that is doubtful.
    11
  1311. It will evade vaccines; that is more or less certain. The virus will find away round every obstacle we put in its path - nature and evolution insist this be so. All we can hope for is that new variants, while inevitably more transmissible, will actually be less virulent.
    11
  1312.  @richardfeynman7491  The reverse is true. There are over 70 hours of evidence and assertion on the Internet placed before various state senate hearings in recent weeks (See below for a couple of examples.) The case against Trump was based almost entirely on the "evidence" presented in a made-up dossier. The case rightly failed, even after an investigation by the Dem/establishment-leaning FBI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    11
  1313. But not to failure itself.
    11
  1314. She will get much fairer treatment than Trump would get from CNN.
    11
  1315. Will you be saying the same thing when you're cowering in your cellar?
    11
  1316. This will not end well for Ukraine - or very possibly for Zelensky personally.
    11
  1317. They were Soviet weapons, not Ukrainian weapons.
    11
  1318. She reminds of Megan Markle in many respects.
    11
  1319. Racism has declined unimaginably in both the UK and the US in recent decades. This is obviously a problem for the left who need to promote a sense of injustice in order to make identity politics work. The working classes in both nations have already largely rejected their creed. Let us hope that BAME people will soon follow suit. Systemic racism is a construct of the leftist mind. It does not exist in the real world.
    11
  1320. Seems a poor swap for billions of dollars of military hardware.
    11
  1321.  @seandenny6430  Child.
    11
  1322. This is all such a con trick!
    11
  1323. Covid 19 pretty exclusively kills the frail and elderly. These people are safe.
    11
  1324. Why should he? He didn't kill them.
    11
  1325. One can only admire Ukraine's resilience, as misguided as it may be. Ukraine is losing and cannot possibly win this war. It is, furthermore, a war undertaken not on behalf of the Ukrainian people in any real sense, but on behalf of greedy Western agencies who wish to lay hands on the vast mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine, traditionally and actually in the possession of Russian companies, and worked by Russian people. The Kursk incursion has achieved next to nothing. It has had no significant impact on Russia's gradual advance on the southern front, since no significant troops were diverted from there. The ground itself is virtually worthless and will not even have much value as a bargaining chip in hopefully imminent peace negotiations - even if Ukraine still manages to hold any of it by then, which is becoming increasingly unlikely.
    11
  1326. If Russia really wanted to conquer Ukraine they would have done stuff like this BEFORE sending the troops in.
    11
  1327. No he hasn't.
    11
  1328. Facial recognition is old hat. Try Googling ID2020, quantum dots and combining them with compulsory mass vaccination and see what conclusions you come to.
    11
  1329. A victory for mob rule and ignorance.
    11
  1330. Do you hear things when you're there cleaning the lavatories?
    11
  1331. Trump may not be the greatest orator in the world but he is sharper that very many men half his age. Playing the senility card shows just how desperate the Dems are.
    11
  1332. ... so often the trouble with a diversity hire.
    11
  1333.  @joeyl564  He had a set of fluffy pink handcuffs as well.
    11
  1334. And, right on cue, the long-awaited "chemical weapons" false flag gambit is trotted out. What kind of mugs do you take us for?
    10
  1335. Putin is no threat to this country. These people are mad.
    10
  1336. This man's folly and conceit has led to the destruction of his nation.
    10
  1337. This actually isn't all that impressive. It sounds like over-compensation. My suspicions are aroused.
    10
  1338. Thanks for the pro-Trump message Independent. Very good of you.
    10
  1339. Even those who voted for him?
    10
  1340. Times Radio is basically wrong about almost everything. It's a real talent.
    10
  1341.  @GaddaDasder  Not many open prisons have rocket launchers in playgrounds and hospital car parks.
    10
  1342. No, the question is will NATO countries supply troops to Ukraine, because they will run out on manpower long before Russia does.
    10
  1343. Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do.
    10
  1344. The Russians will scarcely be inconvenienced by any of this. They are well-prepared and they also know it will only be very temporary.
    10
  1345. Russia has asked for the right to reply to these charges. Has it been given -and if not, why not?
    10
  1346. It's scarcely being fooled. Being foolish more like.
    10
  1347. If anyone wants any further proof of how effective hydroxychloroquine treatments are likely to be you simply have to look at how Google and YouTube censors are weeding out positive information on the subject. Dr Campbell's video of yesterday is still obtainable, thank goodness but plenty of other material has been wiped. Up until now it has mostly been simple stuff, aimed at the layman but I have just discovered that the peer-reviewed John Hopkins study published in late May is now unobtainable. The very fact that the enemies of truth should be acting in this way shows the rightness of the cause. A very great evil is being perpetrated at the cost of thousands of lives.
    10
  1348. There is now a major shift in the balance of power in the world, triggered more than anything by America's dismal performance in Afghanistan. America is no longer respected and feared as once it was and this is leading to many countries reconsidering their positions. It was certainly a factor in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.
    10
  1349. But he has no such ambition.
    10
  1350. The resistance at the Azovstal works certainly epitomises the true Ukrainian sprit. The bunkers and shelters have been crammed with civilian prisoners used as human shields, and the streets around it are littered with corpses of civilians used for sniping practice by Azov Battalion marksmen.
    10
  1351. But Russia isn't going to withdraw. Nor should it be expected to, since its actions are the inevitable reaction to Western aggression going back more than thirty years. This intransigence by the US and its lackeys (among whom the UK is shamefully included) can only lead to an even greater loss of life and continuing tragedy for Ukraine.
    10
  1352. History throws up unlikely heroes from time to time.
    10
  1353. Harmless enough . Shame about the alleged "nursing pioneer" Mary Seacole though. She actually ran a restaurant in the Crimea, dishing out delicacies to officers. The closest she came to nursing was donating some tablecloths to be torn up for bandages.
    10
  1354. Swap creatures fear drainage.
    10
  1355. Zelensky should get a prize for being the Best Grifter at this annual convention of grifters, con artists and mass murderers.
    10
  1356. How anyone in their right mind can believe this utter bollocks totally defeats me.
    10
  1357. No. The Democrats did that.
    10
  1358. More than CNN.
    10
  1359. So making people suffer pointlessly in the real world is hailed as a way of preventing them suffer in a future world of utter fantasy. Is that it?
    10
  1360. Why does anyone think Putin even WANTS to take Kiev?
    10
  1361. Did the BBC give lessons to the Dems "managers" on how to edit and falsify evidence? Or did they just copy CNN?
    10
  1362. I really do think plan B was always plan A and that the activities in the north and west were designed to exhaust the enemy, not to conquer it. How successful this was remains to be seen.
    10
  1363. This is clearly WEF policy: get rid of expensive pensioners who no longer contribute and import healthy young men from third world countries who will work cheap and impregnate our women, thus restoring the balance between productive individuals and those to old and infirm to further contribute.
    10
  1364. He's like something out of the ark.
    10
  1365.  @kassygendron3022  There's a message in that too!
    10
  1366. He is absolutely right about almost everything. Hard to swallow, but there it is.
    10
  1367. I'm sure he's shaking in his shoes.
    10
  1368. What a load of fuss over nothing. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
    10
  1369. This pollution is as nothing compared with the moral pollution the BBC attempts to inflict on the minds of trusting viewers each and every day.
    10
  1370. I think it's a mistake to relate any of Soros' activities to his Jewishness, other than to say that like many Jews he is very clever; an understatement really. He is probably one of the most intelligent men to have ever lived. His is, however, an embittered man. He wanted to be a philosopher but was rejected by the philosophical establishment and so turned his immense intellect to the more mundane business of making money. He is also an enigma. In his seminal work "The Alchemy of Finance" he makes it clear that intelligent misdirection is a key tool in the process of financial manipulation. So are his "philanthropic" activities simply the result of a kindly nature? I very much doubt it. Mammon is a jealous God and I strongly suspect that the Soros millions are being invested in acts of deliberate social and economic sabotage, designed to turn those millions into billions through forms of economic manipulation so esoteric that they evade the comprehension of ordinary mortals. It is also possible that his ultimate revenge will be the collapse of all major world currencies and the consequent plunging of the world into total chaos. His timing is about right. It should just about start to visibly happen as he shuffles off the mortal coil.
    10
  1371. Yes.
    10
  1372. The chatter of starlings.
    10
  1373. Save the Amazon - and stop wasting money on the hedge-fund managers' global warming con trick. The only way to stop people in South America turning the rainforest into agricultural land is to pay them not to. Provide them with alternative ways of feeding their families.
    10
  1374. Closely followed by repeating the same quote from Einstein over and over.
    10
  1375. Constantly beating the drum for Ukraine both makes this channel look foolish and prevents it being actual journalism. Wagner finally took Bahkmut today .The number of lives lost on both sides runs into tens of thousands. Any responsible human being should now be pleading for peace not slavering enthusiastically over some semi-mythical escalation of the conflict.
    10
  1376. Poor Dems - having to choose between Muslim votes and Jewish money!
    10
  1377. Money
    10
  1378. Even if it was a poisoned chalice Biden revealed his utter inadequacy by drinking so deeply from it.
    10
  1379. Only fools die holding territory they don't need Ukraine made that mistake. Wagner won't.
    10
  1380. Marxists have long taken over the education system. Teacher training colleges are indoctrination centres. Margaret Thatcher was getting ready to go through them with the fire and the sword before she was toppled. The modern Conservative party is so weak-kneed and wet that it bows down to the social-engineering lefties on this and every issue.
    10
  1381. This vote means very little. Most countries voting in favour are really sitting on the sidelines to see how things pan out.
    10
  1382. It looks very much to me as though Russia is within a hairsbreadth of achieving all its war aims. It is rapidly advancing in Donbass and seems to be squeezing the Ukrainians out of Kursk. Trump and Putin both strike me as eminently pragmatic men, and if this position can be ratified and a reasonable accommodation achieved, then there is no reason why this ghastly and needless episode should not be put behind us. Putin will be hailed as a national hero is this happens - and quite rightly so.
    10
  1383. A new Mariupol is rising from the ruins - and with astonishing rapidity. Bakhmut will soon follow.
    10
  1384. Parrots are good in this respect.
    10
  1385. This was a disgusting performance by the Democrats. It doesn't help that so many of them look as though they have recently been dug up out of the ground and re-assembled by incompetent morticians.
    10
  1386. Meanwhile Russia is advancing on all fronts.
    10
  1387. I'm really quite cheerful myself. Progressive leftism has got us all into a terrible mess.
    10
  1388.  @JaceFalcon  I'm puzzled. You say Trump will get his butt kicked but quote an anti-Biden slogan. You know the translation, don't you?
    10
  1389. Erratic disruption is the name of the game.
    10
  1390.  @whoisme678  The war has had very little effect on day to day life in Russia. There's plenty of food in the shops and petrol in the pumps. Plenty of work too.
    10
  1391. The Ukrainians will be out of Kursk by the end of the month at the latest. Russian losses will be about one tenth of those currently claimed.
    10
  1392. Is Putin all that bothered though? NATO moving in on Ukraine would be a blow to Russia's national prestige, but other countries joining has no real effect. The idea that Russia wants to invade Europe is a myth, designed primarily to do what it has done -strengthen NATO.
    10
  1393. Dead parrot.
    10
  1394. Nor by the US
    10
  1395. Drought and flood is Australia's natural climate sequence - caused by its isolated position in the midst of a vast ocean where tides and currents affect its weather according to ancient and as yet ill-understood forces. Man-made global warming is a total irrelevance.
    10
  1396. Gosh. This is the man who rules the world!!??
    10
  1397.  @richardgallagher4088  Not when the police kick down the doors of innocent people it isn't.
    10
  1398. There's nothing crazy about Donald Trump. He's totally all there.
    10
  1399. Why don't you have a go right now? I'm dying to know what all these Trump lies were.
    10
  1400. How so?
    10
  1401. I'm really worried now. The BBC being calm and slightly optimistic? The world's about to end.
    10
  1402. He's probably already forgotten all about it.
    10
  1403. Goodbye Kiev
    10
  1404. If he does apologise will he also apologise to the millions of Brits whose ancestors suffered cruelty and deprivation on the land and down mines or in factories to keep his family in luxury?
    10
  1405.  @casianfd  And it's true. Russia is prepared to negotiate. Ukraine, under orders from America, is not.
    10
  1406. Or the people, like you, who are fooled by the continuing campaign of hatred against him. Orange Man Bad? No. Orange Man quite ordinary, really.
    10
  1407. The ICC is a total waste of space.
    10
  1408.  @Kodakcompactdisc  It has been Russian since 1783, except when it was taken back for a few years by the Turks after the Crimean war. It was stuck on to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine in 1954. The population is 70% Russian and Ukrainians are outnumbered by Greeks and Tatars.
    10
  1409. So it's OK to defy the lockdown in huge numbers in order to protest against the death of man in Minneapolis but a man who protects his child by driving 250 miles - and does NOT break the lockdown - has to be treated in this shameful manner. Is that it? These kids are sick and stupid. The people who send them out there are sick and evil.
    10
  1410. There's no way of telling what good, if any, lockdowns do. But there are going to be plenty of ways of judging the immense damage they cause.
    10
  1411. And he's also BLM and a black nationalist.
    10
  1412. The thought of Afghanistan and Vietnam is sending shivers down their spine.
    10
  1413. I rather thought the US was bent on going against Putin.
    10
  1414. He might be as barmy as his dad.
    10
  1415. What's sickening is how the Arabs were given the chance to do something with Gaza, and billions of dollars in aid to do it with. Instead they turned a potential paradise into an armed camp, ruled by leaders living luxury lifestyles. It's just the way they are. There's nothing anyone can do about it.
    10
  1416. Nonsense. It was just about the gas and the oil - as ever.
    10
  1417. What makes a country though? A signature on a bit of paper or centuries of history? Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine is Russian.
    10
  1418. Sure. Let rural small town America be ruled by city-dwellers, eh?
    10
  1419. On a similar theme there has been a huge outcry in the US media after a fan at a baseball game was heard on TV repeatedly shouting the n-word while a black guy was at the plate. Twitterati calls were made for his incarceration - and similar punishment for all the other fans who heard him and did nothing. Turns out the guy was shouting at a man dressed as a dinosaur. It was the team's mascot and the racist was calling out to him because he wanted a selfie. The mascot's name is "Dinger."
    10
  1420. Another victory for truth and decency. The Democrats and their fellow swamp-creatures from the FBI must not be allowed to get away with their venal and cynical attempts to manipulate the justice system.
    10
  1421. Already has.
    10
  1422. .. and Musk is stopping them!
    10
  1423. On behalf of America.
    10
  1424. I really would like to know when these records actually began, how many of the original temperature readings have been "homogenised" (ie altered to fit) and whether or not it is true that the new digital and infra-red thermometers now in use actually record temperatures as being higher than the old mercury thermometers did. I can't help thinking that if these minor details were factored in, the terrifying upward curve of the graphs would appear rather less intimidating.
    10
  1425. This action remains a big, big puzzle. It's hard to tell exactly what Ukraine hopes to achieve from it. Propaganda? A bargaining chip at the conference table? Russia being forced to move troops from the front? Who knows?
    10
  1426.  @turnerfamilyinozi  Because he is telling the plain, unvarnished truth.
    10
  1427. One minute you're saying Russia is going to collapse any minute. The next you're saying it's going to rebuild in order to conquer Europe! Which is it? (Honestly. Aren't you ASHAMED of the utter clownshow the once-great The Thunderer has now become?)
    10
  1428. Try telling that to the people of Donbas who have been fighting for eight years to escape this gangster-run, neo-Nazi "sovereign state."
    10
  1429.  @Jez-Hunt  I can do irony all on my own, thanks.
    10
  1430. It's only the left that feels the need to hammer on constantly about race. Most right wing people these days scarcely notice it any more.
    10
  1431.  @justinatest9456  It doesn't mean the Russians did it though. If they did it was overkill at best. We might not ever know for certain but my best guess is that the dam collapsed after being weakened by previous hits, coupled with extraordinary amounts of water it contained.
    10
  1432. You seem to be ignoring the somewhat important fact that Ukraine's use of these little toys has led Russia to launch an ICBM for the first time in the history of warfare.
    10
  1433. You can always trust an American arms salesman to be totally objective.
    10
  1434. Soledar and Bakhmut are pivotal locations in the fortified lines of defence set up around Donbass by Ukraine following the Minsk agreements of 2014/16. To even suggest they are just quiet country towns minding their own business is absurd. Breaking through this line of defences means Russia meets a further though less well fortified line of trenches and fortifications guarding the border between Donbass and Ukraine. This is the real war. Up until now Russia's objectives have been to deplete Ukraine's forces to such a degree that the current action might meet with success. Their "humiliating defeats" were on territory they neither want nor need, other than as killing grounds. This territory they do want, however, and they will go to any lengths to take it and keep it.
    10
  1435. If the Dems are triumphant it will only be by the same means they were triumphant in 2020. And I think many of us know this wasn't entirely due to their policies being approved by the majority of the electorate.
    10
  1436. As decent and honest as ever. Such a pity some of the commentators on your channel can't seem to grasp the message.
    10
  1437. It ain't like this in Russia.
    10
  1438. You've got to admire Trump for standing up to this biased judge and his kangaroo court. Contempt? I should bloodywell think so!
    10
  1439. Can there be any doubt?
    10
  1440. Chop their hands off.
    10
  1441.  @russophobeSE  Only a few trillion dollars in gas, oil and rare earth minerals.
    10
  1442. Give up. Give Donbass its independence. Don't join NATO. Stop being a hero. This stubbornness is killing hundreds. It might be thousands. And it just isn't worth it.
    10
  1443. This is one of the greatest con tricks ever performed. It makes selling the Brooklyn Bridge look like child's play. And it's STILL working! I am gobsmacked with admiration for its perpetrators and laughing myself silly at the fools who still fall for it.
    10
  1444. This is so utterly symbolic of the state of Britain today.
    10
  1445. The two-state "solution" is just a recipe for permanent conflict .
    10
  1446. Vladimir Putin is probably one of the sanest men on the planet.
    10
  1447. I think it is absolutely disgraceful that tired and weary visitors to our shores should have to put up with such low-grade accommodation.
    10
  1448. Ask yourself what do these doctors have to gain, and what does Big Pharma have to lose? Drug companies have been fixing medical trials for decades. Any treatment which even hints at providing a cheap alternative is systematically disparaged.
    10
  1449. Good move Joe ! We can all go out together.
    10
  1450. It really is time to stop hero-worshipping this guy. He is dragging the world into a whole heap of trouble. He's either a fool or a dupe and probably both.
    10
  1451. When you're in a hole you should stop digging. Lockdown's don't work. School environments are safe for children and teachers alike. This disease is not the disease these measures were designed to tackle.
    10
  1452. James Hansen is now touring Canada wearing a cowboy hat and flogging a credit card scheme designed to let you buy out of your carbon footprint. Makes you think, don't it?
    10
  1453.  @Believe-you-me-  ONS statistics. Fun to trawl through - and quite illuminating.
    10
  1454. Stay at home? Cover your face outside? Sounds like Australia.
    10
  1455. Pontless authoritarian madness will do nothing to prevent this disease. The best that can be hoped for is a temporary respite, followed by an immediate resurgence once the restrictions are lifted.
    10
  1456. Do Putin's enemies ever hang themselves from doorknobs in hotel rooms?
    10
  1457. So it is true about sheep in NZ. No black sheep though.
    10
  1458. Get over there yourself, since you're so keen.
    10
  1459. Yes, and it would take two weeks for the Taliban to reach Kabul, wouldn't it?
    10
  1460. That was then and this is now. Flu deaths are now outstripping Covid deaths every day and have been doing so for weeks.
    10
  1461. Blinded by panic we have rushed into the madness of lockdown and left our elderly to die. What is wrong with people in this country?
    10
  1462. I assume Google to be Western-orientated. Can the new-look maps be configured to reflect this?
    9
  1463. But he only owns the Sun, the Times and TalkRadio.
    9
  1464. Professor, you might have more in common with Tommy than you think.
    9
  1465.  @goswinschepens4751  YouTube is NOT banned in Russia
    9
  1466. No. It is winning the war and its economic woes are much exaggerated.
    9
  1467. The problem of course is that Ukraine could find itself short of Western weapons long before Russia runs out of "battlefield meat."
    9
  1468. Another clever move by the US - encouraging its two biggest rivals into an economic and military coalition.
    9
  1469. Careful they don't seize the pug and sell it on ebay!
    9
  1470. If the US justice system had remained an objective forum for seeking the truth and punishing wrongdoing then this would be the correct take. But since it has been deprived of this role and commandeered as an instrument of political manipulation it no longer has the right to expect respect.
    9
  1471. With the flu season approaching I would REALLY REALLY REALLY like know what co-morbidities these seven deceased people had, and also their ages. At the moment I can't seem to get myself into the state of terror that is apparently expected of me.
    9
  1472. This is morally degenerate. It is not the business of schoolteachers to do anything which may influence a child's developing sexuality.
    9
  1473.  @thescottishanimeguy9946  Actually there isn't much. And it's a good deal safer than blindly believing everything you are told is "facts".
    9
  1474. Selling itself to America was though.
    9
  1475. I'm getting to like the crazy chick more and more. She's still growing up. Can you IMAGINE what would happen she saw through the crap she's been hired to put out and turned the tables on the climate crisis oligarchs?! .
    9
  1476. Not covid but the measures taken to prevent it.
    9
  1477. ..and just won mine!
    9
  1478. You've already got one.
    9
  1479. America should pay. If America had not interfered in this quarrel the war would never have happened.
    9
  1480. Two conmen in perfect lockstep.
    9
  1481. Tell me one of Trump's lies someone. I'm getting desperate.
    9
  1482. America's shame will become more and more apparent in the coming months. Biden is a puppet, elected through fraud.
    9
  1483. All Russia wants is to get Crimea and Donbass back. Grant this and the war could be over tomorrow.
    9
  1484. Cut back to " utter contempt." - otherwise you are danger of descending to their level.
    9
  1485. To Russia (history, investment, population, conquest)
    9
  1486. It didn't happen. There!
    9
  1487. Trump hasn't lost though, has he? The BBC saying something is true doesn't make it so. Quite the reverse in many cases.
    9
  1488. Omicron has got to be far, far less than half as virulent than Delta. Omicron appears to have peaked in S Africa leaving under 5,000 people hospitalised and around only 250 in intensive care.
    9
  1489. A very significant factor is that Omicron takes 11 days to incubate fully in the body as opposed to three or four with Delta, and over that time produces three or four times as many new viruses with us scarcely even noticing in many cases. All things being equal this OUGHT to mean that Omicron will spread like wildfire but leave very few seriously ill victims in its wake, thus clearing a rapid path towards herd immunity. The biggest problem we face, I think, is that we don't know yet how badly it will affect our very elderly people. There aren't that many of those in Africa.
    9
  1490. So weak that he is within sight of achieving his declared military objectives.
    9
  1491. Getting Biden out would be a good start in itself.
    9
  1492. Sanctions to Russia are much like prohibition used to be for American bootleggers.
    9
  1493. STOP PRESS: The Office of National Statistics has just released provisional death figures from all causes for July. There were 38,179 deaths registered That is 1,435 LESS than in July 2019. Deaths where Covid 19 was an UNDERLYING cause amounted to 2.6% of the total.
    9
  1494. According to the US Treasury Department the national debt was $19.57 trillion when Trump took office and $22.72 trillion when he left. Biden leaves with a 2024 debt of $35.27 trillion.
    9
  1495.  @walterego6584  Why? He's already immune in every real sense of the word. Covid becomes a cold as its evolution progresses; natural immunity is part of that process. At this stage the possible dangers of a bad reaction to vaccination are greater than the dangers of covid itself. In neither case is anyone 100% certain of not being to some degree infectious to others.
    9
  1496.  @basbouwman5139  Can you get 74,000 people into one Moscow apartment block?
    9
  1497. Having this item presented by a man is a gross affront to women everywhere. Shame on you BBC!
    9
  1498. Israel must stand firm and refuse to surrender to blackmail.
    9
  1499. It scarcely matters if the claims are false or not. The fact that they are there highlights the immense problems involved in importing large numbers of refugees into existing communities.
    9
  1500.  @peterschulte2408  Because Putin is the leader of Russia, and how Russia is governed has nothing to do with America.
    9
  1501. Freudian slip?
    9
  1502. It's what you get for hanging on to Uncle Sam's coat-tails all the while.
    9
  1503. I fear that Ukraine may have broken an unwritten code here. It will not end well.
    9
  1504. More silly excuses from Times Radio's bottomless pit of rent-a-gob "experts.""
    9
  1505. There is a list of possibilities here - and depraved Russian cruelty is at the bottom of that list. For a start it is odd how these Russian "atrocities" always seem to happen when military aid to Ukraine looks like drying up, but that aside it appears that in any case the funeral was that of a soldier and attended by other soldiers and mercenaries. As with Bucha and Kramatorsk, among others, a question mark must hang over this incident.
    9
  1506. Doesn't seem to have worked so far, does it?
    9
  1507. @ Red-pilled Fox That might be going a bit far but the luxury home in Florida bought recently by arch-hypocrite Al Gore certainly should be.
    9
  1508. Justice. Common sense. National security.
    9
  1509. I wonder if Times radio is ever going to stop hiring buffoons to predict things, and get back to the common journalistic practice of actually reporting things that happen?
    9
  1510. He spoke a great deal of sense. We in the West have little idea how much we are the victims of propaganda.
    9
  1511. A ceasefire just prolongs the agony.
    9
  1512. @Peoples Republic of Ninj They were on the guy's front lawn for chrissake! Demented thugs from BLM have been setting fire to properties for months now. - or haven't you noticed? That house is one of the finest in the entire US and its owners have spent thirty years restoring it. I think he showed admirable restraint.
    9
  1513. I don't know about "upcoming" - the Russian offensive seems pretty continuous at the moment and a dramatically weakened Ukraine seems to be very much on the back foot. It really is time to talk peace. The more ground the Russians gain the more concessions they will ask for at the conference table.
    9
  1514. Biden's excuses are pathetic. Trump had a done deal and the Biden team screwed it up.
    9
  1515. Critical race theory has completely destroyed all semblance of objectivity in the BBC's new coverage. Defund it!
    9
  1516. It isn't rhetoric. It's a promise, and one we would do well to heed.
    9
  1517. I worry that the same tactics and techniques continue to be used to sell us the scare story of global warming.
    9
  1518. Bit like CNN
    9
  1519. Has anyone thought that this new fast-spreading strain could be the virus's evolutionary response to lockdown restrictions?
    9
  1520. If only it was that simple....
    9
  1521. ...and war criminal.
    9
  1522. This video is still up thank goodness, but the John Hopkins peer reviewed study has now been blocked - as have others. This kind of censorship goes a long way to prove the HCQ case.
    9
  1523. Even in the most frozen conditions the ice would not support heavy equipment.
    9
  1524. It beats spending half a million dollars on shooting down a weather balloon.
    9
  1525. Trump's attitude on abortion is decent and honourable. If foolish and immoral feminists choose to make it an issue then that's just too bad.
    9
  1526. The entire political establishment bears the guilt- regardless of party.
    9
  1527. Is Trump jealous of the size of Kamala's crowds because they're so small? I don't get it.
    9
  1528. This old crook jumping on the bandwagon of deceit and false science in order to bully the American people into compliance is one of the most disgraceful examples of political expedience since the last days of the Roman Empire.
    9
  1529. He could always take the knee to Tommy Robinson. That might help.
    9
  1530. Trump has it absolutely right. The Afghanistan withdrawal marked the end of American imperial power -and Putin knows it.
    9
  1531. Europe's leaders are running around like a bunch of headless chickens. The idea that they can do anything meaningful to avert Ukraine's inevitable defeat is utterly laughable.
    9
  1532. Don't lets worry too much. They're bound to fuck up within a year or two.
    9
  1533. Always has been.
    9
  1534. There is no other way.
    9
  1535. I'm sure the swamp will find new and interesting ways to cheat.
    9
  1536. Dems in panic mode. Why should this be? Perhaps they are genuinely afraid that they are going to be found out for the massive electoral fraud they committed against the American people.
    9
  1537. It comes as no great surprise that the Prof supports censorship. It's a very lefty thing. I was a lefty myself once until I realised that I was so because loving everybody and everything made me feel all warm and fluffy inside. Regretfully though, feeling all warm and fluffy inside is not a great basis for reasoned thought. Hard realities must be faced. So when coming up against any opposing views which point out discrepancies and irregularities in one's argument the reaction is often one of panic, as that nice, warm fluffy feeling begins to fray somewhat at the edges. The obvious response is to ban the source of this discomfort, so one can carry on basking in the heady glow of moral rectitude. In my view, for accuracy and disinterested analysis, RT beats shill news stations such as CNN and the BBC hands down. Even if my view is the wrong one, I bitterly resent any measures taken to prevent me having it.
    9
  1538. How about cutting it out completely? How's that for an idea?
    9
  1539. There's nothing a good embalmer and pharmaceuticals can't fix. Don't worry, Joe will be OK.
    9
  1540.  @BuddyAkin478  OK. Armed robbery then?
    9
  1541. Poor old Joe has the sniffles.
    9
  1542. A couple of years should give the Conservatives time to get their house in order and for Labour to fuck up.
    9
  1543.  @curtisjeffries9630  His legacy will live on, alas.
    9
  1544. Ukraine cannot win. It never could.
    9
  1545. Two words: common purpose.
    9
  1546. And quite right too.
    9
  1547. This could misfire badly. It could even see the end of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
    9
  1548. We do! They are!
    9
  1549. If I was Russian I'd certainly have a Z on my car. They have a very good case and if their very reasonable demands were met the war could be over in minutes.
    9
  1550. Good God! The BBC on the side of truth and justice??!! Overwhelming. I feel I may be hallucinating.
    9
  1551. It's wonderful how being hunkered down in a city under constant artillery bombardment can result fewer casualties than in the side doing the bombarding. Ukraine is truly blessed
    9
  1552. But Russia's offensives aren't failing - which rather undermines this argument.
    9
  1553. It is absurd to think the attack on the apartment block was in any way intentional.
    9
  1554. Little can now halt America's collapse into degeneracy and incompetence at every level. The writing is on the wall.
    9
  1555. That's sort of the idea.
    9
  1556. From Bing. Take it or leave it. "Finding reliable figures for desertion and conscription avoidance rates in the Ukrainian military can be challenging due to the dynamic and sensitive nature of the situation. However, here are some estimates based on available data: Desertion: Reports suggest that 45,543 soldiers deserted between January and August 2024. The number of prosecutions for desertion has reached at least 30,000 this year. Conscription Avoidance: It is estimated that 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country to avoid conscription since the start of the war. Additionally, 20,000 men left the country to avoid being drafted between February 2022 and November 2023. These figures highlight the significant challenges faced by the Ukrainian military in maintaining its personnel during the ongoing conflict."
    9
  1557.  @gameofender4463  But is it worth Reform winning if it's just going to be the Tory party of 50 years ago? I suppose anything has to be better than Labour in its present form though.
    9
  1558.  @arwing20  Charming for the most part, though admittedly some can be a little surly. There are at least fifteen racial types there, so it is impossible to generalise.
    9
  1559.  @jim2376  The cheap food. The safe streets. The glorious scenery. The smell of the pine forests... beats downtown Philly at any rate!
    9
  1560. A full investigation will obviously happen - but things could very well be just as they seem to be.
    9
  1561. Hedge funds are the explanation. George Soros and his many imitators realise that deliberately engendered instability causes fluctuations in currency and share values which enables them to reaps huge profits literally overnight.
    9
  1562. Interesting as ever to hear an arms salesman's views on the situation.
    9
  1563. Early being the key word. All that happens now is that new variants more fitted to exploit lockdown conditions come into prominence. Which is exactly what has happened.
    9
  1564. This is just like the umpteenth repeat of a tired old game show. What is going on here?
    9
  1565. The Two State Solution is no solution at all.
    9
  1566. What's sovereignty when it's at home?
    9
  1567. What difference does that make? The people who voted Labour had no idea of what they were getting.
    9
  1568. I can't see how Labour will be saved by a list of minor do-gooderies, some of which might well not work - and others not even be noticed.
    9
  1569. What's mad about bringing the world one step closer to peace?
    9
  1570.  @reallymakesyouthink  Outside a courtroom, but within its precincts. The state always gets Tommy of a technicality.
    9
  1571. At least Joe was tackling inflation at last.
    9
  1572. At least some of the allegations of voter fraud in Georgia are now out in the open. It seems the only way the MSM allows the allegations to be made public is if they can find a way of trying to make Trump look bad in the process.
    9
  1573. In fact the Ukrainians have retreated and Russia now holds the ground.
    9
  1574. Sounds a lot - but America has already pumped an estimated $60 BILLION into Ukraine with, as yet, no return on its investment.
    9
  1575. But Russia has not failed. It is doing exactly what was predicted once it became clear that the plan was not to take over Ukraine, but to deplete its army in the field and then take and secure the entirety of Donbass. And that is exactly what is happening right now.
    9
  1576. You can't know that. He'll probably be Prime Minister within ten years.
    9
  1577. Time for the Wicker Man.
    9
  1578. They did. It's called draining the swamp.
    9
  1579. Millions will go cold and hungry. America: IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT! Your greed and conceit has brought this about.
    9
  1580. You're watching the White House and the White House press corps being made fun of. A time for gloating.
    9
  1581. NATO was everywhere already.
    9
  1582. Where are these soviets? Have they arrived in a time machine?
    9
  1583. Don't get upset. It's all lies.
    9
  1584. Reality catches up with Clarke yet again. Bakhmut has stopped being a strategically unimportant village, and his Spring offensive is happening in Winter. At least he has the useful ability to be totally wrong in an utterly convincing manner.
    9
  1585. How does "fair"come into it?
    9
  1586. Total ignorance on display here.
    9
  1587. He could make a comeback playing Joe Biden.
    9
  1588. A common myth that just won't seem to go away.
    9
  1589. Trump in. Welby out. Hope for the world!
    9
  1590. This simply proves that anyone with any sense realises that "mitigation measures" are next to useless, and only trotted out to keep the peasantry on message. These people wouldn't risk life and health otherwise, would they?
    9
  1591. Everyone is running low on ammunition. It's all this fighting that does it.
    9
  1592. The sad truth is that Ukrainians do this too.
    9
  1593. Maybe we should simply stop annoying Russia quite so much. It'd be cheaper.
    9
  1594. This looks very much like an admission of defeat. Ukraine has clearly lost the battle in the real theatre of operations in the south and is now just trying to get a better bargaining chip in hopefully imminent peace negotiations.
    9
  1595. Perhaps Ukraine is beginning to wonder if having an American boyfriend was such a great idea after all.
    9
  1596. Any commission or enquiry which falls into the trap of blaming climate change for this tragedy while ignoring its real causes will end up with blood on its hands.
    9
  1597. More and more people are seeing what they want to see, and hearing what they want to hear. In what way was he LAMENTING the length of the speech? He was ADMIRING Trump for being able to talk for so long!!!
    9
  1598. He suggested no such thing. What a bunch of liars you are.
    9
  1599. Ever heard of "perfidious Albion"? That goes back more than 200 years.
    9
  1600. It really is time to face reality. Putin's strategy has ground its way to a semblance of victory. Further resistance will only prolong the agony
    9
  1601. Another great appointment by Trump!
    9
  1602. Such sweet optimism does my old heart good.
    9
  1603. As far as Nazis go, while Russia was fighting them Ukrainian police and army herded Jews to the killing pits of Babi Yar and Mariupol to be machine-gunned by the thousand. Ukrainian civilians lined the street to jeer as the Jews were taken to their deaths.
    9
  1604. That is nonsense. It depends on how quickly the virus proliferates and Trump is tested every day. Ten days is at the far end of the spectrum. Two to four days is more common.
    9
  1605.  @paulro4  How so? He stands for freedom. Starmer stands for repression and state control.
    9
  1606. It very often does, in fact. It's called compromise.
    9
  1607. It might well all be over before then.
    9
  1608. It's so wearisome listening to attempts to equate Putin with Hitler. Patriotism and ruthlessness aside, they couldn't be more different and the situations they are in have very little in common.
    9
  1609. The causes are still very debatable.
    9
  1610. Russia seems to have been running out of equipment for two years. And yet they keep on coming.
    9
  1611.  Jez abell  Here's hoping!
    9
  1612.    I have every sympathy for them. He wouldn't get out of the car. He could have had a weapon in there. What were they supposed to do, just apologise and wave him on?
    9
  1613.  @crimsonspice72  Bullshit. He didn't get peppersprayed because he was black. He got peppersprayed because he repeatedly refused to comply and his behaviour led to the very reasonable suspicion that he may have posed a threat.
    9
  1614. In many ways, Russia has already won.
    9
  1615. I don't know about talk of Ukrainians defecting - but a greater part of the armies of separatist Donetsk and Luhansk consist of former Ukrainian soldiers (and policemen!) and when Russia entered Crimea in 2014 the Ukrainian army and the navy went over to the Russians almost to a man.
    9
  1616. He has more justification than most.
    9
  1617. Patronising condescension? Pot, kettle, black?
    9
  1618. Why didn't the woman just bang on the ceiling with her broomstick?
    9
  1619. China has got some balls.
    9
  1620.  @digitalzips  Hush now. He probably spent all night thinking it up.
    9
  1621. We get the journalism we deserve. The media survives by reflecting human instincts - not by attempting to shape them, as seems to be suggested here. The instinct for war cannot be overcome by logic nor shaped by reason. It is bred in the bone. Mankind is ruled by fear, not love.
    9
  1622. These "humiliating defeats" have resulted in the virtual collapse of the Ukrainian army.
    9
  1623. The Ukrainian attack into Kherson has also been repulsed - with heavy losses. The ill-trained Russian troops we hear so much about have been replaced by battle-hardened professionals, such as the Wagner Group. Several armoured battalions of equally experienced men are now thought to be on their way from Chechnya. Watch this space.
    9
  1624. After $150 billion of armaments a d they're reduced to this? Not looking too good, is it?
    9
  1625.  @johnkitching2248  Because if drugs were legalised they wouldn't be there.
    9
  1626. Mariupol is a Russian city. Naturally many who are evacuated go to Russia.
    9
  1627. But he did so very successfully for four years.
    9
  1628. Don't forget it was the EU's willingness to accept Ukraine back in 2014 which started this war.
    9
  1629. While you believe the MSM in the UK? Ha!
    9
  1630. Come back Russia. All is forgiven.
    9
  1631. They weren't Ukraine's nuclear weapons, they were Russia's nuclear weapons which happened to have been stationed there. And the Budapest Treaty was a very bad treaty which revealed itself to be a recipe for disaster almost before the ink had dried on the signatures.
    9
  1632. Call me a cynical old bastard, but I don't see why we are having to put up with this just because we are being forced to support one side in a fight between two empires: one defunct and the other very nearly so. Buy Russian gas now!
    9
  1633. Two million cases out of a population of 1,353 billion and a death rate of around 40,000. They don't seem to be doing so badly. What's the secret I wonder? They manufacture and use hydroxychloroquine a lot, but that can't be it. They had a fierce lockdown which was impossible to enforce - that must have been it.
    9
  1634. Wonderful young people dancing their way to herd immunity!
    9
  1635. I hope he tells them where to stuff it.
    9
  1636.  @davidmurphy563  It was a question, not an assertion and was in direct response to some rather confusing statements made earlier. The fact that it has been taken out of context proves how corrupt the media is, nothing more.
    9
  1637. May I ask what proportion of these sufferers you would considerer to be white British?
    9
  1638. Thank you - most informative. However, does this mean that the hospital was the target? Surely it is more likely that the missile was jammed, or co-ordinated wrongly? There is absolutely no percentage for the Russians in deliberately carrying out acts like this. The reverse is true since the tremendous sympathy they arouse is generally translated into further support for Ukraine.
    9
  1639. Two very successful con artists.
    9
  1640. Have you any idea how many missiles Russia has? Or that most are launched from mobile carriers, ships or submarines?
    9
  1641. A diplomatic solution has always been on the cards - one that recognises reality not Washington's fanciful ambitions.
    9
  1642. The BBC is a TDS hotspot.
    9
  1643.  @gedalyahreback2133  What benefits? Incessant booster shots without ever attaining immunity? Plus the risk of long-term damage and effects on puberty? The only benefit is to the bank balances of the drug companies and their shareholders.
    9
  1644. He tried hard enough, but was outbid by America.
    9
  1645. Wow! Another gamechanger - or just another damp squib?
    9
  1646. You Ozzies don't know how lucky you are. When covid rips through like wildfire it will be Omicron which gets you - a cuddly kitten compared to previous variants.
    9
  1647. Kursk is a sideshow. A minor irritation at the very worst. What Ukraine thinks they are going to get out of it in the peace talks is hard to imagine.
    9
  1648. What free world?
    9
  1649. The wreckage soon to be seen on display in Moscow.
    9
  1650. What's he supposed to be, God?
    9
  1651. Only the ignorant and ill-informed.
    9
  1652. No, that was Kamala Harris.
    8
  1653. And this comes within minutes of the latest release of official figures which show there is NO second wave and that since July when the pandemic ended (and it did end) death rates have been entirely normal and only a tiny fraction of those who have died since then tested positive for Covid 19.
    8
  1654. So what? Bahkmut isn't worth keeping. It's main function is as a killing ground.
    8
  1655. Does anyone know of any reputable scientific study that shows lockdowns have any effect whatsoever on covid death rates?
    8
  1656. According to the Russians this "tragic loss" amounts to less than two thousand men.
    8
  1657. The Dems cheated like hell - and millions of Americans know it. The MSM's weasel words will not alter that fact - nor its consequences.
    8
  1658. At last a voice of reason. Nuclear power works.
    8
  1659. Why oh why oh why didn't he stick to showbiz???
    8
  1660. They do more harm than good.
    8
  1661. He's not hiding them from the IRS. They've been scrutinised and passed as ok.
    8
  1662. Now we wouldn't have this trouble if Farage was PM, would we?
    8
  1663. Russia will "bring this to an end" by defeating Ukraine on the field.
    8
  1664.  @sageme1973  No it isn't - not if that alliance is your declared enemy. And if my neighbour wants to join a biker gang and set up a meth lab and a shooting range up against the fence I'm going to take steps to prevent it.
    8
  1665. Are Ukraine's generals terrified too? Asking for a friend.
    8
  1666. Ukraine may have lost upwards of 50,000 men trying to hold Bahkmut. It will lose many more trying to take it back.
    8
  1667. I have a wonderful idea to prevent further loss of Ukrainian lives. Give up.
    8
  1668. Credit for being partially responsible for the needless deaths of half a million people?
    8
  1669. My parrot died due to Climate Change. People said it wouldn't happen, but it did.
    8
  1670. We need a proper assessment of long covid too. Just how serious a problem will it be? Considering how very old those who have died have been this is surely an issue of at least as great an importance as death numbers.
    8
  1671. And yet more people are currently dying from flu than Covid 19. The number of cases is meaningless because the tests don't work. Until we are provided with details of the ages and co-morbidities of those who have died or been hospitalised this scare-story approach has to be treated with considerable reservation.
    8
  1672. But surely the Russian offensive is starting already and, one way or another, will be over before these tanks and trained crews get there?
    8
  1673.  minutemeditations14All  Surely these disasters are the result of the failure of the Biden administration though? Things were much more stable under Trump.
    8
  1674.  @Sdjejdijdjxudhd  I just hope he grows up to be a policeman. Or a banker.
    8
  1675.  @Beechnut985  By refusing to allow Ukraine and Russia to settle their differences. America wants the $trillions of minerals in Donbass.
    8
  1676. Why? What's it got to do with him?
    8
  1677. I enjoy watching Times Radio for increasing levels of desperation as Russia approaches its inevitable victory.
    8
  1678. But he did nothing wrong. Don't you get that?
    8
  1679. Prison is too good for them. In England traitors are hanged until they are not quite dead then their entrails and private parts are cut out and burned before their eyes. After that they are cut up into four pieces and the pieces sent to tour around the country, being set up in town squares etc. The heads are then stuck on poles in some prominent place in the capital city. That's how to deal with traitors! (PS Wd welcome suggestions on likely sites in Washington for the heads to go on.)
    8
  1680. He may not destroy it, but he might just put it back on the right track
    8
  1681.  Freeze Peach  They weren't overwhelmed during the peak of the pandemic. What is being experienced now is a predictable blip as frail and vulnerable people succumb to colder weather conditions. Flu and pneumonia are killing more than Covid and there is every reason to believe this will continue to be the case.
    8
  1682. The empty plinth? A statue of George Floyd, obviously.
    8
  1683.  @playoffbook7513  BLM is not about fighting for equality and trying to end racism. It's about overthrowing democracy and replacing it with Marxism. Like Nazism, BLM seeks power through sowing racial discord.
    8
  1684. It was Ukraine which broke Minsk by failing to grant regional autonomy to Donbass. Had they done so, there would have been no war.
    8
  1685.  @thegrouse6163  Sorry, you are wrong. There are many hours of evidence and documentation available on the Internet which indicate wrongdoing on many levels. No court has the jurisdiction to deal with these allegations and the media is hiding them from you. Google Here Is The Evidence for an initial introduction. I can't give you the link because if I did this post would be deleted - further evidence of criminal conspiracy.
    8
  1686. Undeniably good job, Russia!
    8
  1687. My right arm is twitching. Time to polish my jackboots.
    8
  1688. What free world is this then? Isn't that something out of sixties comic books?
    8
  1689. Every little helps.
    8
  1690.  @imputinandihaveasmallpeepe9165  So why the worry that the Russians might get to them?
    8
  1691. Anything which might halt the political career of this dangerous egomaniac is to be welcomed. That it might also show up the even more dangerous folly of the covid restrictions he and his crew so clearly breached would be an added bonus.
    8
  1692. It didn't.
    8
  1693.  @deselby6669  But what does that even mean? It's just lines on a map and this "sovereign state" is just a former Soviet Socialist Republic and is a mere thirty years old.
    8
  1694. Why is every country in the world allowed to supply Ukraine with weaponry but Iran and North Korea can't do the same for Russia?
    8
  1695. Because they are Russian? Over 2 million are estimated to escape the war in the eastward direction.
    8
  1696. That's what the police call it.
    8
  1697.  @crulove  It's practically tribal. Another feature of Type A is that they really hate Type B whereas we Type Bs tend to regard Type As with little more than mild contempt. I enjoy venturing into the comments sections of channels like Robespierre and A Different Bias just to stir them up. The fear and loathing one finds there is quite alarming. The utter panic this week at the thought of the pandemic easing was very revealing. They were like junkies worried that their supplies might dry up.
    8
  1698. Hysteria meets hysteria. Young women stand more chance of being murdered than dying from covid. The police behaved like fools.
    8
  1699. Putin is far from being a psychopath. He is an eminently sane, pragmatic and resourceful politician. Using these silly buzzwords simply clouds the issue.
    8
  1700. Did I hear right? He compared today's little outburst to Pearl Harbour??!! What a tosser!
    8
  1701. From what I've seen supermarket shelves are full in Russia and western components and machine parts are easily evading sanctions through an obviously pre-conceived system of cover companies. In the UK, prices are soaring, there are intermittent shortages of various groceries and we are warned to expect power cuts this winter. I blame America.
    8
  1702. It's already happening. More than half of excess deaths now are due to non-covid causes.
    8
  1703. What I find puzzling is that while we are supposed to be furious over Boris breaking the rules, absolutely nobody seems concerned about the current epidemic of excess deaths these very rules seem to have caused.
    8
  1704.  @mbd6054  With all due respect there was plenty of evidence, including at least one peer-reviewed paper published as early as April I believe. - buried, of course, like so much other indicative evidence beneath a mountain of Big Pharma diversionary propaganda.
    8
  1705.  @bobhawke7373  Minsk 2. Regional autonomy for Donbass? Which would have prevented this dreadful war from even happening?
    8
  1706.  @stephenhill545  That's the last thing I want! But all the warmongering idiots out there seem to be determined to set us on that path. Leave Russia alone and Russia will leave us alone. Promise!
    8
  1707.  @MutatedPizzaBoi  It really is a sign of intellectual poverty and historical ignorance to constantly equate the present situation in Ukraine with the situation in Germany in the 1930s.
    8
  1708. Best guess on this is that it's a Russian trick to justify massive bombardment of Kherson and Odessa.
    8
  1709. He knows how to behave when faced with bullying slimebags though.
    8
  1710. No.
    8
  1711. Bakhmut "strategically insignificant" ?? It is the key to bringing Donbass under Russian control - one of the prime objectives of the whole operation.
    8
  1712.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  No. Deaths are not related to cases any more. All that is happening now is that a few old people who would have died anyway as winter approaches have tested positive. The number of deaths is entirely normal for the time of year. There is nothing at all alarming about it. The number of so-called "Covid deaths" will increase as the 'flu season progresses but in statistical terms as long as the total number of deaths is not much above average it will be clear that, at the very worst, Covid is getting to kill people before flu or pneumonia gets to them. Probably though it is just one of a host of co-morbidities. It's all in here. There's a lot to go through, but the graphs are enough to put you in the picture. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending9october2020
    8
  1713. BLM harliners refuse to talk to white people unless they first agree they are racist, and then promise to improve!
    8
  1714. It was never about money. It was about principle.
    8
  1715.  @ericwillis777  What possible scenario can you envisage in which Russia would invade Britain? What possible treat does Russia pose to my well-being, or the well-being of my country? Answers
    8
  1716. Obviously a man of considerable financial acumen. Just the sort of qualities the US needs in a President.
    8
  1717.  @JelMain  They were people! Ordinary people!
    8
  1718. What a marvelous, objective piece of reporting. Well up to Sky's usual standard.
    8
  1719. Ukraine - under Zelensky - made the naive mistake of believing that America would see it through thick and thin. Ukraine is still not up to speed when it comes to democracy.
    8
  1720. Mr T Robinson Esq seems to have predicted these events quite accurately.
    8
  1721. Probably the YouTube bot.
    8
  1722. The bloody Yanks got us into this mess.
    8
  1723. The Russians ain't gonna trade a heap of farmland with a bit of iron ore for Donbass.
    8
  1724. Why don't we just leave NATO and form an alliance with Russia instead?
    8
  1725. It's not their dam. And Ukraine benefits from this at least as much as Russia does. They've been shelling 'their own dam' on and off for months.
    8
  1726. As a PR exercise, this is all going pretty well. It's a great pity it had to come to this, but with the obliteration of British culture within a couple of generations looking inevitable, extreme measures have become necessary.
    8
  1727. It is true that Russian children are taught about weaponry and military discipline from a very early age, but they are not sent into combat. It's worth saying also that a great many people in these "occupied areas" are of Russian heritage.
    8
  1728. Let's hope the doctors don't kill him.
    8
  1729. And he's so right. If Labour had pushed the Swedish model instead of getting on the paranoid lunatic bandwagon they wouldn't be trailing in the polls today.
    8
  1730. This never needed to happen. If NATO had accepted Russia's entirely reasonable treaty demands in December not a single shot would have been fired.
    8
  1731. Your description covers most of the counties in the world. Surely turning them into holiday destinations has to be a step up?
    8
  1732. Covid 19 seems to be rapidly becoming very much like any other cold or influenza now that it has culled the vulnerable. As predicted by some its milder strains survive because they don't kill their hosts and herd immunity is also being achieved in many countries. THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!! Some very important people saw the chance to make billions and exercise control over the rest of us through this virus. It isn't fair that they shouldn't do so, considering all the effort they've put in.
    8
  1733. And every good luck to him. This case is a travesty of justice.
    8
  1734. The cult of the Blessed Saint Zelensky shows signs of wear and tear, thank goodness. The scales need to fall from our eyes pretty damned quickly.
    8
  1735. I would like to thank Times Radio for its sterling work in making Russia's victory look like a defeat. This is a great public service, and will bring comfort to the many millions of people who have been brainwashed into believing they have been supporting a moral crusade rather than a sordid attempt to steal valuable mineral resources from their Russian owners.
    8
  1736.  @davidmacdonald1695  I am not a Russian Troll. I am an Englishman fearful of seeing his country dragged into a needless war.
    8
  1737. In Mariupol Ukrainian units fired on civilians trying to escape as a matter of course. Just saying.
    8
  1738. Perhaps Mr Putin needs a little love. If were nicer to him and stopped trying to take away his belongings he might not be so inclined to go to war.
    8
  1739. Can - but why should they?
    8
  1740. This is what you CALL an insurrection!
    8
  1741.  @cole0889  I doubt Islamic extremists are much influenced by what they read in the Guardian.
    8
  1742. Silly sods. There is no comparison between the two situations.
    8
  1743. Ukraine were only prevented from being the aggressors in this war because Russia pre-empted them. A future peacekeeping force will be needed not to prevent further Russian incursions, but to prevent Ukraine trying to recapture Donbas and Crimea, or whatever territories the Russians have reclaimed when this needless war is finally halted.
    8
  1744. These dangerous, childish fantasies are based on nothing but lies and the desire for power. The CO2 myth has had its day. No matter how much the IPCC and its minions NASA and NOAA issue corrupt data; no matter how much biased, agenda-drive media whip up hysteria the day will come when science -proper science - reveals the truth about the scam which is threatening the foundations of our civilisation.
    8
  1745.  @buildmotosykletist1987  Russia invaded Ukraine in order to forestall a US backed invasion of Donbass by the Ukrainians. The civil war in Donbass has been going on for eight years and has cost thousands of lives. This is a turf war between two kleptocracies and has nothing to do with anyone outside the area who has no financial interest in the outcome.
    8
  1746. The blood of great-grandfathers is hardly relevant to contemporary political situations.
    8
  1747. What grounds for appeal are there?
    8
  1748. Talk of Crimea is just a diversion from the fact that Ukraine is getting slaughtered on the southern front - where there is actually a war going on.
    8
  1749. They are home.
    8
  1750.  @barriewilliams4526  Nonsense. He can go where he likes - including the US, China - and even Ukraine!
    8
  1751. Sunak is a politician to the core of his being. The trouble is that he's not a very good one.
    8
  1752. Well what did you bloodywell expect?
    8
  1753. This will mean the end of NATO .Good.
    8
  1754. Surely children mix more with adults when out of school than in? And they don't spread the disease as much as adults anyway. And the sunny weather explanation doesn't hold much water either. HIT is the elephant in the room and this really could be it.
    8
  1755. I don't, and I'm part of everybody.
    8
  1756. History is history. How about some examples of systemic racism in the 21st century?
    8
  1757. But they are going to have to. The best we can hope for is that Russia's terms for peace will not be harsh.
    8
  1758. Real Reality TV!
    8
  1759. Does that include their own war crimes?
    8
  1760. Tommy Robinson joined the BNP is his youth. The story has it that he went along to his second meeting with a friend who was thinking of joining too. The friend was black. Things went somewhat downhill from that point on.
    8
  1761. Hitler did the same.
    8
  1762. No, Churchill wasn't a slimeball con-artist.
    8
  1763. Russia doesn't need all of Ukraine, nor does it want it.
    8
  1764. He will doubtless share a cell with Putin in Fantasy Prison.
    8
  1765. It's now a race between the effects of these measures (almost nil) and the emergence of new, more infectious variants in response to the continuing useless measures. (Very, very likely indeed.)
    8
  1766. Ukraine needs to be saved from itself. Stop supplying arms. Encourage realistic peace talks which allow Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to ally with Russia. This is, in all probability, what will happen anyway. Better now than at some time in the future after yet more bloodshed and misery.
    8
  1767. Warning: paranoia junkies may exhibit severe withdrawal symptoms. Being expected to come to their own decisions may lead to severe emotional conflict. They could turn nasty. Be careful out there good people.
    8
  1768. As tragic as this is, it is a comparatively minor incident the truth behind which will never be known for certain. It would be extremely foolish to allow it to sour this country's relationship with Israel.
    8
  1769. If Ukraine had abided by Minsk this war would never have happened.
    8
  1770.  @harold9394  He is still a world leader. He just happens to be out of office at the moment - though hopefully that will change soon.
    8
  1771. The two-state solution is no solution at all.
    8
  1772. Let's keep stoking the fire, why don't we?
    8
  1773. Zelensky's "victory plan" seems to consist mainly of taking everyone else down with him.
    8
  1774. Once a again a black guy brings trouble on himself by refusing to obey police instructions. So what's new?
    8
  1775. It wouldn't even have started.
    8
  1776. Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    8
  1777. No-one is going to win the way this is panning out. Time to cut down on the gung-ho rhetoric, Sky.
    8
  1778. They weren't their nukes. They were the Soviet Union's
    8
  1779. Both sides are losing more men than this each week in Bakhmut.
    8
  1780. The Paris Agreement is nothing more than a scam enabling rich people to become even richer by trading in carbon futures, No matter how much urgent pathos your presenter puts into her voice it will not make the world grow hotter, or the polar icecaps melt or the levels of the oceans to rise. This things are not happening, nor will they happen. The grim predictions sound hollow to our ears. Time to move on before the violin strings break.
    8
  1781. Democracy via a Dominion voting machine ain't democracy.
    8
  1782. Moral reasoning has no place in US politics.
    8
  1783. No. America should. They started it.
    8
  1784. Well he's right, isn't he?
    8
  1785.  @31Blaize  Who took part in these discussions? As far as I can recall discussions following the failure of the Minsk accords resulted in a treaty ready to be signed in Istanbul, but which was not signed because Western agents, notably our very own Boris Johnson, persuaded Zelensky to go to war instead. And Putin did not get try to take Kiev. The whole exercise was designed to decimate the Ukrainian army on its own territory - which it did.
    8
  1786. This going to be impossible to prove, one way or another. While entirely likely, we need to know why Ukraine has waited three days before releasing news of these gruesome discoveries.
    8
  1787. This is madness.
    8
  1788. ... but what about the plot twist?
    8
  1789. George Floyd's inquest has apparently revealed him to have been Covid 19 positive. As I understand it this means that if he had been killed in the UK his death would have been recorded as coronavirus linked and been recorded as such in our death toll.
    8
  1790. America is back in its role of of policeman of the world is what he means. What he doesn't say is that US Armed Forces will be deployed to serve the interests of the New World Order and its principal component, the Chinese Communist Party.
    8
  1791. Zelensky has had his bluff called. Crimea is a done deal The Donbass provinces are securely in Russian hands and their independence more or less assured. The TV star must come down out of the clouds and accept reality. Then it will all be over. The hero worship of this man is truly sickening. People are so easily fooled.
    8
  1792. This would be a very retrograde step. Palestine is NOT a country and pretending that it is merely extends the conflict.
    8
  1793.  @socat9311  Masks help hardly at all. They are just symbols of compliance.
    8
  1794. Get out of the ECHR and join BRICS - that's the way forward for this poor, benighted country of ours.
    8
  1795.  @jethrobradley7850  Islam scares me. But this is not a phobia, since my fears are entirely justified.
    8
  1796. Remember Vietnam?How many American teenagers were imprisoned and even shot to death for opposing THAT particular war?
    8
  1797.  @4FlatTires  This week thing is a propaganda myth. It was never said.
    8
  1798. I think you'll find everyone who thinks this through is saying that.
    8
  1799. This doesn't seem to match up much with reality as we know it.
    8
  1800. Trump know full well that masks are mainly psychological props to makes us all feel we are doing something useful in a crisis. The fact that they give the authoritarian Left an excuse for displays of permanent self-righteous virtue-signalling is another bonus for anyone with a sense of humour.
    8
  1801. Why?
    8
  1802. It is interesting to note that the US is also embarking on a mineral deal with Russia - for large quantities of aluminium. Settling things with trade is so much nicer than trying to settle them with tanks and missiles.
    8
  1803. I suppose this applies to women too.
    8
  1804.  @Aaronwhatnow  Anything would be preferable to the previous charade.
    8
  1805. Pick a number, any number....
    8
  1806. Alien shape-shifters - I KNEW it!
    8
  1807. It doesn't.
    8
  1808. Inevitable. But not ALL Tories are thieves and liars. The decent ones are hoping for a return to sanity. Alas, I fear they may well be disappointed.
    8
  1809. Describing Putin as a sociopath is just plain ignorant. He has transformed Russia and will leave a legacy that will be hard follow. The West is hoping for a weakling to replace him - but the West itself is growing weaker and weaker - and by the time Putin goes it will have to concentrate entirely on its own affairs and cease interfering in the affairs of other countries.
    8
  1810.  @KIA-MIA-POW  Do you mean Patrick Lancaster? Not exactly independent, but the videos of burning buildings are quite convincing. An entire street market went up in flames the other day. The city is now suffering as much as it was in the first days of the war back in 2014 since when over 14,000 people have died, many of them civilians and including many children.
    8
  1811. Make sure the mosques are built first.
    8
  1812. Why am I find it increasingly easy to disbelieve everything America says?
    8
  1813. The Tories of North Shropshire have done their duty and stuck the knife firmly into their inglorious leader. But they are still Tories.
    8
  1814. I know. Lets all hold candles and sing happy clappy songs while the police ignore our children being raped and murdered.
    8
  1815. How far right do have to be to be "far right"? Asking for a friend.
    8
  1816. And Times Radio has the cheek to talk about propaganda! Compared to this bizarre excuse for objective journalism Vladimir Putin is the angel of truth.
    8
  1817. More lies. The only thing melting rapidly here is any kind of confidence in this manipulative nonsense.
    8
  1818.  @matthewbrown6497  Russia only wants 20% of Ukraine's territory. The very rich, very heavily defended, very Russianised Eastern part which it now very nearly has. Once peace is declared, and it is seem that Russia has achieved its objectives, the economy ought to recover quickly enough.
    8
  1819. Let's hope Joe gets through before the drugs wear off.
    8
  1820. The West just has no cards to play. We either have to look on helplessly as the Taliban murder their way through those Afghanis who supported us or - unbelievably -invade again.
    8
  1821. The lockdown is looking increasingly bonkers. As long as the frail and elderly are isolated lifting it will mean, at the very worst, that a very small percentage of the population will become ill enough to be hospitalised - and they will suffer greatly, but they will not die. Against this must be measured the very real threat of economic collapse with the dire consequences that will ensue.
    8
  1822. Xenophobia and racism are only relatively small elements in this. Fear of being invaded and overwhelmed by alien intruders, and resentment of the fact that our political class and the police are actively involved in this process are far, far more significant.
    8
  1823. The senior health officials in S Africa say that so far all the cases are very mild. Fingers crossed. More transmissible but less virulent is the way the virus OUGHT to be developing, but there are no guarantees.
    8
  1824.  @monsieurfoupierre  Racism has nothing to with it. Legislation designed to protect victims of war is being abused by crooks, and the people of this country are suffering as a result.
    8
  1825. My money's on sensible Ukrainians being behind this. Zelensky really has to go.
    8
  1826. ..of which Ukraine will receive about $14billion, some in old kit from US armouries and the rest in credit to buy other stuff back from the Arabs they sold it to - but only if they want to.
    8
  1827. It's not "if" - it's "when" and "who?"
    8
  1828.  @jackteare8292  You are on the money here. Time to fight back!
    8
  1829. What do you expect with all these vaccinated people wandering about spreading covid like wildfire?
    8
  1830.    By informed I think you must mean "lied to."
    8
  1831. It is doing so. Schools, hospitals and apartment blocks are springing up everywhere. Very attractive they are too.
    8
  1832. What was nature of the function he attended? Do relatives of the dead have any legal redress against those who sanctioned his release?
    8
  1833. ​ @polygonalmasonary  How it is possible to "disconnect Russia from the global economy" ?
    8
  1834. This is entirely true. Anyone even suspected of collaboration will be very severely treated.
    8
  1835. The war in Ukraine has been going on for eight years. This is just the latest phase.
    8
  1836. Ukraine could certainly use a period of quiet contemplation. Sadly, Zelensky is a demented egomaniac in love with his own image, so the bloodshed will continue.
    8
  1837. It is surely time to sooth community relations by finding a new occupant for the plinth recently vacated by Edward Colston. I would like to nominate George Floyd.
    8
  1838. It's time to take a good, hard look at Russia's pariah status - and the reasons for it.
    8
  1839. Its the Coalition of the Irrelevant. Even Zelensky has no great role to play. This now a matter between Trump and Putin.
    8
  1840. Easier said than done.
    8
  1841. At least some old guy didn't sniff her hair.
    8
  1842. Who exactly is meddling here? The current situation in Georgia, as well as the previous wars there and in Chechnya, as well as - most horribly - the current war in Ukraine are the DIRECT result of USA, NATO and EU meddling in the affairs of these countries.
    8
  1843. Professor Ashton mentioned World War II where millions of lives were lost and huge sacrifices made in order to preserve freedom. The Covid 19 pandemic was nothing like that. It was a novel covid which took a bite of a few tens of thousands of almost exclusively very elderly and very frail people who had insufficient resistance to its worst excesses. I use the past tense deliberately. The pandemic has been over in this country at least since June and what we are experiencing now is merely its endemic phase in which it has taken over as the top killer respiratory infection of the winter season. Seasonal death rates are close to normal. The only unusual increases appear to be among younger age groups and deaths at home. It is very possible that these anomalies will eventually be traced back to the negative effects of lockdowns. Death is always with us. It cannot be legislated against. We should Keep Calm and Carry On. Collapsing into hysteria has done more harm than good.
    8
  1844. On the contrary. It is a vote for sanity and a return to civilised values.
    8
  1845. Do you salute the people of Donbass for defending their territory?
    8
  1846. The last charismatic leader to ruin his country by war ended up committing suicide in his bunker while Russian shells rained down on his head. Zelensky will, however, probably skip town in a private jet loaded with loot.
    8
  1847. Can America survive four years of shame?
    8
  1848. Just like in all the other Islamist autocracies.
    8
  1849. Cheap, easy to use -practically useless and VERY profitable to produce.
    8
  1850.  @erikvan9582  Several. DPA War and Weeb Union both rely on sources from both sides and have geo-located videos showing Wagner troops in these positions.
    8
  1851. Why should anyone in Britain give a toss whether or not Odessa, or Kherson on Kharkov is run from Kiev or from Moscow?
    8
  1852. This will be a welcome addition to the 150 plus tons of food and medical supplies already delivered to Mariupol by the Russians.
    8
  1853. The message is clear and it is aimed, sadly, at people of the same political stamp as our dear Professor: "Be afraid. Be very, very afraid"!
    8
  1854. Still ignoring the major Russian offensives in the south and the imminent invasions from the north and east, I see. Is this just optimism by Clarke?
    8
  1855. It really is time for Ukraine to quit.
    8
  1856. Probably not the worse ever but when that Newsnight programme came on I thought the KGB had moved in. Perhaps it had.
    8
  1857.  @jimothygreen8879  Now they are saying on neck or back and shoulders. Seems Chauvin's knee wasn't pressing down on Floyd's neck all that time after all.
    8
  1858. And it will all have been for nothing when covid, inevitably, sweeps through the nation.
    8
  1859. After what happened to George Floyd a police officer kneeling might take on a new meaning.
    8
  1860.  @_alienblood  It wasn't their nuclear arsenal. It was part of Russia's based there. Having NATO bases in Ukraine would be like having Russian bases in Canada.
    8
  1861. "Rub ziss medal and Vater Christmas will kom down this chimney and give you a new brain."
    8
  1862. And the rouble grows stronger and stronger.
    8
  1863. He wins.
    8
  1864. Why not though?
    7
  1865. As a genuine person I resent that assumption! It really is so weak for people to think that anyone who disagrees with their views is somehow employed by the Russian state to do so. It is a state of mind which goes hand in hand with my original comment.
    7
  1866.  @danellis-jones1591  Murdoch's media holdings are insignificant. Few people realise that most media companies in the world are ultimately owned by just two investment companies, Vanguard and BlackRock. Murdoch is yesterday's villain.
    7
  1867. He's actually the only hope you've got for survival.
    7
  1868.  @colincampbell4261  Because they are growing in numbers and influence. And I don't think hatred is quite the right word. Resentment better covers it.
    7
  1869. The measures had sweet FA to do with it.
    7
  1870.  @Thucydidos  Don't you believe it. There are plenty of Russian sympathisers in Kharkiv. If anyone notable was in that flat the Russians would know about it damned quick.
    7
  1871. If this is true a great many Americans will look upon Trump with increasing admiration. Pearl-clutching is not common in the heartlands. Avoiding taxes is.
    7
  1872.  @brianferguson7840  Yes, there are recently declassified documents that show U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward. This assurance was given during their meeting on February 9, 1990. These documents are available in the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
    7
  1873. It's a funny old world when dictators look like being a better option.
    7
  1874. You kind of know the country is up the creek when American billionaires and right-wing TV hosts can point out - with considerable accuracy - just how much and how quickly we are descending into a dystopian nightmare.
    7
  1875. Surely this supposed General must know that the Kharkiv offensive was merely designed to take Ukrainian troops away from the main front, thus allowing Russia to make the considerable advances it has. Perhaps he sees his job as merely offering false encouragement to Ukraine's supporters though?
    7
  1876. I do hope this satire!
    7
  1877. Astonishing lapse into decency and reason by the BBC.
    7
  1878. America is now officially under mob rule.
    7
  1879. Because Russia is right wing and patriotic?
    7
  1880. Gamblers in an arcade, wondering whether its worth keeping putting coins in the slot.
    7
  1881. Crimea is Russian. It was merely transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for purely administrative and logistical reasons. Russia retook it in 2014 without any real opposition. The armed forces and the police simply transferred their allegiance back to Moscow. Since then Putin has spent billions on regenerating the peninsula, which Kiev had shamefully neglected, concentrating instead on attempting to suppress the prevalent Russian language and culture.
    7
  1882. I thought he died a few months ago and has been replaced by a hologram.
    7
  1883. Oh how very convenient!
    7
  1884. Any Jacks with surnames like precious stones around?
    7
  1885.  @OmANnIe  No it hasn't. You confuse allegation with proof.
    7
  1886. The Ghost of Kiev has struck again, destroying so many ghosts that the ghosts have now all gone.
    7
  1887.  @D9Wx  They've been got at. Mr Murdoch has put his foot down I guess.
    7
  1888. I wonder if the modern-day equivalent of Jack Ruby is going to be up to the job.
    7
  1889. Are you mad? You must know the picnic by the river was a cover for a secret meeting with Russian and Chinese agents and representatives of SmithKlieinGlaxo to fix a deal for Cummings' sister to supply the technology for the new apps? Where have you BEEN for chrissake?
    7
  1890. Who cares?
    7
  1891. This obsession with wanting to throw people in jail is very revealing.
    7
  1892. Tommy Robinson has consistently urged his supporters against violence.
    7
  1893.  @El.Cid17  He was one of those who persuaded Ukraine not to prevent the invasion by listening to Russia's peace proposals. Those proposals were far more modest than those now likely to mark the end of the war. Half a million people have died for nothing and Johnson's Winston Churchill complex is in part to blame.
    7
  1894. Contempt is about right. What other response could anyone have for this latest pathetic Dem stich-up attempt?
    7
  1895. Sweden: no masks. No lockdown. Zero cases.
    7
  1896. What utter nonsense. Gas was around £1.84 a gallon in 2020 and you'd be hard put to get it for less than $3 now.
    7
  1897.  @dz7786  How are they managing to crush Ukraine if their troops are in revolt?
    7
  1898. Your best yet. Age, experience and profound knowledge demolish woke idiocies. I really do think it is time for all good men and true to start fighting dirty. We have nothing to lose but our chains!
    7
  1899. Crimea was merely attached to Ukraine for administrative reasons by the Soviet Union. It is Russian and comparatively few Ukrainians live there.
    7
  1900.  @driedmelon  The war began before Russia invaded and was the direct result of the EU attempting to take over Ukraine, with dire consequences for the Russian economy.
    7
  1901. Starmer did not prosecute Savile. And the 2020 US election was stolen.
    7
  1902. Trouble is the blood clotting could well be just the first of several unexpected consequences. The technique used to create these vaccines has not been tried before and there is no telling what the long-term effects might be.
    7
  1903. But he is innocent of all charges, and people realise this. Anyone who has been even slightly persecuted by the state (and who hasn't?) feels a surge of sympathy for the poor man.
    7
  1904. This doctor knows how to deal with diseases. That must be why he's so good at dealing with reporters.
    7
  1905.  @A4Natty  Not in any important regard. These treaties were all created with the help of American lawyers, well-versed in the art of writing treaties. They have been developing these techniques ever since they were used to help commit genocide against the native populations of America in the late 19th century. Minor infringements - real or imagined - can be cited as an excuse to ignore the main points of such treaties, which are devised solely to enable US interests to be advanced.
    7
  1906. Russia has one in charge.
    7
  1907. These are EXACTLY the tactics employed by BLM and the legacy media. Well-spotted that man!
    7
  1908. There is currently no significant increase in the seasonal death rate in Northern Ireland according to the Office of National Statistics, When will people realise that Covid 19 has simply taken over as the dominant winter respiratory infection - exactly as responsible epidemiologists said it would?
    7
  1909. Yup. Bribery works.
    7
  1910. So good! And this war was totally avoidable too. It could end now if Ukraine agreed to Russia's entirely reasonable demands - and wouldn't even involve the shame of surrender.
    7
  1911. How can it be otherwise? The result of the November election will be utterly meaningless. Whichever side loses will have every justification for questioning the result.
    7
  1912. This sentence is obscene. It marks a new stage in the country's decline into totalitarianism.
    7
  1913. Sensible people, in other words.
    7
  1914. So what you're saying is... people are just too thick to be allowed to use their judgement and must do as they are told by a bunch of patronising middle class lefties pretending to be journalists.
    7
  1915. It would be more sensible and a great deal cheaper if we avoided conflict with Russia by not annoying it so much.
    7
  1916. What threats? Greenland is just being offered a deal which might be better than being part of Denmark.
    7
  1917.  VINLAND_777  I have listened to official Russia directly. Have you read any of Putin's essays? He makes it clear that regaining the Russian Empire is a impossible dream - which of course it is. The trouble is Western warmongers take quotes out of context to make it seem as though that's exactly what he DOES want.
    7
  1918. What is the informed scientific opinion on the suggestion that long covid may be caused in part by hypercapnia as a result of long-term persistent mask-wearing?
    7
  1919.  @jenmu7870  No. I just find out all I can. This story is a lie.
    7
  1920. The best way to stay safe is to avoid getting mixed up in America's wars.
    7
  1921. Never said it. Not once. Ever.
    7
  1922. It wasn't a salute. It was a gesture.
    7
  1923. Advancing, taking territory.... and LOSING?
    7
  1924. Making people afraid is pretty much the idea, I think.
    7
  1925. America did.
    7
  1926. There is no doubt that Ukraine is fighting back valiantly. But defeat on the Eastern front does now seem inevitable.
    7
  1927. It's what's underneath those fields and treelines that counts though. Like trillions of dollarsworth of coal, shale gas and lithium.
    7
  1928. It would be in Britain's best interests to form some sort of alliance with Russia as soon as possible.
    7
  1929. Bye, bye Kiev.
    7
  1930. So in about 18 months time then?
    7
  1931. So a bunch of rich college kids being terribly, terribly nice makes up for a whole bunch of poor slim kids burning their city down does it? That's alright then
    7
  1932. So Trump is right.
    7
  1933. Absolute nonsense. Ethnic Russians have been leaving the area in droves for years - and plenty of Ukrainians too.
    7
  1934. Once again we have a commentator who simply can't seem to understand the fact that these tariffs are not actually going to be put into place - the THREAT of them is enough to make other countries toe the Trump line and give him what he wants.
    7
  1935. God, Starmer is pathetic!
    7
  1936. It says something when the Chinese are still wearing face nappies.
    7
  1937. Only major concessions will make Putin accept a ceasefire.
    7
  1938. What with? Any ideas? The FBI and the DoJ would like to hear from you.
    7
  1939. What if this was just rocket fuel catching fire?
    7
  1940. Russia is nowhere near economic collapse. It is in a far from ideal situation with regard to inflation, but is still on of the top half-dozen economies in the world with an increase in GDP of 4.1% last year as just one example.
    7
  1941. Perhaps the price and availability of real estate in Florida formed part of their conversation?
    7
  1942. We must get out of the insane ECHR as soon as humanly possible!
    7
  1943. Of course it's an investment. The whole Ukraine war is an investment. That's why America started it.
    7
  1944. The whole of Ukraine east of the Dnieper was called "Little Russia" until not so long ago, and very many Russians live there - up to 90% in some industrial cities. Putin is now on course to take much of this back before the cavalry arrives from Europe and the US. It would be wiser in the long run to let him keep it - and certainly much better in terms of loss of life.
    7
  1945. Yeah, and who started it?
    7
  1946. Europe is a geographical entity, not a political one despite attempts to make it so. Russia is not an expansionist country, despite attempts to pretend that it is. Ukraine will accept the return of territories to Russia as a small price to pay for ending the destruction of the country. Trump is an astute politician. Vladimir Putin is alive and well. Apart from these facts, Professor Wilson is correct in every regard.
    7
  1947. But do the vaccines do a better job than ivermectin? We will never know because profit-mad Big Pharma crushes all opposition.
    7
  1948. Keep up the good work The Independent. Every clip you show proves yet again how right Trump is about almost everything! Anyone believing so called climate change has ANYTHING to do with these forest fires is mad. They are now more as they were before humans came along to restrict them The fact that they are any worse now than in recent years is because loony environmentalists have reduced those restrictions.
    7
  1949. You might as well throw gravel.
    7
  1950. Or Ukraine for that matter.
    7
  1951. The S African cases are so mild that the patients aren't even hospitalised. Fingers crossed - but omicron could actually be what's wanted: a variant which spreads fast but is less virulent than its predecessors.
    7
  1952. It's about time the Ukraine government realised things are only going to get worse. If they do a deal with Putin now it will save many lives and will probably be better for them in the long run.
    7
  1953. The whole strategy needs debate, A small coterie of blinkered bureaucrat scientists is leading the Government up the garden path.
    7
  1954. It would have been better for the world if these two people had stuck to showbiz, especially the dwarf.
    7
  1955. It's not the nationality which is significant. It's the money. One of the largest donors to the Conservative party is businessman Alexander Temerko. He is Ukrainian.
    7
  1956. This very thought adds to the suspicion that the Russians didn't do it
    7
  1957. The CDC is mocked throughout the scientific world abroad.
    7
  1958. And of course not forgetting the substantial financial holdings of the Blessed Saint Zelensky, as revealed in the Pandora Papers.
    7
  1959. Why don't you cover the debate on excess deaths which happened in Parliament on Friday? Sunak's contribution (if any) to the covid death toll is as nothing compared with the continuing death toll resulting from...well, who knows? More people are dying now than at the height of the pandemic, and many of them are fit, young people, not just the elderly or obese. There is a deafening media silence over this astonishing phenomenon. You can't help wondering why.
    7
  1960. Why? Russia needs all the allies it can get.
    7
  1961.  @urdro0607  He was robbed in one of the most outrageous examples of systematic fraud in electoral history. But you're right. Whinging all day won't change it.
    7
  1962. And much of if was planted or faked. The judge has done the FBI a big favour by choosing this way out.
    7
  1963. Now I wonder what (or who) could have persuaded Islamic extremists to take this action at this particular time? Did the instructions come from Allah, or from Uncle Sam?
    7
  1964. Musicians attempting to flee a music-banned Afghanistan have been prevented from boarding their chartered plane - by US military. Whose side are they on?
    7
  1965.  @doctoronduty7044  We did have people mooring ships within thirty miles of the North Pole and trying to walk there. Also the Russians and Canadians started building railway lines and roads to open up territories becoming free of permafrost - but by the end of the decade everything was frozen up again. There is more sea ice around Greenland than there was ten years ago, but the cycle zigzags pretty crazily and seems to have very little to do with atmospheric carbon levels. I think atmospheric carbon acts more as a thermostat than anything else.
    7
  1966. I'm not quite sure what "Boris and his cronies" have to do with Islamic extremism.
    7
  1967.  @DJWESG1  This must be one of the most ridiculous theories I've ever heard. Almost 1400 years of religious expansionism and it's all down to the Tories? What planet are you from?
    7
  1968. There is an old story about a woman who had been a given a circular pendant bearing a complex and rather lovely Chinese ideogram. At a dinner party she met a Chinaman and delightedly asked him if he could translate the characters. "Certainly," he replied, "It says: Registered Prostitute, City of Shanghai."
    7
  1969. The children are being sent to safety. Their parents must pretend they are kidnapped for fear of being shot as collaborators.
    7
  1970. A voice of common sense.
    7
  1971. Yup. He struts around East End wearing jodhpurs and attacking Jews. We've all seen it.
    7
  1972. The Ukrainians do seem to be walking into this quite a lot. Perhaps they might think about stopping doing everything their American boyfriends tell them to do - or do on their behalf, at any rate.
    7
  1973. Sadly the US electoral system means that the utterly discredited and illegitimate Biden regime can totter on for three more years. Has there ever been a more grotesque period in US history than this?
    7
  1974. AND FOR PUTTING MONEY INTO THE AMERICAN ARMS INDUSTRY!
    7
  1975. Wagner's recruiting videos make a sharp contrast to America's. They are not particularly interested in attracting pacifist lesbians,
    7
  1976. There seems to be no tactical reason for this incursion. This is largely undefended farmland of no strategic value, If the Ukrainians are hoping to force Russia to detach troops from the Donetsk front, I think they will be disappointed. At a wild guess I would say this means good news for a near ending of the war. Holding this territory could be a useful bargaining chip in peace negotiations.
    7
  1977. It would be a really good idea to revert to a hereditary House of Lords, although one with purely advisory powers. Reform should take this up.
    7
  1978. Ukraine get out of Russia
    7
  1979. That would be because he's calling for something we want.
    7
  1980.  @theimperialist2686  None whatever. I'd prefer them not to be a Communist, however.
    7
  1981. How do you know this? Counted them yourself?
    7
  1982. Apart from Western capitalism's inevitable tendency to over-extend and self-destruct, this time round we have a concerted effort by Russia, China and a host of other countries to bring it down once and for all. The end is nigh.
    7
  1983. Shame we don't have the Stasi or the KGB, innit?
    7
  1984. Have you read the same judgement as I have?
    7
  1985. It was all Putin ever wanted. The people there voted for it, and have been fighting for it for eight years.
    7
  1986. What is exactly wrong with what this guy is doing?
    7
  1987. Adultery being less egregious than treason, corruption and warmongering - then yes.
    7
  1988. No-one ever seems to ask the question WHY are we doing all this? Russia poses no threat to this country.
    7
  1989. If it works Labour scaremongers lose even more credibility. If it doesn't, Johnson goes. I think this is what is called a win, win situation.
    7
  1990. Many of them Jewish.
    7
  1991. What a load of fuss over nothing. Can't people take a joke any more?
    7
  1992. If he does a Michael Jackson it will be no surprise.
    7
  1993. Infections are predominately in younger age groups who generally do not suffer severe outcomes. They become immune and so increase the cordon of protection around the vulnerable. It's called herd immunity, and as long as we hold steady it will arrive eventually.
    7
  1994.  @vr360experiencetheordinary  That remains to be seen. Whatever the case, this is clearly lawfare at work.
    7
  1995. Since the majority of people in hospital with covid are fully vaccinated your suggestion doesn't really make much sense.
    7
  1996. Let's face it -we're all just guessing. My guess is that Putin's plans are ticking along quite nicely, and that at the end of the day he will get more or less exactly what he wanted.
    7
  1997. I can't help feeling sorry for this poor old chap wearing his scarf indoors. Obviously he's feeling the effects of the loss of his fuel allowance.
    7
  1998.  @anyaharris5617  All I know is that I'm not one, although constantly being accused of it by morons. I assume that others thus accused are in the same category.
    7
  1999.  @bobcraycraft7195  There are 93million YouTube users in Russia. I don't know what restrictions there are, but my comments on YouTube are deleted with increasing frequency. By YouTube.
    7
  2000. Could it possibly be that Joe Biden actually thinks he is Donald Trump? Now that would really be something!
    7
  2001. You should watch a few Patrick Lancaster videos. He's in the thick of it almost every day.
    7
  2002. Isn't that a smashing suit? I wonder how much it cost? And that TIE! Italian shot silk by the look of it.
    7
  2003. Only the Democrats could stage a show trial where the defendant gets off.
    7
  2004. There is no way he's going to prison.
    7
  2005.  @djmdb  But what exactly IS happening? The testing system is useless. No-one knows who is infectious and who isn't and at the end of the day it appears that the pandemic is virtually over. Those who were liable to die from it have largely done so and according to most epidemiologists the numbers are following usual patterns and herd immunity is probably here already.
    7
  2006. Zelensky, for all his qualities, has never been much a realist.
    7
  2007.  @GregoryCunningham  You don't even know what fascism is, you silly person.
    7
  2008. Back to warmongering and unwarranted interference in the affairs of other nations. Yippee!
    7
  2009. The deal could well be the one Putin offered in December 2021, two months before the invasion. 1) Recognition of Crimea as Russian. 2) Regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics. 3) A firm commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO. If this is what happens, a minimum of a quarter of a million people will have died to no purpose.
    7
  2010. Bakhmut is taken. It is a major win for Russia. COPE.
    7
  2011. Keep it coming! These pathetic, never-ending attempts to do Trump down only serve to make his support even stronger!
    7
  2012.  @feathercat9118  I agree. But the coincidence is very, very alarming and the fact that the authorities seem so reluctant to institute a proper enquiry into the statistics is rather indicative of a cover-up.
    7
  2013. Have you heard about the state senate hearings into electoral fraud and misconduct?
    7
  2014. According to the Dems the Capitol Hill debacle was worse than Pearl Harbour, 911 and the rise of Adolf Hitler combined. They also say "Awomen" at the end of prayers. They have clearly lost all connection with reality.
    7
  2015. Don't be such a tit. The stuff is cheap as chips and pharmaceutical companies can't make money out of it. That's why they are funding studies using insanely huge doses administered far too late to "prove" it is dangerous and doesn't work.
    7
  2016. Plus that supply of rose-tinted spectacles.
    7
  2017. This war is demonstrating that in a world of drones and increasingly sophisticated attack helicopters the tank is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
    7
  2018. Please don't be. Many of us are very grateful.
    7
  2019. The point of tariffs isn't to increase the price of imported goods, as many people seem to assume. It is to make imported goods so prohibitively expensive that they are no longer imported. Americans will have to turn to alternatives - which can not only be just as cheap, but made even cheaper as money formerly spent on importing goods is spent instead on lowering the cost of the alternatives.
    7
  2020. What's the point in prolonging the agony?
    7
  2021. What Putin is saying makes complete sense.
    7
  2022. This man's great tragedy is that he believed Boris Johnson. We all know what that can do to you.
    7
  2023. No. This is what hypocrisy looks like.
    7
  2024. But it is not a threat. It is a fantasy.
    7
  2025. Retired generals seem to be two a penny these days. I wonder if you can order them from an agency.
    7
  2026.  @carolinenorman6141  It really has very little to do with religious conviction. Back then the question was whether or not a Catholic would support the Pope or the Crown in the event of war. We must ask a similar question of Muslims today - the Crown or jihad and the caliphate?
    7
  2027. There are more threats to our future bubbling away under our feet than there are in the atmosphere around and above us. The magnetic north pole is behaving rather oddly for one thing.
    7
  2028. No. Boris Johnson did by persuading Zelensky not to accept the Istanbul peace treaty.
    7
  2029. We now know what is meant by "gesture politics."
    7
  2030. I think anyone who compares the present situation with anything involving Hitler, Munich, Neville Chamberlain and the 1930's in general needs to go to the back of the class and face the wall until a grown-up says they can sit down again.
    7
  2031. What's this all about? Death rates have been normal since July and the number testing positive for Covid 19 has been absolutely minimal. All the signs are that the pandemic is over.
    7
  2032. Feisty chicks like Katie Hopkins make life worth living.
    7
  2033. Very many entirely decent British people were fooled by Hitler in the 1930's - in much the same way that entirely decent people are being fooled today by subversive Marxist organisations like BLM.
    7
  2034. Politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say. A great many root and branch Tories would like to see the back of Sunack.
    7
  2035.  @tendrosstoodross2976  At America's bidding.
    7
  2036. The Marshall Islands would be a good place to hold a conference. They are going to drown soon, but it is still nice there at the moment. Also you could show how the sea is rising. Better hurry though, they're not going to be there much longer.
    7
  2037. Let me count the ways.....
    7
  2038.  @mikemlejnek4194  He killed tens of thousands of the enemy too. Which was the main point of the exercise .
    7
  2039. This won't be the first time that foolish British adventurism has brought disaster on our heads,
    7
  2040. The remnants of the Azov Battalion are now one step closer to hell. We can only hope that not many of their civilian hostages are entombed in the catacombs with them.
    7
  2041.  @mwd331  At least they were out in the warm.
    7
  2042. ujean56 ...stick you head in the sand! Put your fingers in your ears and go "wibble wibble wibble"! Surrender all pretensions to reasoned thought! Listen only to things that make you feel warm and fluffy inside! Accept it when you are told you are too poor and stupid and working-class to be able exercise critical judgement! Stay true to Socialism!
    7
  2043. Cowering is cowardice. Javid was right. No shame on him for withdrawing the word though. The paranoia junkies need constant soothing.
    7
  2044. He lives in a world of fantasy.
    7
  2045. I would hate to think that the UK is in any way involved in this despicable chicanery - but I very much fear it is. The Americans, who began this war, would think nothing of using British expertise to prolong it.
    7
  2046. Such a shame they can't (or won't) run on a joint ticket.
    7
  2047. Phil is becoming increasingly petty-minded. I think he smells defeat in the air.
    7
  2048. Where does Times Radio find all these mad old generals? Thank Christ they are only used to talk nonsense on YouTube videos. If they were in charge of a real war we'd be in big trouble.
    7
  2049. All sounds pretty good to me.
    7
  2050. Silly man. The Chinese will be doing all the investing that's necessary to reshape the economy their cunning germ warfare has destroyed.
    7
  2051.  @Vzzdak  There are no signs whatsoever that Russia wished to expand westwards after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia had learned the lesson of history that ultimately empires are not worth the bother, and often lead to the implosive destruction of the central authority. NATO is a vehicle of American expansionism, and needs Russia to appear to be a threat in order to survive.
    7
  2052. Is this bloke really a General in the British army?? Christ, we're in trouble!!
    7
  2053. Give them Donbass back and they'll leave. Keep fighting and they'll fight on. There's no genocide involved. It's purely business.
    7
  2054. Sweden remains a beacon of freedom and common sense in the face of covid hysteria. The facts speak for themselves. When compared with countries of similar demographics and population concentrations there is no discernible difference in death rates or hospitalisations.
    7
  2055. The idea that "embarrassment" enters into Putin's thinking is entirely laughable. He's not some English rose whose knickers have fallen down in the dance hall.
    7
  2056. Becoming an MP is not a job - it's a business opportunity.
    7
  2057. Q; What do lockdowns have in common with socialism? A: Neither of them work.
    7
  2058. This is total bollocks. Pathetic anti-Russian propaganda. 1984 has been high on best-seller list there ever since the collapse of the USSR. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an equally anti dystopian and even more anti-authoritarian novel, is actually required reading in Russian schools.
    7
  2059. You are deluded.
    7
  2060. The trouble with this analogy is that Putin isn't Hitler and the Russian army is not the Wehrmacht. Hitler made his intentions clear in his writings - and so has Putin. They are very different. Putin regretfully admits that recovering the Russian Empire is not only impossible but undesirable. He may be lying, of course, but his reasoning is pretty convincing. I fear World War may kick off due to an over-reaction to Putin's current attempts to maintain control of the mineral riches of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, as many imagine it to be the same as Hitler's first moves in the 1930s. I don't think it is. Historical analogies can be very dangerous. History does NOT repeat itself very often. It may superficially appear to do so but the differences between two situations are generally far more significant than the similarities.
    7
  2061. Oh do stop banging on about "far-right extremism". If there was an input from these semi-mythical figures it certainly met with approval from substantial numbers of the disaffected, ignored and vilified people who now constitute the British working class.
    7
  2062. The West has been providing support for Ukraine in its war of suppression against Donbass separatists for eight years.
    7
  2063. At least he didn't slip on the trail of slime Starmer left on the doorstep.
    7
  2064.  @RS-vy9qv  Yup. Recounting forged ballots really proved a lot, didn't it?
    7
  2065. Conquering one of the most valuable and most heavily defended pieces of real estate in the world.
    7
  2066. Is this really a result of warming seas or simply part of coral's natural cycle? Opinion seems divided but I'm betting on the latter.
    7
  2067. Difference is the Russians will almost certainly advance over frozen ground when winter truly sets in.
    7
  2068. It's probably close on ten times as many.
    7
  2069. What genocide?
    7
  2070. The more healthy young people who get covid the better -whether vaccinated or not. The bigger the spread the faster herd immunity is reached.
    7
  2071. What's rightfully theirs though?
    7
  2072. Trump looks and sounds even more reasonable every time he appears.
    7
  2073. He made, sad to say, a basic journalist mistake of publishing severe allegations without 100% checking their validity. He then made the further mistake of defying the court order. These are errors of judgement, not of character. He is a brave man with a good deal of right on his side and I for one hope that he will emerge safe and sound from his incarceration a wiser but no less committed man, with a useful political future ahead of him.
    7
  2074. Could this be the answer to Britain's channel migrants problem?
    7
  2075. My "Woke" is your "Fascist."
    7
  2076. Normal behaviour. Unlike in films, people in crisis situations like this often behave quite calmly because they don't believe or understand what is going on.
    7
  2077. The bishop is a total plonker.
    7
  2078. Has the war in Ukraine just been a great big con from the start?
    7
  2079. I can't help wondering how many parties have been held in police stations over the past two years.
    7
  2080. Stalin and Krushchev wrote the playbook for stuff like this. Anyone who has any doubts that America is rapidly descending into a dystopian nightmare needs an immediate reality check.
    7
  2081. Rigorous studies using too high doses on patients whose condition was too advanced for the treatment to work. If you could point me at a study using minimal doses given just twice a week to patients within 24 hours of them first experiencing symptoms, or even better a purely prophylactic study, I would be most grateful.
    7
  2082. The ICC is waste of space - apart from being a meal ticket for hundreds of lawyers.
    7
  2083. Deporting foreign prisoners and releasing those held on drugs charges would create something like 60,000 prison places. This might be just about enough to accommodate all those likely to be incarcerated for being rude on social media.
    7
  2084. Except he isn't.
    7
  2085. I love the panic in the eyes of sheep.
    7
  2086. The BBC stinks of treason.
    7
  2087.  @rhea7756  Tax evasion sure - bit on sums far in excess of what Zelensky could be expected to earn honestly. His mentor Kolomoisky is one of the biggest crooks in history - so much so that it is hard not to admire him! So it is a bit galling to expect us to revere Mr and Mrs Zelensky as champions of democracy when they are basically just the front for a bunch of gangsters. As for Russian involvement - since Zelensky has been salting away millions since 2012 it is hard to imagine the Kremlin having the foresight to set him up that soon.
    7
  2088.  @rhea7756  There is no such thing as an incorrupt Ukrainian politician.
    7
  2089. Yes! All we need now is for Trump to win and there is a grain of hope for the world.
    7
  2090. It´s not voter suppression. It´s cheating suppression.
    7
  2091. A decent future as an outpost of the crumbling American empire, you mean?
    7
  2092. Before it was a pile of rubble it was a fortress city preventing the Russians heading north to the Donbass border. Now they can and are.
    7
  2093. Hah! Therapeutics so much better than vaccines and other antibody stimulants. Don't forget it's your own immune system over-reacting and that kills you or leaves you damaged - not the virus itself.
    7
  2094. It could have been an error- and if not, who knows what this "aid convoy" was carrying?
    7
  2095. Those who invested in this war for commercial gain must now realise they are to be disappointed. The only solution is to face reality and accept that the Ukraine which was created in 1991 is not a true country, and that considerable areas in the East actually belong to Russia.
    7
  2096. Has the BBC carried out any coverage of the Arizona audit into potential election fraud and the Democrats' efforts to prevent it?
    7
  2097.  @shuathe2nd  No wars. Full employment. A strong dollar. (especially no wars). These "failings" are minor and were really only campaign slogans in the first place. As for the covid response, history will show that if we had left matters more or less alone and let nature take its course, the human race would be better off in the long run. That was Trump's instinctive response, I think. The bleach injection thing wasn't real. It was just a misunderstanding over terminology.
    7
  2098. This channel gets more insane and out of touch with reality by the day
    7
  2099.  @janalucke9739  There is a rapidly emerging divide between American, dollar-dominated economies and the increasing BRICS community, however. If the new BRICS gold-based currency gets into full swing and challenges the petrodollar, and even the dollar itself, Western hegemony could be ended. It will eventually of course, but it could be sooner rather than later - especially if the Ukraine adventure misfires, as it already is in many respects.
    7
  2100. He never said it. Mere propaganda.
    7
  2101. This is madness. Why should we be risking the end of the world by arming one set of gangsters against another?
    7
  2102. You really must stop confusing Hitler with Putin. Entirely different blokes.
    7
  2103. Everyone should be forced by law wear a tinfoil hat to protect their brains from harmful cosmic radiation. This is far more important than a facemask and actually does what it sets out to do.
    7
  2104.  @FR33_PALESTIN33  Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci
    7
  2105.  @FR33_PALESTIN33  Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, a Pulitzer prizewinner, as it happens.
    7
  2106. Since every single one of these cases was brought because of who he was, rather than for any actual criminality, it seems very just that they should be abandoned for the same reason.
    7
  2107. They have womental problems.
    7
  2108. According to this alleged quote RBG won't be replaced until 2024. I'm sure she can't have meant that.
    7
  2109. How come Sky News Australia is relatively conservative and sensible while Sky News UK is a cesspit of raging left-wing loonies?
    7
  2110. He's given the world a much needed kick up the arse, that's what.
    7
  2111. At least they don't get bogged down in ditches like those clumsy great NATO-supplied tanks.
    7
  2112. Excuse me. How is this "exposing Putin's weakness"?
    7
  2113. waxed link Which is a great deal better than them being aided and abetted by biased left-wing media. If the people in power read the Guardian we would all be dead by now. In Britain we are having a quiet revolution and sending socialism to its long-awaited rest. That nice Mr Murdoch has played very little part in this I do assure you. We reaiised ourselves what a bunch of self-righteous, patronising pricks the Labour party are all by ourselves, just by listening to them.
    7
  2114. ​​​They're already Russian. They were being forced to be Ukranian. 7:05
    7
  2115.  @Essexphotographer55  The world should be puzzled why Ukraine is doing this. It makes very little sense.
    7
  2116. Trickling slowly, rather than flooding, I think.
    7
  2117. Entirely so. Humanity adapts "nature" to its own ends. We have to, otherwise we would all die off pretty damn quickly. I might be wrong, but as I understand it much of "green" philosophy- especially as espoused by Extinction Rebellion - results from revelations occasioned by taking LSD or similar concoctions. As someone who was more or less entirely out of his mind on acid between c 1968 and c 1980 may I take this opportunity to say that nature has no particular regard for humanity. To believe otherwise is utter folly. Humankind and "nature" are at odds. To survive and prosper humankind must , however regrettable this may be, attempt to bend nature to its will.
    7
  2118. Just for once he may have got this right. Omicron is following the pattern usually expected of viral infections. We are 3 or 4 weeks behind S Africa. where Omicron represents now almost 99% of cases and yet, with a population of 60 million less than 9,000 are in hospital, at least half of which have been diagnosed after being admitted for other conditions. Less than 300 people are currently ventilated. Compared with Delta, the effects of Omicron seem quite incredibly less severe. It might be a little early to start throwing our hats up in the air, but doomy-gloomy, negative responses are starting to look less and less realistic. It will be a hard blow for all you paranoia junkies out there, and withdrawal symptoms may be severe - but it is as well to prepare yourselves, just in case.
    7
  2119.  @damienroberts934  Roughly three times the lethal dose of fentanyl, plus the meth in the speedballs he was taking.
    7
  2120.  @SKOLAH  What science says generally depends on who is paying the scientists to say it.
    7
  2121. Huge blow? Minor irritation more like.
    7
  2122. No-one said this was going to be easy. Bakhmut is the key to Russia gaining all of Donbass - and largely fulfilling its military objectives. The war the Western media has been fighting in its imagination is not the war Russia has been fighting on the ground.
    7
  2123. And replaces them with a less accountable authority.
    7
  2124.  @facty_kit1742 Putin will agree to peace as long as he can keep Crimea. He may even surrender Russia's four annexed territories if Donetsk and Luhansk are granted independence. Zelensky is committed to total victory, which is probably impossible and at the very least would mean a long and very expensive and dangerous conflict.
    7
  2125. We've had the rehearsal. Now its opening night.
    7
  2126. No chance of that.
    7
  2127.  @Diggnuts  Proposals put forward in December were entirely reasonable, requiring merely a halt to NATO expansionism and compliance with the Minsk agreements with regard to Donbass. The intemperate rejection of these proposals left Russia with little choice but to take extreme measures.
    7
  2128. Zelensky shows every sign of being taken over by the role for which he successfully auditioned. It is a great performance. A shame so many of the supporting cast are getting blown to bits.
    7
  2129. There are approximately ten times as many Muslims as Jews in Britain. Just sayin'
    6
  2130. It's ironical round the other way surely? People wearing masks and still getting it.
    6
  2131. But wise.
    6
  2132. Sssh Hate to tell you George but not many "ordinary" people in the UK actually believe there is a climate crisis. It's just something you posh Londoners talk about at dinner parties.
    6
  2133.  @dichebach  Are you aware of the concept of momentum? Do you push a boulder uphill at the same speed it rolls down it? The Russians have broken through Ukraine's main line of defence. They have crested the hill - and are now gathering momentum as they head for victory.
    6
  2134. I think we can all sleep safely in our beds now. Putin's stranglehold on the British government has finally been broken.
    6
  2135. The Ukrainians have killed more civilians than this in Donetsk in the past week alone. They add to the total of around 8,000 civilians killed by Ukrainian attacks on Donbass over the past eight years.
    6
  2136. But Putin isn't failing. Hasn't anyone noticed?
    6
  2137. The Democrats have gone crazy. They have lost all touch with reality. Barr was like a patient father forced to listen to the ravings of children.
    6
  2138. America - making the world safe for hypocrisy,
    6
  2139.  @gilh3947  The alternative would be, for a start, to have an economy which is not based on the necessity of perpetual war and aggrandisement.
    6
  2140. A bunch of self-righteous prats. And man-made climate change is total bollocks too - which makes them even more irritating.
    6
  2141. When you have senior military men getting their panties in a twist over stray weather balloons and kites you can safely say your country is in serious trouble.
    6
  2142. There is surely more to all this than meets the eye. Rwanda is now starting to figure hugely in the carbon futures market and any millions bunged its way under the auspices of this bizarre refugee scheme will surely grease the way for improved cap and trade deals with the UK.
    6
  2143. I have a wonderful vision of a new two-party system with Starmer heading one of them and Tommy Robinson the other.
    6
  2144. Backing Ukraine is backing the wrong horse.
    6
  2145. Don't be so selfish. Big Pharma CEOs and shareholders have lifestyles to maintain.
    6
  2146. It's dishonest. Using old footage of the situation in the Mediterranean involving whole families fleeing imminent threat of death has nothing to do with the situation in the English Channel today where fit, healthy and well-off young men are coming to this country in search of adventure and improved economic circumstances. And condemning rich people for being rich is daft. Each one of these people provides a livelihood for literally thousands of others -from the pilots of their Lear jets down to the people who clean their offices. The politics of envy is a busted flush.
    6
  2147. Can it actually be true that only people who have had covid jabs are being evacuated?
    6
  2148. Bla bla bla blah
    6
  2149. I must say I do find this hero-worship of a warmongering, incompetent globalist crook somewhat difficult to comprehend. Thank goodness there appears to be a substantial minority in this country and the US who have somehow, like me, managed to resist the conditioning.
    6
  2150. How comforting to know that schoolteachers have the lowest covid fatality rate among all occupations - and that the death rate among children is virtually nil.
    6
  2151.  @yvonnetomenga5726  Patrick Lancaster's fact-checking methodology consists of being on the spot. As he is right now, walking the streets of Mariupol and talking to people who are emerging from cellars. Tony Heller's methodology consists of having access to climate graphs and histories shoved under the table by AGW fanatics, Drbeen is just a good doctor and one not in the pay of the pharmaceutical industry, which has turned a major issue of public health into a business opportunity. The BBC has shown its measure in this video by "fact-checking" three minor videos which happen to do what they say on the tin. They should "fact check" the missile at Kramatorsk, the bombing of the theatre in Mariupol and the history of the bodies at Bucha. That would be interesting.
    6
  2152. And Russia will respond with extreme violence if this continues.
    6
  2153. The Budapest Memorandum was merely the signing of some minutes of a series of meetings. And where is Ukraine going to get these nukes from, incidentally?
    6
  2154. You are totally wrong. There are plenty in Ukraine who realise that peace with Russia is the only answer. And those few in Russia who want an end to the war stand little chance of replacing Putin.
    6
  2155. Not exactly a basis for negotiation, is it?
    6
  2156. Optimism and second sight in one package. I'm sure the Kremlin has made allowances for the possibility of further aid, and when it has come it does not appear to be quite what it says on the tin. Ukraine will only get just under $14billion initially, some in whatever old stuff depleted US armouries can spare, and the rest in credit to buy on the open market. Russia is ramping up military production at a rate of knots and is already punching big holes Ukraine's lines. This loan (and it is a loan) from the US may slow Russia down, but that will only mean more needless deaths. It can only extend the war, not help bring it to a conclusion.
    6
  2157.  @GeldardtheGrey  The Tories were just as bad but were cunning enough to pretend otherwise. Labour making a virtue of this nonsense has been the final straw.
    6
  2158.  @Calactic  Without America eying up the energy resources in Donbass Ukraine and Russia would have settled this between them without any bloodshed.
    6
  2159.  @lololollol4531  I agree 100 per cent. I was just trollng the stupid pricks who are falling for the Slimestream Media's disgusting trickery. Too many of them . Nice to hear a sensible voice.
    6
  2160. Response needn't be nuclear. Russia has a fleet of high altitude strategic bombers which have not yet been used in this conflict. They could reduce Kiev to dust within a matter of days.
    6
  2161.  @b62boom1  It's still happening today.
    6
  2162. Flogging a dead horse. And the horse died from 'flu, not Covid.
    6
  2163. Emission targets increased= Carbon futures market boost= More profit for traders. (And as a bonus, soft-hearted, soft-brainer tree-huggers think the world is being saved. Aaaah diddums!)
    6
  2164.  @ghosthorse77  You do the same. At a point when Ukraine was prepared to listen to Putin's peace proposals to prevent the invasion, Johnson was one of the senior NATO representatives who persuaded them against it.
    6
  2165. Courage and common sense as opposed to weakness and hysteria. I know what side I'm on.
    6
  2166.  @mootedtols4865  You do realise you are simply indulging in a form of wishful thinking, don't you?
    6
  2167. Yeah, the grads voted Biden.
    6
  2168. ​ @brandonw4  Why not? In both cases political extremists are seeking to maintain power by sowing racial discord.
    6
  2169. Now I know he's mad.
    6
  2170. The big question is: did Allah order these attacks, or was it Uncle Sam?
    6
  2171. Not at all. They are mostly decoys without warheads designed to use up Ukrainian missiles and give away their launch pads and radar locations.
    6
  2172.  @dpelpal  You know he didn't. Why don't you put another record on?
    6
  2173. Easy. He would have ensured Ukraine abided by the Minsk Accords instead of giving them billions of dollars to create an army to miserably fail to defeat the Donbass rebels.
    6
  2174. Democracy doesn't work by lying and cheating. That's Democrats.
    6
  2175. Ah, but what actually IS their territory?
    6
  2176. Thigs like this have happened many, many times before - but not in front of TV cameras. Personally I found it very refreshing, as are so many of Trump's activities. Yes, there is to be a new world order - and a far better one. The myth of Russian expansionism has coloured military and economic policy for far too long. Poor Zelensky, caught up in hopefully its last manifestation, is past history. He must bow out gracefully while Trump and Putin sort things out between them with - just for once - no need for soldiers to die on battlefields while they do so.
    6
  2177.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Russia is attacking Ukraine and Ukraine is attacking Russia. Before that Ukraine was attacking the Republic of Donetsk and the Republic of Luhansk.
    6
  2178.  @saint_matthias  Doubtful. Western hegemony is really American hegemony and there are very many signs that the American empire is crumbling.
    6
  2179. Stickler ForBricks Witch hunt, and a failed one. I only took any serious interest in US politics after Trump was elected. Like many Brits I thought:"What are those Yanks doing electing this weird-looking old crooked car-salesman type?" And for the first few weeks, as I watched CNN and MSNBC and The Young Turks and David Packman, I was thinking what fun it was waiting for this amusing little blip in history to be over. And I waited and I waited. And the words of the pundits began to sound hollow in my ears. As the laborious charade of the Russian collusion lumbered on I learned a new phrase - the nothing burger. Trump came out with his economic revolution and I said to myself; "If this works and the Russian thing turn out to be a nothing burger, then I'm going to have to take this bloke a bit seriously." It did work and the Democrats opened up the burger and there was nothing in it. I now admire Donald Trump quite bigly. The Democrats deserve nothing but contempt. They are going to lose out with this. It might even be their end. Watching the impeachment process is mainly interesting for picking out which one of the bright young Republicans might replace the God Emperor Trump when he leaves office in 2024. Trump is no saint, but he lies with a twinkle in his eye. He's a businessman and a showman and has really exposed the Washington swamp for what it is, and the Democratic Party for the collection of cynical opportunists that they are.
    6
  2180. Nonsense. You are from Kansas, now living in Washington DC.
    6
  2181.  @dpelpal  Вы не русский. Вы ошиблись с полом. Вы скромный сотрудник ЦРУ. Хорошего дня.
    6
  2182. What has a golf score got to do with pandemic deaths?
    6
  2183.  @stc3145  I just follow what's actually going on. Channels such as Weeb Union, DPA War and others provide an objective overview. Clarke just basically parrots Ukrainian propaganda, throwing in the occasional wacky slant of his own devising.
    6
  2184. The last time Ukraine tried to join the EU it resulted in civil war and the loss of Crimea. We've already got the war, but all this certainly shows how wise Britain was to escape the EU.
    6
  2185. This wasn't a debate, it was a stitch-up. Trump expressed what many Americans feel at the moment: an almost unbearable rage at the way their country has been highjacked by sinister forces beyond their control and comprehension.
    6
  2186.  @s0ycapitan  So pouring troops into an area of no strategic value and waiting for it to become surrounded is part of the victory plan? How does that work?
    6
  2187.  @davidjwilliams5214  They why do it?
    6
  2188. There was very similar stuff thrown up on the seafront at Cromer in Norfolk during storms a couple of years ago. Spume, I was told, and utterly harmless. I.m not saying this IS the same.Lots of chemicals end up in the sea.I wonder if test samples were taken?
    6
  2189.  @SerenityMae11  When I look at the map I see Donbass and Crimea firmly in Russian hands. Which is all Putin ever wanted.
    6
  2190. The UK death rate is currently about 17% above the five year average for the time of year. Covid deaths account for only about half of this number.
    6
  2191. I realise that a few people in the UK are getting rich out of this war - but what's in it for the rest of us?
    6
  2192.  @dinooldman6671  It didn't happen, and it's even less likely to now. At the peak of the pandemic about 20% of cases resulted in hospital admissions. Overall current figures are not yet avaialable but, as an example, there were 1,336 cases recorded in Leicester in July. There were just seven hospital admissions.
    6
  2193. No it isn't. "Gearing up" is one thing which MIGHT make it so.
    6
  2194.  @kkrolik2106  I'm not even sure that is true. It's irrelevant anyway since most of these children are already Russian.
    6
  2195.  @stevenmartin8828  Perhaps their parents wouldn't have given it. In any case many are orphans, or have been placed in child workhouses which still exist in Ukraine.
    6
  2196.  @T5Zplayer  I agree. The BBC has really gone downhill hasn't it?
    6
  2197. Russia has no designs on Europe.Those days are long gone.
    6
  2198. Or someone who has not been brainwashed.
    6
  2199. So unlike us in the West who get wall-to-wall uncensored reportage showing every detail of Ukraine's magnificent efforts.
    6
  2200.  @GARDENER42  Not lying, but I admit the error. I made the mistake of trusting Google.
    6
  2201. Since sanctions have largely removed the rouble as a trading currency, what relevancy does its value against the dollar have?
    6
  2202. What's wrong with being offensive?
    6
  2203. I gather the big prize in 2022 is now going to be The Dominion Voting Systems Cup. The event is to be held in a new course currently being built in the Ukraine by a Chinese company headed by Hun Ta Bi Den, the well known philanthropist and contributor to children's' charities.
    6
  2204. People are angry and confused because of the lies and misinformation spread by the BBC and others of your ilk. And you're still doing it. .
    6
  2205.  @gilbertmoyes2918  They are investing in companies like BlackRock and Vanguard which own most of the drug companies and most of the world's media and which are milking the pandemic for all it's worth.
    6
  2206. I think you are making rathe too much of what is basically a minor border dispute.
    6
  2207. They eat babies too.
    6
  2208.  @sebastianforbes1  I think so. The tragedy lies in Western interests prolonging the agony at the cost of so many lives.
    6
  2209. They'll be lucky to get out. In a similar situation in Mariupol the Ukrainians fired on civilians trying to flee.
    6
  2210. ...and it's all due to the warmongers of Washington.
    6
  2211. If Russia's reasonable demands had been met this dreadful war needn't have happened. Think on that.
    6
  2212. @ The rich will turn you into soup before you even know it!
    6
  2213. That would be a Ukrainian estimate then?
    6
  2214. For the people of a country created by ethnic cleansing and slavery, Americans can get a bit self-righteous sometimes.
    6
  2215.  @MrAngelusDelapsus  What about those wives and children who are going to lose their husbands and fathers if this needless war continues?
    6
  2216. Lock 'em up and force them to watch Tony Heller videos!
    6
  2217.  @philipmain5701  The ICC is a sad joke.
    6
  2218. With the Ukrainians now kicked out of Kursk by all accounts, the Russians are in a good position to negotiate a favourable peace. Lifting sanctions and giving international recognition to the new borders - whatever they may be - should help make a peace permanent. This has been one of the most ridiculous wars in history. Best to forget all about it as soon as possible.
    6
  2219. He's not in Ukraine. He's in Russia.
    6
  2220. Who's we?
    6
  2221. What suicidal impulse has led us to risk our country by supporting one set of gangsters in their quarrel with another set of gangsters?
    6
  2222. This war has not gone according to plan - from either side. If the US really wants to help it must persuade NATO to persuade Zelensky to accept Russia's peace proposals.
    6
  2223. With Elon Musk as governor?
    6
  2224. What genocide?
    6
  2225. I really don't think Vlad will be the first one to blink in this staring contest.
    6
  2226. He sounds like a carnival barker trying to get people to come in and see a freak show. What a contrast to Putin's considered and informative speech earlier in the day.
    6
  2227. I only means we will believe what politicians tell us even less than we do now.
    6
  2228. He's blown it - and a bloody good job too.
    6
  2229. As opposed to covid paranoia?
    6
  2230. Completely trashed? I suggest checking out videos on how Mariupol has been rebuilt. The same investment will be made to all of Donbass. The war has got rid of much of the drab old Soviet architecture which is being replaced with bright new modern buildings.
    6
  2231. He is merely being rational. Whatever the extent of these atrocities they are certainly being played up on order to gain support.
    6
  2232. What right do the protestors have to claim they were acting on behalf of "the people of Bristol"? The removal of the statue was a matter for elected representatives, not a mob.
    6
  2233. Was it destroyed? According to the Russians the bridge is still operational.
    6
  2234. It's obviously time to cordon it off and start digging graves.
    6
  2235. A Labour government is inevitable. What is needed now is a strong right-wing opposition capable of providing an alternative when the time comes. It doesn't much matter what name it chooses to call itself.
    6
  2236. This man is a pro-Ukraine fanatic. It is entirely possible that he was recruited for the task by Zelensky.
    6
  2237. Elon Musk is just what the world needs right now. The fact that our world "leaders" choose to ignore him just proves it.
    6
  2238. Only fools and horses believed that.
    6
  2239. Roughly 230 million books are sold in Russia each year. What are the Russians doing with them if they're not reading them?
    6
  2240. The threat is real. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction has been undermined. America's military incompetence as demonstrated in Afghanistan has allowed to Putin to believe he might launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes without adequate response. Even if he is wrong, the fact that he thinks this, or even that America thinks he might think this, is enough to upset the balance of power.
    6
  2241.  @Clickhereforthetruth-e5z  And Tommy is both brave and not a racist.
    6
  2242. All sounding a bit hollow, ain't it?
    6
  2243. Liars and shysters both.
    6
  2244.  @supernoodles91  You must be extremely naive to believe that Russia would waste an expensive missile on a hospital, especially since the direct result will be sympathy for Ukraine in the minds of fools who believe it to be so.
    6
  2245. Elected by the dead and a computer program - Biden/Harris, zombie puppets.
    6
  2246. You can always trust an arms salesman for having an unbiased view.
    6
  2247. How dare the forces of a fascist/racist state interfere with the peaceful expression of community goodwill? Police officers should kneel in shame while limbo dancers twerk in their hideous gammon faces! Only then will true equality and freedom be achieved. God Bless Sadiq Khan!
    6
  2248. This is utterly bonkers scaremongering with no relation to anything resembling reality.
    6
  2249. Which is just one of the things America wants by causing this war.
    6
  2250. As tragic as this is it is just part of the horrors of war. Ultimately Hamas is to blame since it deliberately and shamelessly uses civilians as shields for its activities.
    6
  2251.  @PerceivedREALITY999  But they have brought it upon themselves. Israel has tried and tried to form a working relationship with the Arabs, but all have been violently rejected. It is blinkered religious extremism and a totally false version of history which has led to this dreadful situation, not some kind of bizarre xenophobia or bloodlust. Israel cannot be blamed for taking extreme measures, simply in order to survive as a nation.
    6
  2252. Vaccines neither prevent you from catching covid nor from passing it on. They might just reduce symptoms,. but that's about it.
    6
  2253. So can measures taken to (unsuccessfully) prevent it.
    6
  2254.  @Crouchy232323  It's not agricultural land as much as the estimated $14trillion of oil, gas, coal and rare earth minerals under the soil of Crimea and Donbass.
    6
  2255. He typifies modern America - near to collapse and in denial.
    6
  2256. The government's own figures show no increased levels of infection among over 70s - the most vulnerable group. The testing system itself is suspect, with many false and misleading results. There is an increasing body of expert opinion calling the government advisers views into question. Just sayin'
    6
  2257. I'm sure neither Albania nor Indonesia would not like being compared with Auschwitz.
    6
  2258. Rather depends where the zone is situated. As long as it's on the Ukrainian side of the Donbass border Putin will have achieve his military ambitions. And it will save the Russians a fortune in concrete, since they needn't build fortifications.
    6
  2259.  @davidmacdonald1695  Unprovoked?? You've got to be kidding.
    6
  2260. Why am I not as terrified as I ought to be?
    6
  2261. There is considerable doubt. Ukraine gains at least as much as Russia in some scenarios.
    6
  2262. @IronThreads And they still got it wrong then.
    6
  2263. The FBI really have gone downhill. They did a much better job in Dallas.
    6
  2264. A tinpot puppet, elected through fraud, takes an oath of office surrounded by hundreds of armed men. Welcome to the People's Democratic Republic of America.
    6
  2265. NATO has outlived its usefulness. It must be replaced, reformed or completely abandoned.
    6
  2266.  @guillaumeshearmur656  This is utter nonsense. Divisions in the 'sixties and 'seventies were far more extreme than they are now. Compared with race riots and the miners' strike Brexit is a gentlemanly disagreement.
    6
  2267. Send them to prison?
    6
  2268. Despite the growth of wind and solar energy in underdeveloped countries, fossil fuel energy production must surely be essential in the immediate short term if they are to "catch up" in terms of quality of life, life expectancy and so forth. We don't know how much time we have left - but it would be very unfair, not to say tragic, if we continue the race towards zero carbon emissions with the poorer countries potentially first in line for some of the more unpleasant consequences that this unavoidable process will create.
    6
  2269. This was predicted by those trying to fight the hysterical over-reaction to covid. The measures will kill far, far more people than were saved.
    6
  2270. In this instance "lack of government experience" is going to be a major plus!
    6
  2271. And both more than Biden.
    6
  2272. It has crossed my mind that the new strain might be the direct result of lockdown and other measures. If the spread is reduced then surely a strain which spreads more quickly and efficiently will survive and prosper? If someone could shoot this disturbing notion down in flames I would be very grateful.
    6
  2273. The biggest battle of the war is looming. Ukraine will probably retake Kherson - but at immense cost. It is becoming more and more apparent that this war is not about conquering territory, but depleting Ukraine's armed forces to prevent them retaking Crimea and Donbass.
    6
  2274. It shows exactly the opposite.
    6
  2275. There'll be some red faces when these turn out to be escaped weather balloons and kites, perhaps floating around for years in the icy Arctic air-currents.
    6
  2276. Not really. Parts of Ukraine are really Russian.
    6
  2277. Reality bites at last. But it is not enough. Zelensky is still holding out for more than he's going to get.
    6
  2278. @Robert Townrow Most doctors, knowing that an elderly patient will die very soon, will recommend that they do so at home if possible.
    6
  2279. It's purely cosmetic. More and more I am convinced that "replacement theory" is actually a thing, and that this Labour government fully supports it.
    6
  2280. Or common sense.
    6
  2281. https://gizmosheets.com/jacob-blake-wiki-age-family-photos-why-was-jacob-blake-shot-and-is-jacob-blake-dead-or-alive/ The guy was a known criminal with a gun history. He was awaiting trial on a serious sexual assault charge among other things. Last time he was suspected of a gun crime his holster was empty. The police searched his SUV and found the gun. Guess where? Under the driver's seat - where he appeared to be reaching at the time he was shot. (If he was shot in the back seven times he would be dead. My guess is the officer was deliberately trying to shoot his arms and shoulders. This was a totally justifiable response by the officers.) BBC - you stink.
    6
  2282. Still a bit short of the 600,000 who signed up for Tommy Robinson's release. Seriously though, who would want to watch a bunch of lying, discredited politicians arguing the toss on a lying, discredited TV channel?
    6
  2283. During the siege of Mariupol Ukraine's infamous Azov Battalion kept people pinned down in cellars to prevent the Russian advance - the so-called "human shields". Anyone venturing out for food and water was likely to be shot by Azov snipers positioned on rooftops. These prisoners were eventually rescued by Russian troops. I expect this young girl was one of these - hence her gratitude.
    6
  2284. Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    6
  2285. It is important to remember that the vaccines may not be fully effective and can wear off quickly. Other measures must not be ignored as you may well be asymptomatically infected and thereby unknowingly infecting others.
    6
  2286.  @TTTzzzz  I blame the parents.
    6
  2287.  @andrew6978  Have you read the UN report on Ukraine's suppression of the Donbass rebellion in 2014 -18?
    6
  2288. Just waiting for the snobs to start giggling at his mispronunciations. Wankers.
    6
  2289. For "constitution" read "swamp."
    6
  2290. An actual alliance between America and Russia would be a great idea.
    6
  2291. Another one of Sean's gamechangers, eh? How many is that so far?
    6
  2292. Face it. We've been sold a pup and Starmer's wriggling and blathering won't alter that fact.
    6
  2293. Do you mean between a corpse and a criminal, and Donald Trump?
    6
  2294. Time for America to stop playing supercop.
    6
  2295. Stone's arrest, trial and sentence were an obvious political stitch-up. Every day it becomes clearer and clearer that the Democrats are rotten to the core.
    6
  2296. Socially aware and risk averse - or compliant cowards, depending on your point of view.
    6
  2297. So sweet!
    6
  2298. @Join the Universal Education Revolution Not so. A recent study from the UK shows that a third shot has no extra effect with Omicron. Having two shots greatly improves your chances of survival if you are elderly or suffer from poor health, but do not guarantee it. And very many healthy, unvaccinated people survive Omicron while experiencing only very mild symptoms.
    6
  2299.  @DissociatedWomenIncorporated  Do you live under a stone?
    6
  2300. Yes, let's all stay at home and wait for the next super-variant to develop shall we? Sounds like common sense to me.
    6
  2301. Lockdowns don't work. Death rates in these countries where they have been used are horrendous. In Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, there have been just 883 deaths. In Uganda, with a population of 43 million there have been just FOUR. Both these countries use hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against malaria. People take it small doses a couple of times a week in order to mitigate the worst effects of the illness. Other countries where malaria is dealt with in this way have experienced similarly low death rates from Covid 19. There is no mystery in this. The treatment works in the same way by preventing infection from spreading.
    6
  2302.  @jim2376  The consequences of being at war, and assaulted from all sides, I'm afraid. In actual fact these difficulties directly affect only a very small portion of the population.
    6
  2303. Chris Spencer I'm the same with climate alarmists. It's like listening to people who've been brainwashed pretending they can think for themselves.
    6
  2304. Wagner has now reached the centre of the city.
    6
  2305. If you believe that Russia did this then you are even dafter that I took you for, Professor Tim.
    6
  2306. It's on it's last legs, I'm afraid. Everyone knows it.
    6
  2307. 777,000
    6
  2308. What's this bloke a general in - the Salvation Army?
    6
  2309. Eastern Ukraine is Russian and Mariupol is its principal city. The Donbass region has voted overwhelmingly to become independent of Ukraine and separatist leaders have even offered for another vote to be taken, under outside supervision if necessary. That's all it would take for this madness to end.
    6
  2310. Putin has to be tough. Russia is constantly on the brink of anarchy and it is to his credit that his country has prospered throughout the years of his reign. If his behaviour doesn't meet our hi-falutin' standards that's just the way it goes.
    6
  2311. Should this apply to all countries, do you think?
    6
  2312.  @targab9105  Oddly enough Trump's election was probably one of the most honest ever. This is why the cheating establishment was so utterly amazed they had to create the Russia collusion myth.
    6
  2313. Geffo Me But the Guardian and the Independent do exactly the same thing!
    6
  2314. Always unstable, Zelensky now appears to have gone completely mad.
    6
  2315. And wouldn't they do it a great deal better if it wasn't for those pesky politicians!
    6
  2316. For their opinions?
    6
  2317. So the carbon from these gas flares just hovers over Nigeria? Is that right?
    6
  2318. The more the merrier! Herd immunity by Christmas - despite all the efforts to prevent it. Hard luck abut the shares, Sir Patrick.
    6
  2319. Is there no end to the self-righteous twaddle Channel4 will put out to push its lefty globalist agenda? From what I could make out from this scruffy hodge-podge of a programme we are supposed to believe South African policemen of all people, rather than Mr Banks, whose entrepreneurial spirit will be much needed in the new post-Brexit Britain.
    6
  2320. In fact the people who were sacked were trainees and they later found they couldn't sack them because they weren't yet fully employed.
    6
  2321. No puppet at all. That's why the puppet-masters hate him.
    6
  2322. An edge of desperation is now creeping into the anti-Trump narrative. Biden cheated. Trump won.
    6
  2323.  @johnnywong1018  No. That was the Chinese .
    6
  2324. This is why means testing pensioners is a good idea - so that only those without private pensions qualify for extra benefits such as free transport and the winter fuel allowance.
    6
  2325. Of course Trump will lose. It'll be fixed again.
    6
  2326. They wanted tanks, jet aircraft and long-range guided missiles. Instead they get some old guy who doesn't know what day of the week it is.
    6
  2327.  @boink800  golf carts seem to do better that Abrams tanks.
    6
  2328.  @chrispotts6727  It proves no such thing. Stone was convicted for not going along with the FBI's Russiagate witch hunt. Basically he refused to c-operate with a false and corrupt prosecution. Do you not see that Trump's enemies just accuse him of things they themselves are guilty of? Do try to keep up. Things have changed since 2016.
    6
  2329. How encouraging for those of us who believe that Russia has considerable justification for taking the extreme action it has to know that such utter idiocies as those voiced here exist in the other camp.
    6
  2330. One can't help being reminded of the last time a senior British Royal was snared by an American. They were Nazis though, instead of BLM supporters.
    6
  2331. Way off beam again. The testing system is woefully inaccurate and even dangerous. The "second" wave fits exactly with the Gomperz Curve of such epidemics when an initial surge of cases and deaths goes into a steep decline followed by a much smaller peak which then flattens out into a plateau before herd immunity is achieved. Half-arsed restriction measures do absolutely nothing to prevent or advance this. Nature is culling the old and the frail as it always does.
    6
  2332. Attagirl!
    6
  2333. I STILL don't understand why the woman downstairs didn't bang the ceiling with her broomstick.
    6
  2334. And he's GLORIOUS!!!
    6
  2335. If this is failure I'd hate see what success for Russia would be like.
    6
  2336. What you don't understand is that Crimea and Donbass ARE essentially Russian and have never been truly Ukrainian. Donbass was appended on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine when it was first created in the early 1920s for a variety of administrative reasons, Crimea was added in 1953. Both were mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine when it was itself created in the early 1990s. Both have large Russian populations and much the highly profitable industry there is owned by Russian companies. The Westernisation of Ukraine as a whole would mean losing the benefits the ownership of these facilities has brought to Russia for literally centuries.
    6
  2337. Unfortunately perhaps, the right to bear arms is deeply embedded in the American psyche. It's not a question of a handful of hobbyists. Attempting to deprive the civilian population of their guns would undoubtedly result in far, far more deaths than those being experienced at present. It's just something they have to live with - or die with.
    6
  2338. @ianR It's statistics. And I'm pretty sure most of these guns are sporting shotguns - not assault rifles or semi-automatic pistols.
    6
  2339. He's right isn't he? According to the "science" half the people who attend his maskless, non-socially distanced rallies should be dead by now. And they ain't.
    6
  2340. He was of course a champion of non-violent protest. What did he make of BLM one wonders?
    6
  2341. Says more about you than it does about him.
    6
  2342.  @WHS_reviews  I'm just puzzled by the reference to "the soviets" .Who are these people?
    6
  2343. You have the nail on the head. Plans for dealing with pandemics were trotted out on the assumption that covid would be indiscriminate in its effects. It was a mindset across most of the world which has led to carnage. Astonishingly, the thinking behind it still persists.
    6
  2344. No. America should. They started it.
    6
  2345. Why?
    6
  2346.  @Manic.miner2077  What democracy? The fact that American democracy is dead is what is making them do it.
    6
  2347. There is no energy crisis in Russia, nor food shortages either. I think we are backing the wrong side.
    6
  2348. Scarcely surprising to see the BBC taking such a prominent role in the plot to do for Cummings. After all, getting rid of the licence fee is quite high on his agenda I believe.
    6
  2349. Is woke Disney waking up? Woke means broke, you know.
    6
  2350.  @barrywood7322  Many of the eight million or so Russians living there have different ideas.
    6
  2351.  @rupok90  I'm sure they don't want to go anything like that far. As long as they have Donbass, Crimea and maybe Odessa, Ukraine can keep the rest.
    6
  2352. I love listening to Ingram. I know from experience that everything he says will be utterly wrong.
    6
  2353.  @jethrobradley7850  A phobia is an irrational fear.
    6
  2354.  @Elizadoolittle1948  And you, madam, need to take a good long look at the history of the region before getting on your high horse.
    6
  2355.  @TheBigStink9268  Like you have? Compare the condition of Russia now to what it was before Putin arrived That's all the research you need.
    6
  2356. This can only bring peace closer. Ukraine should quit and talk as soon as possible. The longer they hold out, the more territory Putin will demand in the final settlement.
    6
  2357. There is some considerable doubt whether these children have actually been "stolen". It is suggested that they have been sent to Russia by their parents for safety(coming from Russian families living in Ukraine, of which there are many)and that the parents have claimed they were stolen for fear of being treated as collaborators. Other children appear to have been taken from orphanages by Russian soldiers, once again for their safety in a war-torn area. I must say this explanation seems more likely to me, but who know?
    6
  2358. A wonderful tactic. Seeing the BBC wallowing in confusion just adds to the fun!
    6
  2359. He actually gives voice to the incoherent fears of oppressed British people, caught between the twin threats of Islamification and globalisation.
    6
  2360. Be afraid.
    6
  2361. On the contrary. he is on the brink of success and only foolish action by NATO now stands in his way.
    6
  2362. Where is she from anyway?
    6
  2363. What isn't peaceful about offering the people of Greenland a good deal?
    6
  2364. The old US stock being doled out to the Ukrainians ain't so hot either, by all accounts.
    6
  2365. Does that include the police discriminating in favour of Muslims?
    6
  2366. Its a fact that slavery still very much exists in the world, pretty exclusively in Muslim countries. They aren't very keen on statues though.
    6
  2367. Is there any limit to America's total incompetence when it comes to foreign policy?
    6
  2368. To be accurate, the Ukrainians are advancing around Bahkmut while the Russians are advancing inside it.
    6
  2369. Why?
    6
  2370. Why? He's winning.
    6
  2371. This is just the beginning.
    6
  2372. Which we must now ignore.
    6
  2373.  @Vladimirthetiny Except for the thousands of poor souls at the end of the line perhaps? But they are only foreigners.
    6
  2374. Where will TDS fit into this dictionary?
    6
  2375. I do hope someone goes through these names. They seem to include people who have died of Covid 19 as well as Grenfell Tower victims. It would be a pity if the case for racial violence was being overstated and people found out.
    6
  2376.  @marksmoore  Did he make such a comment? I know he thinks highly of Putin, who is certainly a very clever man. Putin's invasion was forced upon him by circumstances, so while not possibly being a genius move it was pretty much the only thing to do.
    6
  2377. NATO has provided the Ukrainian army with training and equipment and Polish soldiers are now fighting there in Ukrainian uniforms.
    6
  2378. They are either liars, fools or investors with money to lose.
    6
  2379. I agree. Fundamentalist Islam is as close to fascism as we have been for a long time.
    6
  2380. Money talks. And its a language American politicians never tire of hearing.
    6
  2381. It really is time for people to discreetly start taking those little blue and yellow flags out of their windows. Wishful thinking can only go so far.
    6
  2382. You'll have a long wait.
    6
  2383. Yes, it is a dream. And an utterly unobtainable one, as Putin has said on many occasions.
    6
  2384. Boris Johnson now has a lot in common with Tommy Robinson - stitched up by a corrupt, elitist judiciary in the interests of globalism. At least he wasn't nearly starved to death in solitary confinement first.
    6
  2385. Climate change killed my parrot. And now I want REVENGE!! Bernie 2020 Yaaay!
    6
  2386. The producers are now working on a new show titled "Reset" in which cherished national institutions are demolished, environmental policies ensure economic ruin, at least one sexual deviancy is mandatory and facemasks must be worn at all times.
    6
  2387.  @igorigor1496  Quite right. I didn't. I mean 2022.
    6
  2388. Well done BBC! I You just proved beyond question that Trump is the right man for the job!
    6
  2389. Russia very likely didn't do it - and if it did it was for a justifiable military purpose and therefore cannot br classified as a war crime. If Ukraine did it, however, simply to put blame on Russia while regrouping it's forces then that might well be open to a more severe interpretation.
    6
  2390. Because that nice Mr Zelensky told you so?
    6
  2391. This war has been going on for eight years, during which time atrocities by both sides have been widely reported and many confirmed. These latest examples have yet to withstand objective scrutiny.
    6
  2392. The two creeds you mention have a great deal in common though.
    6
  2393. Money should be taken OUT of education and channeled into the NHS. Many university degrees are totally useless and further education has become synonymous with blatant Marxist indoctrination in many instances. We should turn back the clock: make technical colleges what they once were and reduce both the number of university places and the variety of courses available. Teacher-training colleges need to be similarly disinfected.
    6
  2394. Russia has had its terms set out for at least three years, It would be as well to stick with them since at the moment it seems likely that Putin will gain more militarily than he asked for diplomatically.
    6
  2395.  @daviecanning1180  Perhaps we could call it Huzma the Hate Monster?
    6
  2396. It's not a lie.
    6
  2397. False flag or not, this alleged incident gives Russia a good excuse to step up its assault on Ukraine. It even brings the nuclear option into sharper focus.
    6
  2398. As things stand Cummings did no wrong - morally or legally.
    6
  2399. Keir Starmer is about as relevant to international politics as a goldfish in a pond of sharks.
    6
  2400. Shut the gates and quit the ECHR.
    6
  2401. This reminds me of the scene in the Wizard of Oz when the Wicked Witch of the West had water poured over her. I shouldn't enjoy it,but I do.
    6
  2402. Blame China. And the WHO. And the virus itself.
    6
  2403.  @raywhitehead730  Only yesterday EU President Ursula von Leyen gave the same figure for the number of Ukrainian dead.
    6
  2404. What's the point of this nonsense?
    6
  2405. In your dreams.
    6
  2406.  gdi wolverine male  Pity she didn't get paid big kick-backs by the drug companies.
    6
  2407.  @B1GK1NG  But when push comes to shove...
    6
  2408.  @tobiasrietveld3819  Not just gas, it's lithium. The point though is that the land and the mines are already largely owned by Russian companies and worked by Russian labour and have been for decades, if not centuries. Putin doesn't see why they should be hived off by Ukraine to America or Blackrock - and I for one can sort of see his point.
    6
  2409. I gather that the inquest into the unfortunate Mr George Floyd showed a positive result for Covid 19. As I understand it, this means that if he had been killed in England his death would have been recorded as coronavirus related, and entered into the statistics as such.
    6
  2410. Except that it isn't.
    6
  2411. I expect he was just planning his revenge.
    6
  2412. Any Tory MP who takes over now is likely to have but a short term in office and see their career pretty much wrecked. Johnson is already threequarters of the way there.
    6
  2413. Since it is clear that the disease generally only kills the frail and elderly, any steps taken towards achieving herd immunity have to be welcomed. Masks don't just cover up faces. They cover up Government incompetence.
    6
  2414. Oh dear. I suppose Ukraine never targets civilians?
    6
  2415. Zom Bee Nature And other parts of Africa. False pro-climate crisis stories such as this are needed to maintain a balanced instability in the carbon futures market. The market requires African and other third world countries to be over-supplied with permissions to exceed carbon limits. The excess can then be bought cheaply and sold to industrialists in developed countries who desperately need them. The idea that Africa is becoming uninhabitable is also an excuse to allow mass immigration of cheap labour into Europe.
    6
  2416.  @garethhanby  Why? Trump has condemned the violence. Has BLM or the Democrats condemned the violence of their supporters?
    6
  2417.  @lukeswan7776  Yes but at least one of the jurors lied about his involvement with BLM. That in itself should be enough for a mistrial.
    6
  2418. Astonishing how the Left-wing establishment supports a child who is being used by a hedge-fund company to front an agenda to corner the carbon futures market.
    6
  2419. Works for America.
    6
  2420. The continuing attempts to bring Trump down are truly, truly pathetic.
    6
  2421. I hate to say it - but instinctive racism is at work here. Ukrainians and Israelis are perceived as "like us" ie white. These other conflicts involve only brown jobs, and thus Western news editors put them way, way down on their list of priorities.
    6
  2422. America's insane adventure in Ukraine has brought about an alliance between two heavily-armed opponents. Who'd have guessed it?
    6
  2423. Then why not now? Study after study has shown that lockdowns merely put off the inevitable. Some also indicate that the death toll is actually larger the longer lockdowns run. If we are still relying on Neil Ferguson's modelling then God help us!
    6
  2424. This incident summarises the tragedy of this needless war. Russia's initial peace demands were entirely reasonable, but Ukraine shot them down and its people are now paying the price.
    6
  2425. I cannot help but admire the never-ending efforts of CNN, the Dems, the FBI and all their allies in their ceaseless campaign against Trump. What dedication! What spirit! The fact that it all seems such an incredible waste of time, money and human resources adds greatly to my amusement.
    6
  2426. Just love the way The Independent keeps showing these clips! Great publicity for Trump, each and every one. Shame they don't get more views.
    6
  2427. No. That's Joe Biden you're thinking of.
    6
  2428.  @beckybarnett2066  I'm reminded of President Lyndon B Johnson's famous quote when asked about the seemingly odd choice of one of his advisors. "It's better having him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."
    6
  2429. Calm, reasonable, informative, well-balanced and sane. What's gone wrong BBC?
    6
  2430. The essential question is, of course: did she get the job because she was the best candidate or because she was black and a woman? (Whatever that is. She doesn't seem to know herself.)
    6
  2431. Forgive me if I've missed it but, religious speculation aside, has the BBC yet covered the story of Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents? A Presidential candidate in the pay of Russian mobsters used to be a big story once, I seem to recall.
    6
  2432. Senior oncologists are very worried about the rise in cancers following the Covid vaccine rollout. It has been suggested by them that mRNA vaccines should be banned forthwith.
    6
  2433.  @Szminsky  The populations of some industrial towns and cities in Donbass is 80% Russian.
    6
  2434.  @hansreichhardtsohn4522  Check last summer's death rates in Goa where, as in a number of Asian locations, the Delta wave was halted by the widespread use of Ivermectin.
    6
  2435.  @hansreichhardtsohn4522  Look at the graphs. In Goa Ivermectin was given to everyone over the age of 18 once it was realised that Delta was breaking through. In other Far East locations such as Japan, Singapore and Vietnam, Ivermectin was widely available: either legally or smuggled in from India. The waves broke after twelve days. There is a heap of laboratory evidence which confirms your assertion of course - all carefully managed by Big Pharma, which has systematically denigrated all possible rivals to its money-spinning vaccines.
    6
  2436.  @hansreichhardtsohn4522  Big Pharma propaganda. The whole pandemic has been stage managed in order to create a semi-permanent market for money-spinning vaccines. Research scientists and medical journals rely on Big Pharma for their living. They supply the results required of them. Only real-world data can be relied upon.
    6
  2437. Russia's goal is to take all of Donbass and defend it. It would, of course, have been much easier if Ukraine had followed the Minsk Accords and paved the way for regional autonomy, but Western greed has prevented that, and as a consequence many, many thousands of people have died to no purpose.
    6
  2438. The "Russian propaganda" just happens to be cold, hard truth.
    6
  2439. Very low standard of propaganda by the MoD these days.
    6
  2440. @ The distribution of materials owned by the Soviet Union following its collapse was the subject of lengthy negotiation. The simple fact of them existing on Ukrainian soil did not make them Ukrainian. They were divided according to agreement, with some going to Russia and others remaining in Ukraine, including some ships and military vehicles. The nuclear weapons were consigned to Russia. They were Soviet. They became Russian. They were never Ukrainian. If Ukraine had wanted to keep them they would have said so. The fact that Moscow still held the launch codes was a contributing factor in this decision.
    6
  2441. It's nothing to do with vanity. It's called patriotism, and Britain could do with a great deal more of it.
    6
  2442. The Russians of course planned how to avoid the effects of sanctions long before their plans for Ukraine became visible. Russia has a war chest of around 500 billion dollars all safely tucked away and rude letters from Western bank managers will be tossed aside with a scornful laugh.
    6
  2443. On the other hand it might well save us from Armaggedon.
    6
  2444. Having just briefly watched Putin chairing the BRICS+ summit I have to say that he didn't seem much frightened of anything- quite the reverse.
    6
  2445. Is this Keir Starmer a robot? This is a question which must be seriously asked.
    6
  2446.  @applerunner1184  Around 80 case studies indicate otherwise. Big Pharma actually carries out false studies into alternative medicines which they they then find fault with, so discrediting genuine studies. They've been up to dirty tricks like this for decades.
    6
  2447. Tens of thousands of jobs lost, the economy in ruins, children with agoraphobia and the BBC highlights the fact that a black girl has forgotten how to put her makeup on. Says a lot.
    6
  2448. Help me out. I need to know what some of these "lies" actually were.
    6
  2449. There was plenty of smoke and bright flame - but relatively little damage with, it appears, only a small section of the carriageway hitting the water. Can't help thinking this might be a false flag by the Russians, giving them justification for further bomber raids on civilian targets - probably in Odessa and Kherson.
    6
  2450. These fleabites will only further enrage the Russian bear.
    6
  2451. This is a very wise move and brings peace one step closer. The sooner Russia achieves its military objectives and captures all of Donbass the sooner meaningful talks can begin.
    6
  2452.  @inamorta47-playertwist  Not Russian sources, but impartial ones which derive information from both sides.
    6
  2453. The kiddies' storybook version! It wasn't Ukraine's arsenal - it was Russia's!
    6
  2454. I gather incubation period for Omicron is up to 14 days as opposed to 3 or 4 days for Delta. This is surely of great significance.
    6
  2455. It's not just US bank stock which is crashing then. All it takes is a little nudge.
    6
  2456. Phil really should stick to parish pump politics and boring stuff about Brexit and how nasty the Tories are. His grasp of international geopolitics is about on par with that of your average polytechnic physics lecturer.
    6
  2457. At least Russia got the leader most people wanted. The same can't be said for America.
    6
  2458. To think Christ rose from the dead for this! It's enough to make you turn Muslim.
    6
  2459. He won.
    6
  2460. He knows that technically he is. He made some serious errors of judgement.
    6
  2461.  @stevec6427  Not one bit. It's the numbers we are talking about.
    6
  2462. No need. Those of us with sense are immensely grateful.
    6
  2463. If only he'd stuck to his vaudeville act we wouldn't be in this mess.
    6
  2464. Allegations, yes. It just proves your opponents are out to smear you.
    6
  2465. Why? Someone tell me why we are spending billions supporting one set of gangsters against another set of gangsters?
    6
  2466. For which we should be thankful.
    6
  2467. Ian Graves You're an idiot, and brainwashed too. I don't need Murdoch and Tory billionaires to tell me how to think. I look at Corbyn and his support for the IRA and anti-Israel terrorist groups. I see Labour conferences where the Union flag is scorned and the Palestinian flag is waved instead, I hear Corbyn outline his insane, suicidal pipe-dream policies and I see my country being led into a cesspit. I don't even READ mainstream newspapers and rarely watch mainstream TV. I scour the Internet, giving everyone a chance to convince me. If Socialism has convinced you then you are either incredibly naive or the victim of some weird guilt-complex.And also an idiot.
    6
  2468. I identify as a condor. Mrs Dalton needs to keep looking upwards.
    6
  2469.  @ottoabramishvili8375  They're just saying that to frighten you. Putin doesn't even want all Ukraine - just the Russian bits.
    6
  2470.  @shane5898  What do we do about NATO invading other countries - Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yugoslavia etc etc?
    6
  2471.  @boink800  Busy elsewhere at the moment. The Ukrainians can have some fun among the hayricks, I guess.
    6
  2472. The insane over-reaction to covid is only matched by the insane support for American warmongering in Ukraine. Britain's utter ruin is now inevitable.
    6
  2473. Glad to see The Independent back in the business of assisting the Trump campaign. Looks great, don't he?
    6
  2474. When this grisly charade is finally over we can only hope that those politicians who survive will have the sense to form better relations with Russia.
    6
  2475. Who's "we"?
    6
  2476.  @ksav4330  Trump might be a crook, but he's not a crooked politician. That's Biden.
    6
  2477.  @DoubleUProds  Lack of tourniquets (if true) has nothing to do with a stockpile of bombs and guided missiles, does it?
    6
  2478. She had been rescued by Russians from a cellar where she had been held by Ukrainian military as part of their "human shield" tactics. Whether her mother was killed by Ukrainian or Russian fire remains unknown.
    6
  2479.  @johnbadger3295  Nearly all being their 80s and 90s perhaps they were entitled to have others look after them a bit.
    6
  2480. He never thought he could take the whole of Ukraine. He just used it as a battlefield to destroy the Ukrainian army.
    6
  2481. Once again the BBC is showing itself as a Left-wng propaganda machine, not a public service broadcaster.Pathetic. It's time for it to die in shame.
    6
  2482. How is it a war crime? IF Russia did it it it was a sound enough military tactic.
    6
  2483. If Russia did it (which remains in doubt) it cannot be a war crime since it would serve a clear military purpose.
    6
  2484. It continues to astonish me how today's so-called socialists continue to support American imperialism. You really are the running dogs of capitalism!
    6
  2485. When the law protects criminals, the law must be ignored.
    6
  2486. What absolute piffle! The Russian army was a million and a half strong before the war and even if they have lost as many as a quarter of a million - which is very doubtful - there are still plenty left. As for artillery, war production is easily replacing losses. Your false optimism is very destructive in the long run, especially since such problems are far more acute in Ukraine.
    6
  2487. Why should Trump and his team feed the media's dishonesty with honest facts?
    6
  2488. Someone is blocking comments which contradict Sky's lies about the theatre "bombing."
    6
  2489. At last sanity returns. Time for the children to go back to the nursery.
    6
  2490. I'm afraid you're asking for your money back long, long after the expiry date. I am not responsible for the actions of my parents and grandparents. In any case my ancestors were up in the rigging of the slave ships and dying at much the same rate as the slaves in the holds. Either that or they were agricultural labourers living in conditions not dissimilar to those on sugar plantations. Just a few generations previously, under the feudal system, they would have been no different at all. It's time to put race behind us. Miscegenation not reparation is the answer, and it is one which will win through in the end. In the meantime let's stop harping on about the past and get on with trying to live together as human beings.
    6
  2491. Can't someone please buy Zelensky off? A few billion and his own show on cable TV should do it.
    5
  2492.  @JustSomeTommy  He's a politician. He lies.
    5
  2493.  @mazzaelili3713  Look up BlackRock and Vanguard. They own most of the world's media. They largely own Murdoch too.
    5
  2494. So has every news outlet in the world.
    5
  2495.  @jakeroper1096  Not at all. It was clear months ago that the SMO was designed to reduce the Ukrainian armed forces in order to be able to take all of Donbass and secure Crimea on a permanent basis That seems to be exactly what is happening now. Russia is extending its front line and Ukraine will have a very hard job halting the advance. Where it will stop remains to be seen, but once it does I anticipate Russia will dig in behind permanent fortifications and proceed to rebuild its new territory, as it is doing in Mariupol. It may not succeed, of course; but that has been the plan all along.
    5
  2496.  @Phil_vG  You are entirely right. It's around 50% for both shots.
    5
  2497. It's all lies.
    5
  2498. This is surely a sign that Ukraine has admitted defeat in the main theatre of operations, and is merely seeking a bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.
    5
  2499.  @Lotus78aze  These are political behaviours carried out by institutions/governments and come into a different category to individual acts.
    5
  2500. It ain't gonna happen.
    5
  2501. Britain is not at war with Russia, not is it in its pocket. It's the US which is pulling our strings.
    5
  2502. This act has no provision for criminal prosecution.
    5
  2503. A truly huge step forward in the eternal fight for freedom and justice. No longer is there any need for judicial process. Just threaten to burn down cities and murder jurors and victory is ours!
    5
  2504. According to the Germans in World War II ,fighting in Kursk was "like playing ping-pong on a football field". This is a pretty pointless exercise, and while the Ukrainians are likely to run rings around the Russians it is difficult to see what they will gain by it.
    5
  2505. The civilian deaths are incidental. These drones are a cheap way of destroying infrastructure. The panic they may cause is just a bonus. Russia has tried to keep civilian deaths to a minimum throughout this conflict.
    5
  2506. Who needs NATO anyway?
    5
  2507. Obama was always just a front man. Trump is his own man. Obama's glib self-assurance looks increasingly shallow the older he gets. The Dems virtual conference is a laughable mish-mash of cringeworthy ineptitudes and Obama's music-hall turn was just one of them.
    5
  2508. "It isn't the votes that count, it's who counts the votes that counts." J Stalin.
    5
  2509. You wouldn't think Michael Shoebridge is only 23 either, would you?
    5
  2510. Kai James You're better off with Sky Australia anyway.
    5
  2511. It's time to acknowledge reality, and allow Russia to regain its historical predominance in Donbass and Crimea. This dreadful war has been an act of Western greed disguised as philanthropy.
    5
  2512. Apart from all the people who get killed of course.
    5
  2513. It's all lies, you know.
    5
  2514. Fortunately the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Have large-scale gatherings resulted in increases in deaths and hospitalisations No. Will this one? No. It was a joy to see the 99% throwing off their shackles. While dour control-freak Lefties mourn the loss of this opportunity to restrict liberty, those of us who treasure freedom can get on with it. The disease has done its worst. Just look at the graphs. Just examine the statistics. Should the lives of healthy young people be ruined just to give the frail and elderly a few more months or weeks of life? No. Old farts like Ashton are the ones who are being selfish. If you are afraid of Covid lock yourself up somewhere. Take some hydroxychloroquine if you can get it. And shut up. Teacher, leave those kids alone.
    5
  2515. Playing fast and loose with absurd covid regulations is one thing. Being instrumental in starting a major war is another.
    5
  2516. This wasn't a debate. It was a bear garden with Trump as the bear and Harris and the "moderators" as the dogs yapping at his heels. A well-rehearsed stitch-up.
    5
  2517. Putin obviously told him to.
    5
  2518. Starmer take note.
    5
  2519. The perpetrator is clearly mentally ill- but we have to ask is his condition was not made worse by religious belief.
    5
  2520. So refreshing to know that the USA is prepared to fire up another war in a last ditch attempt to stop losing another one.
    5
  2521.  @kierano8390  Ukraine never had any nuclear weapons. It only had Soviet weapons stationed there.
    5
  2522. I know. Let's blame Trump.
    5
  2523.  @paulveenings6861  And to a hero's welcome.
    5
  2524. They will share the same cell in Fantasy Island Prison.
    5
  2525.  @JessicaIsabelah  Crimea was taken from the Ottomans by the Russians in 1783. There have never been many Ukrainians living there, and there aren't that many now.
    5
  2526.  @sallywilton2236  There's a railway line - and they won't get the bridge. And Russia is already there.
    5
  2527.  @sabi2557  Problem? What problem? The "problem" is purely the construct of intersectional Marxists who need an oppressed class for identity politics to work.
    5
  2528. @Heisenberg Neither UKIP nor the Conservative Party are racist. How can they be when they have a multiracial membership? As for the EDL that does seem to have a few chip on the shoulder types in its ranks but it's scarcely an institution is it?
    5
  2529. Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage are - like it or not - the voices of hundreds of thousands of angry British people. They do not fire this anger. They reflect it.
    5
  2530. He actually seems to be winning.
    5
  2531.  @afaultytoaster  Then why haven't they given Hamas the boot?
    5
  2532. GDP is an entirely artificial measure of a country's prominence and abilities - that's why.
    5
  2533. I accuse The Independent of racial stereotyping! Sheep are not uncommon in hotel bedrooms in Wales.
    5
  2534. Market opportunists thrive on uncertainty. This financial package has doled it out in spades.
    5
  2535. Napoleon was killed by his wallpaper. On his deathbed Oscar Wilde claimed that his wallpaper was killing him. Boris Johnson is not in their class, and his wallpaper won't kill him, but it should thankfully be instrumental in ridding us of him.
    5
  2536.  @stoufer2000  DON'T BE A BERK!
    5
  2537. No. You are.
    5
  2538. There has never been a cogent case for children wearing facemasks anyway. The statistics simply don't support it. And as a recent court case has shown it has never been legally enforceable.
    5
  2539. Literally in some cases I expect.
    5
  2540. Isn't everybody?
    5
  2541. You wish
    5
  2542. It's all just a lot of hot air.
    5
  2543. @John Hoyle All the deaths seem to have been accidental. The cop who shot the woman is claiming accidental discharge and no evidence has been found for the claim that the cop who died was beaten with a fire extinguisher. He actually went back to his office and texted his brother saying he was okay. Looks like he had a stroke shortly after. The other four were also accidents or natural causes. More people die at rock concerts.
    5
  2544. Lies are a weapon of war. The fact is that when under pressure and in fear of death most people behave badly. All these accusations are probably true at one time or another, and even when they are not they can easily be made to seem so. War throws morality out of the window. It is absurd for those of us on the sidelines to judge the actions of those engaged in war. War is not about right and wrong. It is about killing or being killed.
    5
  2545. An honourable retirement seems more likely.
    5
  2546.  @florite007  I sort of worked it out for myself, actually. Nothing I have said is untrue.
    5
  2547.  @jacqdanieles  It's true though. Look at former Yugoslavia. Lines on a map. Look at the various maps of Europe over the past hundred or two hundred etc years. Lines on a map - lines which get moved as circumstances change.
    5
  2548. There is essentially nothing wrong with Trussenomics, but she and her team attempted to rush the changes through too swiftly and without realising how entrenched against them national bureaucracies and the financial establishment are. Le Pen is on firmer ground and will hopefully be able to take the fight against globalism and population replacement to the next level. The collapse of the EU is very much on the cards , and a good thing too.
    5
  2549. This is what will happen in Bakhmut. It is what has happened in Crimea since 2014.
    5
  2550. The current numbers suggest that herd immunity can be reached within a matter of weeks - as long as we keep our nerve. Just so you know.
    5
  2551. I love the confusion and distaste of middle-class lefties when faced with the fact of Trump's genius.
    5
  2552. Prof Michie is, of course, a member of the Communist Party and a political activist, not to say agitator. Does this matter? I think it does. Her mindset obviously takes a delight in control and repression - far, far too much of which has already been in evidence in the handling of this disease.
    5
  2553.  @Ghandi12  The two-state "solution" will leave the situation unresolved and simply lead to continued madness - despite what some EU diplomat or anyone else says.
    5
  2554. When do we put a cordon around it and start digging graves?
    5
  2555.  @joshuacampbell1625  and the opposition is supported by America and the EU.
    5
  2556.  @slabbygabby  Crimea is Russian, with a predominantly Russian population. It was only attached to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 as a matter of administrative and logistical convenience.
    5
  2557. Welcome to COP26 - where energy oligarchs fix carbon futures prices while bamboozled plebs get further bamboozled by the BBC.
    5
  2558.  @brittcrona7802  From what? Protecting his country from Western aggression?
    5
  2559.  @tonydanis1480  Are those contributing officially to Covid 19 eradication doing such a great job though? It seems to me you only get on board if you follow the official line: enforce restrictions, wait for a vaccine, support expensive medications and dismiss all alternative treatments by using deliberately false data if needs be. Fail to follow these guidelines and you're out.
    5
  2560.  @tonydanis1480  Well, you do sound quite extraordinarily elitist if I may say so! "Outsider" indeed! He gains a following, I imagine, for the very reason that he provides a reasonably comprehensible interface with the esoteric realm you seem to inhabit. Lay people such as myself are frequently puzzled by the behaviour and doings of our betters and the arrival of Covid 19 and the way it is being dealt with are especial causes of bafflement. We all have our biases and I must confess I have up until now been somewhat disappointed in Dr Campbell but his reaction to the many mysteries surrounding the use or none use of hydroxychloroquine treatments match mine - so now I thoroughly approve of him. His background is in nurse training I believe, so a very lowly individual indeed. He may even have got his hands dirty from time to time and actually had to deal with real, living patients,; this obviously disqualifies him from pure research. He is however, obviously honest and decent and to quote the eminent and powerful Dr Fauci " has no horse in the race." Whether Dr Fauci himself actually does have a horse in the race or not is of course another matter.
    5
  2561. So now those whose vaccines have worn off can walk about, possibly asymptomatic and infectious. Is that it? Sounds like a good plan.
    5
  2562.  @Stephanie-bl8je  He said Biden was incompetent. Will that do?
    5
  2563. TYT now confirmed racist religious bigots. This is not the video of Dr Immanuel which Trump retweeted. It was one of her acting in her capacity asf a fully trained and experienced medical doctor. She also happens to be a pastor whose Christian beliefs were shaped in her home country of Nigeria. They may seem a little odd to many of us, but then I find it a bit peculiar that a Muslim doctor can actually believe that Mohammed ascended into the sky on a horse with a human head and took a slice off the moon with a magic sword.
    5
  2564. Pelosi seems to be suffering from some sort of paranoid condition, possibly as a result of guilt at the part she played in fixing the election, compounded by excessive drinking and prescription drug abuse.
    5
  2565. How about losing wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine?
    5
  2566.  @superhumantrueman  The obvious point that the SU defeat in Afghanistan hastened its decline - and that the US defeat there will do the same. As indeed will its present defeat in Ukraine.
    5
  2567. Can bots live in cesspools? Wouldn't they get rusty?
    5
  2568.  @xpusostomos  It takes two to tango, but Russia and Ukraine go back a long, long way. America, as ever, is just muscling in.
    5
  2569. Corpses and computers are deciding this election - not people.
    5
  2570.  @marilenaganea6578  And for its citizens, killed by Azov snipers as the queue for food and water.
    5
  2571. Purely incidentally Mariupol is now undergoing a major reconstruction after decades of neglect by Kiev.
    5
  2572. Who says so? And what is a "sovereign nation" anyway?
    5
  2573.  @davidmacdonald1695  It is dealing with it. Ukraine can join the EU - but not Donbass and Crimea which are integral to the security and economy of Russia.
    5
  2574. GB News is crap in many ways but Farage is brilliant. He is a far better journalist and interviewer than the hags and hacks on BBC and Sky. Last night we got an in depth view from one of Trump's generals outlining exactly how Biden screwed up in Afghanistan as well as a fascinating chat with Jacob Rees-Mogg over pints of the latter's own home-brewed cider. You would have loved it.
    5
  2575. But he didn't do it very well, did he?
    5
  2576. Why don't we set up labour exchanges in Albania and other countries where people are so keen to come here? There wouldn't even need to be a physical presence. It could all be done online, with applicants interviewed and granted pre-entry if they get the job. Better than crossing the channel in a dingy and taking pot luck.
    5
  2577. Germany hopes Russia will win. Which is really quite sensible. A negotiated peace is entirely possible and ought to be welcomed. Russia's demands are - and always have been -entirely reasonable.
    5
  2578. Shelling? Missiles? Sneaky saboteurs? At this stage there can be no firm conclusions.
    5
  2579. Already a done deal, I'm afraid.
    5
  2580.  @jamesjones7770  Name one lie.
    5
  2581. Fear of excessive immigration and Islamification doesn't have to be "orchestrated" . It's there. I find it quite insulting that so many on the Left regard the British white working class as being so idiotic that they can't think or do anything without being manipulated y "ringleaders." But modern-day Socialists are inevitably patronising, so I suppose it's only natural.
    5
  2582. What's up? For once I try to praise DDN and the comments have gone haywire. Honestly though although I generally find so, so much to disagree with here this lady is correct in everything she says -and she says it so very well. Socialism might even have a future with minds like hers at the forefront.
    5
  2583. This is madness. The pandemic is over.
    5
  2584. Militant feminists and BLM fight it out with the lockdown Gestapo? Pass the popcorn!
    5
  2585. Sanity slowly returns, inch by precious inch.
    5
  2586. Off to bed now. Time for your milk and biscuits.
    5
  2587. The Yanks have discovered pantomime - just in time for Christmas!
    5
  2588. Russian conscripts are forbidden to fight in the front line. These are all highly trained professional soldiers.
    5
  2589. For real laughs I prefer Times Radio, CNN and the BBC.
    5
  2590. Why, for stopping a needless war?
    5
  2591.  @TalkingDonkeyz  What's peaceful about marching down a private residential street street waving placards and bawling inane slogans?
    5
  2592. They are not fighting for their survival. They are fighting over resources.
    5
  2593. This is a fine act of defiance by a very brave man. His "terrorist act" was to refuse to allow the Gestapo access to his phone. You are on the wrong side of history.
    5
  2594. This was a clever if somewhat callous move - whoever did it.
    5
  2595. One cannot help but have sympathy for Times Radio when its two favourite bogeymen have either to be placed in opposition to one another, or proved to be in collusion. It must be enough to tie the editorial team's tiny brains in knots!
    5
  2596. Ultimately the press and the vaccine producers are largely owned by the same two finance companies, Black Rock and Vanguard. Go figure.
    5
  2597. Far from being a consolation prize, Donbass was all Putin ever wanted. The attacks on Kiev and elsewhere were classic feints, designed to weaken the enemy.
    5
  2598.  @iguiste23  And hungry dogs and crows don't eat them?
    5
  2599. All these warnings are of course very applicable to the BBC's coverage of not only the US elections but just about everything else.
    5
  2600.  @boink800  Remind us who was President at the time.
    5
  2601. I've just watched a video of two girls inside a flat where the police were breaking the door down. One of them had apparently said something improper on social media. My sole comfort at the sight of this dystopian nightmare in action was that both girls were laughing their heads off.
    5
  2602. He should have got to Armenia. From there you can catch a bus to Calais and then cross the channel to the UK for free food and hotel accommodation.
    5
  2603.  @marcopalazzo9349  I don' think the people of Ukraine find it all that amusing. And we might well not be laughing much before very long.
    5
  2604. Because Clacton isn't his workplace. And his job is to representing the views of the majority of the people of Clacton in Parliament and elsewhere, not to act as some kind of social worker.
    5
  2605. Sentimental support for Ukraine and irrational fear of Russian expansionism are the barriers to peace, as they always have been. This war has been about resources - not about morality. Ukraine is sitting on uncountable trillions of dollarsworth of rare earth minerals. Compared with this fact buzzwords like "sovereignty", "democracy" and "aggression" fall by the wayside. Russia has rights over many of these resources. Russian companies own much of them, especially in the eastern part of Ukraine. They have been invested in by Russians and worked largely by Russians. The insidious attempts by Western agencies to wrest them away are what has caused this dreadful, needless war. Trump and Putin are both eminently pragmatic men, each with their fair share of cunning. A deal is entirely possible which will be satisfactory to both of them, and which will bring peace. To this end, sentimental support for Ukraine must be put to one side, and fear of Russian expansionism given a great deal more rational consideration than has been the case until now.
    5
  2606. Crimea is Russian. Russia took it from the Ottomans who took it from the Tatars. Ukraine only enters into the picture after 1954 when Crimea was stapled on to it for purely administrative reasons.
    5
  2607. Why don't you just put everyone you don't agree with in prison?
    5
  2608. Dominic Cummings is way, way down in the pecking order. When I put on my tinfoil hat I see a virus which kills only the elderly and the unproductive, followed by a mandatory vaccine which ensures infertility in a selected proportion of the population. Great minds and great souls with vast wealth and resources are thus ensuring the future of mankind. We are indeed blessed.
    5
  2609. Five million cases and 83,000 deaths. That's a case to death ratio of a whole.00166%! Beats the UK's measly of.034% by a long chalk. Why that's almost five million people who have achieved immunity without waiting for Bill Gates' beastly vaccine.
    5
  2610. After this the Democrats will go the way of Labour -sent howling into the outer darkness, victims of their own conceit.
    5
  2611. It doesn't exist any longer.
    5
  2612. It strikes me that actors and other people granted artistic excellence are often very dim in other areas.
    5
  2613.  @bossa65  Says who? And why not?
    5
  2614. There was plenty of provocation.
    5
  2615.  @jom1727  Look at the Irish Republic compared with N. Ireland. Geographical proximity is totally irrelevant to death rates. You might as well compare Sweden with Bulgaria.
    5
  2616. What democracy?
    5
  2617. But why should Ukraine win? For what reason?
    5
  2618. The Ukrainians seem capable of shooting down more missile than were launched, which is especially impressive since Russia doesn't have any.
    5
  2619.  @bruce1437  No it wasn't. Fixing elections is trampling on democracy. Believing in left-wing fairy tales is gullibility.
    5
  2620.  @johnkitching2248  All of them. Otherwise it isn't genocide.
    5
  2621. Almost certainly the decrease has nothing to do with either vaccination or lockdowns. It is just a seasonal respiratory infection going through a normal pattern of behaviour
    5
  2622.  @peterthompson1462  The situation on the island of Ireland is weird. Northern Ireland, with less restrictions is doing much worse than the Republic - all except in the three Ulster counties which have similar infection and death rates to NI!
    5
  2623. He'd been turning over in it if he knew to what purposes it has been put.
    5
  2624. Who - Trump or Zelensky?
    5
  2625. ..and there's the cover-up for an ever greater medical scandal going on at this very moment.
    5
  2626. I think we know.
    5
  2627. So far sea levels aren't rising. ice-caps aren't melting and all temperature records prior to around 1970 have been dismissed as unreliable. Coronvirus clearly kills only the frail and the elderly or those subject to multiple re-infection. and the actual death and hospitalisation rate is minute. These seem to be observable facts. The conspiracy is the one which uses corrupt science to create a world of lies and to advance an agenda of globalisation and state control. And you can stick it where the sun don't shine.
    5
  2628.  @a5cent  What else is the war in Ukraine?
    5
  2629. ​ Karl Zaraiva  When an excess of caution and awareness leads to excessive behaviour, that is paranoia. The measures we are taking to beat this pandemic are creating more damage and causing more death and misery than the disease itself.
    5
  2630. Spooked? We should be.
    5
  2631.  @doccarter5283  You believe NASA when they have been fiddling their figures for years? They have a name for it - homogeneisation
    5
  2632.  @DavidGravesExists  'Киев'
    5
  2633. This is just another gesture - like all the other highly publicised but essentially insignificant support the US has been giving. The missiles are restricted to the Kursk front and all they can possibly do is to prop up this ill-conceived Ukraine adventure a little longer.
    5
  2634.  @fatdoi003  And higher in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Italy , Hungary etc etc. What's your point?
    5
  2635. Few people know that Zelensky was one of the first men on the moon.
    5
  2636. Dark?! A blinding ray of light more like.
    5
  2637. The odds of Boris having Covid 19 are about the same as the odds that Biden didn't cheat in the US election.
    5
  2638. As a deal, no. But as a tactic it does a good job.
    5
  2639. What for? Keep a war going that should never have started?
    5
  2640. I have a wonderful vision of US President Barron Trump meeting with UK Prime Minister Sir Stephen Yaxley-Lennon to discuss the future of the NATO- Russia Trade Alliance in the light of Australia's application to join.
    5
  2641.  @ryanread8617  Plenty of dams have broken without having to be blown up. This one has suffered repeated artillery fire and at least two direct missile hits. Enough to cause a crack or two I think.
    5
  2642. Am I alone in finding it hard to believe that Australasia's almost total escape from the pandemic is actually entirely due to lockdowns and border closures? It could be so, but other possibilities ought to be investigated - including the chance that earlier covid infections of a minor nature may have allowed immunity to build up. This idea is certainly being advanced in the case of some SE Asia countries, as well as Japan and even parts of the US.
    5
  2643.  @talesofcanterbury42  We can't talk science since my view on the matter would be immediately censored. Excess deaths in many countries are now running at up to 20% and even more some weeks. The reluctance to investigate this phenomenon leads one to suppose that the reason will reflect very badly on the authorities - and might even cause widespread panic.
    5
  2644.  @a.barker7792  The liberated areas of Eastern Ukraine are already being extensively rebuilt. Paid for by Russia.
    5
  2645.  @Baltasarmk  They why do only some countries apply them? doesn't sound very international to me.
    5
  2646. Quite the reverse.
    5
  2647.  @Notrusbot  Sour grapes are on the menu.
    5
  2648. Interesting choice of words. The "pale" was originally the fortifications set up outside English enclaves in Ireland. "Beyond the pale" meant you were a Paddy bogtrotter, not a member of the ruling, imperial class. The Tories are very much inside the pale. You are beyond it
    5
  2649. Just 31 people died at Chernobyl and a possible 200 or less as a result of radiation poisoning over the following few years.
    5
  2650. We become more like robots and ants and this is GOOD???!! Welcome to the world Oh Ye Mighty and despair!!
    5
  2651. Compared with this man's role in encouraging the war in Ukraine, these are minor sins. He has stopped being a fool and become a danger. However it is done, he must be prevented from ever holding high office ever again.
    5
  2652. If Putin wants Moldova its only as part of his strategy in Ukraine, not for anything it has to offer in itself.
    5
  2653. Yet again the plot backfires.
    5
  2654. It's just got to be Jim Jordan. He and his supporters can hopefully hold the fort until - hopefully - Donald Trump regains the Presidency in 2024.
    5
  2655. Any reasonable person condemns these riots. The point though is that we cannot simply dismiss the rage which caused them, not should we make the mistake of assuming they were somehow engineered by sinister outside forces. They are a crude expression of genuine discontent and the reasons for that discontent should be addressed.
    5
  2656. Stylish. One up for Russia.
    5
  2657. The fact that this inane comment continues to gain so many likes fills me with something close to despair.
    5
  2658. Russian forces have been using motorbikes ever since the start of the conflict. They are manouverable in difficult terrain and many carry relatively heavy armaments, capable of taking out tanks and drones.
    5
  2659. The only alternative - and an unlikely one - is for the Palestinians to totally reject Hamas and to accept the fact of the continued existence of the state of Israel.
    5
  2660.  @chefdave3275  What you know about history could be written on a grain of rice with a sharpie.
    5
  2661.  @chefdave3275  I am in the minority - at the moment. But the pro-Ukrainian hysteria is wearing off and more and more people will come to realise that we have been conned into war fever by cynical opportunists.
    5
  2662.  @davidhowse884  The Russian Federation tried several times to join NATO, but was rebuffed. It has no interest in joining the EU. The Maidan revolution was the result of America meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs, including the deposition of its elected Premier and his replacement with an American puppet. Russia retook Crimea and supported the separatist rebels in Donbass as a direct result of Western efforts to hive off the substantial resources of these areas, which have large Russian populations and which have been developed by Russia and Russians for centuries. Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent the new Ukrainian army (paid for with billions of US and NATO dollars) from invading Donbass and Crimea, which are Russian by right of history.
    5
  2663.  @johnkitching2248  ..and many don't vote at all.
    5
  2664. Trump's attitude on abortion is decent and honourable. If foolish and immoral feminists choose to make it an issue then that's just too bad.
    5
  2665. This organisation has outlived its purpose and usefulness.
    5
  2666. ReeeeeEEEEEeeeee!
    5
  2667. Why will Ukraine not accept Russia's very reasonable terms and bring an end to this tragedy altogether?
    5
  2668. Does anyone still believe that any of the lockdown restrictions served any real purpose?
    5
  2669. Glad to see the Mail continuing its long tradition of support for Fascism.
    5
  2670.  @nom_chompsky  How so? All Hamas has to do is surrender and give up its weapons and it's over.
    5
  2671. This is going to turn out very, very strange....
    5
  2672. If they're still alive and functioning.
    5
  2673. ..and welcome to World War III
    5
  2674. On the contrary. It might just save us.
    5
  2675. This is what happens with democracy. It's a new concept to Ukraine, but they'd better get used to it.
    5
  2676. Out with the old - in with the new! I love it!
    5
  2677.  @rogercude1459  I am rather.
    5
  2678.  @dexterx9862  What communist state would that be?
    5
  2679. I've noticed a curious lack of serious and fatal incomes in countries where malaria is endemic, notably in Africa and around the Mekong river network in SE Asia Is there any chance that a resistance to malaria could imply a resistance to Covid 19?
    5
  2680. Yes please! Can I have my carbon footprint allocated on a smartphone app so that every time I want to exceed it I have to buy a certificate to do so?
    5
  2681. This is just a sales pitch. Storm Shadow will make damn all difference.
    5
  2682. It's about 100 times more expensive than hydroxychloroquine though.
    5
  2683. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Ukraine has regularly been shelling purely civilian targets in Donbass for eight years.
    5
  2684.  Maree Kars  So many "educated" people confuse their education with intelligence. It's nothing of the sort. It's just about learning to do as you're told.
    5
  2685. @ He is a pragmatist and a very good communicator. The latter is very important since Trump faces the difficult task of convincing the American public that the military strategies it has followed for decades are dangerous and immoral and have to be replaced.
    5
  2686.  @lani6647  Christianity, like most religions, is riddled with hypocrisy.
    5
  2687.  @julianshepherd2038  That's called being a child.
    5
  2688.  @atomiccritter6492  I have worked in the NHS and know this to be the case. If death is inevitable and pain is managed then it is preferable for people to be allowed to die in their own homes. It is less impersonal, more dignified and of course frees a bed.
    5
  2689. Great to see the climate change con running out of steam.
    5
  2690.  @gordonstrong5232  Why not? It isn't a signatory of the ICC. It isn't officially at war with Russia.
    5
  2691. Actually, it is doubtful he could lose.
    5
  2692.  @georgedorn1022  Fascism is Sooooo last century!
    5
  2693. Nu sounds like "nude" in French or "new" in English and Xi is a common name in China and is of course the surname of their present Glorious Leader.
    5
  2694. It's so wonderful that the comments section on this channel is so full of people with sophisticated political acumen such as yours.
    5
  2695. Paul Downie They don't see anything. They're just doing what their left-wing loony teachers tell them.
    5
  2696.  @whoisme678  A a 75-year old Englishman the chances of Mr Putin calling upon me to aid him in his efforts are slim. Even if these figures you quote so confidently are accurate - which is very doubtful - the number of men tragically lost in this needles war is entirely sustainable. The dreadful things predicted for Russia seem to be more or less water off a duck's back, as far as I can see.
    5
  2697. Possession of this wealth is what this war has been about from the very start. Russia now has the best part of it, but there are one or two deposits in Western Ukraine which could be worth a couple of trillion.
    5
  2698. No. That would be people who think they are a great deal more intelligent and moral than they actually are.
    5
  2699.  @ascgazz  I thought it a rather specific request.
    5
  2700. I smell Reform.
    5
  2701. She has evidence. You are not permitted to see it.
    5
  2702.  @Andrew-ob5ij  The judges are not permitted to view it either. This is why all cases have been dismissed "for lack of evidence."
    5
  2703.  @paulybeefs8588  There are many hours of evidence presented to state senate committees available on the Internet, plus sites which collate many thousands of areas of concern.
    5
  2704. Just how is the invasion "floundering"? It's been a long, hard haul but Russia is now within an inch of achieving all its military objectives. Escalation can only come if the West allows Ukraine to attack Russia, in which case the whole shape of this war will alter dramatically.
    5
  2705. No. It's Russia and only temporarily part of Ukraine between 1991 and 2014.
    5
  2706. Yes! Have a senile child molester in the pocket of Marxist thugs and corrupt big business! A President you can be proud of while your country slides into anarchy and ruin!
    5
  2707. The lack of naturally immune people in Australia is going to mean that Omicron will hit relatively hard. Even so it is likely that only the very elderly and the very ill will die.
    5
  2708. And Russia has launched missile attacks on key targets in Kiev as a response.
    5
  2709. Western support for Ukraine is now mainly restricted to making meaningless gestures.
    5
  2710. No he didn't. That's just another of the myths you've been fed.
    5
  2711.  @Omega0850  On the contrary, Russia considered to be a world leader in developing new nuclear technology. It also provides attractive finance packages to customers.
    5
  2712. How about suppressed rage?
    5
  2713. Very few people who are not wearing masks now will put them on again. Believe me.
    5
  2714. Well, the investment isn't paying off, what else is there to do?
    5
  2715. I've had this idea before, and it's been shot down in flames. Your turn now. Why don't we compete with the people smugglers on the Internet and offer UK jobs to would-be immigrants? They could be interviewed on line, and if they get the job be allowed immediate entry.
    5
  2716. Doesn't seem to be working that well so far, does it though?
    5
  2717. Waah! That nasty Mr Trump set me up! Waaaah!
    5
  2718. As an - I hope - impartial observer of the US political scene I have to say that there seems to be an increasing edge of desperation to all these attempts to discredit Trump. As a Brit I now have a new Americanism in my vocabulary: the Nothingburger. With chips.
    5
  2719. America and Russia will be responsible for peace in Europe - or lack of it.
    5
  2720. You must be mad.
    5
  2721. Paranoiac.
    5
  2722. It's the same as capital punishment. Can we trust the authorities to catch the right guy?
    5
  2723. Fascist
    5
  2724. Running out of insults BBC? Is "highly choreographed" now the best you can do? He got in a helicopter. He got out of a helicopter. He saluted, took off his stupid mask and spoke sound common sense. Not exactly Lohengrin was it?
    5
  2725. Have you any idea what he's actually being tried for?
    5
  2726. It's not his guts that'll be spilled though, it it?
    5
  2727. @Firedread I can't really envision an exact parallel. Orban is reinforcing a moral position and attempting to prevent subversion via the Trojan horse of the imagined "rights" of sexual deviants. If he felt his country to be threatened by an influx of black people then he would certainly have the right to take steps to prevent it.
    5
  2728.  @iandawe948  What misery? In any case the situations are entirely different. The Tories failings were the result of sloppiness and incompetence. The hell that is about to be unleashed on us comes as the result of deliberate deceit, and is entirely intentional.
    5
  2729. Putin has just given a speech to Russian industrialists in which he cited an old Russian proverb which is something along the lines of: "Be careful digging a hole to trap a bear, you may fall in it yourself."
    5
  2730. Ukraine was warned to expect this if they accepted arms from the US. And there's plenty more where that came from.
    5
  2731. It is an age of nations, not of empires. Which is why the EU is so dangerous and why Trump wants the US to draw in its horns and concentrate on trade, not conquest.
    5
  2732. How do you think Ukrainians feel about Zelensky then?
    5
  2733. @ But what when the law is manipulated for political purposes, as in this case? And why are TR's sentences so severe in relation to the crime? Make no mistake. This is lawfare, not justice.
    5
  2734. Or a sensible, caring human being.
    5
  2735. Time to stop feeding the pokie. Ukraine isn't going to pay out a jackpot.
    5
  2736. And thousands died in Germany as American bombs rained on them. In both cases civilians had approved and supported a vicious regime, bent on the destruction of another race. The same one, as it happens
    5
  2737.  @theyoutubeguy1  fortunately for your case there are videos of him carrying the gun and actually throwing it behind the fence a split second before he was shot.
    5
  2738. Ukraine has certainly been bad news for the arms industry. Cheap drones and ancient tanks have proved themselves far more effective than the over-engineered and hideously expensive armaments this war was supposed to showcase.
    5
  2739. That opposition will only continue so long as a financial advantage is seen. That financial advantage is diminishing, as is reflected in the lessening of practical support. A compromise is on the cards, and one which will see Russia extending its boundaries to include territories with which it has strong historical and economic links.
    5
  2740. I don't think this was racist at all. As I understand it what he was saying was that he dislikes Diane Abbott so much that it was putting him in danger of disliking ALL black women. That's just a joke and implies very strongly that he is NOT a racist, and doesn't want to be turned into one by his dislike of this woman.
    5
  2741. Bloody amazing race, the Romans.
    5
  2742. Paranoia is a great moneyspinner. Look at the Covid "pandemic". Look at the "climate crisis". Now the big bad Russian bogeyman is providing entrepreneurs with yet another excuse to channel taxpayers' money into their own pockets.
    5
  2743. Judging on past performance you might as well go to a gypsy fortune teller as listen to the "scientists" in SAGE.
    5
  2744. And welcome the zombie puppet.
    5
  2745. The news media is as corrupt as the Democrat party. And that's saying something.
    5
  2746.  @davecross4493  Well Campbell is only a hack who has never let the truth interfere with what he says or writes. He started off in journalism by making up obscene letters in girlie mags and his career has gone downhill since then.
    5
  2747. This is so silly. I hardly have words enough to express how silly this is.
    5
  2748. That's more of a metaphor for people who continue to suffer from TDS. Be comforted. Relief will soon be available, though the medicine might be hard to swallow.
    5
  2749. "We all know herd immunity cannot exist"??? Of course it can - and it will arrive within weeks. The difficulty arises, I think, because people confuse herd immunity with the elimination of a disease. Herd immunity simply means that the disease becomes manageable, because the routes of infection are reduced to such an extent that outbreaks become rare and easily contained.
    5
  2750. America is sick.
    5
  2751. Trump faces the challenge of making what will be a victory for Russia look like a victory for Ukraine. Shouldn't be too hard.
    5
  2752. Why don't they just pack it in? Donbass and Crimea are easily as much Russian as they are Ukrainian - if not considerably more so.
    5
  2753. I hate to be picky, but does it mention funds given to BLM or to ensure the elections of mayors and DA's in US cities where these officials have encouraged violent BLM and Antifa riots, and where these officials have freed rioters caught burning and looting? I only ask because I'd like to know.
    5
  2754. Why does Ukraine have to win?
    5
  2755. Every healthy person in the UK under the age of 65 has the moral duty to kiss, cuddle caress and sneeze over as many other healthy people as possible. The old and the sick should stock up on food and stay well out of the way. Hydroxychloriquine should be made freely available to all Within a month this nonsense would be over.
    5
  2756.  @cheeksakimbo6591  I suggest it is you who needs to improve your education. Swallowing propaganda wholesale does not mean an understanding of political realities.
    5
  2757.  @keyboarddancers7751  More likely Rittenhouse-related. Kenosha's only an hour or so's drive away.
    5
  2758.  @superhumantrueman  The suggestions were, in fact, entirely credible. Fr all we know some of them may eventually turn out to be true.
    5
  2759. He spoke the truth. Convincingly. He has more moral fibre than the array of scumbag reporters he faced put together.
    5
  2760. I had a neighbour once with a dog of the same name. I always thought it was a good job we lived in the country when he called it in for its dinner.
    5
  2761. Unprovoked? I don't think so.
    5
  2762. Or an enquiring mind.
    5
  2763.  @GlasgowCelticBhoy  Climate change is predominately driven by the sun. Atmospheric carbon acts as a thermostat regulating the amount of heat reflected from the earth's surface which is reflected back down again, or which passes into space. Man-made climate change is a scam by means of which millions are made trading in permissions to exceed limits, such as those which will be decided in Glasgow in six months time.
    5
  2764. Absolutely! But the drug companies will do everything in their power to stop it and they've got the money and the clout to do so.
    5
  2765. Has anyone noticed the remarkable similarities between the covid con and that much larger and longer-lasting scam - man-made global warming?
    5
  2766. The unspeakable greed and stupidity of America in provoking and continuing this dreadful war must not be ignored.
    5
  2767. The idea that Putin even wants the whole of Ukraine -let alone parts of Europe - is patently absurd. The Soviet |Union collapsed because it was over-extended and badly run. Why would Putin wish to return to that position, even if he had the military capability of doing so? No. All he wants are the mineral-rich areas of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine which were mistakenly handed over to the newly-created and somewhat artificial country which was formed in 1991. But this doesn't suit Western warmongers whose careers and incomes depend upon the existence of a Russian threat to justify their drum-beating antagonism.
    5
  2768.  @_FsEk  The science is confused and contradictory, however. A lengthy study published by the Lancet at the start of the pandemic concluded that lockdowns were fairly useless, and a recent peer-reviewed study from Stanford University has come to much the same conclusion. No study has yet proved their efficacy.
    5
  2769. Not only Russia. Ukraine has been bombarding Mariupol too.
    5
  2770. Why is the UK siding with Ukraine? Aren't we sick of being US lapdogs? This is all just a plot by the demented loons in bonkers Biden's military hierarchy. Don't forget the Biden family's financial links with corrupt Ukraine politicians either. Compared to these people Putin is a saint. Why should he allow his country to be surrounded and intimidated by potential enemies?
    5
  2771.  @perkinscrane  These constant comparisons between the situation in Ukraine today and that in Europe in the 1930's are becoming increasingly ridiculous. Putin is not Hitler and has no plans for world domination. He saw how those ambitions helped destroy the Soviet Union.
    5
  2772. Ukraine has no chance of regaining Crimea.
    5
  2773. Trump is just so great when he doesn't feel obliged to be polite. This whole speech was stand-up comedy gold!
    5
  2774. If it is Trump's "whim" that the war should end then perhaps it should be granted.
    5
  2775. In fact many of these people ARE Russian, they don't just speak it.
    5
  2776. It's enough to make you weep.
    5
  2777. Fat chance.
    5
  2778. Is turning the other cheek really an option for Israel at this point? Hamas is ultimately responsible for this suffering - both Israeli and Arab.
    5
  2779. Here's a question: if Putin does decide to nuke a target in Ukraine - Kiev, say - does anyone REALLY think that NATO is going risk all-our nuclear war by responding in kind?
    5
  2780.  @chibuo4733  Systemic racism, like the patriarchy, white privilege et etc do NOT exist. They are intellectual constructs deliberately created to brainwash the foolish and the unwary into becoming cannon fodder for a Marxist revolution. BLM is a Marxist terror group which deliberately encourages violence under the cover of "peaceful protest". What are the demands? What legislation do they wish to be introduced? None. Riot. Defund the police. Destroy democracy and capitalism. That's the agenda and they need fools like you to stand on the front line.
    5
  2781. Then the world banking system collapses and Russia comes out laughing.
    5
  2782. At least it's not going to take long to see how much bollocks he's talking this time, is it?
    5
  2783. Is this some sort of parallel universe? Bannon has not been arrested; he has been indicted for very reasonably declining to take part in the latest desperate anti-Trump witch hunt - which will be even more of a dismal failure than the others have been. When are the Democrats going to grow up and start behaving like proper politicians instead of demented schoolkids?
    5
  2784. What's the difference between a weapon and a bargaining tool, precisely?
    5
  2785. Yes. How dare he.
    5
  2786. And what's wrong with that?
    5
  2787. The EDL no longer exists.
    5
  2788.  @matthiasbauer3822  These are all questions that are going to be answered in the coming weeks. If British Intelligence is listening to the Americans its the same people who said it would take the Taliban two months to get to Kabul, don't forget. Among other things.
    5
  2789.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  Incorrect. His war aims are to take and secure all of Donbass. This is now very nearly achieved.
    5
  2790. An alliance between Reform and the Tories is now very much on the cards - or at least a major re-alignment of the soft right. The political future of Britain very much depends on how the present government performs. If, as anticipated, it screws up big time, then Labour might be the next party to lose money and seek new friends.
    5
  2791.  @DanFromMerdo  Most countries could claim bits of other countries if you go back far enough. In this case though the history is far more recent. Ukraine was made a country by a flawed treaty.
    5
  2792. There is far more media hype in favour of the man-made climate change hypothesis than there is against it.
    5
  2793.  @bluecanary9417  Russia invaded Ukraine in response to American provocation.
    5
  2794. Bubble syndrome.
    5
  2795.  @John_13_35  Out of their depth?
    5
  2796. This is extremely good news:immunity for thousands of people with no increase in deaths and only a handful of hospitalisations. Omicron Mk II is doing what was expected from vaccines.
    5
  2797. Considering how much lies and misinformation is spread by organisations such as the BBC it is hardly surprising that people are forced to draw their own conclusions. Congresswoman Greene merely expresses the profound doubts so many people have about the narratives they are supposed to accept as unarguable truths.
    5
  2798. They're not looking too hard.
    5
  2799. Is he planning a re-invasion then?
    5
  2800. Can you tell me how much Russia has expanded during the 20 year of Putin's rule?
    5
  2801.  @scottyd3138  Mariupol is a Russian-speaking, largely Russian city, founded by Russians who took it over from the Turks. It is situated in a former Russian province which became a Soviet Socialist Republic, subordinate to Russia. It suffered extreme neglect following its inclusion in the pretend country of Ukraine in 1991.
    5
  2802. He was stitched up, same as General Flynn. They were both being blackmailed by the FBI into testifying against Trump in the totally false Russiagate scam, Flynn succumbed because they threatened to jail his son. Stone held out and lied and wriggled, just as any decent man would when being interrogated by enemies of the state. Even the witness he was supposed to have interfered with supported him. Sound like you would do well in a police state, James.
    5
  2803. I gather the couple have spent the last thirty years restoring it. No wonder they are a little protective.
    5
  2804. More like Tony Blair.
    5
  2805.  @Vzzdak  The military conflicts in which the Russian Federation has been involved have not been undertaken to expand westwards - or in any direction for that matter. They have purely been to secure its existing borders and to protect its existing interests. The invasion of Ukraine very much enters into this category. NATO countries, by contrast, have been involved in far more military adventures, most of which can clearly be seen to be motivated by the desire to expand America's imperial ambitions. Here is a list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Philippines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine Apart from being obvious that NATO needs an enemy in order to justify its existence, the fact that the Russian Federation has tried on a number of occasions to join and been curtly refused does rather tend to emphasise the point.
    5
  2806. Less is more. Masks don't work, lockdowns don't work and if too high a proportion of the population is injected with inefficient and short-lived vaccines then fewer people attain natural immunity - which is, and always has been, the only way out of this mess.
    5
  2807. It's what you get for claiming moral superiority!
    5
  2808. Why should she? It would imply this was serious, rather than the shameful farce that it is
    5
  2809. The BBC has already been caught out working hand in hand with extremist organisations such as Hope Not Hate. It is clear that it is hopelessly infected with the cancer of neo-Marxist globalism. It is using our own money to destroy us. It should be shut down immediately while a full public enquiry is carried out.
    5
  2810. Considered the dubious nature of some of the photographic evidence I daresay the FBI will be having second thoughts.
    5
  2811. I'm sure Farage has left the domestic affairs of the constituency in safe hands.
    5
  2812. Why not? Like motorbikes and golf carts by VERY unlike multi-million dollar US tanks and troop carriers, donkeys don't get stuck in the mud. We laughed at the Vietcong using bicycles, and look what happened there!
    5
  2813.  @ismailyahaia3312  Are you talking about Zelensky?
    5
  2814. Because Ukraine doesn't deserve it.
    5
  2815.  @quickie17  I don't know about not resisting. His autopsy showed he had taken both fentanyl and crystal meth and the guy in the convenience store who called the cops said he was "not acting right." The police apparently say he had to be taken out of the car because he was thrashing about so much, and there is some independent confirmation of this. He shouldn't have died. All the same it's a total stretch to say he was deliberately killed, much less that it was a race crime.
    5
  2816. But surely the Americans are only allowing these missiles to be used in Kursk at this stage?
    5
  2817. Heis getting ready to bomb Ukraine into dust. This is their last chance.
    5
  2818. The mental convolutions on display here are quite alarming. I fear Sean Bell's head is going to explode if this war goes on much longer.
    5
  2819. Hardly an end to his career. You can't put a good man down.
    5
  2820.  @ryanthompson1981  Without the EU there would be no war in Ukraine.
    5
  2821. They are members.
    5
  2822. All so clearly organised well in advance and waiting for an "incident" to trigger it off. Dark forces at work.
    5
  2823. Mug.
    5
  2824.  @itsknotmagic  A bit!
    5
  2825. No shame in being realistic.
    5
  2826. Another nail in the coffin of free speech. Katy is often OTT but she has the right to be heard.
    5
  2827. Easier said than done.
    5
  2828.  @dexocon2658  The point is that this is a war between the US and Russia being fought on Ukrainian soil.
    5
  2829. So he's going against God's will, is he? The idea that we can do anything about climate change is utterly ludicrous. All we can do is hope that the warmer world that is coming will be bearable, as indeed it was 500 and 1,000 years ago.
    5
  2830. Stand by Australia and NZ. There is evidence that this type of coronavirus loves Spring weather, spreading like wildfire at temperatures between 14c and 18c. You have no herd immunity.The vicious lockdowns could well turn out to be further examples of those good intentions with which the road to hell is so adequately paved.
    5
  2831. Get woke - go broke.
    5
  2832. At least Russia will actually be getting the President most of them want - not like in America.
    5
  2833.  @zarni66  The mines and factories of Eastern Ukraine largely belong to Russian companies and have been developed by Russian capital and Russian labour for generations. Why should they be sold off to foreigners by a corrupt government in Kiev?
    5
  2834. No wonder they're losing.
    5
  2835. This is the final deranged act of a lifelong warmonger. Biden has made the war between NATO and Russia official, without doing anything which will have any great effect on the outcome of the present conflict.
    5
  2836.  @kevinmolloy9134  And its only a ten hour drive there and back.
    5
  2837. What a contrast to the situation in Mariupol where the Ukrainians forced people to stay to act as human shields.
    5
  2838. It's called "land art" - a movement begun by a guy called Robert Smithson back in the late 1960's. There are intriguing things like this in various desert locations, especially in Utah. The most famous example is called "spiral jetty" - which sticks out into a salt lake not too far from this piece, I think.
    5
  2839.  @nijadbahnam9859  If you are going to repeat facile propaganda, at least learn how to spell.
    5
  2840.  @michaelslator64  What a pathetic response. I have just as much chance of catching covid from a fully vaccinated person whose jab has worn off and who is wandering the world blithely and asymptomatically infecting everyone in sight. Vaccinated or not, I have every chance of ending up in hospital. There are more people of my age range in ICU's and in morgues who have been vaccinated than otherwise. And I am NOT an anti-vaxxer. My point is that other potential solutions have been deliberately cast aside and obscured so that Big Pharma can make billions. Vaccines are of a limited value, but some cost-benefit analyses cast doubts even on this. Your seat belt analogy is too stupid to even merit a response.
    5
  2841.  @michaelslator64  The moment I become convinced I'm talking to an adult I might consider it.
    5
  2842. Labour should take heed. Obsessing with sexual identity, race and other woke nonsense detracts from the essential function of anti-Conservative parties - namely protecting the interest of the increasingly disenfranchised British working class.
    5
  2843. Similar demographics, just on a smaller scale.
    5
  2844.  @123Andersonev  Which can easily be ignored.
    5
  2845.  @lukefreeman828  I merely meant to point out that compared with the puppets of organised crime who have preceded him, the perhaps slightly dodgy property developer Donald Trump is close to being a saint. As well as one the best presidents the US has had. If Covid hadn't wrong-footed him we would be heading for another four years of peace and prosperity right now.
    5
  2846. The PM of Ukraine is also a stand-up comedian and serial liar. Boris should feel at home.
    5
  2847. @Monkey God The problem is Marxist strategy is geared towards provoking an over-reaction. They control the media and educational institutions, either directly or by proxy. Trump and other conservative leaders need to avoid going in heavy-handed. It would be playing into their hands.
    5
  2848. @Fred Bloggs Of cource it is. There, there now. Go back to sleep.
    5
  2849. What is really significant here is that cheap drones are proving to be far more effective than hideously expensive guided missiles - with quite alarming consequences for the arms industry. Which has got to be a good thing.
    5
  2850.  @hansb7020  Good money after bad.
    5
  2851. @ Russia is only using a fraction of its capability at the moment. There has been no carpet-bombing in civilian areas and I suspect that its armoury of drones and missiles is more varied and more extensive than we have been led to believe. This has certainly appeared to be the case throughout the war when "Russia is running out of missiles" stories have invariably proved to be unfounded.
    5
  2852. The simple answer of course is that you are mistaken in believing that Brexiteers are "white supremacist Islamophobes."
    5
  2853. No pensioners qualify for the winter fuel payment. Only those below pension age in receipt of pension credit do so.
    5
  2854. "What a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive." - Robbie Burns
    5
  2855.  @wom_Bat  No. They'll be nice and warm.
    5
  2856. Good job this bloke is retired.
    5
  2857. It looks like an old video to me. The Internet is full of videos claiming to show tanks arriving for Ukraine which end up being nothing of the kind. This seems to be the only channel covering this.
    5
  2858.  @dpelpal  These figures are as nonsensical as the claim that Russia thought it could take Kiev in three days. And nobody in their right mind laughs at the Russian army.
    5
  2859.  @maciek_k.cichon  I have to disagree. He has outfaced Western aggression. If he had simply sat back and allowed NATO into Ukraine, and allowed US and European interests to take over the country's mineral wealth then his country, and his reputation, would have suffered a major setback. Russia will win in Ukraine - it's just a question of time now.
    5
  2860. Just after we ruined ourselves solving another problem you mean?
    5
  2861. Simple to a simpleton.
    5
  2862. Suicidal insanity about covers it.
    5
  2863. Not doing so well on the ground where it really counts though.
    5
  2864. Looking at damage to a hundred yards or so if one carriageway of an 11-mile long bridge it's hard to believe this is going to have any great effect on Russia's long-term strategy.
    5
  2865.  @andrewoliver8930  What is there to apologise for? The guy is being railroaded by race grifters.
    5
  2866. Good for him!
    5
  2867. Where do these figures come from? According to the WHO there were 19 deaths recorded in the UK yesterday where the deceased had tested positive for Covid 19 in the previous four weeks. Nineteen, NOT 70.
    5
  2868. It's not just conservatives, surely? Newsom's California faces similar problems, as do many regions in the world which have thrown aside age-old solutions to the wildfire problem.
    5
  2869.  @paulwilson7234  It rather depends on how you would prefer to see the future of your country, doesn't it?
    5
  2870. The more cases there are the better, since this leads to herd immunity. As long as hospitalisations and deaths remain relatively low then this is clearly the strategy to follow.
    5
  2871. So he's both anti-Semitic and anti- Muslim? That's unusual. Thank you anyway for this interesting and informative biography of a man who seems to be very wise in the ways of the world and a most positive addition to the American political and cultural scene.
    5
  2872.  @jim2376  Of the 60 billion, 13.4 billion stays in the US to replace munitions already sent to Ukraine, 7.3 billion is earmarked for the use of current US operations in Ukraine,13.9billion is to be spent on procuring new advanced armaments (will take months if not years) and 13.7 billion will consist partly of cash and partly of existing weaponry to be shipped over. I imagine this is the 13 billion being referred to here.
    5
  2873.  @joe-dirt697  We SAY we all will, but when the shit hits the fan, what guarantees are there that these promises will be kept?
    5
  2874. The "security" of Ukraine isn't uppermost in Trump's mind. Peace and prosperity for America is - and that means doing deals with Russia.
    5
  2875. Do you propose starting World War III to settle the matter?
    5
  2876. My heartiest congratulations. Unless I missed it you managed to do this piece WITHOUT ONCE MENTIONING CLIMATE CHANGE. Perhaps there's hope for the BBC after all.
    5
  2877. Boris never mentioned "bankers" the lefty Independent is just playing with words. He's talking about entrepreneurs and businessmen who have to fight hard to raise capital.
    5
  2878.  @Mikados_Advark12  Apart from full employment and economic stability.
    5
  2879. When were these records begun? These forests have been burning and regenerating and burning again for at least fifty thousand years. God, how I hate the BBC.
    5
  2880.  @rachel9508  Donald Trump fought in the trenches of World War 1, was thoroughly traumatised, has a psychotic hatred of Jews, found his country crippled after losing the biggest war the world had seen, rebuilt it, murdered all the Jews and started a war with Russia he could never hope to win. Oh no. Hang on a minute. That was the other guy.
    5
  2881. The supermarkets in Russia are fuller than in the US. Plenty of vloggers to prove it. Go to Anna in Russia for one.
    5
  2882. If those pesky Ukrainians would stop trying to shoot the missiles down it would help.
    5
  2883. Well no, the gun was not illegal. And even if it had been it would still have been self defence.
    5
  2884. I doubt there is any organisation in America which could investigate this objectively. The inquiry needs to be done from the outside.
    5
  2885. So nature is sexist as well as racist? Who'd have thought?
    5
  2886.  @mrjerzheel  It's a fort.
    5
  2887. How Labour has gone downhill!
    5
  2888.  @jurbroek8117  And when will Ukraine be in a position to sustain such casualties? Retaking Donbass must surely come first - and that won't be easy either.
    5
  2889.  @hugo8500  Seriously. Subway networks in Russia are clean and totally devoid of crime. There are no beggars either. It simply wouldn't be allowed.
    5
  2890.  @emm_arr  These tiny differences between modern Tories and modern Socialists are a mere distraction. Believe me - it doesn't matter a damn if Labour or Conservatives get in. The same sad, old grind will continue.
    5
  2891. Ah! Repression and control. So dear to the socialist heart. What a wonderful opportunity this little bug has given them!
    5
  2892.  @olyb3693  Testosterone, lack of.
    5
  2893. Not because he understand the need to cheat and lie in order to make profits then?
    5
  2894.  @runnyhunny786  She won on style because the whole thing was fixed. But I agree she didn't win on content.
    5
  2895. An army to fight off what, exactly?
    5
  2896. Russia in 2024 bears no resemblance to S Africa under apartheid.
    5
  2897. There are very few Ukrainians in Mariupol - even fewer now Russia has taken over.
    5
  2898. This is about betrayal. But who did the betraying?
    5
  2899. @ Whole books have been written, including Bad Pharma by English doctor Ben Goldacre.
    5
  2900. Who remembers the RAF bombing hospitals and refugee columns in former Yugoslavia back in 1999? Let he who is without sin......
    5
  2901. What for?
    5
  2902. Easy for you to say!
    5
  2903.  @valentinakuleshova5978  No. I find it very disheartening that anyone who questions the official Western line is accused of being a paid Russian agent. I am British and my concern is that Western countries have been drawn into what is basically a turf war between two sets of gangsters - and furthermore that this forced involvement is resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and worldwide economic chaos.
    5
  2904. The situation is very clear, Western leaders have become trapped by their own rhetoric and are now afraid that some of their own people will have to be killed instead of just Ukrainians.
    5
  2905. These petty acts of meanness directed against ordinary people look even worse when compared with the obscene sums of money given to Ukraine, and to feed, house and entertain illegal immigrants.
    5
  2906. Ukraine had a multi-billion dollar army supplied by NATO - which is mainly why it was attacked to get rid of it.
    5
  2907. The formula is a simple one: increase fear, increase targets, carbon bonds shoot up in value and those in the know pocket millions.
    5
  2908. You are becoming increasingly paranoid, Professor. Which is a shame, because you are clearly a decent person. I am not a Russian troll, though often being accused of being one simply because I can fully understand Russia's position in this conflict. Whether others who roughly share my opinions are "Russian trolls" or not, I cannot say. But I tend to doubt it. In this particular instance, to be confused about Ukraine's sudden invasion of Russian territory and being unable to see any immediate strategic advantage in it is entirely understandable. It looks very much like a last-ditch effort to obtain some fragile advantage before - at last - getting to the conference table. The only alternative is that Ukraine has vastly superior resources available than has been thought, and than Russia actually is on its last legs. Otherwise we are just looking at further needless bloodshed.
    5
  2909.  @Kromaatikse  They can be useful as backup, but to rely on them exclusively would be near suicidal.
    5
  2910. This going to rebound on Zelensky big time.
    5
  2911. Because it isn't?
    5
  2912.  @stoufer2000  Here's another one Stouf. Breathe on a mirror and watch it fog up. Then put on a facemask - or two or three if you like -then breath on the mirror again and then watch it fog up. That's aerosols on there - which cause at least 60% of covid infections.
    5
  2913. What a pair of shysters! You can't help admiring them even though one of them has brought his country to the verge of Armageddon. Boris has just been rather naughty.
    5
  2914.  @simonharris4873  It's a word which has far too pejorative a meaning for the feelings of people who may well have nothing whatsoever against individuals or groups of individuals of a different race, but who do not wish to see their own race overwhelmed. Tommy Robinson is a good example. He is not a racist. He has many black and brown friends and even black relatives, in terms of a couple of nieces, I believe. What he and a great many people from working class communities resent is the failure of some of these newcomers to integrate into their society, and indeed to appear to be positively hostile towards it. So "racist" just won't do, I'm afraid.
    5
  2915.  @CameronLoadman  I don't think I'm surer than anyone else. But I do know that Trump isn't a warmonger and that the path to peace in Ukraine is, and always has been, quite easy to see. The Middle East position is much more difficult. Long term peace can only arrive when Islamic fundamentalism is crushed and that can only happen with considerable loss of life - unless the ordinary people of Palestine can be persuaded somehow to rid themselves of the fanatics who hide behind them.
    5
  2916. Worth remembering that compared with Lloyd George's personal life and financial career, Donald Trump is Boy Scout.
    5
  2917. So you REALLY think Ukraine is winning?
    5
  2918. Trump and Putin are both great leaders and men of pragmatic common sense. Between them they should be able to create a new era of peace and prosperity.
    5
  2919. For International Law read US Law.
    5
  2920. The reputation of the US legal system is likely to come off worse than Trump's.
    5
  2921.  @DNCpoliticalprisoner  I'm British and we have this thing called "panto" which is like corny musical theatre. I think Trump Impeachments could become the US answer - a much anticipated seasonal entertainment!
    5
  2922.  @DNCpoliticalprisoner  Latest news: Biden has accused Trump in failing in his duty as President by not impeaching himself on a regular basis, contrary to the wishes of the American people.
    5
  2923. What NK prisoners? They're Russians from the Mongolian border.
    5
  2924. Where is this important judicial body? When do misdemeanours become felonies?
    5
  2925. I need to know how many of these new cases are severe or life-threatening. Otherwise we could be creating chaos over a few coughs and sniffles.
    5
  2926. You've got to make a gesture. Like giving your cousin socks for Christmas.
    5
  2927.  @davecooper3238  I'm talking about trying to divert blame. It wasn't the knife that killed those children, it was the man who held it. How he got hold of the knife is utterly irrelevant. It's why he was apparently allowed to walk the streets that is important.
    5
  2928.  @jimmyhughes5392  In all fairness this is due to the fact that most who die are very elderly and, sadly, beyond all help. The biggest problem comes from vaccinating young, healthy people who would otherwise gain permanent immunity via infection.
    5
  2929. He ought to. It has done more harm than good in recent years.
    5
  2930. As ever you persist in the assumption that the SMO was designed for conquest. It was not. It was designed to destroy as much of Ukraine's army as possible. The success or failure of this operation will be determined this winter when Russia resumes its attack. Its objective will, again, not be to conquer the whole of Ukraine but simply those areas in the south-east where Russia has a commercial interest, and to so subdue the Ukrainians to such a degree that they will be forced to acknowledge Russian ownership of these territories.
    5
  2931.  @colinmurphy525  A moot point. They could only be fired by Moscow though. The Ukrainian authorities had neither the permission nor the means to do so.
    5
  2932. Yet another Rent-a-General! Where are you getting them all from?
    5
  2933. This does seem to be one of the few American elections which can't be fixed!
    5
  2934. I am amazed that Gen Hodges is still on speaking terms with Putin, let alone such a close friend that Mr Putin has told him what his objectives actually were.
    5
  2935. Nigeria, with a population of around 200 million, has experienced just 883 Covid 19- related deaths. Uganda, with a population of around 43 million has had just FOUR. Malaria is endemic in both these countries and hydroxychloroquine is widely used as a prophylactic. People take it in mild doses to ensure that malaria symptoms are kept to a minimum. Other countries where hydroxychloroquine is used in this manner have also recorded such staggeringly low figures. Just sayin'.
    5
  2936. Or gold. It has vast reserves, both in vaults and still underground.
    5
  2937. Your thumbnail of Trump always shows him with his bandage on the wrong ear. Why does Times Radio get EVERYTHING wrong?
    5
  2938.  @deadly-roblox3101  Studies have shown that not only do children not suffer so badly or die, they also infect others far more rarely. A study some months ago demonstrated that shutting down schools may well increase infection rates because having children in the wider community actually increases the number of social interactions. Nothing is ever as simple as it first sight seems.
    5
  2939.  @shennnai  Not to any statistically significant degree. There have been around 20 deaths of children under 16 who tested positive, all seemingly with severe pre-existing conditions.
    5
  2940. ROHIT GOGOL Climate change is real but it is the result of age-old cyclic patterns in the solar system. CO2 has nothing to do with it. Atmospheric pollution is a totally separate issue. Climate change has, however, become a political issue because it is being used as a bogeyman for purposes of financial and political manipulation.
    5
  2941. It amazes and depresses me that people like you can be so damned conceited.
    5
  2942.  @JOHN-wm2on  Serious criminal reform would be a better idea - such as not hiding guns under the front seat of your car - which this guy certainly did on a previous occasion.
    5
  2943. The Russians haven't gone yet.
    5
  2944. Because he has no wish to do so.
    5
  2945.  @It1nt  Sorry, but I really can't see this. Those missiles are damned expensive and if Russia really wanted to terrorise civilians they would blitz them killing thousands - not just the odd handful here and there.
    5
  2946.  Jack Richardson  How do you know the planet is warming rapidly? All temperature records prior to the 1970's have been judged to be inaccurate, since they indicate periods when temperatures were higher than today's, even though atmospheric carbon levels were lower. The "Greenhouse Effect" is just a sill catch-phrase for an enormously complex series of phenomena which remain little understood, despite glib assertions to the contrary.
    5
  2947. They didn't.
    5
  2948. These myths are wearing pretty thin by now.
    5
  2949. Simon Colbeck Are we living on the same planet? I don't read the Sun or the Mail and when I watch the BBC it seems so riddled with LEFT-WING bias that I find myself in support of the RIGHT-WINGERS calling for the licence fee to be abolished. UKIP called for this because of BBC bias. The right-wing populist channels I watch call for its abolition for this very reason. What has the BBC done to upset all you guys?
    5
  2950. A pair of sunglasses and a spliff would really set him off.
    5
  2951.  @crystalwebster2005  That's just what some of them said to encourage the troops. Nobody in the right mind believed it.
    5
  2952. This will get the same brush-off as hydroxychloroquine , although the fact that it is much more expensive might save it from oblivion. (Hydroxychloroquine about $40 US for 100 doses. Ivermectin about the same for just one dose.)
    5
  2953. They're looking for volunteers. Got a tin hat and a gun?
    5
  2954.  4.7 million lndians choked to death on covid  You would have lost them anyway. Now, in order to have given these mostly elderly or obese people perhaps a few more weeks of life, thousands upon thousands of younger people will die because other pathogens have been kept in check by covid restrictions.
    5
  2955. ColinsEagleEyeView So far though my views seem to coincide very much with yours. Something tells me that an enforcer for the Mullahs and a major figure in Middle Eastern terrorism wasn't going to be Mr Nice Guy. The world is well rid of him. I just hope that the US has its strategy worked out for dealing with the aftermath. A cyberwar and surgical strikes seem the likeliest outcome at this stage.. Whether or not a regime change will result remains to be seen.
    5
  2956.  @joshuabetts2484  Questionable to those with underlying conditions which cause TDS to infect their brains more readily. Trump's position in this, as in most things, is entirely credible and rational.
    5
  2957. Welcome to fantasy island.
    5
  2958.  @boink800  Come on! You have to admit that this is looking just a teeny, teeny bit bad for the Ukraine cause.
    5
  2959. It puzzles me why these bodies have not been torn apart by ravening dogs, rats etc.
    5
  2960.  @kurtwicklund8901  But it is. Cope.
    5
  2961. All is fair in love and war.
    5
  2962. Do you honestly think that foreign agencies have to read about Starmer's movements in the news??!! Some of them probably know where he's going before he does.
    5
  2963. Do you really think NATO would risk nuclear annihilation just for the sake of silly old Ukraine?
    5
  2964. That's a shame . It is a perpetual source of amusement.
    5
  2965.  @MrMartinSchou  Of which there are plenty. All in fact. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
    5
  2966. When?
    5
  2967. He's technically guilty, and he knows it. He's made two basic journalistic mistakes in a country where the press is very constrained by the law. But that doesn't mean he's guilty of anything else.
    5
  2968. Russia's quarrel with Ukraine has got Western leaders losing their minds -and none more so than Macron who once seemed conciliatory towards Russia and dubious about NATO. Russia presents no threat whatsoever to Europe that I can see. The very fact that we have to pretend that Putin is Hitler and that 2024 is like 1939 in order to justify this paranoia seems to indicate that the fears are artificial - and that there are other motives behind these distasteful displays of jingoism.
    5
  2969. How sad to see The Telegraph descend to such crude propaganda.
    5
  2970.  @meganutz93  I really can't see Russia redeploying forces from the Donetsk front to deal with this though. (Not a bot, by the way.)
    5
  2971. There's every chance that neither country will be in existence by then - so not much point?
    5
  2972. ...and the shops are full and the streets are safe.
    5
  2973. Simple decision? Simple-minded, more like.
    5
  2974.  @deborahfreedman333  Occupation is the equivalent of annexation, and America's interference in the affairs of other nations is far, far greater than that of the Russian Federation. The idea that the US is always on the side of "freedom" is laughable. The US is on the side of the US. To Washington wars are a business opportunity, no more. How many dictators have the US installed and supported in the pursuit of profit? But back to annexation: how did the US acquire the states of Texas and Hawaii?
    5
  2975.  Corvus Glaive  What law in Virginia allows you to refuse to obey a reasonable police instruction? Just asking.
    5
  2976. This is untrue. Read the Reform constitution. Members - and they are members - have full voting rights on policy issues and in any leadership contests, and can also call for a vote of no confidence in the leader if more than 50% agree. Reform is registered political party which also happens to be a limited company, but one limited by membership, not shareholder.
    5
  2977. This is a great decision. Let us hope that it brings an end to the dangerous and disgraceful abuses of the judicial system for political ends which the Democratic Party has sunk to in recent months.
    5
  2978. Misinformation is simply other people disagreeing with you. Don't you get that?
    5
  2979. Sky's definition of a "conspiracy theory" is anything that doesn't fit their globalist narrative.
    5
  2980. A degree of genetic immunity due to exposure to historic pandemics which did not reach Europe must be a factor in Asia's performance, I think. Also it is very odd that in Africa the countries where malaria is endemic have had among the lowest death rates in the world. The mistake we will make the next time around is the same one we made this time: to have a "plan" in place which does not recognise the unique nature of each pandemic.
    4
  2981. Do you want brown sauce or red sauce with that?
    4
  2982. And they will get ignored, and criminals will make big bucks out of finding their way around them.
    4
  2983. Beach Life Matters
    4
  2984. If he hadn't invaded Ukraine, Ukraine would have invaded Donbass.
    4
  2985. Totally blinkered and illogical approach.
    4
  2986. Wot?
    4
  2987. This dreadful old crook is probably more responsible than anyone for the war in Ukraine.
    4
  2988. We are all much closer to acts of evil than we dare even to think.
    4
  2989. Social media aside, Donald Trump is alive and well and living rent-free in left-wing news channels in the USA. From CNN to the looniest libtard YouTuber not a day passes without him looming large. Anyone would think he was still President.
    4
  2990. I worry about those who are conned by it.
    4
  2991.  @184Kitkat  The playground was hit either by falling debris or a Ukrainian missile gone astray.
    4
  2992. Russia is not the aggressor, America and its allies are. The war is based upon a series of moral falsehoods. It has nothing to do with a brave little country fighting off an evil foe, it is about disputes over borders and resources, as most wars usually are. To Russia, this is a war of liberation. Eastern Ukraine was tragically and mistakenly appended on to the new country of Ukraine in 1991, simply because it was part of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, and then only because it suited Russia in terms of logistics and administration to have it so. The Kiev government has not only attempted to suppress the very large Russian populations in the area, but has responded to American pressure and inducements to sign away the vast mineral wealth of the area - mineral wealth which has been exploited with Russian labour and Russian investment for centuries. Peaceful solutions have been rejected by Ukraine, one suspects entirely at NATO's behest, and thus Putin has been forced to go to war.
    4
  2993. What would the West do if, say, Putin carried out a symbolic nuclear strike on some well-chosen target? Would we go in guns blazing or - meekly, sensibly and probably - accept an invitation to the conference table?
    4
  2994. I still don't know why we have to support one gang of oligarchs against another gang of oligarchs. Must be money it somewhere.
    4
  2995. @@joeyjoejoe9575Is he the one with his country in ruins? I don't think so.
    4
  2996. So it's OK for laws designed to save lives at sea to be abused in order to facilitate illegal immigration is it?
    4
  2997. I expect Labour wants the job themselves.
    4
  2998. But the Maoris lost. Live with it,
    4
  2999. No, because they aren't wrong. You , on the other hand, are revealing your inner fascist by suggesting prison sentences for people whose opinions you disagree with.
    4
  3000. An insane paranoid rant - but fun. Get real kid.
    4
  3001.  @yvonnetomenga5726  Tata. Are you always this patronising, by the way?
    4
  3002. I saw the headline and thought he was talking about Ukraine! He might have been right in that case, but no, the silly old bat is as barmy as ever.
    4
  3003. Russia is advancing Westwards. Everything seems to be going to plan.
    4
  3004. How do you get fear of paranoia? Sounds serious.
    4
  3005. Johnson's role in what happens or does not happen in the Ukraine is negligible.
    4
  3006.  @AM-fs1je  AS a matter of historical fact, and certainly oddity, Owens and witnesses said that Hitler waved at him in greeting and the crowds roared enthusiastically. He also sent him a signed photograph. Owens said that Hitler didn't snub him - but President Roosevelt did because unlike other winners he was never invited to the White House.
    4
  3007.  @wowJhil  Why? If Ukraine agrees not to join NATO and grants Donbass independence the war will be over in an instant -unless of course Putin decides he's been pushed too far.
    4
  3008. Yes, but what's the death rate? And why is the BBC giving credence to the Chinese Communist backed WHO?
    4
  3009. Any idea who the guys wrapped up in white wearing top=grade US body armour and carrying US automatic weapons are? They're ex Afghan army, waiting for their beards to grow.
    4
  3010.  @mazzaelili3713  I don't think the measures make much difference in the long run. They might slow things down but covid always breaks through in the end. Only total isolation of every individual can prevent this, and that is impossible to achieve.
    4
  3011.  @caballoloco100  This is exactly what happens to anyone who has been subject to a lifetime of brainwashing by Marxist schoolteachers and a biased left-wing media. I despair for you.
    4
  3012. The only "threat" Britain is under is one created by our absurd and misguided interference in the war between Ukraine and Russia. This suggestion is the mad suggestion by Mr Mad of Mad City. Where do you get these people??!!!
    4
  3013. Efforts which have dramatically failed and many of which have made the situation worse.
    4
  3014.  @fishgreed8098  If you watch the entire press conference you will see what he said was a direct response to some rather confusing things said before.
    4
  3015.  Daughter of Enoch  Never heard of him.
    4
  3016.  Daughter of Enoch  Is that all you're worth? Love your handle by the way.
    4
  3017. This does seem somewhat optimistic. So far the Ukrainians appear to have lost an awful lot of troops and equipment to capture a few barn and a soggy field or two. The Russians don't seem too bothered either. Still, you never know things might pick up soon.
    4
  3018. Simon Daya Cheer up. Soon be Christmas.
    4
  3019. I doubt it.
    4
  3020. His strategy is working. And that's what counts.
    4
  3021. Probably he will.
    4
  3022. I'm a Soylebrity. Get Me Out of Here.
    4
  3023. Just who's desperate here?
    4
  3024. So far he has been.
    4
  3025. Forget the felon thing. His "crimes" were mere misdemeanours.
    4
  3026. The existing figures have been so efficiently faked that it should be easy enough to conceal a new wave -if there actually is one.
    4
  3027. What parts were they exactly? Do tell.
    4
  3028. It wins though.
    4
  3029.  @nudisco7882  World War I when Germany was so reduced by trench warfare that it ran out of credit. Ukraine is heading the same way.
    4
  3030.  @johnkitching2248  As are we all.
    4
  3031.  @dpelpal  You seem to know an awful lot about US oil prices for a Russian refugee living in Samaria.
    4
  3032. Further proof that the measures taken to contain covid have caused more overall damage than the disease itself. We must not make the same mistakes again.
    4
  3033. What a charade. The Dems know what many of us only suspect. They cheated - and now they're making a silly fuss to cover up their guilt.
    4
  3034. How do make that out? It's getting what it wants.
    4
  3035.  @joedoe783  He is becoming increasingly Orwellian.
    4
  3036.  @churly9717  There is actually a website called Hereis the Evidence containing several thousand items. You can make of it what you will.
    4
  3037.  @JOEFABULOUS.  Lockdowns? Compulsory vaccination? Have another laugh.
    4
  3038. They were effectively disenfranchised anyway.
    4
  3039.  @ethancoster1324  Because the EU wanted to take it over - with dire effects on the Russian economy.
    4
  3040. Jones is only saying out loud what a great many left-wing loonies feel in their hearts. This is just one stage further along the road to totalitarianism as the constant calls for Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson and everyone else they disagree with to be sent to prison.
    4
  3041. The Dems have brought this upon themselves by trying to weaponize the judicial system.
    4
  3042. Personally I think NATO would chicken out if he did. Worse still, I think he probably thinks so too.
    4
  3043.  @michaeldunham3385  The advances are far from minor and are verifiable - which the casualty figures are not.
    4
  3044.  @revidual  Russia never there. It was the Soviet Union.
    4
  3045. No .Because he's incompetent.
    4
  3046. Ukraine brought this on itself.
    4
  3047.  @MikeR-pq8qe  In your deluded mind.
    4
  3048. Most animals would have no life at all of we didn't eat them. They exist to be eaten. Our only duty is to ensure that they are kept as happy as possible when alive and slaughtered painlessly.
    4
  3049.  @annoyedaussie3942  It's odd how US statistics differ from statistics available in more civilised parts of the world, where public health is not seen as a glorious opportunity to make money. In England at least half of cases occur among the vaccinated. In the US it is alleged to be between 1% and 5%. The total number of cases of double infections in the UK is around 50, and the second bouts were very mild. The chances of dying or even suffering from long covid in healthy young people is minimal. They then go onto help provide a cordon of immunity around the vulnerable. If this strategy had pursued from the start the pandemic would be over by now.
    4
  3050. The war could end tomorrow - and indeed would not have begun - if certain geopolitical realities were recognised. China is aware of these realities, and for the sake of peace we can only hope it can convince the West of them.
    4
  3051. As with most wars, the result will depend upon which side runs out of men and equipment first. Ukraine's forces are spread very thinly while Russia, despite all predictions, is resupplying on all fronts. By the time the patriot missiles arrive and are up and running it could all be over.
    4
  3052. Is Kolomoisky really on his way out, or is this a cosmetic exercise?
    4
  3053. @errorswillmultiply1697 You do me a disservice. I am genuinely keen to learn other people's point of view. I only go into troll mode when face with some particular idiocy.
    4
  3054.  @jenniferreynolds1398  I still don't get your reference though. Both Ukraine and Russia fell to the oligarchs after the breakdown of the SU and Donbass was hit pretty badly. As far as I'm aware it was relatively prosperous before then. Rightly or wrongly, many ethnic Russians both there and in Crimea feel they have been badly treated by Kiev, which is one of the root causes of the present troubles.
    4
  3055. Housing and feeding immigrants and weapons for Ukraine.
    4
  3056. He appears insane. Was he on meds? Did he take them?
    4
  3057. Some understanding of the actual situation would also help.
    4
  3058. No.
    4
  3059. The attack on the Kerch bridge and the referendum results in the four provinces mean that Russia is now defending itself against an aggressor and can ramp up its response accordingly. I would imagine Belarus will move in soon to divert Ukrainian troops from the south. The blitzkrieg will continue in the hope that the Ukrainians will dump Zelensky and agree to peace talks. At the end of the day there is a fair chance that Crimea will be recognised as Russian and Donbass either the same or as an independent republic. Which is all Putin ever wanted.
    4
  3060. Because the expansion of the EU into Ukraine would lead to a vast loss of revenue for Russia. Russia cannot be expected to take that lying down.
    4
  3061. Hi! How's the weather in Washington today? How's Reggie?
    4
  3062.  @dpelpal  SSO? That's Special Services Organisation in Massachusetts Avenue, right?
    4
  3063. The "pretender" is the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who is in her seventies and lives in Spain. She is on record as welcoming the annexation of Crimea and Donbass by Putin and declines to criticise his invasion of Ukraine.
    4
  3064. By what measure is information provided by Russia likely to be less accurate than that provided by America?
    4
  3065. I love Greta. My parrot died because of Climate Change but I'm getting another one soon. I intend to name it Greta. Indigenous people deserve our love and respect.They should be rewarded financially for all they have suffered due to oil. Bernie 2020 Yaaay!
    4
  3066.  @teniente_snafu  There have been several treaties, none of which have worked. The latest in 2014 was ignored by Ukraine while NATO trained and paid for a new army. Defeating this army on the ground is what this war is primarily about.
    4
  3067.  @williamdew7143  Is it? What's wrong with hatred anyway? I hate lots of things, some of them people. Why shouldn't I?
    4
  3068.  @alanmarr3323  I once had a gardener who used to sit in the potting shed raving on in a similar manner. I had to sack him.
    4
  3069. Not much of a swap for Laurence Fox.
    4
  3070. He might get away with it. Drinking wine at work is not illegal and as far as we can tell there were no actual laws governing how closely together work colleagues should be. The covid regulations were pointless, ridiculous and unworkable and this proves it.
    4
  3071. In what way was Trump authoritarian? Just curious.
    4
  3072. Name one lie.
    4
  3073. Warmongering rhetoric from NATO parasites who need the Russian bogeyman to keep their careers and profits.
    4
  3074.  @superhumantrueman  Very true. But so what?
    4
  3075.  @boink800  Fighting or dead. They weren't actual Syrians, but Russians who had fought in the war in Syria.
    4
  3076.  @Viktor-gk5ri  All I'm saying is that even if this claim was made it can only have been to encourage the troops. Putin must have known it to be nonsense. His whole conduct of the war points to it being designed to sap enemy strength, not to conquer.
    4
  3077. Zelensky must go.
    4
  3078. I think you are making the common mistake of putting the decisions of war through a moral filter. There come a point when it stops being about right and wrong, and becomes about winning or losing. By giving Ukraine the go-ahead to use Western weapons to strike inside Russia we have tempted Russia into stepping up its game. The fact is that, despite propaganda to the contrary, Russia is only using a part of its military capability at the moment. If it goes all out not only will Ukraine suffer but so will other countries - and our leaders know this.
    4
  3079.  @treehugger8846  I don't know how anyone can possibly know this but there are supposed to be 1 and 23 noughts stars in the observable universe and approximately three times that number of coronavirus in circulation. What can be said is that your puny trillions guess is laughably inadequate since every patient is liable to exude tens of millions of viruses over the course of their illness. And I'm far, far more scared of the general idiocy surrounding this disease than I am of the disease itself, believe you me.
    4
  3080. This is just delusional. This much-vaunted aid will go the same way as the other "gamechangers" and be swallowed by the Russian advance. It's Game Over. Time to quit before even more lives are needlessly lost.
    4
  3081.  @kellychuba  It's not their fault. It must be hard for these commentators to face reality.
    4
  3082.  @redflag4781  Most people in your echo chamber, perhaps. To most of the rest of us the Union Flag flies high above flags of Palestine, Ukraine and the Alphabet People.
    4
  3083.  @rocksmo3384  Not at all. The Ukrainian army has been decimated. Hy else would they be training civilians?
    4
  3084.  @thegreatdane3627  They seem to be settling on a line largely on the Eastern edge of the Dnieper flood plain, and beginning to fortify it., ready for winter. The western sections of the annexed regions remain in Ukrainian hands it is true. But Russia controls much of the coastline and the main industrial areas. I think the Ukrainians will have great difficulty dislodging them.
    4
  3085.  @Bork_Cruk  They have.
    4
  3086.  @fredfredrickson5436  I don't know. I find it hard enough to identify the nature of problems. Coming up with solutions is something that doesn't sit that well with me. I suppose I would have to say national sovereignty seems the best way to combat globalism, or at least counteract its worst excesses. Small units of government, independent but interacting with each other as reasonably as possible is as good a way of conducting human affairs as any, it seems to me. As to imperialist expansion the time for that has probably come to an end, at least in the old meaning of the term. Today's empires are going to be financial rather than territorial, and achieved through manipulation rather than direct conquest. Soros is building his using reflexivity and bribery, and the Chinese are building theirs by buying real estate and infiltrating institutions like the UN. Competition without regulation is often dangerous, but it is difficult to see who will police the brave new world.
    4
  3087. I think you're lying. No-one could be as foolish as to believe what you have just written.
    4
  3088. Name me a lie.
    4
  3089. Pretty well, in fact,
    4
  3090. The right decision. I could explain why but the BBC or YouTube won't let me.
    4
  3091. Thankyou once again Times Radio! You have confirmed my instinctive feeling that the Russians will retain their bases in Syria under the new regime.
    4
  3092.  @steelmongoose4956  Follow the money, I guess.
    4
  3093. So bloody what?
    4
  3094. Looking ahead a bit,isn't she?
    4
  3095.  @paul8161  Russians actually own a considerable portion of Ukraine's resources, having mined them, invested in them and used Russian labour to work them for decades, if not centuries. It is the prospect of having these resources taken away from them and sold off to Western companies which is the main reason for this war.
    4
  3096. What's this Spring thing? The new Russian offensive has already started.
    4
  3097. Not according to gun experts who have recreated the incident. Astonishingly the tissue expands for a split second as the bullet passes through and then closes up, leaving just a small hole.
    4
  3098. I wonder what the result would be if Trump was allowed to conduct his own approval ratings survey, as Zelensky did his?
    4
  3099. Fun to see these two crooks forming a mutual admiration society. Poroshenko is in a different class to Johnson, however. The Ukrainian "chocolate king" invaded the eastern part of his country, causing many civilians to be tortured and murdered. He also banned the export of coal - and then bought it all up on the sly and sold it for a vast personal profit - pretending it came from Mexico. Our former PM has much to learn from this entrepreneurial genius.
    4
  3100. Which is exactly what Ukraine did after Minsk 2.
    4
  3101. Exactly as was the case with the nukes in Ukraine they can only be fired by Moscow. Rather than worrying about them being turned on Russia this very sensible precaution is to prevent Belarus firing them anywhere which Russia might consider inappropriate.
    4
  3102. What do you mean "volunteer army"? America and its NATO allies have spent untold billions on creating a highly professional, well-armed fighting force in Ukraine.
    4
  3103. Has it crossed your mind that Russia, like any sensible criminal enterprise, has two sets of books?
    4
  3104. No need to turn the screws on Keir. He screws himself practically every time he speaks.
    4
  3105. The NHS is not at breaking point. Covid 19 is no worse than many of the seasonal influenzas it has replaced. It is shameful that this illness is being used as a political weapon. The reality is that thousands of babies and young children in third world countries are dying of malnutrition due to worldwide economic downturn created by lockdown policies. In the UK the largest single group of people to die are those aged 90 and above. Less than 1,000 under the age of 45 have done so. Check the ONS website if you don't believe me. Teachers who refuse to teach children on the offchance that they will catch Covid are cowards. So are the health workers whose absenteeism is largely responsible for whatever pressures the NHS currently faces. Neither group is especially vulnerable . Proportionately, bus drivers and taxi drivers are more at risk of death or serious outcomes.
    4
  3106. Joe is a wonderful advertisement for the US pharmaceutical industry. He should let us know what he's on so we can all have some.
    4
  3107. I can't think how they're going to be taken away - or who by.
    4
  3108.  Tom Frost  Do you think there's any similarity at all between the mayor reading out those addresses and having several hundred gibbering BLM loonies on you front lawn? Incidentally if this had happened and the police force had been disbanded I'm sure the householder would have had no hesitation in opening fire. And he would have had every moral right to do so.
    4
  3109. This mysterious force is due to cows farting, as must be obvious to any true vegan.
    4
  3110. The conversation is pointless. Britain did what people did back in the day and was damned good at it. The descendants of those we conquered should be grateful that they have had a decent education and can think for themselves . Without Britain they would still be eating one another and throwing widows on bonfires.
    4
  3111. This will be a great step forward for freedom of speech if it happens.
    4
  3112. Russia doesn't care what anyone thinks. Why should it?
    4
  3113. These rules are so utterly insane and ill thought out they are not even worth considering. Ignore them all .
    4
  3114. This is merely thinly-disguised ant-Trump propaganda from the mad lefty BBC. South Korea had the SARS experience as a blueprint. Also,when this is all over there is a very good chance that very few of the measures taken will have had any impact anyway. Trump has done a good a job as anyone in attempting to limit the pandemic. These smartarse graphics ignore many factors and are both manipulative and ultimately meaningless.
    4
  3115. A healthy young woman in the UK has more chance of being murdered than dying from covid. And if this unfortunate victim had been black, and the mourners likewise. Sadiq Khan´s Gestapo would never have dared to behave in this fashion.
    4
  3116. The fate of two drug-crazed criminals can in no way justify these riots. The Democrats and the MSM (including the BBC) are acting totally irresponsibly in encouraging this anarchy. Shame and curses be heaped upon them.
    4
  3117. So the crooks who send them out in overcrowded boats bear no responsibility?
    4
  3118.  @johnjeanb  The Nazis weren't very keen on the mentally deficient either. So be careful.
    4
  3119. Putin has also offered new peace terms, which are more demanding than those he offered before the war began. Perhaps Ukraine should take up this Christian offer of a ceasefire in order to reflect upon their position.
    4
  3120.  @T5Zplayer  American expansionism is at the root of all major world conflicts - including the war in Ukraine.
    4
  3121.  @T5Zplayer  How many of the conflicts in the world have resulted from American expansionism?
    4
  3122.  @dpelpal  But the Russians didn't particularly want Kherson and Kharkiv. And what do they have to do with getting these tanks etc running ,transported and suppled with trained crews anyway?
    4
  3123.  @Fishstycz  Maybe you need reminding that Ukraine was setting itself up as a US missile base.
    4
  3124. As most MPs will admit ( if not openly) constituency surgeries are a complete waste of time.
    4
  3125. Russia seems to be winning if you look at a map.
    4
  3126. But he has reacted. He is stepping up air attacks on Kiev since it is entirely possible that the Zelensky regime has colluded with Isis to perpetrate this atrocity.
    4
  3127.  @jethrobradley7850  A few square miles of forest, swamps and potato fields. Potentially useful as bargaining chip in peace negotiations, but not much else.
    4
  3128.  @ivareskesner2019  No.
    4
  3129. Why, after the Soviet Union collapsed due to over-extension, would the Russian Federation wish to repeat the same mistake?
    4
  3130. Being America's girlfriend isn't working out too well for Ukraine, is it?
    4
  3131. Revenge is sweet.
    4
  3132. Jealousy will get you nowhere.
    4
  3133. For a minute there I thought Old Joe was going to sniff his hair.
    4
  3134. Will the regimented left be able to distinguish between "recommended" and "legally required" this time round? I doubt it.
    4
  3135. I've got a feeling Omicron is going to sweep across us like a tide - but do very little damage. How it will affect old people is the real crunch though.
    4
  3136.  @BarmyDeer  You are about 80 years out of date. The Crimean population was partially replaced by ethnic Russians during the Stalin era. Their descendants (and many Ukrainians) voted overwhelmingly for Crimea to rejoin Russia in 2014.
    4
  3137. And thus Ukraine becomes the aggressor allowing Russia to reply in kind.
    4
  3138. Trump is a leader with guts and determination. What a contrast to soggy Boris!
    4
  3139.  @ohauss  Yeah, but it isn't sitting on $13 trillion dollars of gas, oil, coal and lithium. Everywhere around here has massive historical meaning.
    4
  3140.  @MacDaddy8200  Is it as much as that? I had no idea.
    4
  3141.  @calumhenderson9404  It might be even more. No-one has any idea of the true extent of illegal immigration.
    4
  3142. When NATO patted Zelensky on the back and told him to go for it, kid, I really don't think they expected things would go this far. We are nudging our way towards world oblivion.
    4
  3143. This is Karma, Kamala.
    4
  3144. And yet the week ending July 19 showed yet again a decline in excess deaths from ALL CAUSES (9,339) - this being less than the five year average . Furthermore the percentage of those deaths POSSIBLY related to Covid 19 (8.4%) is the lowest percentage for three months. Hmm.
    4
  3145. Don't be silly.
    4
  3146. Yes, but what's WRONG with this? And where does the secrecy come in? This really is a total non-story.
    4
  3147.  @LordDim1  Ukraine is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy, same as Russia. Neither is it fighting a war of survival. All it has to do is give Russia back the bits of Russia which were mistakenly included in it in 1991 and the war is over.
    4
  3148. But none of this amounts to a hill of beans. Why do you expose yourselves to ridicule by pretending otherwise?
    4
  3149. And no extra launchers, I gather. Just the missiles themselves. And do we have any idea how many?
    4
  3150. This doesn't seem to have done either side much good at this stage. But it cannot be called a war crime since if the Russians did it it has a clear military purpose If Ukrainian did it then that judgement is not so clear-cut.
    4
  3151. At last - a commentator on this channel talking sense.
    4
  3152.  @catherinemacaskill1421  No, it happened under some surveillance cameras in a counting room in Georgia. The footage is readily available on the Internet. You can watch the whole thing from the moment observers and news crew were told the counting was over at around 10.30 and accordingly left. When they had gone four boxes containing several thousand ballots each were pulled out of concealment under a cloth-covered table and four people then spent the next two hours or so stuffing them through voting machines.
    4
  3153. Why not? Russia is standing up to the world after all.
    4
  3154. Not unusual for this channel.
    4
  3155. This is so damn GOOD! How can wavering voters ignore stuff like this? Trump 2020!
    4
  3156. No. Just lifting sanctions will do.
    4
  3157. Why?
    4
  3158. Why not?
    4
  3159. Dear, dear, we'll have to take them to court then.
    4
  3160.  @Joe-ey7cu  Yes. I know that NATO was formed after the end of World War II in order to protect Europe from the Soviet Union, and I know too that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. Hence my question.
    4
  3161.  @pifflepockle  I don't think so! But there's bound to be a Russian MacDonalds!
    4
  3162. Aaaah! It's just like something out of a fairytale!
    4
  3163. Our dear old Prof continues to confuse politics with theatre. Badenoch is a cautious operator who knows how to play both ends against the middle. She reminds me more and more of Thatcher in her early days.
    4
  3164. Why would Russia want a permanent civil war? All it wants from Ukraine are the Russian bits - Crimea and Donbass, where large sections of the population have more affinity with Moscow than with Kiev.
    4
  3165. Geographical proximity is not a factor.
    4
  3166.  @3TYKX  But they are more similar in terms of demographics and population concentrations. Being on different sides of the same mountains doesn't make countries the same -or even similar.
    4
  3167.  @germancomment2244  It is a very sad situation. Of course very many refugees have fled Eastern Ukraine to Russia rather than to the West, and they will have the same sort of attitude towards the Ukrainians as those refugees you have met have about Russians.
    4
  3168. After the gunman had been sighted by a passer-by who phoned the police. They had no choice.
    4
  3169. What do you expect? One up to the Ruskies, I say.
    4
  3170. Exactly. Supporting people trying to prevent genocide - the Israelis for example - is not.
    4
  3171.  @VFella  The population of Crimea is 80% Russian.
    4
  3172. He's one of the sanest leaders on the scene.
    4
  3173. You just don't get it, do you?
    4
  3174. Since when did bashing your sugar daddy become political?
    4
  3175. As with the railways, nationalisation is the only answer. As to the root causes of these problems a realistic assessment of the ACTUAL population of this country is - rather than what official statistics say it OUGHT to be - is an essential first step.
    4
  3176. America Presidents don't run the country. They are just figureheads - apart from Trump which is why the people who run the country hate him.
    4
  3177. Aanthanur DC I keep hearing this but can find no evidence. Potholer 54 on the other hand strikes me as being a slimy con-artist of the most obvious kind.
    4
  3178. He and Melania will be adding to the increasing number of immune people needed to bring the pandemic under control.
    4
  3179.  @ISuperTed  Another man of the people!
    4
  3180. Why does Clarke never consider the possibility of a Russian winter offensive? Other commentators believe it is very much on the cards.
    4
  3181.  Make it lucid  That's just propaganda. Look up the figures for yourself. Sweden is doing no better or worse than other countries with a similar demographic. And better than the UK UK with lockdowns - covid deaths 190.71 per 100,000 of population Sweden with no lockdowns - 133.31
    4
  3182.  @jonluberio5109  Oh hush! He's very proud of this great thought. It's probably the only one he's ever had and he puts it out on the Internet whenever he can.
    4
  3183. There's a reasonable chance of toppling Johnson right now if Labour had the common sense to vote against his latest ridiculous covid measures.
    4
  3184.  @luisfelix7989  I think you have this slightly wrong. After the two Donbass republics attempted to break away in 2014 it was Ukraine which sent in the army and militia groups to do the murdering. This has escalated from there.
    4
  3185.  @jeepdan7776  You forgot to mention money.
    4
  3186. Fakes.They are of a missile hit in December.
    4
  3187. Better and better and dafter and dafter!
    4
  3188. But if Trump is such a loser and a threat to Republican hopes you ought to be encouraging his adoption, surely? That would be the clever thing to do. But perhaps you're not very clever.
    4
  3189. Time to reverse that, I think.
    4
  3190.  @MagpieOz  Astonishingly I was being sarcastic. The number of likes here suggest that viewers of this channel are even thicker than I thought.
    4
  3191.  @durhamfox5271  The whole ethos. Glad to see so many voices of protest on this channel. On others, Times Radio, CNN, etc there's little but bloodthirsty ranting. No major channel appears prepared to put forward a reasoned view including, sadly, GB News.
    4
  3192.  @TeasLouise  If the US hadn't sparked off the war in the first place no support would be necessary.
    4
  3193. Why, when we have a properly elected Lower House?
    4
  3194.  @BobBobOnYouTube  It sort of looks that way , but as more and more is discovered about this virus it may not be so.The death rate is very low and almost exclusively restricted to the elderly, the infirm, or those in occupations such as healthcare where there is possibility of multiple re-infection. Its worse than the flu in one important respect in that a very small percentage of people who get it suffer very greatly indeed. For most people its pretty mild and many people who do get don't even notice. Social distancing is hard to understand because coughs and sneezes can send droplets flying for up to thirty feet, not six. Its encouraging too that the virus seems to survive only very briefly on surfaces. Anyway, time will tell.
    4
  3195.  @johnbravo7542  The big picture has nothing at all to do with this country. The big picture is the United States pursuing colonialist policies and expecting people from other nations to take the flak when they fail.
    4
  3196. Apart from the Normans in 1066, or the Dutch in 1668, to mention but two that spring immediately to mind. The US in Puerto Rico in 1896? The British in India? I think I'll stop there.
    4
  3197. As a "Russian bot", I heartily agree. People simply cannot seem to understand that Russia has a very good case. Given the amount of propaganda they are fed this is hardly surprising.
    4
  3198. Surely the likelihood of death should be the only criteria. There seems to be no information on how severe or life-threatening these new "cases" are.
    4
  3199. Yesterday the deaths in Sweden were back down to zero. Aren't you pleased? The death rate in the UK continues to soar because of the new variant - created as the virus' response to lockdowns - which Sweden, very sensibly, did not implement.
    4
  3200. No need to bother. The FBI will fix it for you, same as last time.
    4
  3201.  @kenmahoney5255  Keeping people permanently underprivileged and angry, so they will vote for the party which claims it will improve their lot even though that party needs to keep them permanently underprivileged and angry so they will vote for the party which claims it will improve their lot even though that party....... and so on, ad infinitum.
    4
  3202.  @DFenV  I like the WHO flashboard too! What pisses me off is the way the media insists on making us think this is getting worse when it's getting better.
    4
  3203.    But hospitals are empty. Most of these "cases" have few noticeable symptoms, if any. The death graph has been flat for three months. Either the virus has run out of potential victims or it has modified so that only milder strains survive (which makes evolutionary sense). As for Brazil - national demographics obviously make a huge difference. Brazil's death rate has remained fairly constant since May and is still horribly high. This must simply be because there is a larger pool of vulnerable people there. In African countries and South East Asian countries the number of deaths has been insignificant. Why?
    4
  3204. This is a disaster. All these thousands of mainly young people becoming infected and refusing to die! We must realise that these people are becoming immune without permission. The situation means that there is even the possibility that the vaccines were are developing may not be needed. Political leaders across Europe must unite and join with news organisations in order to spread the fear and panic needed to prevent this tragedy.
    4
  3205. The owner of the car lot asked him to help. The firearm was not illegal.
    4
  3206. The age of collusion between crooks like Joe Biden and suckers like our dear Professor is now over. As the great Maggie Thatcher said in another context; "Rejoice!"
    4
  3207. Someone at the hospital is now $10,000 richer. Perhaps several someones. Trump regularly signs blank pieces of paper which he gives to people he meets. That's the going price on e.bay.
    4
  3208.  @candywilson6908  Not at all. Russia doesn't want the headache of trying to rule a recalcitrant Ukraine. It just wants to keep hold of the mineral-rich Russianised bits.
    4
  3209. Avoid PR like the plague. Reform doesn't need it to win through eventually.
    4
  3210. It's not war with Russia that's stopping the election. It's peace with Russia - the peace that would come once the country got rid of this puppet comedian .
    4
  3211.  @chefdave3275  The usual thing. "Making the world safe for democracy" when all we were doing is opening up new markets for products and gaining access to new resources to produce them with.
    4
  3212.  @richardsanders.4624  It appears not in this case. There can be no doubt that the armaments were stationed in Ukraine at the behest of Moscow and that Moscow held the launch codes. They were Russian, and back to Russia they went. Very sensibly too. This was done with the full agreement of both parties.
    4
  3213. @ It's a question of intent, isn't it?
    4
  3214. Around sixty hours of sworn testimony at state senate hearings available on the Internet. Go look.
    4
  3215.  @jordancobb7553  I rather think time will prove you wrong. The Donbas front is crumbling even as we speak and the major lines of defence have now fallen. Kursk seems to be some sort of attempt by the Ukrainians to mitigate the effects of this disaster but Russia is not being drawn into any trap, and a substantial amount of territory was recaptured there today.
    4
  3216. Why should he worry? It's not his money. He owns nothing and is happy
    4
  3217.  @jessesinclair3861  I believe it is a slang word in Turkish for an absolutely unspeakable sexual act. Hence the reticence.
    4
  3218. It's a very sensible tactic - and one entirely in accord with Russia's generally unconventional but imaginative conduct of this war.
    4
  3219. Well he couldn't be much worse than the last two or three, could he?
    4
  3220. Every word he says it true. Covid is being used as a political weapon. America needs more leaders like this.
    4
  3221.  @cyberfunk3793  It gives them an excuse not to carry out an attack which could well have resulted in significant losses with very little gain. Plus it gives Zelensky a further excuse to whip up sympathy and hold out the begging bowl Tactically there a number of potential advantages too - but mainly it buys Ukraine more time and funds. Don't get me wrong, Russia could well have done it, but it is foolish to make the definite assumption.
    4
  3222. Musk is doing BRILLIANT work! He has just discovered that there are several million US residents over the age of 100 (Some near 200 and a couple over 300) who are in receipt of social security and have the vote!
    4
  3223. Whatever the figures are, the tragedy is that it now looks very much as though Russia will achieve through war more or less what Putin initially proposed to achieve through negotiation. All the deaths will have been to no purpose.
    4
  3224. But he's right.
    4
  3225.  @tonysea9724  Only if you believe the kiddies' picture book version of events in Ukraine.
    4
  3226. darsin_1 Do you personally observe any evidence of man-made global warming? I don't I must say. In my view we are being diverted from attending to such things as you mention by this hysterical concentration on one extremely exaggerated issue.
    4
  3227.  @TheCloudhopper  This sounds fascinating. Can you direct me to an incident where something like this may have taken place?
    4
  3228.  @DJWESG1  I think you may be misinterpreting the term "excess deaths". This is merely the number of deaths which is over and above those predicted for a particular time period. To ascribe this excess purely to social conditions is entirely misleading. As for Professor Aston, I'm afraid that his inevitable habit of passing statistics through the filter of his political beliefs destroys any pretence of objectivity in his work.
    4
  3229. What's Kamala's excuse for talking nonsense?
    4
  3230. WHY? Why are we spending money we can ill-afford to help one set of crooks fight another set of crooks? Where's the sense in it????
    4
  3231.  @keithhardy8513  I'm British based in Britain and this is anti-propaganda. A reaction to the propaganda we are being constantly fed.
    4
  3232.  @superhumantrueman  The new ones are better.
    4
  3233.  @brendanpells912  Nonsense These people are from Liverpool and with Irish backgrounds in many cases. Not Pakistanis from Leeds.
    4
  3234. ... or the end of NATO more likely.
    4
  3235. Panto season starting early this year.
    4
  3236.  @buildmotosykletist1987  So what? What does that have to do with us? Russia had sound reasons, as outlined in my previous reply. Even if we might disagree with its actions, we have no cause to interfere other than to support the US and the EU in their plans to colonise Ukraine.
    4
  3237. Fauci??And you accuse Trump's followers of belonging to a cult?
    4
  3238.  @dirkdupont5004  I don't think there is any suggestion that the effect was immediate - merely that consistent intermittent shelling combined with one or possibly two direct Himars hits made the dam wall too weak to contain the increased volume of water accumulated in recent weeks.
    4
  3239.  @tryingtocorrect  A hasty conclusion. It was probably an accident as a result of shelling and missile damage weakening the structure so it was unable to contain an exeptional.volume of water
    4
  3240.  @busterofcoviddeniers  No war for a start. Near full employment. Business stability.... Meanwhile the deficit increases, reaching braking point and America is helping finance a disastrous war which is going to fail, as the retreat from Kabul failed, further diminishing America's credibility in the eyes of the world. This wouldn't have happened under Trump. As for the pandemic, America would have done better if Trump had followed his instincts instead of being forced to listen to so-called "experts" whose advice vastly increased the death toll and whose strategies are even now being felt as excess deaths, especially among the young and middle-aged, continue to mount.
    4
  3241. @ Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    4
  3242.  @TheMasterMind144  Well, it's kinda fun for a start. My chief motivation though is that I hate to see so many people being led by their nose into supporting dangerous policies which will bring them to harm. The fact that these egregious tactics are twisted into some perverse form of philanthropy just adds to my discontent.
    4
  3243. In your dreams.
    4
  3244. That's because he's not a politician.
    4
  3245.  @herbaliser4207  Since Soros is anti Israel and funds extremist groups within that country, this seems highly unlikely. The government has made attempts to ban him - as he is from several other countries.
    4
  3246. Anyone who gives any credence to this pathetic attempt at a stitch-up needs their head examined.
    4
  3247.  @ChrisBred4s  They can't last forever though. This war has drained the big NATO-backed military build-up which prompted Putin to invade in the first place. So much better to acknowledge reality and concede Crimea to Russia and allow Donbass to properly decide its true allegiance.
    4
  3248. Unlike the messages of love and unity preached by the religion of peace, and put into practice on our streets.
    4
  3249.  @Splodnik  They have. There are war memorials to the dead, including the Alley of Angels commemorating all the children who have been killed.
    4
  3250. This is what Russia does. It really works pretty well.
    4
  3251. The US election is one of the most important ever. The UK election just isn't.
    4
  3252.  @Bigboy664u  Not to join NATO. Recognise independence of Donbass. Acknowledge Crimea's secession to Russia.
    4
  3253. A minor mispronounciation v mounting evidence of senile dementia in a certain other party. Hmmmm.
    4
  3254. The outcome of the war is far from certain. If countries appear to be distancing themselves from Russia (which in real terms they are not) it is simply because they are playing both ends against the middle. A victory for Russia will certainly solidify opposition to Western hegemony - but that will happen anyway.
    4
  3255.  @buttercupbaby891  Until 30 years ago the whole of Ukraine was more or less part of Russia and had been for at least 400 years.
    4
  3256.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Eastern Ukraine has been either Russian or Ottoman for hundreds of years. Calling it part of Ukraine is sheer pretence.
    4
  3257.  @williambowling8211  Then you are of the first school, outlined here. You believe these rights came into existence as a part of creation?
    4
  3258. His tax returns havea lready been examined by the IRS and been found to be in order.
    4
  3259. Trump is capable of very complex thinking - although perhaps not very good at expressing it.
    4
  3260.  @grumpyturtle9682  Becoming President of the United States twice against fierce opposition from the political establishment?
    4
  3261. Other way round. They're saving the best till last.
    4
  3262. You are fighting a myth.
    4
  3263.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I was a theatre porter for two years and also a volunteer carer for the elderly.
    4
  3264.  @mile_high_topher  I get so tired of these foolish analogies between Hitler and Putin. They may make simpletons feel clever, but they add nothing to the debate.
    4
  3265. More countries need to form closer relationships with Russia - in order to prevent further wars if nothing else.
    4
  3266. Can someone explain the difference between a manpower shortage and full employment? And where exactly do we get these figures about Russia's "catastrophic" losses in Ukraine?
    4
  3267. When Ukraine is in ruins its people will bitterly regret not entering into negotiations. Putin's offers have been entirely reasonable and realistic from the start.
    4
  3268. It isn't. Forest fires consumed an average of 50 million acres a year in the 1920's and 30's and around 12 million in the 1960's. It's averaged around 8 million acres since then. Check the US Department of Agriculture figures before believing climate alarmist bullshit.
    4
  3269. Scientists are such liars.
    4
  3270. I get the same when I criticise Hamas. I think the new YouTube algorithm is just super-sensitive to anything in its daft way it considers encourages violence.
    4
  3271.  @SqwarkParrotSpittingFeathers  Only on one side. The Israelis are generally very secular. At least 40% of them say they have no faith worth speaking of and of the rest many just go through the motions.
    4
  3272.  @grief1  The possibility of full Israeli citizenship I suppose.
    4
  3273. The American justice system deserves to be insulted.
    4
  3274. This is the final deranged act of a lifelong warmonger. Biden just declared war on Russia - and to little or no purpose other than to invite severe retribution.
    4
  3275. This is just carrot and stick blackmail, not a long-term policy of any sort. Trump just pokes and prods and sees which way other countries jump. It's a bit of a departure from usual practice - we'll just have to wait and see how well it works.
    4
  3276. By refusing to testify Trump is showing his his utter contempt for these proceedings. All right-thinking people should do the same.
    4
  3277.  @kevinduffin4665  The Tories mismanaged it to such an extent that they didn't crash it. Labour ineptitude will do more in 14 months than the the Tories did in 14 years. Watch this space.
    4
  3278.  @willshaman2128  Is the mere mention of racial characteristics and ethnic dress racist? Why?
    4
  3279. Don't think for a moment he won't do it.
    4
  3280. I like this guy. He's got Alex Jones off to a T!
    4
  3281. It must be a relief to us all that no Albanian drug dealers or Russian draft-dodgers were hurt in this incident.
    4
  3282. The bot with nickers is bringing in the dosh. You ain't. That's all that matters to YouTube.
    4
  3283. The inevitable decline of US influence in the world can either be a catastrophic nightmare or a more gradual and less harmful process. The Boltons of this world are hellbent on achieving the former. Trump's return to the White House seems to be the only viable route to the preferable option.
    4
  3284.  @TTTzzzz  Failing to teach their children irony.
    4
  3285.  @leyvithanTech  So Zelensky must go.
    4
  3286. He doesn't want to raise prices. He just want to manipulate the market by discouraging importers from buying products from certain countries. The oil industry is extremely complex, because the product has to go through various stages before being converted into a final form. By introducing competition in this way he hopes that prices will actually decrease as suppliers, both in the US and from abroad, will be encouraged to lower them in order to be competitive.
    4
  3287. Betcha they don't. Masks are pretty useless. Their function is mainly psychological.
    4
  3288. Keep up the good work Mr Ojeda. You're doling out red pills with every ridiculous word you utter.
    4
  3289. A rare voice of sanity.
    4
  3290. The more Badenoch puts up two fingers the more I like her.
    4
  3291.  @JasonBoyce  Chernobyl was one of the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed. We now have the Russian Federation, which has learned the lessons of the past.
    4
  3292.  @JasonBoyce  Silly boy. It's just that so many Americans seem unaware of the change.
    4
  3293. What are we hiding, anyway?
    4
  3294.  @Moonscafe7  Why?
    4
  3295.  @Moonscafe7  As yet there is no evidence at all that anyone who is fit and healthy becomes seriously ill through contracting Omicron. Only a few very elderly or already very ill people have been hospitalised - none of whom are likely to be employed in the jobs you mention.
    4
  3296. jules I'm listening. It's a hoax.
    4
  3297. Why?
    4
  3298. If Boris gets in I hope he has the guts to follow Trump's example and starts to call out the pathetic MSM for what they are.
    4
  3299. yelbarb She won an essay competition organised by a group of financiers who wanted a "face" to head up their pretend environmentalist hedge fund scam -which is going very well. I doubt that they, Greta or her parents give a toss about the environment. It's all about the money.
    4
  3300.  @richardsanders.4624  And a similar number of Ukrainians - and all to no purpose.
    4
  3301. She broke the rules. Johnson abused them.
    4
  3302. What a cunning way of drawing worldwide media attention! (Either that or his brain is failing.)
    4
  3303. Shhh. He's not the President any more. Has no-one told you yet?
    4
  3304. Well he isn't, is he? He's been out of his depth from the start.
    4
  3305. Ukraine is not a democracy. All elections are fixed, one way or another. Selensky has arrested the leader of the main opposition party and placed him under house arrest. His predecessor has been charged with various offences meriting 15 years imprisonment. The President before that is in exile on Russia having been found guilty in his absence of mass murder, among other things. Selensky has also closed down three TV stations which broadcast against him and refused to release many hundreds of political prisoners jailed on trumped-up charges. Sound like a democracy to you?
    4
  3306.  @Serahpin  Naah. He actually did most of the stuff people say he did.
    4
  3307. It will inevitably be the dominant strain worldwide very soon. Travel bans, lockdowns and masks will do nothing to stop this. We just have to hope that Omicron will live up to its early promise and be the mild but highly transmissible strain which will get us out of this mess.
    4
  3308. Since we're playing the predictions game I suggest that both the Conservatives and Labour will be defunct within 20 years. There's even a chance that Prime Minister Stephen Yaxley-Lennon will be urging his supporters to turn out to beat yet another challenge from an elderly Nigel Farage.
    4
  3309. I think that when things have settled a bit we might realise that Russia has done rather well out of this.
    4
  3310. Why?
    4
  3311. No it isn't.
    4
  3312.  @jim2376  The day the Russian army rolled into Ukrainian territory to prevent the Ukrainian army rolling into Donbass, I think you mean.
    4
  3313.  @netrunner36  The complete reverse is true. In the UK where I live over 65% of those in ICUs are fully vaccinated as are over 80% of those who die. The proportions are even higher in some other countries I believe.
    4
  3314. Is there any real reason to suppose the Russian government is in any way involved?
    4
  3315. Very much a step in the right direction.
    4
  3316. How is North Korea going to help the British?
    4
  3317. The so-called climate crisis is based on bad science and financial and political manipulation. Not one of the alamists' predictions have come true in over thirty years. The ice-caps are not melting. Sea-levels are not rising. Natural disasters are no more common now than they have ever been. Indeed their cost in both financial and human terms is at an all-time low. Yet the circus continues, with it conjourers and flashing lights. The ultimate aim is for all of to have our individual carbon footprint allowances allocated and monitored on our mobile phones. If you want to fly off on a holiday you will have to buy permission to exceed your allowance. This is already happening with industrial development today. And the biggest part of the con is that C02 has little or no effect on temperature.
    4
  3318. Attending Parliament is a relatively small part of an MP's duties.
    4
  3319. But this is not justice. It is rule by the mob.
    4
  3320. This seems to serve no strategic purpose. A real puzzle.
    4
  3321. Death toll? No. Just deaths in which by the furthest stretch of the imagination coronavirus might just possibly have been involved. Perhaps.But then probably not.
    4
  3322. Putin has a strong case. NATO has spread East, country by country, and used them all as military bases wth missiles pointing at Russia. He can't just go on ignoring it.
    4
  3323. I find it rather surprising that the Government should be so keen to see the nation's children return to their woke indoctrination classes.
    4
  3324. I do hope this spat is actually a sign of affection. Badenoch and Farage would make a great team.
    4
  3325. Peace is on the way. Unless something really weird is going on the only reason Ukraine can have done this is to get an extra bargaining chip in armistice negotiations.
    4
  3326.  Justin Rolland  Boom and bust. Boom and bust.
    4
  3327. The UK has just spent around £1billion on covid vaccines which probably won't work on Omicron and which probably won't be needed even if they did.
    4
  3328. MsimpK16 Has it ever occurred to you that climate change hysteria comes very much into the scenario you have outlined? Millions believe that the poles are melting when they are not or that islands are being drowned when they are not, or that reefs are dying when they are not. Compared with these huge lies currently being promoted for political ends tittle-tattle about Corbyn is neither here nor there.
    4
  3329. If anyone is in line for a lamp-post it's that little feller over the way in Ukraine, name of Zelensky.
    4
  3330. The Budapest Memorandum was not a binding treaty. It was little more than a signed minute of a series of meetings. It is of no more weight than the minutes of the meeting between Baker and Gorbachev, which has just been released, and in which Baker does indeed say that NATO will move no further eastwards. Conversations which took place more than thirty years ago have little relevance to the situation as it stands today.
    4
  3331. The judge in this case is obviously unfit for the position he holds.
    4
  3332.  @appletree6741  If he had a grain of sense Russia would never have invaded in the first place.
    4
  3333. Congratulations. You are the second person in the world to believe Boris Johnson is Winston Churchill. The other one is Boris Johnson.
    4
  3334.  @wheeliebeast7679  How's he crazy then?
    4
  3335. Bottom line is - Bridgen is entirely right to voice jab concerns.
    4
  3336. And all the restrictions and the police brutality will have been for nothing. It is clear the vaccinations considerably reduce symptoms in the fit and healthy, but once health has deteriorated due to age they are of little use. Australia's only way out is to follow the precepts of the Great Barrington Declaration and isolate the vulnerable.
    4
  3337.  @davidmcculloch8490  Yes. But have any of these people been guilty of it? They sympathise with the rioters to varying degrees, but I don't know if any one of them has offered direct encouragement. Do you have an example that might stand up in court?
    4
  3338.  @gio-oz8gf  I just don't think we were given any example of incitement which would stand up in court. Sympathising with the rioters is not the same as inciting them.
    4
  3339.  @roseanncampbell3168  No it isn't. It's an opinion. To incite violence you have to use a direct form of words, not merely express opinions with which people might disagree. The hate and division is already there anyway. Pretending it isn't won't make it go away.
    4
  3340.  @Joeblogs999  Exactly. I wish more people would realise this.
    4
  3341. I suppose everyone by now must realise that this fake news has been thoroughly debunked. It often gets very hot in Greenland for a couple of weeks in the short summer and the top inch or two of the ice melts as a result. All this photograph proves is the insane need of climate alarmists to find actual evidence for their computer-generated fantasies - and the eagerness with which equally hysterical journalists seize upon this egregious nonsense.
    4
  3342. Mike Taylor You really have swallowed all this down without a murmur, haven't you. Were you born gullible or did it come with adolescence?
    4
  3343. Trump is America's only hope. An unlikely saviour, granted, but a saviour nonetheless.
    4
  3344. Sound advice too.
    4
  3345. In this case, where are the 300,000 Russian troops currently gathered on the border near Kharkiv coming from?
    4
  3346. Who was the baffled soy-boy reporter Channel Four threw at the feet of those pie-munching Northerners? You could almost see his fond preconceptions dripping down his trouser legs.
    4
  3347. Why are we so intent on reducing his options? Patriotic pride led Putin into this and unless concessions are made that pride could lead us into nuclear Armageddon.
    4
  3348. And this on the very day that the government's own statistics office issued a report clearly showing that death rates are entirely normal and that only a tiny fraction of those who have died since July tested positive for Covid 19. There is no second wave. The pandemic is over. We are being conned.
    4
  3349. We're going to know before long who's right and who's wrong It's going to be Trump and Musk - but MSNBC will be saved the embarrassment of reporting this because it won't exist any more.
    4
  3350.  @reallymakesyouthink  He didn't film in court. He filmed people on the steps of the court and in ignorance that this TECHNICALLY was in breach of the law. I can find no other cases of the law in this regard ever being cited,, so comparisons are impossible. He is currently serving an 18 month sentence in solitary in a high category prison for a civil offence which many people believe ought to have merited - at the very most - a much shorter sentence in an open prison. But Tommy is Tommy. He gets treated differently.
    4
  3351. Voted.
    4
  3352.  @utrian4148  This simply isn't true. The disparities outnumber any apparent similarities to such an extent as to make the comparison worthless.
    4
  3353.  @icourant  These are ridiculous comparisons. You might as well say a golf ball is an apple because both are vaguely round.
    4
  3354.  @drmachinewerke1  Why can't you simply think about this war as this war is, rather than foolishly comparing it with other wars? In wars people get killed. That is a very good reason for stopping them.
    4
  3355.  @colincampbell4261  Both sides were guilty of minor infringements - but Ukraine completely ignored the main thrust, which was to find a way to grant regional autonomy to the two breakaway Donbass republics.
    4
  3356. It would be interesting to know the percentage of those arrested who happen to be Muslim. I would bet good money on it not being anything like the percentage of Muslims among illegal immigrants as a whole.
    4
  3357. But it won't be Ukraine that's doing it. It will be NATO. Don't you get it??
    4
  3358. And what has any NATO state got that Putin could possibly want anyway - apart from possibly a Baltic port?
    4
  3359. Sanctions are a Boy Scout in a world of gangsters. They have damaged the West far more than they have damaged Russia.
    4
  3360.  @tadcastertory1087  This may or may not be true. ( I think it probably is) - but the police ought to say one way or the other.
    4
  3361. Why are the left such cowards?
    4
  3362.  @SoarWithSimon  What if the conviction is clearly politically motivated and highly suspect? Does that count?
    4
  3363.  @degaussingatmosphericcharg575  You prove that Trump has done wrong first.
    4
  3364. If these hearings serve any purposes it will be to show the American people the fine caliber of some of those Republicans who will be in line to replace President Trump in 2024.
    4
  3365. There is no such thing as Islamaphobia. Islam is truly terrifying when taking to its logical extreme - as nations and peoples across the world have been finding out to their cost for 1400 years.
    4
  3366. Why are teachers so paranoid?
    4
  3367. Why? She'd already said she would look it up. It was The Fox River in Wisconsin by the way.
    4
  3368.  @Handler9  Russia has no plan to reach Kiev.
    4
  3369. The people in the Eastern part of Ukraine, Donbas, have been fighting for eight years to protect the country they love and call home. Their opponents are Ukrainians, some of who are proud to be called Nazis and who wear SS badges. Hasn't been in the news much though.
    4
  3370.  @geraldhewing2076  It would be helpful if they put healthcare before profits, that's all. Their business practices are utterly heinous and the way the covid pandemic has been engineered for this purpose clearly illustrates this. It can well be argued that the way they have manipulated the media and the politicians has actually led to an increase in the number of deaths rather than otherwise.
    4
  3371. PMQs are not a debate, they are a point-scoring game, that's all.
    4
  3372. Not only that but it has been shut down since September.
    4
  3373.  P.M.  I have been a journalist for more than 50 years and have watched it's degeneration , rather than its evolution.
    4
  3374. Seems like they can.
    4
  3375. The West must bear a great share of guilt for this dreadful war. Without Western interference Russia and Ukraine could well have settled the dispute with minimal bloodshed.
    4
  3376. No. Just sensible.
    4
  3377.  @stephensuddick1896  Not at all. They are both on Russia's side but it would be rather impolitic of them to say so at this stage.
    4
  3378. I wish a British politician could be as sensible as Trump and pull us out of the great Paris climate con.
    4
  3379. Your satire has been wasted!
    4
  3380. Are you SURE this guy isn't Alex Jones in a bad wig?
    4
  3381. Kursk? Donbass?
    4
  3382.  @NoNo-we6mp  Not by me, not by the mass of public opinion nor by the families of the millions of dead Iraqis.
    4
  3383. I told you. He's wearing a Magic Mask!
    4
  3384. And what are causes of these excessive flu cases, and the excess deaths from all causes currently well over 1,000 a week above average? Which is higher than at any time during the pandemic. For those of who predicted this it comes as no surprise. Lockdowns, untried drugs and even masks are to blame.
    4
  3385. It's not a manpower shortage. It's a question of how best to use the manpower available. The Kursk incursion is a sideshow and Russia is very sensibly not diverting resources away from the main front, where it is now achieving considerable advances.
    4
  3386. The jurors must have been scared shitless.
    4
  3387. You're probably correct, but there is every chance that some of the socialist vote was a protest vote against Macron and that protest element may well switch to Le Pen in the next round.
    4
  3388. The Israelis gave it to them in the first place. They spat on it.
    4
  3389. What makes you think Putin is a Communist?
    4
  3390. @ If you look carefully at history you will realise that treaties cause more trouble than they prevent, as a general rule. They become outdated and do not truly reflect new circumstances. In this instance the arrangements made in the past - and signed by Putin's predecessors in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation - are at the root of the present tragedy. It is necessary to define what actually Ukraine consists of for another thing. The disputed territories in the East were never part of a country called Ukraine, apart possibly during the brief existence of the Republic which was introduced after the collapse of Tsarist rule. The Russians took them from the Turks and the "Ukrainians" who moved there did so largely as a result of agricultural improvements introduced by Russia. The true wealth of the area, however, lies in its mineral resources which are largely owned and operated by Russians, and have been for decades if not centuries.
    4
  3391. Of course he isn't! He acknowledges Russia's rights in this conflict as ought anyone with a grain of sense.
    4
  3392.  @AIAudiobooks411  Modern Ukraine is basically a Russian creation. Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine were donated to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by Moscow, because they were easier to run that way. There are large Russian populations there, vastly outnumbering Ukrainians in many cases. The very lucrative mining industries there are run by Russians and their products sold to and via Russia.
    4
  3393.  @keyboarddancers7751  Oh I think it is - racial hatred stirred up by Marxists and the media mainly. People can generally get on with one another if left to it.
    4
  3394. So does attempting to suppress it.
    4
  3395.  @emm_arr  You're the one who's constantly misled. I think for myself.
    4
  3396. In the long run, taking sides against Russia will prove to be a big mistake. The UK should be completely neutral in this conflict - not forever doing America's bidding.
    4
  3397.  @DavidEFarner  Antiviral Research Volume 178, June 2020, 104787 This is just one of many scientific papers indicating the efficacy of this drug in treating Sars-Covid 2.
    4
  3398. In fact Putin has stated that the ideal relationship between Russia and Ukraine would be similar to that which exists between the USA and Canada.
    4
  3399. Every weapon the West gives to Ukraine prolongs the war and brings more death and suffering. It's as basic as that.
    4
  3400. Paranoid fantasies.
    4
  3401.  @cheryl71000  True. But surely this makes the case for special treatment of Muslims even stronger?
    4
  3402.  @Leigh-ry3yb  Many Muslims are still stuck in the 800's, let alone the 1500's. Maybe we need to meet them half way!
    4
  3403.  @jamesmorrow1646  Well who can say? Russian missiles certainly seem to be flying in when required and the Ukrainian advance is stalled on the front line envisaged by Russia - apart from in the northern sector where Russia is currently making some advances, it appears.
    4
  3404.  @luisekjeldsen1515  I agree that the Russian army has a somewhat old-fashioned attitude to the duties of the fighting man, but that doesn't answer my question!
    4
  3405. Yes, they should just have concentrated on producing great music and literature and forgot all that nonsense about putting men in space and building nuclear power stations all over the world.
    4
  3406.  Levi Lyons  Bit late for that. The US is up to its eyeballs in Ukraine corruption.
    4
  3407. It can't have been Antifa. They'd have torched it.
    4
  3408. It'll take us to Armageddon.
    4
  3409.  @geofo60  International law does not exist.
    4
  3410.  @ray-wm7yd  I quite agree. There is no logical reason why we should support Ukraine.
    4
  3411. I am astonished how many Australians seem entirely happy with this situation. I wonder how long it must go on - since vaccines provide only limited protection I can see no-way Australia can avoid a severe epidemic of Covid 19 if restrictions are ever lifted. That is of course if the very low infection rate IS the result of restrictions.
    4
  3412. I believe that visitors to Aleister Crowley's commune in Sicily were required to eat a goat turd upon entry. What a great sense of humour that man had.
    4
  3413.  @jameslew2804  I particularly approve of his habit of hanging his wife upside down in a wardrobe whenever she displeased him.
    4
  3414. How are these records arrived at when no records have been taken for 99% of the earth until the past few decades and those that were taken prior to 1970 or so have been discounted because the equipment was not up to scratch? Isn't it time this glaringly obvious con trick was treated with the contempt it deserves?
    4
  3415. It took off in the wealthy suburbs of Indian cities, came to the UK through family contacts and then spread to Europe through holidaymakers and business trips.
    4
  3416.  @toddmorningstar4206  Few deaths have a primary cause. They are generally the result of a combination of circumstances - as is the case here.
    4
  3417.  Lee Morton  He was yelling "I can't breathe!" long before he was knelt on. It happens when you swallow your stash in a hurry.
    4
  3418. You are deluded.
    4
  3419. Name one time.
    4
  3420.  @kpcm834  I just wonder where his retirement villas will be, and whether or not he will get a chat show on prime time US TV.
    4
  3421. What $60billion? It's less than $14billion after deductions.
    4
  3422. My grandfather gets like this sometimes. When my parrot died recently he refused to admit it was due to climate change, despite all evidence to the contrary. But he is not a bad person, he is just old. I guess he has heard so many words that they get mixed up in his brain and he can't talk straight. Bernie 2020 Yaaay!
    4
  3423. Using the death of Joe Cox as a political weapon is more than humbug - it is disgusting.
    4
  3424. Arron Banks is just the sort of no-nonsense guy this country needs to pull it out of the insipid mess decades of PC nonsense and left-wing posturing has left it in. He is a pirate - but he's a patriot too. He could be the UK's Donald Trump if the system would only allow it.
    4
  3425. Well, they're more or less right.
    4
  3426. What about the death rates? That's the only figure that's really important. Otherwise getting Covid is generally little worse that getting a cold.
    4
  3427. I bet he's all of a-tremble. Won't be able to sleep nights, poor man!
    4
  3428. As they ought to judge many of his actions, once the dust has settled.
    4
  3429. Cancel culture eh?
    4
  3430. Might not be so delusional though.
    4
  3431. Sadly masking and social distancing don't help much either. Nothing does.
    4
  3432.  @ybor20  There are masks and masks. Only a fully fitted N95 standard mask or above has any chance of restricting a covid 19 virus, and then only if worn in conjunction with a face shield and respirator. A cloth mask. or one of those little blue things, are utterly useless. The gaps in the weave are big enough to let coronaviruses of this type pass through between 1,000 and 5,000 at a time.
    4
  3433. University towns in the UK are other Labour enclaves. Marxist indoctrination in the education system is a serious problem, here as elsewhere.
    4
  3434. Not all that similar. These drones can be set on target far more accurately than the V weapons could. Plus the V weapons only came after many months of conventional bombing.
    4
  3435. God Bless America.
    4
  3436. Russia has something quite important to trade -food. It has been supplying Syria with grain and other foodstuffs for years. It has just stopped and shortages are already causing chaos. The new Syrian regime will, I bet, let bygones be bygones and when the dust has settled Russia will end up with up to 40,000 battle hardened troops to help out in Ukraine, plus all the dosh Assad managed to ship out AND still keep Tarsus and the airbases. It's almost as though Putin had a hand in all this.....
    4
  3437. Boris is acting a bit like a slice of soggy Sunblest at the minute, but he's got a lot on his plate and no election to win. I do fear that he may be a tiny bit woke though.
    4
  3438. Sky and other media outlets have much to answer for. Irresponsible reporting has helped whip up this hysteria.
    4
  3439. If any more reasons were needed to rid Britain of its lefty-loonie Supreme Court, this is it. These lawyers represent all that is wrong with our country. How can they be objective when their minds are riddled with woke socialism?
    4
  3440. Putin did not start this war. America did.
    4
  3441. I think it's really wonderful how the poor dogs wandering loose in Bucha didn't eat the bodies left lying in the street for a fortnight.
    4
  3442. You've got to catch him first. And since he's going to win, that won't be at all easy.
    4
  3443. Englishman here. I'm enormously happy for all of you.
    4
  3444.  @MijinLaw  How do you prove these things? There would have to be a lengthy and expensive court process, just to protect people who can't think straight?
    4
  3445.  Ron Hunter  Eight-year old girl killed in Atlanta? Six deaths in CHAZ? White bar owner in Perth, Australia beaten to death by BLM protestor? Many many more. You need to get a brain you pathetic pos.
    4
  3446.  @DaveMcKinley-bm5mh  Official statistics via Google. Personally I think its probably a great deal higher.
    4
  3447. But Putin is quite correct. The present county of Ukraine is simply the territory of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine - which was a country in name only, but in fact a construct of the Bolsheviks and later of Krushchev, who added Crimea in 1954. It was an administrative unit of the Soviet Union, largely controlled by Russia and those parts appended to it have little or no historical, linguistic or cultural connection with any place called "Ukraine", which is itself an ambiguous term covering a wide spectrum of varying territories in the region. The fact that the parts added by the Soviets are exceptionally rich in mineral wealth is the key to this issue. They have been invested in by Russia, and worked by Russian labour for centuries and I personally can fully understand Russian objections to having them spirited away by a process of treaties and agreements signed by the government in Kiev.
    4
  3448.  @larsbjrnson3101 Ukraine never had a nuclear arsenal. The weapons were Soviet weapons which were simply stationed there for strategic reasons, and could only be fired from Moscow. Allowing them to be taken to Russia for dismantling had nothing to do with these so-called "security guarantees." In the negotiations over the distribution of Soviet materiel left in Ukraine, Ukraine preferred to keep ships and tanks and other conventional weaponry and willingly allowed the nukes to be removed, since converting them to be capable of being fired from Kiev, and maintained thereafter, would have not only have been incredibly expensive but potentially dangerous. Pretending that Ukraine nobly surrendered its nukes in exchange for "security guarantees" is simply a PR-inspired re-interpretation of actual events.
    4
  3449.  @boatinggal  Untrue, as I have already explained. It was a memorandum, not a treaty - as the name suggests - and was not binding in any way. Ukraine willingly gave up the nuclear weapons. This had nothing to do with protecting borders and sovereignty, but was an entirely separate issue. Putin, incidentally, was against the principles of Budapest, as were many senior Russians, but they were over-ruled by Yeltsin.
    4
  3450. I hear the unmistakable sound of the bottom of barrels being scraped.
    4
  3451. Russia has just cause and will win eventually. Western leaders and media have continually lied to us and many have been fool enough to believe them.- - but not for much longer we hope!
    4
  3452.  @TonyFisherPuzzles  Keep on hoping.
    4
  3453. Glasgow welcomes the next price-fixing meeting for the carbon futures trade.
    4
  3454. To me these strikes don't suggest Russia is losing at all. They seem more of a logical step in a carefully considered plan which is generally going pretty well - in Russian terms at least. We make a mistake in judging and assessing Russia as though it was a European country. It isn't - and despite lines drawn on maps, Ukraine isn't either.
    4
  3455.  @MissMan666  The geopolitical landscape may shift once the conflict in Donbass concludes. The United States is no longer the sole global superpower, and Russia has established numerous alliances within the international community. It's unlikely that the U.S. will be exporting gas and oil to China, India, and the Pacific Rim in the near future. Both Trump and Putin are pragmatic leaders who understand that war-based economies are unsustainable and unnecessary. Hopefully, they can move past the longstanding rivalries that have persisted since the Soviet Union's collapse. Russia excels in constructing and maintaining nuclear power stations, and as the limitations of renewable energy become apparent, the demand for nuclear power is likely to increase. Regarding the arms industry, the current conflict has demonstrated that U.S.-manufactured equipment may be overly complex for practical use in challenging battlefield conditions, which is not favourable for its reputation.
    4
  3456.  @stephenhill545  I don't think I am. It seems by far the likeliest explanation and I have seen videos from Russian Ukrainians who have escaped to Russia saying this. Also from members of a Ukrainian youth orchestra who, it was claimed, were kidnapped but say they decided to stay in Russia because they were from Russian families and felt safer living there. The whole "Russia kidnaps children" thing just reeks of crude propaganda to me.
    4
  3457. Yes. YouTube's new censorship algorithm has pink hair and wears a nose ring and its daddy is a merchant banker.
    4
  3458. Do they exist? Is it possible?
    4
  3459. Despite potential legal constraints the police should release details of the suspect's religion and ethnicity. The fact that they haven't just adds to the suspicion that there is an element of religious fanaticism in this dreadful incident.
    4
  3460.  @calisto2735  Equipping and training a 600,000 strong Ukrainian army with a view to invading Crimea and crushing the separatist rebellions in Donbass. Using Ukraine as a launch pad for nuclear missiles. That sort of thing.
    4
  3461.  @bluecanary9417  There is opposition in Russia to the war, and it is expressed freely. Crimea is Russian and was only stuck on to Ukraine in 1954 as a matter of administrative convenience. The Donbass region has suffered since being taken over by Kiev in 1991 and the wish for independence is genuine. Repressive measures by the Ukrainian army have greatly encouraged that desire. This war has been created by America, using the expansion of NATO to threaten and subdue Russia. Russia isn't having any and will defend itself from threats to its identity by any means necessary. The door to negotiation is always open.
    4
  3462. @ I think that's what we're going to get. All this old-school, Cold War posturing has got to stop.
    4
  3463.  @VALUST17  It sunk a few of the Black Sea fleet. The Russians have four other fleets comprising 265 warships and including 58 submarines.
    4
  3464. Thankyou. Any ideas on Kramatorsk? Fake, error or fact?
    4
  3465. and help investment companies get even richer!
    4
  3466. @ Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    4
  3467. Lots of Irish in Merseyside. Just sayin'
    4
  3468.  @alistairw.6394  Pro-Russian sentiment is very strong in Mariupol. They were much better off financially when Moscow ruled the roost. The nationalist government in Kiev has neglected Eastern Ukraine and has added to local resentment by trying to eradicate the Russian language and Russian traditions.
    4
  3469. An MP is elected because he/she represents the general majority opinion in a constituency. The pastoral role is secondary, and can be left safely to others. It is utterly ingenuous to suggest Farage is neglecting his duties by using his new status as an MP and the leader of a political party to take his place on the world stage.
    4
  3470.  @Wombbatts  What makes you think I'm non vax? But they are completely unnecessary in recovered cases. You are naturally immune.
    4
  3471. I think people should realise the COP has little or nothing to do with "tackling" climate change, but simply to find ways and means of making money out of it. These conferences are price-fixing exercises to determine the likely progress of the cap and trade market over the forthcoming year. The poorer nations, who supply the market with its raw materials in the form of unused carbon emission certificates, are seeking to increase the value of their product in much the same way as in the 19th century they might have sought to increase the price of ivory or slaves to an earlier generation of colonialist entrepreneurs.
    4
  3472. I can scarcely do without my daily dose of Times Radio belly laughs!
    4
  3473.  @tyjay6885  And I hope the thugs and vandals are indeed brought to justice. It won't be the organisers of these shameful events who will be fined or sent to jail though -just wide-eyed little mugginses too dim to know they're being conned.
    4
  3474.  @Vzzdak  Once again you prove the point. What more effective way of discouraging military expansion could there be than for the country you fear might so expand to join your alliance? In any case it is ridiculous to say the point of NATO is to discourage military expansion. The exact opposite is the case. It exists primarily as a market place for the arms trade and the military/ industrial complex upon which the American economy depends.
    4
  3475. No need. Russia will build fortress Donbass.
    4
  3476. Not the fate of the world -the fate of Vlodomor Zelensky.
    4
  3477. There's every chance the war will be over before these tanks get there.
    4
  3478. Perhaps it wasn't them then?
    4
  3479. Behind Russian lines all will be warm and cosy.
    4
  3480. @Mark B What's vile about it? If the friend did die after a second infection it would be a very significant development in the progress of the disease and a matter of great public concern.
    4
  3481. Nope. It's what the country needs.
    4
  3482.  @Steve_Coates  You don't even know the meaning of the word.
    4
  3483. The world be a safer place if Boris Johnson stopped believing he was a re-incarnation of Winston Churchill.
    4
  3484. Has any unvaccinated person caught it yet? It would be quite funny if Omicron was the virus's evolutionary response to vaccines and only vaccinated people get it. I'd laugh anyway.
    4
  3485. If it makes attacking Russia more difficult then it is entirely justifiable for Russia to have done it.
    4
  3486.  @matheusimon7316  Not so. Russia was subjected to extreme provocation.
    4
  3487. Remind Ukraine.
    4
  3488. Having an American boyfriend isn't so great after all, is it Ukraine?
    4
  3489. But fewer will suffer in the long-run - so long as Ukraine surrenders to the inevitable and has some common sense.
    4
  3490. The protestors have to go back into the dim and distant past to justify themselves. Is there a single individual or institution in modern Britain which they could be justified in treating this way? No there isn't. Spoiled, pathetic pea-brained lefties throwing baseless tantrums don't exactly match up with the civil rights movement or the Jarrow march,do they?
    4
  3491. What else would you like for Christmas, sonny?
    4
  3492.  @jeremybunn8473  Actually I'm not all that sure, but saying otherwise gets banned by YouTube.
    4
  3493.  @ashfield1425  Absolutely. The amount of hypocrisy, sentimentality and sanctimoniousness floating around right now is positively suffocating.
    4
  3494. Why?
    4
  3495.  @Vladimirthetiny  So they don't matter so long as the US arms industry makes a profit and provides jobs? Is that what you're saying?
    4
  3496.  @Think666_  I cannot understand your thermometer analogy. Analogies are slippery customers at the best of times, but that one is off the scale. I prefer saws to analogies The one about the road to hell being full of good intentions fits this case quite admirably. The peoples of Ukraine and Georgia, like their cousins in more Western parts, have had their eyes and imaginations filled with the glittering prospects of a better life. For the Westerners this has been relatively harmless (although many Greeks might disagree, to say nothing of the Irish) but for Ukraine and Georgia, still with close relations to the much reduced but still powerful Russia, a transition is fraught with difficulties. Russia cannot be expected to surrender resources and markets created with Russian investment and Russian labour merely on the whim of populations dazzled by questionable advertising methods. Russia, being Russia, will take steps to prevent this, and when all else fails, will put the boot in. I will probably shock you by saying that in several instances they have every right to do so, in my my humble opinion. They are far more entitled to enjoy the benefits of the coalmines and lithium deposits of Donbass, for example, than are asset management companies such as BlackRock.
    4
  3497.  @Bubajumba  The problem lies in the boundaries created following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The mistake was made in creating new countries out of what were administrative units of the Soviet Union, and which contained much former Russian territory and large Russian populations. In Ukraine, for example, Donbass and Crimea are very rich in mineral deposits which have been developed by Russia over very many years and which are still owned and operated by Russians, even after independence. If Ukraine -as a whole - joins the EU then these immense assets will be forfeit and Russia simply won't stand for this. The Russia solution, as in Georgia, is to create buffer states where Russian influence remains. This would very well have worked but greedy Western eyes on the trillions of dollars of gas, coal ,iron ore and lithium in Donbass have prevented this solution.
    4
  3498. This is a sound basis for negotiation. At the end of the day, recognition of Crimea as being part of Russia (which it is) and allowing Donbass to become independent might be all he wants.
    4
  3499. He only invaded Ukraine.
    4
  3500. What's someone with a sense of humour doing in this channel???
    4
  3501. Floods, fires and hurricanes are part of nature. It is pure conceit to imagine that human activity has anything other than the most minor effects upon their prevalence .
    4
  3502. He's setting about it in a funny way by killing off mainly old people who are beyond reproductive age and were due to die soon anyway. Of course there all these vaccines..... What a surprise it would be should it turn out that they make a certain proportion of the population sterile!
    4
  3503. Another mixed bowl of fruit from Rambling John. The idea that it is any way acceptable for the government to condone and support a criminal enterprise has to be dismissed out of hand. The idea that the government is using it as a "distraction" is equally ludicrous. Farage has had to drag them out of their beds to get down to Dover and face this embarrassment. I'm sure they would very much have preferred to go on pretending it wasn't happening.
    4
  3504.  @greenthumb8266  I'm British, so a lot of stuff you guys do seems weird.
    4
  3505. Do deals with Russia. That should fix it.
    4
  3506. Why should he apologise to cretins?
    4
  3507.  @turnerfamilyinozi  I suggest you try assessing the available evidence. You might begin by contrasting America's economic position and standing in the world under Trump with the economic chaos and increasing opprobrium being experienced now.
    4
  3508. Australia could be on its way to experiencing the horror that Europe and the US have experienced. SARS-type viruses seem to thrive in the Spring. Lockdowns and mandatory masking might not only prove to be relatively useless, but counter-productive as they hinder progress towards her immunity.
    4
  3509.  @Andy-wn6wm  Even if we believe it we don't find it all that significant. Records only seem to have begun in the 1970s or thereabouts, since those which preceded it have often been thrown out as being "inaccurate" ie. going against the desired narrative.
    4
  3510. Russia is the top nation in the world for building and maintaining nuclear power stations This one is in safe hands even if the silly Ukrainians keep shelling it.
    4
  3511. In September 1, 2021 America dies.
    4
  3512. The only sensible thing to do right now is to pretend to do a lot, but in fact do very little.
    4
  3513.  @TheHalfEmptyGlass  Where is it irrelevant? People can just accept that their way of life is threatened and that the police won't do anything about it, or they can protest. This riot was against the police. This riot was against acceptance.
    4
  3514.  @rudiruttger  How dare you! 'I'm MAGA to the core!
    4
  3515. As a pensioner I am happy to be put at risk if this helps rescue the economy and speeds up herd immunity. After all, Covid 19 is just one of the things lining up to get me - and pretty low down on the list, what's more.
    4
  3516.  @user-vu9ys5wm7d  You might have to wait a year or so. So far the evidence, although vast, is generally circumstantial. As long as sufficient determination is applied it will be proved that this election was rotten to the core. The incredible con trick that is Dominion election systems will be exposed, beyond doubt. There is just too much evidence left in the matrix for it to be otherwise. And that is just one example of this multi-layered fraud. The Biden/Harris administration is set upon very shaky foundations. It may limp through the next four years, but probably not. At the end of the day though it will clearly be seen that the Democrats have vilely pissed on democracy in the United States of America simply in order to return to a regime of war-mongering profiteering for its elitist gang-members.
    4
  3517.  @karsten11553  It attracts investment. It is a commercial organisation.
    4
  3518.  @karsten11553  I only question your use of the term "former". Ukraine owes its very existence to Russia and while the march of history allows the modern manifestation to seek a future in the arms of the West, it cannot justifiably take the family silver with it.
    4
  3519. No one in their right mind could disagree with a single word Trump said.
    4
  3520. We should have stayed neutral. As it is, we've picked the wrong side.
    4
  3521.  @paulwilson7234  If only! These are just the shiny objects designed to tempt you into signing up to a very sinister future.
    4
  3522. Brave men, fighting Putin to the last Ukrainian. America and Europe are resolved not to give in!
    4
  3523. Extremely well put. I shall steal this metaphor.
    4
  3524. It would be nice if he reduced Biden to tears.
    4
  3525. You American. Live Washington DC. Work CIA.
    4
  3526. Nowhere near collapse. Rocky in places - but nowhere near collapse.
    4
  3527. You don't seem to get it. These tariffs are not supposed to be anything other than kicks in the pants - to have an immediate effect before being rescinded.
    4
  3528. @ It's not that mighty an army, And the Donbass is one of the most heavily defended and valuable piece of real estate in the world.
    4
  3529.  @michaelslator64  Use your eyes.
    4
  3530.  @michaelslator64  Much of the world's media and much of Big Pharma are ultimately owned by the same two finance companies -Vanguard and Black Rock. Big Pharma has consistently commissioned studies to denigrate any strategies or treatments which might have stood in the way of its making billions from vaccines. Such studies have been widely cited in the media, although they fly in the face of real-world experience. One of the main reasons the Great Barrington Declaration was undermined was because the official line was that natural immunity is weak and short-lived. and so we must wait for vaccines. This is not the case, and never has been, as has now been clearly proved. Ivermectin has been mocked as horse-paste and banned by many governments, thanks to campaigns financed by Big Pharma. Yet its widespread use in Asian countries can clearly be related to significant decreases in case numbers. As to politicians' paranoia - they are fearful of losing votes and so must follow the "popular" course. The popular course is dictated by Big Pharma, largely through joint ownership of pharmaceutic companies and media companies by Black Rock and Vanguard. The response to the pandemic has been largely driven by the lust for profit and the lust for power, and has seen a bad situation made infinitely more terrible as a result.
    4
  3531. All Ukraine has to do is agree to Russia's perfectly reasonable terms and this could be over in minutes.
    4
  3532.  @alboy4  Mainly because both countries have a relatively large number of very elderly people who have escaped influenza for a few seasons. It is predominantly these people who have died.
    4
  3533.  @godblessthelessfortunate3175  More than 65% of covid patients in intensive care are fully vaccinated.
    4
  3534.  @godblessthelessfortunate3175  Are you an American? You are being comprehensively lied to. In the UK the UK Health Security Agency produces a Covid Vaccination Surveillance report each week. It regularly reveals over 65% of those in intensive care are fully vaccinated, as are over 83% of those who die. This is entirely reasonable, since those who end up in intensive care or in the morgue are going to be very elderly or severely immuno-compromised in some other way. It is hard to believe the situation is in any way different in the US.
    4
  3535.  @jakea3950  Actually BLM, Antifa etc etc do make me want to throw up now you mention it.
    4
  3536. @ADB ADB Have you read their manifesto?? It's hardline Marxist and calls for the overthrow of democracy and the forcible redistribution of wealth. The organisers could't care less about racism -that's just a front to get suckers on board.
    4
  3537. @ADB ADB No more or less than anyone else. Race is no longer an issue for much of the right wing. It's the left that need to pretend race is a systemic issue in order to whip up resentment against duly elected government.
    4
  3538. @ADB ADB Sadly the right does take the bait too often. A person's colour is just one thing about them and never the most important. The left's identity politics however demands that skin colour be the most important thing about you.
    4
  3539. And when you add to this that he cannot eat the food for fear of being poisoned, not mix with other prisoners for fear of being beaten up or stabbed, then his situation looks very much like the torture of a political prisoner.
    4
  3540.  @lukefreeman828  Well there are all those hours and hours of state hearings in Georgia and elsewhere. You must agree that there is sufficient evidence there for at least some sort of cursory examination? Why won't Georgia release their Dominion machines for examination, for example? And what about the videos of election workers apparently passing ballots through voting machines multiple times or even sneaking off with concealed memory sticks? "Nonono. Go away! Nothing to see here!" seems scarcely an adequate response to a very troubling situation.
    4
  3541.  @bakubb8659  There are around 40 hours of evidence presented at various state senate hearings available on the internet. Might be a bit much for someone with the attention span of a goldfish though.
    4
  3542.  @jamesmorrow1646  Not all of them - and it depends who you give them to. Checked death rates in young males recently? Or the percentage drop in birth rates?
    4
  3543. Send long-range missiles to Ukraine and Putin will turn Kiev to dust before they are out of their crates. But perhaps that is what the Pentagon and Biden want. There will be immense profit to be made in clearing up the mess, as Haliburton has shown in Iraq.
    4
  3544. @Monkey God Two or three generations of brainwashing is going to take some time to overcome -but it can be done. A review of school and university curricula is very much needed. There are millions of adults out there who firmly believe in things that just aren't true.
    4
  3545.  Adam Fraser  No it isn't. It's designed to PREVENT electoral fraud. If your vote hasn't been counted, then you haven't voted. So vote. Geddit?
    4
  3546.  @mikeceebo8611  It is America's war, as has been practically every war in the past seventy years and more. In the fine balance which makes Mutually Assured Destruction work every second, every mile or kilometre counts. Ukraine is 450km from Moscow. The other counties are all at least 700. That aside, the civil war in Donbass has crippled this once wealthy industrial heartland. Zelensky, almost certainly with American backing, was planning to escalate it further. Once again this was intolerable for Putin. He is not mad or senile and has no ambitions to recreate the Soviet Empire. There are sound, defensive geopolitical reasons for the extreme action he has taken.
    4
  3547. @ Around 60%. That's most. And it's the good stuff. I'm no expert but the geology of the terrain east of the Dneiper apparently contains better and more easily accessible lithium etc than the smaller deposits under the richer farmlands to the west.
    4
  3548. Lefties and Islamic extremists have much in common - overwhelming self- righteousness and conceit and a total disregard for common human decency for a start.
    4
  3549. Zelensky just can't seem to take a hint.
    4
  3550. I'm told that these drones were first invented by South American drug lords as a means of transporting their product to Florida. Funny old world.
    4
  3551. It's really very interesting to see the point at which propaganda descends into wishful thinking.
    4
  3552.  @Lepocoloco  Mariupol
    4
  3553. Bad management of national parks due to tree-hugging is far, far more to blame than climate change. Banning grazing and restricting public access; leaving undergrowth uncleared season after season, allowing firebreaks and emergency access routes to become overgrown in case orchids get trodden or little critters get upset.. it all adds up.
    4
  3554. There is no escaping the fact that the Ukrainians kill civilians too. Wearing a white armband, a sign you have been given the all-clear by the Russians - invites instant death from a Ukrainian sniper.
    4
  3555. Their freedom?
    4
  3556.  @VorosMedve  In terms of modern thinking perhaps. But the money was not compensation, it was simply a means by which the British government bought the slaves from their owners - and then freed them.
    4
  3557.  Gary V  The only people who die are too old or too fat to have sex. So it won't happen.
    4
  3558. Let's talk about how Melania's hat nearly blew away instead.
    4
  3559.  @redlightmax  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Which is not a society. A society is a small group of people who get together to share a common interest - such as model trains or knitting.
    4
  3560. Defend Europe against WHAT?
    4
  3561.  @relaxedhigherself  Absolutely not. I'm no racist - which is why I hate it when race is used as a political gambit.
    4
  3562. Another glimpse into life on Planet Times, where reality is merely a distant concept.
    4
  3563. There will almost certainly be a rise in cases, hospitalisations and deaths as winter approaches. Most of the latter will occur in people, usually elderly, whose treatment plans for existing conditions have been abandoned or compromised as a result of the virtual collapse of the NHS caused by lockdowns and other hysterical over-reactions to the pandemic.
    4
  3564. A bit premature. He might occupy some cabinet position in Sir Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's government in twenty years or so though!
    4
  3565. We must keep the fear alive!
    4
  3566. I think members of the House of Lords SHOULD be elected. As long as candidacy is restricted to hereditary peers, that is.
    4
  3567. Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    4
  3568.  @sdparsons  You're wrong. There are clear provisions for taking sensible steps to secure the welfare of children Which Cummings did.
    4
  3569.  @justinatest9456  Ukraine gets benefits as well as disadvantages and Russia gets disadvantages as well as benefits. Both sides are callous enough to have done this. I still favour the accident theory , but the jury's out.
    4
  3570.  @thinkerly1  It was subject to artillery and Himars hits throughout last year all pretty well documented. The appearance of the damage is entirely consistent with it having burst.
    4
  3571. It depends upon the objective. Russia first depletes the Ukrainian army, then destroys its infrastructure. It can now continue with the true objective which is to secure Donbass and Crimea. The conquest of Ukraine was never the objective.
    4
  3572. Russia does not wish to "destroy Ukraine." It's aim is to retake those parts of Eastern Ukraine which it believes were were mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine when it was recreated in 1991.
    4
  3573. So sanctioning Russia, freezing Russian assets, training Ukrainian troops and supplying Ukraine with weapons don't count as acts of war?
    4
  3574. You can to a considerable degree. You might be surprised.
    4
  3575.  @god1971b  All Reform members have full voting rights. What do you mean by dubious practices, by the way?
    4
  3576. Defence against what?
    4
  3577. Since the disputed territory in Donbass is worth around $13 trillion (at least) it is more economical to retain it by means of warfare than through a cash offer.
    4
  3578. I don't understand what quarrel we have with Russia anyway. What's it all about?
    4
  3579. You really have swallowed the narrative, haven't you?
    4
  3580.  @paulro4  The days are quite short at this time of year.
    4
  3581. They are cute - until you see one tearing a new-born lamb from its mother's womb.
    4
  3582. What exactly is lame about firing an ICBM for the first time in the history of warfare?
    4
  3583. Is there an elephant in the room?
    4
  3584. "Mr Floyd, who had multiple convictions for robbery and assault, had consumed both fentanyl and crystal meth immediately before his arrest, his autopsy revealed." I just put that in because the BBC forgot. Both these drugs can cause respiratory problems incidentally. as well as violent and erratic behaviour of course.
    4
  3585. And the fact that he is nearly always wrong doesn't matter a bit.
    4
  3586. There is every doubt
    4
  3587. They've got 150,000 in Belarus.
    4
  3588. He's totally sane.
    4
  3589. This could become an idea for a new fairground ride at Alton Towers.
    4
  3590.  @tonypredergast5782  Well I doubt it will happen too -but it could, and it is enjoyable that the threat exists. Democracy is not as simple or as cut and dried as you seem to think. It comes in many forms and if you accept that the elected Congress represents the will of the people, then if Congress decides to make Trump leader, and then to impeach Biden and Harris, then this represents what the people want. As to your question: Biden doesn't and didn't need this tactic. All he had to to was let the CIA and the FBI fix the election for him. I daresay they'll be at it again this year and in 2024 too.
    4
  3591.  @tonypredergast5782  So Biden doesn't want power then? Perhaps he should give it up. I sincerely believe that as things stand at the moment Trump is the only thing that stands between America and total disintegration. Democracy died in 2020.Despite five years of total brainwashing by the media and the panicstricken political establishment Trump, the outsider, still seemed set to upset all their plans to get back to bleeding the American people dry. So they cheated. They will cheat again, so now anything goes. Making a threat like this is entirely permissible. And it's in the Constitution.
    4
  3592. Russia has been up for it from the start.
    4
  3593. Worth every penny. Anything that concentrates the minds of the huddled masses away from the egregious idiocy of politics has to be welcomed.
    4
  3594.  @ELcinegatto87  I agree completely.
    4
  3595. Why?
    4
  3596.  @MikeSpike117  Yes. I admit I'm too weak to prevent cosmic rays and the movement of the solar system through the galaxy, and the galaxy's movements through the universe, or stop that nasty little wobble the earth has when in spins on its axis.
    4
  3597. What's all the fuss about? Once you give out your data you can be 100% assured that it will be made available to anyone wiling to pay for it or capable of stealing it. Anyone. Using it sway voters is just the information age's version of going around knocking on people's doors. Once again you Lefties need to get off your high horse and board the train with the rest of the passengers.
    4
  3598.  @yasink331  Sorry to interrupt, but here is one of many https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/5/3/tanzania-president-questions-coronavirus-kits-after-animal-te It may not be true of course, but so many lies are being told about this disease it is hard to separate fact from fiction. ADD. The above link is now unavailable. I wonder why? Here is another though. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-tanzania/president-queries-tanzania-coronavirus-kits-after-goat-test-idUKKBN22F0TG
    4
  3599.  @reduk1999  Dream on.
    4
  3600. Are you aware of the considerable Russian and Chinese presence in Africa, just as one example?
    4
  3601. Ukraine is not "fighting for the freedom of the West". It is being sacrificed in pursuit of profit for the West. To believe otherwise is to be either a fool or to be financially involved in this disgusting charade. Tice is just another grisly hack.
    4
  3602. Haven't vaccine mandates been declared unconstitutional? Just askin'
    4
  3603. Considering all the billions spent on covid relief, could not the government come up with a way to provide financial incentives for drivers to re-join the industry? There's plenty of them out there.
    4
  3604. And all due to misguided environmentalist policies which ignored literally thousands of years of expertise in controlling bushfires.
    4
  3605.  @RatTerminator  Make treaties with the first two and outlaw the third.
    4
  3606. Sewers full of shit, that's why. Much like climate change nutters.
    4
  3607. It is clearer by the day that Ukraine is going to lose this. They should now be concentrating on the nature of the final peace settlement.
    4
  3608.  @rhea7756  And yet Poroshenko - who was as bent as buggery and probably as responsible as anyone for the conflict in Donbass - has actually come back home! The motives of these people are complex. There is something piratical in most of them. As I said - avarice and bravery are far from being incompatible. It's just such a tragedy that so many decent, ordinary people get killed and hurt when they quarrel.
    4
  3609. What is it with his eyes? Is it just lighting or do his pupils seem hugely dilated from time to time? Could it possibly even be true that there actually contact lenses which can act as teleprompter screens? Surely, surely not.
    4
  3610. @ YouTube will not allow me to mention any, but you must be aware of areas of genuine concern.
    4
  3611.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Ah. The new buzzword.
    4
  3612. Is the assumption then that all Britain's defence budget will now be spent on bolstering Ukraine?
    4
  3613. That is what you are supposed to think.
    4
  3614. You do realise you are living in a fantasy world created by people who know you are as dumb as a rock and never read anything but comic books, don't you?
    4
  3615.  @BradleyWynne_DavidBowiefan  I'm having trouble with my sarcasm lately. I am reassured by comments made at the time by people who said they didn't believe a word of what Jonathan Swift had written concerning the benefits to the economy of eating unwanted babies.
    4
  3616. PJ Brown Too true. How many of them are going to turn out to be Extinction Rebellion nutjobs, I wonder? I gather that many are juveniles and cannot therefore be publicly identified.
    4
  3617. Just for once the media has got this right.
    4
  3618. I realise that many American's have become addicted to war, but don't you think its time to give it a rest?
    4
  3619.  @cIoudbank  That's the idea. Once these areas are secured they will be rebuilt, as is happening in Mariupol and other places captured by the Russians. Their value is in their strategic positions and potential - not in what they actually have before they are taken.
    4
  3620. Ukraine in denial. A bad sign.
    4
  3621. Or if you don't want to freeze or starve.
    4
  3622. ​ @ghlscitel6714 It's only spent about 150 billion dollars on it so far.
    4
  3623. They are utterly sane.
    4
  3624. There could be a get-out here. Being a 37-year -old child might not be enough. You will have to be a Ukrainian drag queen to avoid the uncertainties of Rwanda.
    4
  3625.  @Geffo555  It's quite clear that his enemies are manipulating the legal system in an attempt to bring him down. He may well have committed some minor misdemeanours, but they pale into insignificance beside the vast crimes of those who are persecuting him.
    4
  3626.  @jackdubz4247  No. Britain. An end to Scottish and Welsh "independence" should also be on the agenda.
    4
  3627. Are you accepting what YOUR government says?
    4
  3628. America will greet him as a hero and then give him a few crumbs. Their investment in him and Ukraine just isn't paying off. Time to call in Halliburton.
    4
  3629. In this video Professor, your head is superimposed on Victoria Derbyshire's body. It is an improvement for both of you.
    4
  3630. Yes. Whenever you like.
    4
  3631. And what are you getting for Christmas, my little man?
    4
  3632. Surely more like the Dems - fixing the election system first then waiting for it to let them "win."
    4
  3633. I don't understand why you think they do.
    4
  3634. We'll end up with more arguments than armaments. Reality looms.
    4
  3635. Are the Democrats and their MSM lackeys going to sink any lower than this? I expect so.
    4
  3636. Two highly intelligent and resourceful men swapping ideas about the future of humanity. What's wrong with that?
    4
  3637. They were Russian. They could only be fired from Moscow.
    4
  3638. @ Ukraine did not possess them. They were simply stationed on Ukrainian soil. Moscow held the launch codes and Ukraine agreed as part of negotiations following the collapse of the SU for them to be removed to Russia. They got to keep other items of military hardware.
    4
  3639.  @markpowell4615  You are quite wrong. The nukes were Soviet nukes stationed in the SSR of Ukraine, which was not a country, other than for the purposes of the USSR having an extra seat in the UN. Russia, in the form of the Russian Federation, became a country on December 25,1991. Ukraine had declared independence in August of that year and could be regarded as a country from that point on, although the present country is somewhat different, its constitution only having been ratified in1996. The nukes were controlled from and put in position by Moscow - or Muscovy if you like - acting as the premier republic of the USSR. Negotiations over the ownership of materials unquestionably once belonging to the USSR were subject to negotiation, and the nukes were given to the Russian Federation, making them Russian.
    4
  3640. "In the Bleak Midwinter" might do it.
    4
  3641. And if they make a few billion bucks on the way, who's to blame them?
    4
  3642.  @plainswell  Wow! With all this stacked up against them the Dems obviously just HAD to cheat! They had every right to do so, eh?
    4
  3643.  @plainswell  So it is permitted to lie and cheat to prevent it then?
    4
  3644. But there are no Ukrainians living there. These historical links are purely due to divisions of territory created by the Russian and Polish/Lithuanian empires.
    4
  3645. I rather thrill to the notion expressed in your final sentence.
    4
  3646. The war can be over the minute Russia's right to control over Donbass and Crimea is recognised. A significant proportion of the populations want this and Russia has invested heavily in the development of these regions. Tens of thousands are dying for no other reason than treaties manufactured by the West in the wake of the collapse of the USSR have proved not to adequately reflect the economic, ethnic and historical realities of the situation.
    4
  3647. Offending fools is fun.
    4
  3648. ​ @nothandmade9686 They would if they thought they'd get massacred. Which they would have done
    4
  3649. Uncle Sam and Allah are close allies, don't forget.
    4
  3650. These fires have nothing to do with climate change. Once a fire is lit it stays lit. Tree-hugging policies which have led to the abandonment of long-established fire prevention measures in Australia's extensive national parks are more to blame than anything.
    4
  3651. What boxing match? Russia is standing alone against many nations.
    4
  3652. Compared with Keir Stalin they are heroes.
    4
  3653.  @petergriffin9902  Sorry Pete, I've got a date with my clinical pathologist buddy who says -wait for it -that facemasks are useless. His name is Dr John Lee. Most of his colleagues agree. Professor Carl Heneghan and one two others pop up on a YouTube channel called Co-Immunity. It bothers them a bit that every public health body in the world said the same thing until some sort of directive went out last May or thereabouts.
    4
  3654. Ronald Reagan once said that the nine most feared words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
    4
  3655. This is weird. All these guys are fit, military age men and the people who are escorting them and looking after them in the luxury hotels they are driven to look, to me, very military or ex-military themselves. Must I adjust my tinfoil hat, or am I allowed to think that there is more here than meets the eye?
    4
  3656. Why, why WHY are you people so intent on imprisoning people you disagree with? It makes you look so COMMON!
    4
  3657. In a fair and reasonable world you would be made editor of The Independent.
    4
  3658. It's the reputation of the US legal system which is going to be forever tarninshed by all this - not Trump 's
    4
  3659. And if Russia should win.....?
    4
  3660.  @kevinyaucheekin1319  They're brainwashing thousands of kids into setting fire to cities with much the same purpose in mind - so yes. Plus the profit motive of course. And there are very few journalists worthy of respect any longer, nor a lot of scientist either. Money speaks louder than truth.
    4
  3661. It's going to happen out of the east too. Ukraine will find itself fighting on three fronts. It will have to decide whether to save Kiev or Donbass.
    4
  3662. Don't worry. It'll all be OK when Trump gets back in.
    4
  3663. Has it already.
    4
  3664. King Charles the Absorbent. Wasn't he once taped calling Camilla and wishing he was a Tampax?
    4
  3665. That's OK then. Can Russia have the territory back which was stolen from it in 1991?
    4
  3666. Indelible stain! Being impeached by a bunch of crooks and clowns is a badge of honour! The Democrats have removed all meaning from the process, Their case is nonsense and when it fails Trump with pounce on the Bidens and the traitors in the FBI just in time for the 2020 election. Only the most partisan of anti -Trumpers (and I include C4) can possibly see this charade as anything other than a corruption of due process for political gain. And it's not even going to work.
    4
  3667. This sounds like a thoroughly sensible and realistic plan. I hope it is true.
    4
  3668.  @SlowhandGreg  No. The sons have learned from the errors of their fathers.
    4
  3669.  @ruprect8858  Very different. It wasn't about keeping the peace - it was an attempt to undermine a political opponent.
    4
  3670. @ It might even be something more sinister.
    4
  3671. Was the Dambusters raid by Britain a war crime?
    4
  3672. Times Radio should stick to stories like this and leave politics and international affairs well alone.
    4
  3673. Welcome to the BBC - spreading misinformation for 70 years.
    4
  3674. Just as effective as the other stuff - ad far less dangerous.
    4
  3675. Fine words. But all lies.
    4
  3676.  @shadwelthames9416 Don't be so daft. Trump has more brains than you and your entire family put together.
    4
  3677. The level of ignorance and hate generated by the political establishment and the media against Donald Trump is quite unprecedented. The fact that it has been so successful is very much reflected in many of the comments on this channel.
    4
  3678. It is clear that Russia has realised it military limitations from the outset. Its army does not exist to conquer other armies, but to force them to disintegrate through a process of continued conflict. This has always been so.
    4
  3679. A put-up job by a professional race-baiter. It's the poor old lady who's the REAL victim here.
    4
  3680. Do you know what a dhimmi is, professor?
    4
  3681. I said more or less the same thing here a few minutes ago - but my choice of words caused the new fascist YouTube algorithm to delete it. Weird or what?
    4
  3682. In the 11th and 12th centuries Greenland was occupied by a large colony of Vikings who built farms and churches and even a cathedral They planted ash trees on the graves of their dead which grew to such a size that their roots broke and twisted the skeletons within. There are no trees nor cornfields in Greenland now.
    4
  3683. Does this have anything at all to do with CO2 emissions into the atmosphere? Or is just part of the plan to confuse the scientifically ignorant?
    4
  3684.  Jack Richardson  Reconstructions? Doesn't that say it all? Adjusting data to fit a theory immediately calls the theory's validity into question. The climate is constantly changing and the emphasis upon AGW is purely political.
    4
  3685.  Jack Richardson  Now you are being absurd. Ahrrenius' theory has been continually disputed every since it was first aired. How can a theory based upon enclosed experiments carried out in the late 19th century be regarded as indisputably applicable to a real-world scenario? And did you know that the organisation which employs Greta Thunberg is run my financiers who are making fortunes by manipulating the carbon futures market?
    4
  3686.  Jack Richardson  A massive publicity campaign does not make a thing true. Just because thousands of tame "scientists" and "journalists" make an assertion it is only reasonable to question that assertion when the observable facts do not accord with it. For more than thirty years we have been told that the world is getting warmer,that the poles will melt and the oceans will rise. None of these things has happened, nor are they likely to. Global warming has become a profitable industry, nothing more. As to the Greenhouse Effect it is, as I say , merely a catchphrase. Atmospheric carbon does have an effect on maintaining surface temperatures of course but that effect is not merely to increase those temperatures the higher the amount of carbon. There is considerable evidence to suggest that carbon acts as a thermostat by aiding in the distribution of heat, either by its being reflected back on to the surface or by being transmitted into space.
    4
  3687. Were they bribed?
    4
  3688. Unless there is a Trump landslide America is in big trouble. If he wins by a narrow margin the Democrats will create merry hell. If they win the result will be suspect due to the extreme likelihood of postal ballot fraud and the Supreme Court will have to decide the outcome. Who governs the country while this is going on seems also open to dispute and the Supreme Court will have to decide quickly on that one.
    4
  3689.  @dawnmoriarty9347  That's generally the way.
    4
  3690. Someone who must not be named showed a documentary about grooming gangs in an outdoor venue in Telford a couple of days ago. Victims told their stories and a police officer was named as accepting bribes for covering up this appalling scandal. Literally hundreds of men have escaped justice and continue to do so to this very day. Will GB News have the courage to invite the pariah to speak? I doubt it.
    4
  3691. Better hurry. There's a good chance Russia will start digging in soon.
    4
  3692. And win.
    4
  3693.  @jonye7511  ....goes to the Ukrainians.
    4
  3694.  @SlavaUkraini85  That must one of the daftest things I've heard in a while. Donbass is sitting on at least $13trillion of coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals. What sort of human resources does Ukraine have that competes with that?
    4
  3695.  @nuclearblackhole  Assuming of course you can avoid nuclear Armageddon and total moral and economic collapse.
    4
  3696. Let's hope they have the sense to vote for Trump.
    4
  3697. World peace came one step nearer.
    4
  3698. Exactly so. Your teens and your early twenties are times for making even more mistakes than usual.
    4
  3699.  @Asif_Bcn  Not if they can get other mugs to do it for them.
    4
  3700.  @shabanovorg  How odd that I agree with her entirely, and have never seen a Russian political TV show.
    4
  3701. Naah. Send 'em to pluck turkeys in Lincolnshire.
    4
  3702. The look on his face!
    4
  3703. I wish I knew how these figures are obtained, Do your reporters and contributors walk up and down the front lines counting the bodies?
    4
  3704. Didn't this actor used to play a barman in Coronation Street?
    4
  3705. The Dems keeping shooting themselves in the foot but just carry on hopping. I think though that the evidence of fraudulent anti-Trump propaganda presented by his excellent lawyers may actually have come as a revelation to many dimwitted Dem supporters.
    4
  3706. LastBref Popular with some, hated by many. There are those who would like to see a constitutional monarchy, or at least an end the the reign of the Mad Mullahs. A theocracy in the 21st century is an anomaly that needs fixing.
    4
  3707. Is this soft soap ad going to get back the black voters rushing to Trump with open arms? Don't think so.
    4
  3708. Russia was South Africa's greatest ally in the fight against apartheid.
    4
  3709.  unitedwestand  I thought acronyms were popular on the Internet! Trump Derangement Syndrome. There you go. A form of hysteria largely affecting persons who have passed the through the crypto-Marxist indoctrination process which used to be called education. It is characterised by an inability to accept the possibility that any other opinion than your own has any moral value and manifests itself in a visceral hatred for an amiable old gent who, by dint of natural cunning and an affinity with the working class, has become the President of the united States.
    4
  3710. Take the idiocy of Islamic fundamentalism out of the issue and peace in the Middle East is ENTIRELY possible. These people are insane.
    4
  3711. Yet another victim of American imperialism. Poor sap. Poor Ukraine.
    4
  3712.  @jeremymanson1781  I cannot help but admire your optimism.
    4
  3713.  @loppadus  I don't either - apart from 3 mysterious "subscribers". This "bot" thing is grossly exaggerated, I feel. I've been accused of being a Russian bot more times than I can count. (I'm not by the way!)
    4
  3714. Times Radio just get weirder and weirder.
    4
  3715. All the Right has to do is regroup around a reasonably charismatic leader and Labour has had it. The race is between how long that regrouping will take and how long it will take Starmer to screw up even more than he has already.
    4
  3716.  @dpelpal  They are.
    4
  3717.  docbogus6128  NOT
    4
  3718.  @HectorHectorious  We all have the same problem. Mind you, trying to beat the algorithm can be quite fun. I sometimes split my replies into sections, which works sometimes.
    4
  3719. Nice one!
    4
  3720.  @seanpatrick1243  Ukraine is swimming in CIA money. You can't tell me none of it reached Zelensky's campaign. He is just a puppet for American imperialism.
    4
  3721. Zelensky has been out of his depth from the start. If he had recognised reality instead of trying to play a TV hero none of these tragic events would have occurred. Busking on the subway is about all he's good for.
    4
  3722. 2020 was the last year of US democracy.
    4
  3723. You cannot possibly say that with any confidence. There is no evidence that Trump is a coward. No-one knows how they will react in a situation like that.
    4
  3724. This is not a strategic defeat for Russia. It is hard-won victory.
    4
  3725. If Covid 19 had been introduced to the planet by aliens, this would be a Petri dish.
    4
  3726. BBC - why can't you stick to wonderful stuff like this instead of messing with politics?
    4
  3727.  @fimenduro  If we're talking about the Russian Federation then just about never, as far as I can see. It is reactive rather than proactive.
    4
  3728. America is doing great in this department right now, isn't it?
    4
  3729. Yup. Politics is a popularity contest.
    4
  3730.  @theimperialist2686  It certainly was a mistake, as events have proved. I don't think he can have realised the seriousness of what he was doing. When I say "mistake" I mean an error of judgement, not an accident. His greatest error though was to believe his sources without checking them thoroughly, and keeping records of those checks. A rookie mistake.
    4
  3731. Both these accusers seem insane. You just have to look at their eyes.
    4
  3732. On what charge?
    4
  3733. The pessimism about Omicron is utterly baffling. One cannot be 100% certain but it looks exactly like the variant many people have been expecting -the one which will end the pandemic. Fortunately in six weeks or less this will not be open to argument. Lockdowns etc did next to nothing against previous strains so will do even less against a strain which spreads ten times as fast. We are 3 or 4 weeks behind S Africa where hospitalisation rates are 91% less than with previous strains and where the clear message from the health authorities is: "Don't panic and carry on." Once again we have the paradox whereby those of a left-leaning frame of mind are falling over themselves to support strategies which are clearly moulded to suit the interests of profiteering drug companies and their political lackeys.
    4
  3734.  @imran4006  Awomen to that.
    4
  3735.  @roshnisingh3418  Take your pick. Where the US has invaded in the past 100 years 1914-1918 - a series of invasions of Mexico. 1914-1934 - Haiti. After numerous uprisings, America brings in its troops, the occupation continues for 19 years. 1916-1924 - 8-year occupation of the Dominican Republic. 1917-1933 - military occupation of Cuba, economic protectorate. 1917-1918 - participation in the 1st World War. 1918-1922 - intervention in Russia. In total, 14 states participated in it. Active support was provided to the territories that separated from Russia - Kolchakia and the Far Eastern Republic. 1918-1920 - Panama. After the elections, troops are brought in to quell the riots. 1919 - COSTA RICA. ... The landing of US troops to "protect American interests." 1919 - American troops fight on the side of Italy against the Serbs in Dolmatia. 1919 - American troops enter Honduras during elections. 1920 - Guatemala. 2-week intervention. 1921 - American support for militants fighting to overthrow Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera for the benefit of the United Fruit Company. 1922 - intervention in Turkey. 1922-1927 - American troops in China during the popular uprising. 1924-1925 - Honduras. Troops invade the country during elections. 1925 - Panama. US troops break up a general strike. 1926 - Nicaragua. Invasion. 1927-1934 - American troops stationed throughout China. 1932 - invasion of El Salvador from the sea. There was an uprising at that time. 1937 - Nicaragua. With the help of American troops, the dictator Somoza comes to power, having removed the legitimate government of H. Sakasa. 1939 - the introduction of troops into China. 1947-1949 - Greece. American troops are involved in the civil war, supporting the Nazis. 1948-1953 - military operations in the Philippines. 1950 - Uprising in Puerto Rico is suppressed by American troops. 1950-1953 - armed intervention in Korea about a million American soldiers. 1958 - Lebanon. The occupation of the country, the fight against the rebels. 1958 - confrontation with Panama. 1959 - America sends troops to Laos, the first clashes of American troops in Vietnam begin. 1959 - Haiti. The suppression of a popular uprising against the pro-American government. 1960 - after José Maria Velasco was elected president of Ecuador and refused to comply with US demands to break off relations with Cuba, the Americans carried out several military operations and organized a coup. 1960 - US troops enter Guatemala to prevent the removal of a US puppet from power. 1965-1973 - military aggression against Vietnam. 1966 - Guatemala. ... US troops entered the country, massacres of Indians were arranged, who were considered potential rebels. 1966 - military assistance to the pro-American governments of Indonesia and the Philippines. ... (60,000 people were arrested for political reasons, 88 torture specialists officially worked under the government). 1971-1973 - bombing of Laos. 1972 - Nicaragua. American troops are brought in to support the government, beneficial to Washington. 1983 - military intervention in Grenada, about 2 thousand marines. 1986 - attack on Libya. Bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. 1988 - US invasion of Honduras 1988 - The USS Vincennes, which was in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian plane with 290 passengers on board, including 57 children. 1989 - US troops quell riots in the Virgin Islands. 1991 - large-scale military action against Iraq 1992-1994 - occupation of Somalia. Armed violence against civilians, killings of civilians. 1998 - Sudan. The Americans destroy a pharmaceutical plant with missiles, claiming that it produces nerve gas. 1999 - ignoring the norms of international law, bypassing the UN and the Security Council, the United States launched a 78-day air bombardment campaign by NATO forces against the sovereign state of Yugoslavia. 2001 - invasion of Afghanistan. 2003 - bombing of Iraq. 2011 - Libya. 2014 Syria US and allied invasion of Syria 2015 Yemen US missile strikes on Yemeni Houthi rebel positions and active support for the intervention of Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen 2015 Cameroon US military operation in Cameroon 2015 Libya Second intervention in Libya
    4
  3736. BS
    4
  3737. This is much exaggerated for propaganda purposes. Compared with - say - Britain in the 1940s Russia is doing just fine.
    4
  3738. Steady with the jackboots, sunshine.
    4
  3739. STYX Your hands look so HUGE in this new format. It seems both sinister and distracting. Just saying. Your message and your analysis are as exact as ever.
    4
  3740. What an absolutely wonderful con trick! Climate madness gets more entertaining by the day!
    4
  3741. Tyler Croal No. The Democrats, without any evidence, are saying he did bad things that's all. He'll be found not guilty and the Democrats will once again be exposed as the lying fools that they are.
    3
  3742. I'm really looking forward to the release of the thousands of hours of videotape of this "insurrection", as opposed to the selected highlights. Looks like the Oathkeepers were outnumbered by FBI troublemakers, and indeed some of the Oathkeepers and even more of the Proud Boys WERE FBI troublemakers!
    3
  3743.  @anthonywillis7634  He did no better nor worse than anyone. And of course it is anyway up to individual states to take what steps they see fit. If is only the vindictive and the small-minded who use the pandemic to denigrate Trump.
    3
  3744. Piers Morgan is similar to a sewer rat
    3
  3745.  @bravoalley228  The same applies but more so. The vast majority of those who have died have been way beyond an age to reproduce.
    3
  3746.  @Justwantahover  No he didn't .His essay on Russia/Ukraine relations published in 2021 makes it quite clear that all he wants are the former Russian parts of modern Ukraine :ie Donbass and Crimea.
    3
  3747.  @SaturnineXTS  Such as?
    3
  3748.  @gregh378  I am familiar with this. It does not mention deaths as far as I can see, only the effect of lockdowns on the spread of the virus and consequent rates of hospital admissions in areas of metropolitan France. The Lancet in fact published a detailed study earlier on the pandemic showing quite conclusively that lockdowns have little if any relation to mortality. Other factors, such as general health and availability of resources have a far greater impact. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext
    3
  3749.  @Aaronwhatnow  This is just too crude an analysis - and not borne out by unbiased observation of the facts. What is happening now is more in accord with carbon in the atmosphere creating a thermostatic effect and helping to regulate temperature, not to increase it per se.
    3
  3750.  @nathansmith622  Which treats the sun if it was just a big light bulb - and not the immensely complex structure that it actually is.
    3
  3751.  @beecee2205  A respect for freedom of speech?
    3
  3752. With all due respect, the refugees shown in the heartrending footage shot in the Mediterranean several years ago have little relation to the fit, healthy and 80% young male occupants of the rubber dinghies, who are of generally concealed origin and can afford to pay thousands of Euros to people-traffickers and have enough left over to buy a smartphone and expensive trainers. They might not, however, be rich enough to offer employment to others, as as do the evil billionaires you scorn so vehemently.
    3
  3753. A big question is whether or not Badenoch will risk possibly losing middle-class backing by supporting the largely disenfranchised white working class, as typified by the supporters of Tommy Robinson.
    3
  3754.  @drcommonsense1  I am sure this is true of ordinary decent Muslims. But Islamism, with its emphasis on domination and rejection of other religions, is a growing force which has to be countered.
    3
  3755.  @colincampbell4261  I think many British people believe that as a price of living here, people from other cultures should be prepared to adapt to the British way of life, and not try to impose their way of life on those not of their faith.
    3
  3756. Don't you think this could be just a teeny, teeny, teeny bit optimistic?
    3
  3757. With "cases" increasing at this rate and deaths and hospitalisations plunging it looks very much as though herd immunity is being achieved without a vaccine. And that's a scenario which is sending all sorts of vested interests into panic mode.
    3
  3758.  @gerrytushh  I don't see it that way. The large NATO-financed Ukrainian army is in shreds and the Russians are busy securing Donbass. We make too much of Russia's apparent losses and failures. To them this war isn't about taking over Ukraine or even minimising their casualties. It's about taking Donbass and keeping Crimea.
    3
  3759.  @Odirile.molaolwa  It would be so simple if wars were football matches. But they aren't.
    3
  3760. According to official statistics 88% of those over 18 have received one dose and 56.4% one dose.
    3
  3761.  @barrieeliasson3585  They're not. It's just old people. Why they are lying is a big, big question.
    3
  3762. It actually works out quite well when you think about it.
    3
  3763.  @alexisdasiukevich5417  I don't think he really had any. They seem to have been part of his cover.
    3
  3764.  @Lotus78aze  .which get out of control for one or several reasons.
    3
  3765. And is that a bad thing? Surely an alliance between thee two great powers is highly desirable.
    3
  3766. How do we know it's getting hotter in California? All temperature records prior to the 1970's have been expunged, as many of them showed it to be a good deal hotter in the 1890s through to the 1930s than today, and therefore cannot be reliable.
    3
  3767. There is a very great deal. The fact that the climate crisis mafia goes to so much trouble to conceal it is proof enough of criminal conspiracy. In recent weeks there have been studies published on: 1) The analysis of the Vostok ice-core upon which much of the "carbon causes temperature rises" was originally based. This one had to be withdrawn following a concerted attack by "climate scientists" despite being the work of a prominent French geologist. 2) A detailed study of the effect of cyclic cosmic rays on cloud cover which strongly indicates that climate changes are primarily solar forced. This one was also blocked, but the group doing the blocking has been caught out and it is now thankfully peer-reviewed. 3) A double survey of the earth's reflectivity which indicates that cloud cover has reduced over the past 30 years, when according to climate change dogma, it should have increased as oceans release more steam due to warming. This one has got through so far, but you can be sure if it is ever cited as an indication of the falsity of increased warming then the gestapo will be knocking on the door.
    3
  3768. The only miscalculation Putin has made is to underestimate the seemingly bottomless pit of sanctimonious hypocrisy in the pampered Western soul.
    3
  3769. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    3
  3770. Do these Welsh Wizards know where all the viruses are planning to go for the next 17 days?
    3
  3771. I simply cannot believe you bonkers journos are still banging on about this Cummings question. Drop the bone. You are starting to look ridiculous. The experts' answers spoke volumes.
    3
  3772. The very excellent and much maligned Rupert Murdoch sold off UK Sky to a giant multinational whose experts decree that being "woke" gets the most views. Murdoch still owns Sky Australia, one of the very few English language news channels which is not a disgrace to journalism.
    3
  3773. It sounds a bit Soviet to say so - but these people really do need psychiatric help.
    3
  3774.  @davidsmith5523  You speak with much wisdom, grasshopper.
    3
  3775. Prefer a crook who's got away with it do you?
    3
  3776. The EU helped start this war and now they are helping to prolong it.
    3
  3777. Fat chance.
    3
  3778. There are thousand of Russians stationed in Belarus anyway. Front line support from Belarus would be helpful - but even without it Putin will almost certainly go ahead. He just needs to draw Ukrainian forces away from defending the front line in Donbass.
    3
  3779.  @PlanetaryCitizen  The language was being banned. Russians in senior positions were being replaced by Ukrainians. Dates of religious holidays were being altered. Street names were being changed and following the Maidan rebellion, torture squads were sent in.
    3
  3780. And Ukraine should respect the same wish by the people of Donbass.
    3
  3781. The Christmas lights are blazing in Moscow and the supermarket shelves are full. So much better to be huddled around candles and eating rats for your dinner in Democratic Kiev.
    3
  3782. Marmite is banned in Canada. - clear evidence of the stupidity and evil of Trudeau's administration.
    3
  3783. It's a step on the way though.
    3
  3784.  @nozhki-busha  Russia has no imperial designs. America has imperial designs - of the mineral wealth of Donbas and Crimea which Putin is trying to retain for the benefit of those who have developed and exploited it for centuries.
    3
  3785. Bluff, double bluff and counter-bluff. But he might just mean it!
    3
  3786.  @meziahdanieljolley8842  What planet are you on? One where people are honest about their intentions before embarking on a war?
    3
  3787. NATO is just a glorified protection racket. It doesn't need to invade itself, it just sends in its minions to do the job.
    3
  3788. It was bollocks.
    3
  3789. There is little chance that Ukraine's silliness in Kursk will undermine Putin. If it does it will only result a more hawkish administration which will not show the moderation Putin has constantly exercised in this conflict.
    3
  3790. The information is that the information you have been given is wrong - and they know it.
    3
  3791.  @mickeythompson9537  Whoah! Hang on! Boris and his chums deserve to be kicked out on their arses. What I meant was that the information we have been given to justify the lockdowns and all the other nonsense measures was wrong. You have been conned. The whole operation is a psychop designed to instil fear and compliance. The measures have very little effect on spread and the elite knew it long ago. We need a fullscale independent inquiry into the whole thing - not just a little cosmetic job on Number Ten jollies.
    3
  3792.  @mjowsey  Until now.
    3
  3793. It seems to have escaped your notice that the Russians have stopped retreating and are now apparently pressing ahead with the next stage of their plan, which is to take the northern part of Donbass, this time on a permanent basis. The drafted reservists have performed their function, which is to soak up as much of the Ukrainian army as possible. The Russian forces now primarily consist of the ruthless professionals of the Wagner Group, Chechen mercenaries and the highly-motivated armed forces of the two Donbass republics who have been successfully fighting off the Ukrainian army for eight years. All are fully equipped. Several thousand Ukrainians - maybe 50 - are holed up in the ruins of Bahkmut. It is difficult to say what the forces sent to reinforce/rescue them consist of. According to the Russians, many of them are Polish dressed in Ukrainian uniforms. It is a moot point which of the two sides is low on ammunition, but Ukraine is having to rely on American supplies which are likely to dry up before long, for one reason or another. It could go either way, but my money's on the Russians.
    3
  3794. They failed in Syria. They will fail in Ukraine. Not exactly good selling points.
    3
  3795. Zelensky says he is willing to go for the sake of peace. He should.
    3
  3796.  @stoufer2000  Hi Stouf, how's it going? You really are losing your form you know. Back to troll school for you!
    3
  3797. Having no electricity supply might be somewhat inconvenient.
    3
  3798. The new variant is nature's response to lockdowns. Without them this would all be over by now.
    3
  3799. Very much the latter. Why cannot people see this?
    3
  3800. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    3
  3801. Jack Richardson Hi Jack! Why is it that everyone who disagrees with you is a troll, a bot or a Koch brothers shill? AGW IS BS! And you alarmist suckers are getting outnumbered.
    3
  3802. I wish. But the crooks won't let him, sorry to say.
    3
  3803. False flag ready to runup the flag post.
    3
  3804.  @patriciashannon6631  He seems to be one of these people who's very good at accumulating information, but very bad at processing it.
    3
  3805.  @truetech4158  What utter tosh.
    3
  3806.  @artmcteagle  In the last census more than 70% of Crimeans identified as Russians. Historically and ethnically it has never been Ukrainian. The Ottomans took it from the Tatars and the Russians took it from them in the 18th century. Ukraine can only gain it through conquest, and against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants.
    3
  3807. You really hate GB News, don't you?
    3
  3808. fredneedle She works for Channel 4. What do you think?
    3
  3809. It's a paradox that this mockery of democracy gives Russia the leader they want, whereas the US version gives a win to the leader most don't want.
    3
  3810. I dread to think what this will do to carbon levels.
    3
  3811.  @JohnCavendish-ql4jc  They did no such thing. There only direct order was that Hamas should release the Israeli hostages, since holding them is a war crime.
    3
  3812. It's not their land.
    3
  3813.  @mikeoglen6848  Not any more. Only between 1991 and 2014 was Crimea part of a a country called Ukraine, and that was a mistake. The population is vastly ethnic Russian.
    3
  3814. If Palestinian flags and Ukrainian flags can be flown then so too can Israeli and Russian flags. If the Alphabet People flag can be flown then so too can the flags of any other minority group. The Camping and Caravan Club, for instance.
    3
  3815. Ryan Campbell My parrot was killed by Climate Change. NOT MARXISM! But I think you know this already. Bernie/Nina 2020 Yaaaay!
    3
  3816. Whatever your politics you must agree that there is sufficient circumstantial evidence of substantial fraud in this election to warrant a full and independent judicial enquiry. Failure to do so will result is a cloud of doubt hanging forever over the Biden presidency. It must be done. At the very least failure to do so could very well result in a case being made for Americans to be legally justified in ignoring the edicts of a potentially illegal administration.
    3
  3817.  @pdp977  Forty hours or so of sworn testimony, video recordings and statistical analysis presented to various state senate hearings in recent weeks? The differences between evidence, allegation and proof are many, subtle and varied. They can only be determined by judicial enquiry and this has not occurred.
    3
  3818. Ukraine is a country in name only and the Budapest Memorandum was not a treaty and the nuclear weapons in Ukraine were not Ukrainian and they did not give them up in return for security assurances. All that aside the Professor is correct in every detail.
    3
  3819. Everyone knows the Russians are minimising the death toll. Both sides do this. It is what is expected. Hundreds of Ukrainians and Polish, Belarusian etc mercenaries are dying in Bakhmut every week. We don't hear much about that. The most important thing about the school building strike is that it demonstrates Russian military incompetence and general carelessness in warfare, but there's nothing new there.
    3
  3820.  @wesleyrodgers886  The way elections are run in America it doesn't much matter who votes what.
    3
  3821.  @conchronic  Of course they are. They are just like the Nazis in imposing a racist doctrine through violence, intimidation, symbolism and the brainwashing of fools.
    3
  3822. @ There's no need for a quid pro quo. As Trump said, Zelensky has no cards. He has nothing to offer.
    3
  3823. This must be the silliest offering yet from this increasingly silly channel. You are making The Sun look like responsible journalism.
    3
  3824.  @pneron2032  Sarcasm.
    3
  3825. There are sound political reasons for Trump to want Zelensky out of the picture - but the fact that the guy clearly despises Trump, and shows it, doesn't help matters much.
    3
  3826.  @OmANnIe  As far as one can make out all that has happened is that these people have been exposed as being highly prejudiced against Trump, and therefore in no proper position to judge him fairly. This scarcely counts as being "attacked" and if they are taking part, as they are, in the manipulation of the judicial system for political gain, then this hardly qualifies as "civic duty."
    3
  3827. Sachs is completely right. When Russia emerged reeling from finally shedding the shackles of Communism, instead of greeting it as an ally, the West saw it as prey. Continued US/NATO aggression for more than thirty years has resulted in several serious wars, the latest being the current tragedy in Ukraine. Instead of imagining ourselves to be on the side of truth and justice we should realise we have been pawns in a cynical takeover bid - and one which has finally failed.
    3
  3828.  @lunaxquinn  It's a glib buzzword designed to give the pretence of intellectual respectability for what is nothing more than an assault on free speech. It is a signpost down a very, very dangerous road.
    3
  3829. Brilliant PR stunt, certainly.
    3
  3830. The only way to stop Brazilians deforesting the Amazon basin is to pay them not to. Instead of weasel words, developed countries should come up with substantial sums of money to invest in the country. Don't forget: Europe was a forest once - until our ancestors cut down the trees to create agricultural land in order to feed their families.
    3
  3831. Hullo! Lost your objectivity somewhere? One of the best, certainly.
    3
  3832. The evidence of fraud is substantial. So too is evidence of the establishment and the media refusing to acknowledge even the possibility of it. A three year investigation was launched into Trump's 2016 win based on a tiny fraction of the amount of evidence that points the finger at the Biden campaign. There is no equality here.
    3
  3833. Shh. They wouldn't listen. Ukraine on the other hand....
    3
  3834.  @alienthed.e.i.9165  They need everyone they can get at this stage!
    3
  3835. Reform has around 150,000 members. This three-member thing is a pure affectation.
    3
  3836. Track and trace and isolation only exist to make money for crooks. How hilarious to see Johnson made a victim of the scam!
    3
  3837. It was a present from King George II to the then chief minister.
    3
  3838. To say nothing of starting the war in Ukraine.
    3
  3839. There seems to be an edge of desperation entering into Western attitudes which is no so apparent among the Russians. Perhaps they're just better actors though.
    3
  3840.  @Groggybandito  Yes Russia invaded Ukraine, to prevent Ukraine re-armed by NATO, from trying to retake the rebel republics in Donbass. And no, Russia is not going to be destroyed.
    3
  3841.  @Zikar  The Budapest Accords, which created the modern country of Ukraine, were a huge mistake. This treaty is largely responsible for the conditions leading to the present war. It was signed in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union and fails to recognise a number of significant historical, economic and ethnic truths. Efforts have been made ever since to straighten out its anomalies peacefully - and they could easily have been successful were it not for the interference in Slavonic affairs by greedy Americans.
    3
  3842. @E KL The UN is not a community though, is it?
    3
  3843. @E KL The same one as you. The one where there is no such thing as "an international community" - only the pretence of one which uses "international law" to promote the interests of powerful states at the expense of less powerful ones.
    3
  3844. What an incredible old fraud! I thought I was watching a scene from the "The Godfather."
    3
  3845.  @Ji_hadJoe  Hispanic women too? The Hispanic vote is looking increasingly crucial.
    3
  3846. I wonder if it will exercise the same level of incomprehensible censorship as the existing YouTube?
    3
  3847.  @rogerwilco5918  .On most responsible mapping sites which back up claims with video evidence.
    3
  3848. I blame the parents.
    3
  3849. @Jordie And they hid behind captured civilians. And shot them.
    3
  3850.  @Bigmangh  Why would he want Kiev? Occupying Western Ukraine would involve him in a permanent civil war. Crimea and Donbass have large Russian populations which are highly dissatisfied with their treatment by Kiev.
    3
  3851.  @alcrow1458  I'm 75 and the only Michael Marshall Smith I know of is a British writer of rather poor fantasy novels. I just wonder why we should give any credence to his views on the current political situation in the US. Or is there perhaps another one?
    3
  3852. @TalorcMcAllan Why confused? They've picked the winning side.
    3
  3853. @W Richardson You've got this around the wrong way.
    3
  3854. Politics makes strange bedfellows and war even stranger alliances. There is nothing to prevent us seeing Ukraine's hand in this act of extreme terrorism.
    3
  3855. Dunno about jail time. Information obtained this way cannot be used in a criminal proceeding. At the most Trump might be required to hand over the golf courses to the state - which since they are losing money he might be quite happy to do.
    3
  3856. How can this be the darkest moment when deaths from Covid remain broadly similar to those from seasonal flu in previous years?
    3
  3857.  @weswheel4834  From the very earliest days of the EDL, TR made it clear that violence was not a good idea, and expelled members who indulged in it. They were too many for him, though which is why he left the organisation he had helped to create. When there is a demonstration in the offing he circulates appeals on social media asking his supporters to restrain themselves.
    3
  3858. And nor should he. America has been propping up Ukraine with tax dollars for far too long.
    3
  3859. As ever, I am astounded at this ostensibly socialist channel's wholehearted support for American warmongering and imperialism.
    3
  3860. Do you honestly and truly believe these actions had any bearing at all on this incident? How, for goodness sake? What possible sequence of events could there be?
    3
  3861. Zelensky has apparently already been told not to expect any further US support. It's over. Time to pick up the pieces.
    3
  3862. Black people simply realise that the Democrats have been conning and manipulating them for decades.
    3
  3863. Assuming this doesn't work (and it won't) - what's next on the agenda?
    3
  3864.  @elliottpenlington4993  If you look at the graph in section 2 of the latest ONC report in fatalities (below) you will see that flu and pneumonia deaths have been outstripping Covid deaths for many weeks. Obviously the large number of Covid 19 deaths in the Spring show more Covid 19 deaths over the whole year, but that is no more relevant than saying flu has killed more people over five years say, is it? It is what is happening now that counts and flu is clearly killing more people than Covid 19 and there is no reason to suppose this will not continue to be the case. You should do your own research instead of listening to cherry-picked data designed to make you irrationally fearful of a disease which has, in fact, caused far less damage than many flu epidemics in the not-too distant past. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending25september2020
    3
  3865.  @boink800  It was actually 20,132. Ukrainian losses are estimated at over a million.
    3
  3866. That could be you.
    3
  3867.  @AustinAMV  And the reverse has happened. Ukraine's large Russian population has been undergoing a process of enforced Ukrainianisation for thirty years. This has involved actual torture in some extreme cases.
    3
  3868. To confuse and misdirect you.
    3
  3869. He showed uncommon wisdom.
    3
  3870. The BBC has now lost all credibility as a news organisation. Orchestrating a smear campaign against a person who you see as a class enemy is not journalism.
    3
  3871. You've got to be imprisoned for a year or more as things stand at the moment.
    3
  3872.  @disobedientavocado5959  One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Ukraine's "ownership" of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is tenuous, to say the least.
    3
  3873. I sympathise with your confusion. It is never pleasant to see one's fondest imaginings undermined. It is, in fact, is far from nonsensical that this man was recruited by Ukraine for the task. It makes a great deal of sense that he would have attracted the interest of the Ukrainian special ops people when he was over there. He is an ideal candidate for a mission of this sort. There can be no doubt that there is considerable collusion between the US intelligence services and their opposite numbers in Kiev. They have a mutual interest in getting rid of Trump, in much the same way as the FBI and the Mafia had a mutual interest in getting rid of Kennedy. I doubt we will ever find the truth, however. This man has a very short life expectancy. An Epstein-style "suicide" or a Jack Ruby style murder can be expected I fear.
    3
  3874.  @andyh3873  I'm sure a madman from America would pass unnoticed. Does Putin even play golf, by the way?
    3
  3875.  Imaru Lewis  BLACK POLICE EXIST Last year in the United States a total of nine unarmed black men were killed by police. Last weekend 18 black men were killed by other black men in Chicago alone.
    3
  3876. Wind turbines are offensive to the eye and pointless in purpose. They are monuments to greed and stupidity.
    3
  3877.  @paulmuaddib3470  Experience so far seems to suggest that exposure to one variant creates more or less total immunity to that variant and results in mild symptoms only if another variant is contracted. This seems to make sense if one assumes that T cells retain a memory of the first variant and released antibodies then have only to adapt to whatever probably slight differences the new variant has. As to vaccines, the S African health experts say that vaccinated people appear to experience overall even milder symptoms than those who are not.
    3
  3878. The new totally mad YouTube algorithm is to blame, not poor old Times Radio.
    3
  3879. Healthy people should abandon masks immediately. If you are double vaccinated a dose of covid will vastly increase your immunity at the cost of little more than a runny nose.
    3
  3880. Who needs it?
    3
  3881. Hamas ought to surrender. But they are fanatics so they won't.
    3
  3882.  @Putindidnothingwrong  Only every word that comes out of his silly gob. And I voted for the tosser! Oh the shame! The shame!
    3
  3883.  @norbertlipusz3892  The question is: what and where is Ukraine? The huge mistake which was made was to have made the new country of Ukraine match the footprint of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. This entity - created by Russia - contained a great deal of of actual Russian territory, which was stuck on to " Ukraine" for mainly administrative reasons, in the 1920's and even in 1954, in the case of Crimea. The territory now in dispute is "Ukraine" only on paper. Historically, and in terms of population and cultural bias, these areas are Russian.
    3
  3884. I'm afraid the mule still has to be bopped on the nose from time to time.
    3
  3885.  @rob338  They are shagged out after a long squawk. (Forests have burned since time immemorial. It's their thing. They have to. Lovely plumage, by the way.)
    3
  3886. There is no agency in the US capable of conducting an objective enquiry into this assassination attempt - something ,I'm sure, the people behind it were relying upon.
    3
  3887.  @damonrunyon2551  ?
    3
  3888. Cognitive decline? Times Radio!
    3
  3889.  @simoneclarke7746  Children under16 invariably suffer from a milder form of the disease and it is this which they pass on. Basically this is because their immune systems can deal with infection as soon as it gets into the nose and throat and prevent it reaching the lungs. For a start masks only protect against aerosol droplets which are larger than the weave of a mask and none at all against virions, which are individual viruses. Even then their effectiveness is limited because of the large amount of aerosol which escapes around the edges of masks. An interesting fact is that schoolteachers have suffered proportionately less deaths per capita than any other occupation with a sufficient workforce to be able to apply statistics. This is especially true of primary school teachers. In short there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that pre-pubescent children pass the disease to each other in a virulent form, or even on to adults. There is even some evidence (albeit very tentative) that exposure to young children with covid 19 can actually create immunity.
    3
  3890.  @Paveway-chan  But it doesn't want Ukraine. Never has. Never will. It just wants Donbass - and it's very nearly got it.
    3
  3891. If anyone needs to be bullied it's Uncle Sam. Give him a taste of his own medicine!
    3
  3892. Speaking from experience?
    3
  3893. There's probably little doubt that Trump fiddled his accounts to hide the money he paid to keep the whore quiet. But who cares, really?
    3
  3894. It is a well known fact. One good that could come out of covid is research into why a small percentage of people suffer such debilitating effects from respiratory pathogens.
    3
  3895.  @HummaKavula-c5f  Not so much as once it was, by any means. In any case, what does that have to do with us in Britain?
    3
  3896. @ Shhh. I'm actually older than he is!
    3
  3897. @ I am. I am looking out of my window right now at the very splendid spire of a medieval parish church in the East Midlands.
    3
  3898.  @chadl1876  Meaningless political chicanery of the cheapest and nastiest kind.
    3
  3899. Whatever would Cecil Rhodes have made of this?
    3
  3900. Why do so many third-rate British politicians imagine they are Winston Churchill?
    3
  3901.  @RawsonHirschel  I agree. My figures come from the US Treasury Department via Google. However someone else on this thread says there is a formula by which the proportion of the debt which can be directly attributed to the activities of the Presidency can be calculated. What this formula is I do not know, but the facts of the ACTUAL amount of the debt year by year seem incontrovertible.
    3
  3902.  @anat6360  Count them yourself, did you?
    3
  3903. They look upon Eastern Ukraine as being their country -which in a sense it is having a large Russian population and close economic ties with Russia.
    3
  3904. But how will this leave you when the Trump revolution turns out to be a resounding success - as there is every chance that it will?
    3
  3905. I genuinely hope, BBC, that this latest piece of propaganda doesn't come back to haunt you one day.
    3
  3906.  @nomennescio4604  So because Zelensky refused to talk to the DPR and the LNR directly his country got invaded? What a very astute politician he is.
    3
  3907. Do US Presidents actually run the country anyway? Or are they just figureheads? (The only two have tried to exercise control in decades have been JFK and Trump. And look what happened to them.)
    3
  3908. @channelsixtyeight068 Ridiculous. Murdoch's political influence is now much reduced in the UK. He only owns the Sun and the Times and TalkRadio. The rest are ultimately owned by globalist investment giants like Vanguard and BlackRock.
    3
  3909.  @SpeccyHorace  Mainly that Russia is sitting on a minimum of $12trillion of mineral assets in former Ukraine and is not going to give them up without a fight. Neither is it going to meekly accept continual encroachments on its sovereignty - which is far more firmly established than Ukraine's very recent and somewhat tenuous claim to such a status.
    3
  3910. Good try. But of course all governments behave this way when confronted by an unpredicted threat. Fortunately Britain still hasn't yet quite become crippled by a blame-shifting socialist bureaucracy. Viruses do not behave quite in the same way as radiation, do they? They evolve to survive and so stronger strains that kill their hosts die out while those which not kill survive and prosper, much like Covid 19's cousin the common cold. The figures have certainly been fudged - but upward rather than downward. The so called Covid-related deaths include Covid as one of three possible contributors. The contribution is often rather tenuous. If I were to become so incensed by the lying propaganda being put out by the media and burst into a TV studio and beat an offending journalist to death with an iron bar it could well be recorded as a coronavirus related death. Quite rightly in this instance.
    3
  3911.  @kralikkral5560  No point in pipes that freeze solid every winter and burst every spring. The old ways are often the best.
    3
  3912.  @jokubasmirinas116  As I said, I don't think the Russian army is that good, which is why they have to rely on the likes of Wagner and the Chechens to do the hard fighting. How it will go from here I do not know, but my guess is that the Ukrainians are now severely depleted both in terms of equipment and personnel. As for Bakhmut is really is one of the heavily fortified positions strung out along the frontline post Minsk. No wonder it has taken so long to fall. There is apparently a further line of defence before the border, but word has it that it is not so heavily fortified.
    3
  3913. So what?
    3
  3914.  @jeff5534  Not for much longer.
    3
  3915.  @davidlewis5742  Russia is entirely justified in defending itself against continual Western aggression.
    3
  3916. I'm sure Trump would love to go to jail for a couple of nights. The publicity would be fantastic!
    3
  3917. Absolutely correct.
    3
  3918. Is this a record for being proved wrong within an hour of the transmission of a video?
    3
  3919. It's time to realise that military aid to Ukraine is an investment that just isn't paying off - and there's no point throwing good money after bad.
    3
  3920.  @peterebel7899  What nonsense. War is generally a last resort in this day and age and this is certainly the case here. Putin's demands are entirely reasonable. Peaceful compromises have been treated with distain and he has decided to use force instead.
    3
  3921.  @dlevi67  I think what is significant is that so many people were prepared to accept this false information. The suggestion that this crime was committed by a foreigner certainly fell on fertile ground.
    3
  3922. He'll choke us first.
    3
  3923. Immediate verification is required. The Russians say this has been staged for propaganda purposes. There's chance they are right, so the truth needs to be established quickly before the war is made to escalate further.
    3
  3924. The UK police are afraid of Muslim insurrection. There are far more Muslims in Britain than official figures claim and in some areas they are completely taking over. For more than thirty years they have been raping and trafficking young girls with apparent impunity and running crime gangs which overwhelm police resources. I hasten to add that there are very many decent, law-abiding Muslim citizens in the country, but even they are overwhelmed by the licence their religion gives to excesses of all sorts.
    3
  3925. Does your cat dream too?
    3
  3926. I don't understand this view that Russia is "in trouble." It has begun to turn Ukraine into rubble after occupying its industrial heartland and most of its coastline. Ukraine is having to rely on smaller and smaller military handouts from the West while, despite all predictions, Russia seems to be replacing men and weaponry with comparative ease. Western generals, like this one, seem to me to make the classic mistake of assuming the enemy is doing what they would have done - and when it doesn't do it it imagines they have failed.
    3
  3927. I'm only writing this to find out why and how my comments on climate change are being deleted.
    3
  3928. According to the Russians some 50,000 Ukrainians are trapped in the ruins of Bakhmut and are dying at at rate of ten to one.
    3
  3929.  @natnat_o3  I don't think Starmer and Cooper are QUITE that bad. Not far off though.
    3
  3930.  @boink800  No, but there is an Avenue of Angels in Donetsk in memory of all the Russian children killed by the Ukrainians.
    3
  3931.  @boink800  Donetsk was liberated ten years ago.
    3
  3932. How can anyone trust information when it is peddled by drug pushers?
    3
  3933. Who's this "we" then? You and your mates down the pub?
    3
  3934.  @davidatkins3498  Up to you. I see myself as the customer and the IPCC and the rest as the pet-shop owner. It's a dead parrot. It is not pining for the fjords. It has been nailed to its perch. It didn't move. The IPCC just shoved it.
    3
  3935. This is window dressing. When you take off the packaging all Ukraine gets right now is just under $14 billion, some in unspecified surplus weaponry and the rest in credit to buy whatever it likes - though where from it's hard to say. Meanwhile Russia is ramping up military production and seems set to continuing making advances all along the front. America has written Ukraine off as a poor investment. This much vaunted show of support is a face-saving exercise more than anything else.
    3
  3936.  @KuariThunderclaw  It looks to me more as though it was his dad who was the Maga supporter. Freud wouldn't have any trouble attributing a motive in that case. I don't think this was at all political, in point of fact.
    3
  3937. Are we not beginning to think that perhaps "Mad Vlad" has in fact had all this worked out well in advance? He is playing chess. America is playing college football.
    3
  3938. Dr Campbell - it's all lies. All of it.
    3
  3939. It's Sky News and the BBC's fault as much as anything.
    3
  3940.  @dpelpal  Вы из Канзаса, вас зовут Этель Половски.
    3
  3941.  @dpelpal  मैंने कभी नहीं कहा कि आप भारतीय हैं. आप पोलिश मूल के अमेरिकी हैं। आप सीआईए के लिए काम करते हैं और आपके पास रेगी नाम की एक बिल्ली है।
    3
  3942. This is all total LIES! How have you got the gall?! Why are you doing this? Do you really believe it?? You can't possibly. You just can't!
    3
  3943.  @T5Zplayer  Weston-super-Mare.
    3
  3944.  @stoufer2000  He didn't kill anybody. Containment measures are almost entirely useless and are the responsibility of states and cities anyway.
    3
  3945.  @stoufer2000  I'm getting a bit tired of arguing with you stouf. You're just no fun any more.
    3
  3946.  @stc3145  Because I am not a paid propagandist.
    3
  3947. Lord Charles had far more personality.
    3
  3948. A very significant factor is that Omicron takes 11 days to incubate fully in the body as opposed to three or four with Delta, and over that time produces three or four times as many new viruses with us scarcely even noticing in many cases. All things being equal this OUGHT to mean that Omicron will spread like wildfire but leave very few seriously ill victims in its wake, thus clearing a rapid path towards herd immunity. The biggest problem we face, I think, is that we don't know yet how badly it will affect our very elderly people. There aren't that many of those in Africa.
    3
  3949. Trump won't be on trial - America will.
    3
  3950.  @DAVJULART  Ukraine just did.
    3
  3951. Who are you?
    3
  3952. This is dangerous nonsense. We should have let Russia and Ukraine settle their squabble without interference, instead of trying to capitalise on it. Unless the West draws its horns in pretty immediately we are headed for World War III. Ukraine must surrender and hope for a reasonable settlement with Russia. To carry on stoking the fire like this is just plain suicide.
    3
  3953.  @thenonexistinghero  No. He's only had the job for less than a year.
    3
  3954.  @garmbryhewwert7059  The jury's out on this guy. If he did have his fingers in the till it's odd he should draw attention to himself in this way. But you never know.
    3
  3955. Putin doesn't mind getting votes though. Every little helps.
    3
  3956. This is dreadful! Scandalous! Much, much worse than covering up decades of child abuse in order to secure the Muslim block vote!
    3
  3957. You can fiddle with the details, but you cannot excuse the true horror of what happened.
    3
  3958.  @Dellboy56  What reprisals? Israel is not taking reprisals. It is more than that.
    3
  3959. And him and his kind are behind the global warming disaster scenarios too. We have unfortunately give bears of little brain big, expensive toys to play with. I'm no mathematician, but can somebody please explain logarithms to me and how it is they are apparently not taken account of in the exponential growth scenarios predicted in both global warming and Covid 19?
    3
  3960. Hamas, on the other hand, was found guilty of committing a war crime by taking civilian hostages.
    3
  3961. No we don't. Giving clear guidelines gives criminals a streetmap to evade them. Only by creating confusion among these people can we hope to catch them out.
    3
  3962. But the present chaos is entirely due to Biden's blundering ineptitude. The deal crumbled because of his inexplicable misreading of the situation as it developed.
    3
  3963.  @supersardonic1179  Trouble is you can't find out what the rules are!
    3
  3964.  @chrisevans1255  Are you sure about this? I really would like to find out how it works. How does this explain comments getting INSTANTLY deleted?
    3
  3965.  @boink800  Essentially it is. It's called getting help from your allies.
    3
  3966.  @SpencerGreen-r2o  The principle is exactly the same. You are merely making subjective assessments as to the morals and abilities of the participants.
    3
  3967.  @WestermanT.  I don't think Russia says that. I think our media says they say that.
    3
  3968.  @MarkPayne-ss6yu  That's them. Or, to be more precise, those with received opinions rather than ones arrived at through a process of reason.
    3
  3969. Iwer Sonsch This skeptic doesn't agree that water is rising at all and waits for evidence to show that is. By the way, thank you for your input to the debate here and the obvious effort you have put in to respond to the points we heretics have made. For what it's worth you are now on my list of climate "alarmists" who are neither completely mad or in it for the money.
    3
  3970. I think, if you look carefully, the USAS has more or less given up on the deal. Shh. Don't tell anyone.
    3
  3971.  @WHS_reviews  You are a silly person.
    3
  3972. One would almost think Cameron had a personal interest here. Objectively, it must be clear that Russia is favourite to win, should be allowed to win, and there will not be a great deal of harm done if it does.
    3
  3973.  @Viktor-gk5ri  1) Pep talks to the troops. And I don't know if this was even said anyway. Putin must have realised that only in Donbass would his troops be welcomed. 2) Prior bombing of territories you wish to conquer is a general rule of war. Shock and awe in Iraq for example. 3) Rather a romantic view, I think. 4)You are working on the assumption that the Russians actually want these cities.They do not. The sole purpose of the operation is to attempt to cripple the Ukrainian armed forces, thus making them too weak to invade Crimea and Donbass
    3
  3974.  Alex Perez  All Russia ever wanted was Crimea and Donbass. Kherson would be a bonus, but is probably more use to Russia as a killing ground. I will remind you that Russia still holds Crimea and around 20% of Ukraine, including most of its coastline and much of its steel, coal and gas supplies.
    3
  3975.  Alex Perez  What Russian land has Ukraine taken exactly? None at all. It has merely reclaimed parts of Ukraine from the Russians who only wanted it to use as a killing ground anyway. This is not a war of conquest, it is a war of depletion. The objective is to secure Donbass and Crimea and to seriously weaken Ukraine's military capacity to retake them.
    3
  3976.  @ireissistable  Just go to the ONS website as I just did. It's very well organised and can tell you what you want to know. Just make sure you get the latest posts.
    3
  3977. Great fun to mock the hypocrite who broke the rules - perhaps we should also consider those who have been killed by them.
    3
  3978. Interesting too how Greta Thurnberg is controlled by hedge-funds. The organisation behind her, We Don't Have Time, is run by people withe purely financial backgrounds. Their plan is to control the issuing of carbon emission certificates on the cap and trade market and to make vast fortunes thereby.
    3
  3979. And why wouldn't Russia use winter as a weapon of war? The tactic has served them very well in the past - and will do so again.
    3
  3980. Biden hasn't won yet - and even if he does it will have nothing to do with socialism or healthcare. If fact he WON'T win. It's just that Trump might lose. Which is rather a different thing.
    3
  3981.  @boink800  It is. Retreating would be losing. Advancing is winning.
    3
  3982.  @christianevanherck6023 I agree the Russian army has its own way of doing things, but the fact that more and more territory is being taken - and held - by the Russians is pretty indisputable.
    3
  3983. He was a Muslim - by upbringing and indoctrination. Whatever further madnesses he has developed (or pretended to develop) this is the most salient factor in this obscene tragedy.
    3
  3984.  @PaulMathias1  Twit
    3
  3985.  @AH-ml4vi  I think you are wrong. These actions come about as the result of grim political necessity, not any lack of conscience or empathy other than that which has to be supressed in order to carry out policy. Running Russia is a bloody tough job.
    3
  3986. F***ing right!
    3
  3987. They had to destroy the Ukrainian army first.
    3
  3988.  @antred11  Is it though? The front seems relatively secure at the moment and more or less along the line I imagine Russia had in mind. The Ukrainian army, meanwhile, has sustained substantial losses of trained troops while Russia has considerable reserves of men experienced in the war in Syria, the battle-hardened armies of the Donbass republics, plus Cossacks and Chechens with more Chechens on the way I gather. Should be an interesting winter campaign, especially if Ukraine has no electricity.
    3
  3989. Is there any possible way in which the Democrat party might consider advancing policies rather than merely trying to slander its opponents?
    3
  3990.  @Bork_Cruk  They do.
    3
  3991. The route seems clear for an appeal on a number of counts. With the American public generally having the attention span of a goldfish, this will hopefully be successfully achieved without too much fuss. A good result all round.
    3
  3992. There is no evidence that Russia's war in Ukraine is even remotely "genocidal", nor that Putin would have any quarrel with Britain once we stopped supplying arms, money and military training to that country. Which we should ASAP.
    3
  3993. It's actually black privilege since only black people are allowed to use this word, and frequently do so as a term of affection.
    3
  3994. In his book "The Alchemy of Finance" Soros decries both Fascism and Communism and all kinds of "isms". He is one of the most intelligent men in the world, but a failed philosopher who has instead utilised his brainpower and analytical abilities to make incredibly vast sums of money. He does this by sowing discord and reaping the consequences of it through financial manipulation. His strategies are beyond the ken of normal mortals, let along left-wing loonies who regard him as some kind of Marxist Santa Claus, but to imagine he does it just to be nice is a bit of a stretch. Why one of the most intelligent men in the world should invest money in making some of the most stupid people in the world mayors and district attorneys in the US is certainly puzzling at first sight,. but when we look at the anarchy this has engendered we might get some idea.
    3
  3995. He's read more than you have and writes a good deal better.
    3
  3996. This woman and her boss Zelensky should have sat down and talked with Putin back in December last year. Instead they let their country be used by America. They have much to answer for.
    3
  3997. Time to think about an alliance between the UK and Russia, eh!!!!
    3
  3998.  @snaileri  Mine too. The new YouTube algorithm is a fascist.
    3
  3999.  @iTautra  There is a difference between accepting civilian deaths as a consequence of military activity and deliberately targeting them in order to terrorise. The latter is a sign of weakness, and this is why Islamic extremists and Ukrainians do it. Russia has no need to.
    3
  4000.  @soereng8305  I think you've got it!
    3
  4001.  @dinooldman6671  The first part of what you say may well be true, but I'm not so sure about the second part. In any case it comes down to balancing the pros and cons, doesn't it? As far as I'm concerned everything points to the common sense of lifting all restrictions as quickly as possible and getting back to normal. The elderly and other vulnerable people should be offered protection, in terms of relative isolation and prophylactics but the rest can just catch Covid or not. There will perhaps be one or two people who will be affected badly, but that applies to all illnesses. Herd immunity could be just around the corner if we act pragmatically now..
    3
  4002.  @dinooldman6671  You too. Thanks for the insights.
    3
  4003.  @electron6825  True; but over the long term deadlier variants OUGHT to be outstripped by less virulent versions.
    3
  4004.  @derwolfpack3599  Only to a limited extent. There is certainly a very right-wing Nazi-style element among extreme Ukrainian nationalists, and this is often directed against ethnic Russians, of which there are great many in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian military units openly wear Nazi-style insignia. Many Ukrainians sided with Hitler in World War II - mainly due to hatred of Soviet Russia. But this is only one of several reasons for Putin's actions, and a relatively minor one.
    3
  4005.  @derwolfpack3599  That's not how Russia sees it, and understandably so. Ukraine in NATO provides the opportunity for US nuclear missiles to be sited seven minutes flight time from Moscow. Ukraine in the EU has a considerable negative impact on the Russian economy. Putin is pretty pragmatic. The treaty offered in December would have paved the way for a peaceful compromise. Modern Ukraine is basically a Russian construct anyway. For the time being, Donbass becoming a buffer state (like Belarus) would have allowed Putin to appease his nationalists to a great extent - and (like Belarus) it could well enter into a more fruitful relationship with the West some time in the future. As it is Washington hawks have pushed THEIR puppet government into a bloody and needless confrontation.
    3
  4006.  @unworthy42  The Ukrainians has the biggest choice in the world: poke the bear or be just a little bit nice.
    3
  4007. Dead right. It's window-dressing from this point on.
    3
  4008. Yup. Silk stockings and chewing gum. Never fails.
    3
  4009.  @stevo091  Daddy! Is that you?!
    3
  4010.  @alanjamey2777  Care to ask why they did it?
    3
  4011. Greed.
    3
  4012. ​ @superhumantrueman The USSR collapsed because it could not control its empire. Why on earth would the Russian Federation want the same fate?
    3
  4013. I think we are confusing narcissism with independence of spirit and freedom of outlook. You do, however, have to be a zombie-like conformist to be a Democrat.
    3
  4014. Leave it - and until then ignore it. Like so many do-gooder organisations the EHCR does more harm than anything. The road to hell is truly paved with good intentions.
    3
  4015.  @AbsFabbs  The Brandon Herrara re-creation clearly shows the ear expanding and then reassuming something close to its original shape. Another gun guy, The Humble Marksman, used pigs ears and the bullet just left a small hole. If you cut away from the Brandon Herrara video before it ends it certainly LOOKS as though the ear was destroyed - but quite miraculously it reforms.
    3
  4016.  @WGrind0687  A gun guy called Brandon Herrara. The video has around 10million views.
    3
  4017.  @TouchableGrass  Journalistic integrity??? The BBC? Are you mad?
    3
  4018. That might be because interacting with Russia isn't illegal.
    3
  4019.  @cann0708  Exactly what it says. Ukraine's mineral wealth was developed largely by Russia using imported Russian labour. Russia reckons it should have first dibs. In addition the EU was lining the country up - which the majority of Ukrainians wanted, but there were a lot of Russians in Donbass who didn't. Russia didn't either since, once again, markets which are traditionally Russian would have gone to Brussels.
    3
  4020. And the West keeps adding fuel to the fire by supplying Ukraine with weapons. Surrender Donbass, Crimea and Kherson to the Russians and this dreadful war will be over.
    3
  4021. NATO ceased to have a purpose after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It only exists now to provide the opportunity for financial profit and career opportunities for the military.
    3
  4022. Ah poor lickle cibble servants getting sad! Naughty, naughty Priti Patel!
    3
  4023. we hope!
    3
  4024. He's completely correct. Russia and Ukraine could have sorted this out between them if the West didn't have its greedy eyes on the vast mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea.
    3
  4025. It's a perfectly acceptable regional usage. (I assume the "dispicable" was a misprint?)
    3
  4026. Yeah. Once the US has run of Ukrainian cannon fodder Brits are supposed to go over and die instead? I don't think so.
    3
  4027. But many of the people of Donbass and Crimea prefer to be ruled from Moscow than Kiev -because they are Russians.
    3
  4028.  @alohalaniboido8083  And what makes you think the Ukrainians are not equally capable of such atrocities? I suggest you read the UN report on the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine 2014-21.
    3
  4029. Of course he's not losing! The control of Donbass is the only issue. Everything else is a sideshow. And right now Russia is doggedly working its way through the Ukrainian defence lines set up post-Minsk while the Ukrainians have not even come within shooting distance of the Russian lines set up at the same time.
    3
  4030.  @Cheeseatingjunlista  They did entertainment better though. Throwing BLM protestors to the lions would be great fun.
    3
  4031. @Sean Embry The terms "murderer" and "white supremacist" have been used by numerous news organisations. Not "alleged". They are in for it - and a good job too. The lies of the left have gone far enough.
    3
  4032.  @C_mao  The Rittenhouse case alone provides many examples. He didn't cross state lines illegally. He didn't possess the gun illegally. He is not a white supremacist. He is not a murderer. Is that specific enough? Now name me a good right wing media lie which has been proved to be a lie in a court of law.
    3
  4033.  @beigefox6579  Russian collusion 100% proven??!! Are you insane? after years of investigation involving tens of thousands of man hours and millions of dollars it turned out to be the nothingest nothingburger in the entire history of nothingburgers. And you try to match that with some piece of crap involving Tucker Carlson which I couldn't be bothered to research because if he said it was a joke, then I'm ready to believe it was a joke! And who cares anyway? My side of the scales of evidence is already groaning under its weight while yours seems to contain one small booger. A sign a person make stands for what they person making it says it stands for, And in this instance it stands for "fuck you, you ignorant leftie". The Proud Boys stand for freedom and the flag and they stand against the racism the left is continually trying to create from the ashes of history. Oh, and they quite like getting drunk and hitting people too. These are failings perhaps, but there you go.
    3
  4034. Man-made climate change is failing to make itself apparent, while renewable energies are being increasingly proved to be expensive failures. Bandwagons and dead horses come to mind. And if anyone thinks Biden will do ANY of the things he says he will if by some horrible mischance he becomes President, they are very much mistaken.
    3
  4035. They just don't get it. do they?
    3
  4036. @ You are wrong. This war came about because Ukraine was setting up deals with the EU which would have removed the highly lucrative mining and steelmaking industries in Eastern Ukraine from long-standing Russian ownership and control. The idea of Ukraine fighting to survive as a "sovereign democratic nation" is a load of old hooey.
    3
  4037. That was the plan. But if you read his biography you will understand that he refused this role, and his current persecution is the direct result of that.
    3
  4038. No. When he becomes President. Which isn't until the New Year.
    3
  4039.  @fred-youtube  I have - and checked with other people who have and it comes out Ukraine "Guilty" on two counts and sharing guilt with Russia on the third. But I would be interested if the BBC could deploy their resources and prove me wrong.
    3
  4040. And it is so. As it happens though while UK tests are down by around 13%, positive results are down by around 30%.
    3
  4041. Its own dirty laundry.
    3
  4042.  @rogerphelps9939  It holds off a Ukrainian counter-offensive at this point and gives them the excuse not to launch one - which would have been costly and not very productive.
    3
  4043. Garlic Breath Nice use of cliche. Well done.
    3
  4044. Make no mistake. If Putin is cornered he will take up this option.
    3
  4045.  @martinpankhurst2683  At least you've got a sense of humour.
    3
  4046. Support for Ukraine is madness. The biggest foreign policy blunder Britain has made since Suez.
    3
  4047. The conference will go ahead and many delegates will be unmasked. If you are healthy and double-vaccinated a dose of covid will vastly increase your immunity at the cost of little more than a runny nose.
    3
  4048. They believe Trump invited them? They also believe that Biden is a lying, cheating puppet of foreign powers. If the first is true then, logically, so is the second.
    3
  4049.  @boink800  And this would have been before the duly-elected Prime Minister was overthrown in an anti-Russian coup, would it?
    3
  4050.  @boink800  It really is odd how many conspiracy theories turn out to be conspiracy facts, don't you find?
    3
  4051. ​ @copperbollox3368  I did say hardliners. Most BLM "supporters" are thoroughly decent people who don't realise that the organisation is hard line Marxist. They are being used.
    3
  4052. What's the Baltic got to do with it? The tankers go to India and the Far East via the Arctic Ocean. And they are actually mostly owned by Indians.
    3
  4053. Once again Zelensky reveals himself to be a pawn of the American deep state.
    3
  4054. Naah. People are gonna get rich.
    3
  4055. @ Of course. Enough to know that it is far more complex than the version presented to young people in the West as a justification for repressive measures against foreign countries.
    3
  4056. Cry some more. It's lovely.
    3
  4057. What would happen though if Russia launched a single strike, just to make the point?
    3
  4058. @ Many have actually been returned to their parents who went to Russia to be re-united with them.
    3
  4059. I believe there is a washing powder in New Zealand called "Dynamo". The NZ Dynamos could keep their strip and possibly get a bit of sponsorship as well!
    3
  4060.  @The_ZeroLine  The Bradleys won't arrive until next year at the earliest according to the Americans, and the British Challengers are non-operational because they have been in storage for so long. And where are those Leopards? The willingness to continually supply the Ukrainian war effort is fading rapidly. All they are getting is fine words and promises. The Ukrainians have fought magnificently, but it really is time to call it a day. Although it is entirely possible, as you say, that there are 40,000 newly-trained soldiers in reserve, Russia has an estimate half-million called up, all of whom will have completed up to four years prior military service. They will be poorly equipped and poorly led but they will still soak up whatever Ukraine has left to throw at them, while tightly-run and fanatical units, such as Wagner and the Chechens, are on hand to do the serious fighting. Don't get me wrong - this could go either way, but Russia only wants the mineral-rich and Russian speaking parts of Eastern Ukraine, just to stop the Americans having access to them as much as anything. Ukraine needs a new government which can talk to Russia and hammer out a compromise before both countries are bled dry.
    3
  4061.  @dpelpal  The Moskva was launched in 1979 - so hardly brand-new. And Kharkiv and Kherson are not militarily important at this stage, certainly not worth losing men to defend. You make the common mistake of looking on war as a publicity exercise. It isn't.
    3
  4062. Fascinating! Could you honour us with a couple of examples?
    3
  4063.  @lorelange  I see what you mean. Grass being considered black people's poison. Like crack cocaine today.
    3
  4064. Ukrainian involvement is far from impossible - or at least the possible result of actions by extreme elements in Zelensky's increasingly fragmented government. Even since its creation just over thirty years ago the Russian Federation has had to face aggression from both the West and from Islamic extremists.
    3
  4065. It's a great day. The old Cold War myths which have fed the US war machine for decades are being shattered. Peace beckons.
    3
  4066.  @JelMain  They didn't vote for the Tory Party. That's what they didn't do. Labour rules purely by default. When it screws up - as it is already doing - a new right wing government which actually reflects the wishes of the people will hopefully come into being.
    3
  4067. Big Pharma are driving the pandemic - not trying to stop it. Omicron is looking more and more a likely candidate to end this mess and pull the rug from under the greedy, immoral bastards. Fingers crossed.
    3
  4068.  @dioghaltasfoirneartach7258  They simply didn't. They just told that to the raw recruits by way of encouragement. This has always been a war of attrition, designed to destroy as much of the Ukrainian army as possible and with little regard for losses of raw troops and ancient equipment on the Russian side.
    3
  4069. The council has spent YEARS arguing over the wording of such a plaque. These two wonderful people have got it right overnight. Now, how about a competition to find a replacement statue for poor old Edward? To be judged by popular vote of course.
    3
  4070. The solar system is a massive complex organism, the functions of which we barely understand. To attribute changes in climate to our pathetic little farts is the height of conceit and folly.
    3
  4071. Uncle Sam or Allah? My money's on Uncle Sam.
    3
  4072.  @Whitewithdust  The facts prove you wrong.
    3
  4073.  @sausage4mash  Can you really not deal with the idea that not everyone is brainwashed? I am not Russian nor am I paid. I just think for myself.
    3
  4074.  @Nick7901962  According to one of the the widely circulated interviews with Dr Angelique Coetzee, who notified the first cases, this is so. There may be nothing to it of course, but the European cases all appear to come into the same category: mostly having travelled in planes where of course full vaccination is mandatory. It wouldn't in fact be surprising. Viruses evolve very rapidly and those which circumvent obstacles are obviously the ones which survive. Delta evolved to get round lockdowns. It is entirely possible that Omicron has evolved to bypass vaccines.
    3
  4075.  @Nick7901962  As has been pointed out to you it was not a claim but an observation of an apparent fact: ie so far all cases in S Africa have been among the vaccinated. The observation was made by Dr Coetzee and we must wait to see if any cases of Omicron occur in the unvaccinated.
    3
  4076.  @Nick7901962  I'm basing it on the tiny handful of cases we know about so far. Since that number is likely to increase by several million over the next few weeks perhaps we will be able to make a clearer judgement by then.
    3
  4077.  @allanpattison329  There is no surge of fascism You don't even know what fascism is. It's just being used as a buzzword to persuade the weak-minded down the road to REAL fascism, as represented by the New World Order and the Great Reset.
    3
  4078.  @porkbelly0713  What are you babbling about you pathetic little person?
    3
  4079. It might be time to think about adjusting your priorities and going back to shitting yourself about climate change.
    3
  4080. This excursion would seem to serve no strategic purpose, since I doubt that whatever steps Russia will take against will involve removing troops from the front, where they are currently making considerable advances. As for Putin "looking weak" I daresay he can weather the disapproval of whoever might imagine this to be so.
    3
  4081. Delta is resistant. Half of those testing positive have been vaccinated - that's around 160,000 a day.
    3
  4082. What a sensible, intelligent bloke. Can't we swap SAGE for him?
    3
  4083. KootFloris That is a very nice picture of a kingfisher next to your name. Do you like kingfishers? I had a parrot but it died. I'm going to get a new one soon though.
    3
  4084. In other countries people are crying out against lockdown. In Britain the majority support it and want it to continue. The Government gives us the opportunity to use our common sense in dealing with the threat and we bleat in protest and demand to be told exactly what to do. Britain has become a weak, cowardly and foolish nation.
    3
  4085. The UN is a waste of space.
    3
  4086. Are we at war with Russia? I must have missed that.
    3
  4087. He had coronavirus too apparently. If it had happened in the UK his death would have been recorded on the lists of Covid victims. Honestly.
    3
  4088. Yet 88% of the UK population have had one dose.
    3
  4089. Starmer has confirmed in a few weeks the suspicions of many thousands of working-class Britons - that the State is their enemy.
    3
  4090. Scottish Nationalists?
    3
  4091. Sadly Putin has been holding back so far. Advance parties have been repulsed but the big push is now on. Kiev and the other targets cannot hold out for more than a few days I think.
    3
  4092. The people who are scared the most.
    3
  4093.  @Chamieiniibet  I don't think it has any particular value other than to supply power to the local area - although I may be wrong about this. There could well be some military target here, but if there was the Russians would surely be defending it. It looks as though the Ukrainians may have hit here simply because it was easy to do so.
    3
  4094. The Budapest Memorandum was a worthless piece of paper. Get over it.
    3
  4095. @ This is an utterly perverse view. It was Ukraine which defied Minsk 2 and instead of working towards find a way of granting regional autonomy to Donbass -which would have solved all the problems - instead used it to buy time to re-arm using billions of dollars from the US and its NATO stooges to do so. Budapest was not a deal - and even if it had been, Ukraine was once again the first to reject its principles by allowing Western influences to overthrow its democratically elected President.
    3
  4096. You should stop scratching and start digging. You might get a shock.
    3
  4097. How on earth do you make that out?
    3
  4098. Indeed to goodness.
    3
  4099. Meanwhile the Biden presidency is looked at through rose-tinted binoculars from a very great distance.
    3
  4100. I wouldn't want to alarm anyone, but all this is happening quite near a small town called Armageddon.
    3
  4101.  @SuperCaelia  Both sides are liars.
    3
  4102.  @anthonyhulse1248  No children have be abducted. What other "crimes" have you in mind?
    3
  4103.  @petefrys545  That's because Russia got in first. Ukraine was preparing to try to take back Donbass from the separatist rebels.
    3
  4104. While congratulating Ukraine in its efforts to reduce corruption and become more democratic, picking a fight with Russia doesn't seem the best way to set about it.
    3
  4105. And I don't suppose for a minute either of them believes in all this climate crisis bollocks anyway.
    3
  4106. If there was any justice this would be happening in small-town America.
    3
  4107.  @xvi1128  Defense again what charges exactly?
    3
  4108. Perhaps some kind of financial reward would be appropriate.
    3
  4109. This doesn't seem to have worked so far though, does it?
    3
  4110.  @Tad1945  Join the club. I think he was pretty jacked up too.
    3
  4111. Yes you can. There's no S.
    3
  4112. Why not? Be democratic in your own country if you like, but trying to export it to other countries is just colonialism.
    3
  4113. Keep those records safe - make them public too!
    3
  4114. They've actually been sent to the pockets of American arms manufacturers.
    3
  4115.  @funoff3207  I just think that the supporters if a war criminal trying cheap tricks like this on his political rival is disgusting and evil -that's all.
    3
  4116. Am I right in thinking that in some states soon he will be legally allowed to drive through them and their like? Good. I do hope so.
    3
  4117.  @imbonkers3629  I think that trading in permissions to exceed carbon emission limits is where the real money is being made. So-called carbon bonds are the new world currency, the price of which is roughly regulated at jamborees like this one.
    3
  4118. Shame human sacrifice is illegal.
    3
  4119. I dunno about that so much. The Russians are breaking through and Western aid is drying up.
    3
  4120. @Tom Not ignore - but not over-react either. Obviously isolating covid patients from those with weakened immunity is necessary, but a great many covid cases were hospitalised needlessly, especially younger people. When the sums are finally done we will discover that our efforts have generally killed more people than were saved.
    3
  4121. A sound judicial principle.
    3
  4122. Britain is not at war with Russia. America and Russia are well on their way to forming a peacemaking alliance which Britain would be well-advised to join.
    3
  4123. @gregrudolph2378 There are not only no grounds. but no procedure in place to do so.
    3
  4124. This government won't get to full term. You must realise by now - you wonderful, kind, caring Labour supporters - that you have let in a sinister and destructive force which does not care a damn about this country or the people living in it.
    3
  4125.  @jeremysmith54565  The idea that an MP is some kind of social worker worried about the drains and the dog poo on the streets is something you just have to get out of your head. The "people of Clacton" are simply a microcosm of the people of Britain as a whole.
    3
  4126.  @jasonhaven7170  It isn't. An MP is a member of a national executive. If there is any local problem which local authorities cannot deal with then he may, if requested, bring the issue up in the House. It really doesn't matter a toss if he never visits his constituency ever again once elected, apart from to garner the votes of people like yourself, who seem to believe that he is some secular version of the parish priest.
    3
  4127.  @harrypalmer3481  Absolutely. America, via NATO, has spread eastwards following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and NATO brings American influence and make profits for American businesses. Ukraine is a prime target. There is an estimated $14trillion of oil, gas coal and rare earth minerals in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea - and America has been plotting to lay hands on it for decades. Russia has financed and developed the mining and steelmaking industries in these regions, and they are run by a largely Russian workforce - so Russia is somewhat reluctant to hand them over to American interests. America and NATO have spent billions on creating a Ukrainian army to aid their efforts and Putin has had enough. His invasion was an act of defence, not aggression. If America could just learn to keep its nose out of the affairs of other countries then this war and many others would not need to happen.
    3
  4128. But what he says is true. Russia has endured more that twenty years of provocation from the West - meaning America.
    3
  4129. The BBC now confirmed as being in the vanguard of Marxist terrorism.
    3
  4130.  @atomiccritter6492  This is a strict medical definition - but one closer to the present situation than you seem to imagine. The idea that children should be inoculated when they are capable of dealing with covid entirely efficiently under their own steam is the result of a delusion. It is delusional too to suggests that lockdowns prevent the spread of the virus when all they do is create environments where variants can prosper. Paranoia is fear feeding upon itself. Which is what we have here.
    3
  4131.  @paulsaunders6536  The facts are that lockdowns are not considered in many scientific circles to have any appreciable affect on the long-term spread of the disease. There have been any number of studies to this effect. The disease, like all pathogenic infections, follows a predictable pattern of gradual rise followed by a steep decline. It is easy enough to superimpose a lockdown date on this descending curve and claim that this created the decline, but it is not so. This failure is of course apart from the immense and disproportionate damage caused by lockdowns. After all a cursory examination of the sky shows that the sun revolves around the Earth.
    3
  4132.  @Ghengiskhansmum  I don't think you understand what the term "herd immunity" actually means. It is not some evil Tory plot to kill everyone off. It is a natural way of resisting the spread of disease which needs as much help from human ingenuity as it can get. I entirely agree with you about test and trace by the way.
    3
  4133. The great myth of Rusian aggression in Europe has sustained the US economy for more than 30 years. The clown Zelenski is just the latest salesman.
    3
  4134. Nudes at Ten?
    3
  4135.  Victor Manuel  The evidence of data adjustment by NASA and NOAA is overwhelming and not even denied. Fossil fuel companies are major investors in green energy, by the way.
    3
  4136.  @waltdavis29  Videos from Mariupol for one.
    3
  4137.  @hurz2233  He didn't. The first phase of the invasion was designed purely to draw the Ukrainian army away from the Donbass border so it could be destroyed in Ukrainian territory, not in territory occupied by Russians.
    3
  4138.  @stevo091  'Киев'
    3
  4139. Then you're a fool.
    3
  4140. This does remind me of the infamous quote by the then Prince Charles when he was secretly recorded expressing the ambition to be a ST in the appropriate position in Camilla. King Charles the Absorbent?
    3
  4141. And how many billions did they spend?
    3
  4142. NATO set the scene for this war. Despite promises that it would not do so it has been advancing westward for thirty years, country by country, all with missiles aimed at Russia. This is provocation , plain and simple - and you can't blame Putin any more you than you can blame a dog for biting you if you keep prodding it with a stick.
    3
  4143. But where are these borders? Establishing them is what this war has largely been about.
    3
  4144.  @boink800  Most Ukrainians speak Russian I believe, and many Ukrainians don't speak Ukrainian. What to make of that?
    3
  4145.  @BrazenBull91  Sadly my lengthier replies keep getting deleted by YouTube's new fascist algorithm. Simply put, what we have here is a group of people who want to exterminate another group of people on largely religious grounds. These people don't want to be exterminated, and things have come to a point where they have little choice but to exterminate the first group first. That about covers it, I think.
    3
  4146. Ryan v Jordan would be a great race for 2024 - if America can keep democracy going that long.
    3
  4147. Without him we probably wouldn't have had covid in the first place.
    3
  4148.  @steveb951  Building contacts with powerful Americans while interviewing them for British TV seems a good use of one's time to me. Better for the people of Clacton in the long run than sitting on the seafront in a tent like some fortune -teller waiting for people to drop by and complain about the state of the drains.
    3
  4149. If I could give you 100 likes I would do so!
    3
  4150. Simple-minded, knee-jerk hysteria is not a good way of dealing with a problem. There. Job done. No need for a Royal Commission.
    3
  4151. People are still dying as the result of the action of big drug companies and stupid politicians. They don't care either.
    3
  4152. Putin has rescued Russia from the shame of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is a truly great leader. When he goes we can only hope that someone of equal abilities will emerge to maintain the balance of world power as the USA degenerates into its swift and inevitable decline.
    3
  4153. Scary and supercilious - and that's just the presenter.
    3
  4154.  @MattWhite-vh6xh  Russia isn't going to waste many resources getting back a few square miles of forest, swamp and potato fields in Kursk.
    3
  4155.  @GrahamA63  You've obviously got more common sense in your little finger than farty-chops left-wing looney Prof John Ashton has in his whole raddled old noggin.
    3
  4156. Minsk treaties, ten years ago. That effin deal.
    3
  4157. Rupert Murdoch is, of course, the one shining exception to your last statement.
    3
  4158. I find it hard to believe that Israeli Intelligence was not aware of this. I'm almost tempted to think that it has been allowed in order to justify a terrible revenge which will drive Hamas into the sea and put Gaza under Israeli control.
    3
  4159.  @jhonhdhcb7495  You've really swallowed the con, like so many.
    3
  4160. How?
    3
  4161.  @fredking5448  But Russia is driving the Ukrainians out of Donbass and Kursk almost by the hour.
    3
  4162.  @johndavidwolf4239  This is simply not true. In the last census , carried out years before annexation 73% of the population self-identified as Russian. That percentage is thought to have increased now. Crimea was never Ukrainian. It was mery stuck on to it by the Soviet Union in 1955 for purely administrative reasons.
    3
  4163. Western commentators show an unending lack of understanding of Russia's motives and strategies in the conduct of this war. The objective of the SMO was NOT to gain territory, but to destroy the new army the US and NATO had spent billions of dollars on creating. This army was designed to retake Donbass and Crimea and so gain access to their vast mineral wealth on behalf of Western commercial interests. That army has now been severely damaged and, despite further billions being pumped in by the West to rebuild it, Russia is now pursuing its next aim, which is to overcome the very strong defences installed by Ukraine designed to hold back the Donbass separatists. Bakhmut is a major fortress in these line of defences. It is now almost surrounded and just hours ago the Wagner Group reached the centre of the city.
    3
  4164. And you don't think Starmer is manipulating us?
    3
  4165.  @slyesttrash6778  The land and the people of the land are not the same. The land was assigned to Ukraine in 1991 in a badly thought-out treaty; but the people of the land are both Ukrainian and Russian. This is why independence is the best answer, but greedy gangsters on both sides will not allow it.
    3
  4166. Which ones?
    3
  4167. National identity requires a common acceptance of a set of beliefs. It doesn't matter how daft they are - or even if people genuinely believe them -as long as the pretence is maintained. Faith, after all, is nothing more than a firm belief in something you know not to be true.
    3
  4168. Trump was right about hydroxychloroquine. States where its use is banned or discouraged (mostly Dem states of course) show significantly higher death rates than those where doctors prescribe it.
    3
  4169. Speak for the whole world do you?
    3
  4170. I don't understand why people can't grasp that the Kharkiv "offensive" was simply a ploy to divert Ukrainian forces away from the southern front, where the real war is. This war is only about gaining limited territory for Russia, namely the mineral-rich Donbass; the rest of it is simply about exhausting Ukrainian forces sufficiently to enable this to happen and to prevent Ukraine from recapturing it afterwards.
    3
  4171. What do you do? Ignore the rockets? Israel sends out warnings before strikes to minimise casualties. Hamas prevents people from leaving because dead children make good PR.
    3
  4172.  @rayisafitzpatrick9523  The ownership of all former Soviet materiel was the subject of lengthy dispute. Russia was, of course, the premier SSR in overall control of the other semiautonomous SSRs, which affected negotiations considerably. No treaty was signed, just a series of agreements was made .
    3
  4173.  @Lonsome1223  Ukraine never had any nuclear weapons. They were Soviet nuclear weapons, just based in Ukraine, and could only be fired on orders from Moscow. What do you mean by Ukraine, anyway?
    3
  4174. More and more people are seeing through this disgraceful sham. The climate crisis mafia have shot themselves in the foot with their cynical manipulation of this vulnerable girl. Only brainwashed children and the weak-minded can possibly be swayed by this pantomime.
    3
  4175. Donnie and Vlad make a great double act. Grade A trolling by both!
    3
  4176. What free world are you talking about?
    3
  4177.  @eh1702  Both sides lie about losses and gains. All one can safely say is that unless Ukraine gets even more help from the West, it will lose.
    3
  4178.  @gregorysurovoi3968  Ever heard of filter-down economics? Keeping hold of a resource that brings in the equivalent of a several billion dollars a year can only benefit the Russian people as a whole.
    3
  4179. Just one battery. The war could be over before it is up and running.
    3
  4180.  @MustardSkaven  Russia has concentrated far more on protecting itself from invasion than it has on creating a conquering army - as can clearly be seen by its somewhat slow progress in Ukraine.
    3
  4181. What else do you expect? We keep encouraging Ukraine to step up with bigger weapons, and Putin will do the same.
    3
  4182. I think there are probably easier ways of earning a crust, don't you?
    3
  4183. Why is it inhuman? If immigrants are of such benefit to national economies, why should we not share them with Rwanda?
    3
  4184. The Democrats don't quite seem to have got the hang of staging Soviet-style show trials. You're supposed to win.
    3
  4185. How is it that these "explosive claims" simply make the guy seem even more endearing?
    3
  4186.  @martinbures881  No worse than anyone else. That's the point.
    3
  4187. The more people who get it the better. These figures, as unreliable as they are, clearly show that the predictions of the scientists supporting the Great Barrington Declaration have got it right: widespread mild infection and death rates comparable with a normal flu season.
    3
  4188.  @verysaltysnack4626  But it wasn't and isn't. I don't understand if these Western military types are just ignorant or pretending.
    3
  4189. Russia has won. Get used to it.
    3
  4190. The allegations of fraud and misconduct in this election are substantial, extensive and real, despite what the media would have you believe. Unless they are fully addressed any Biden administration will be forever tainted.
    3
  4191. No need to. Eastern Ukraine - which is all Russia wants - already had a large Russian population and will have an even larger one after the war - because the Ukrainians have fled.
    3
  4192.  @Yeknodathon  Put another record on! How does it feel to be conned into supporting Boris Johnson, sucker?
    3
  4193. Absolutely.
    3
  4194. I'm afraid Putin's "startling take" stands up to considered examination far better than the juvenile crap spouted on this channel.
    3
  4195. And all because an actor took his part too seriously.
    3
  4196.  @jamesmorrow1646  These childish analogies achieve nothing. This is a needless war, fostered by American greed, and Russia has a good case for both retaining Crimea and for maintaining commercial relations with Donbass. I simply despise the cant and hypocrisy which seduces doubtlessly kindly people such as yourself into supporting the escalation of wars.
    3
  4197. This is disappointing. Instead of falling for left-wing race baiting Boris should put his foot down and say the race of his cabinet members is totally irrelevant and refuse to bring the matter up. I would imagine that Patel and Sunak et al are tired of being trotted out in this way. It's demeaning and its defeatist.
    3
  4198. Why is this very sensible decision so difficult to understand? The President must be above the law because he IS the law. Impeachment or removal from office through election are the only constraints he/she should face. As we have seen in recent months, commandeering the judicial system for political gain can only demean a nation in the eyes of the world.
    3
  4199.  @Steven-vo4ee  Why? They all seem to be excellent choices, interjecting new blood and new ideas into what has become a hidebound and self-serving form of government.
    3
  4200. Which is a good place to be.
    3
  4201. Putin dies not want to conquer Ukraine. He only wants Donbass and Crimea - and a goodly proportion of the inhabitants of these regions are entirely happy with this idea. Give way now and stop the bloodshed.
    3
  4202. For "unbelievably" substitute "thankfully"
    3
  4203. He should have quit earlier and simply kept Donbass out of the EU deal.
    3
  4204. Put another record on.
    3
  4205. Like Boris' various plans to defeat covid, this will undoubtedly make things worse.
    3
  4206.  @adamlouis3725  Defeat for Ukraine - or at least the Zelensky regime.
    3
  4207.  @mikekubo3668  Masks are but a minor factor. There is considerable evidence that people in many Asian countries have a built-in immunity to covid due to historic exposures to similar pathogens which did not reach Europe. A curious feature of this is the way in which the Delta variant seemed to bypass such immunity. Many parts of India, as well as Japan, Singapore, Vietnam etc experienced a sudden simultaneous surge. And they hadn't stopped wearing masks all of a sudden!
    3
  4208.  @iltsd123  Very much so.
    3
  4209.  @Alan-ii9te  What's the cunning plan then?
    3
  4210.  @justinj8492  Russia has not failed and Ukraine is not a sovereign nation.
    3
  4211.  @KatherineJames-y6o  How do you define a sovereign nation? A nation isn't sovereign just because it claims to be, or America says it is. And even then it's just a word. Follow your own advice and research the history of the area which has now been labelled "Ukraine".
    3
  4212. CNN, with a well-established reputation for continual lying, is going to have to do better than a stream of childish nit-picking like this. It was mostly peaceful though.
    3
  4213.  @Blanka1100  NATO is at war with him, not the other way around.
    3
  4214. I thoroughly disapprove of this American-imported idea that everyone you disagree with should be sent to prison. I would be quite satisfied if Jess and other members of Starmer's cabinet were forced to live in an inner city tower block with Pakistani child molesters and drug addicts as neighbours, and be expected to feed themselves on £35 a week.
    3
  4215. Will the next pandemic be entirely geared to maximising drug company profits, as this one has been? You bet it will. And will the WHO be entirely complicit in this? Right again.
    3
  4216. Did he mention schoolteachers? Latest figures have revealed they have suffered a lower percentage of Covid deaths than any other category of adult.
    3
  4217. And the hungry street dogs don't seem to have eaten the bodies left supposedly out in the street for weeks.
    3
  4218.  @glennhook2180  A considerable amount of evidence can be found on a site called Here Is The Evidence which has over 1,500 links to various areas of concern. It is well worth a browse. I can't give you the link because if I did this post would be deleted - something rather concerning in itself. You can Google it though -or at least I can. Let me know how you get on.
    3
  4219. Totally one-sided and inaccurate presentation from the moment this twit opened his mouth.
    3
  4220.  @jamesmorrow1646  And the ethnically Russian people of Crimea and Donbass would have continued to be treated as second-class citizens.
    3
  4221.  @livingtribunal4110  Minerals which, incidentally, have been mined pretty exclusively by Russia and Russians since salt was discovered there back in the 17th century.
    3
  4222.  @DFenV  I couldn't agree more. I can't make my mind up if there is just plain stupidity behind this or something more sinister.Hopefully the former.
    3
  4223.  @milomilo55  I have to agree with much of what you say. His actions in going alone (apparently) to put out the dumpster fire which led to him being pursued were foolish in the extreme. There's no doubt in my mind that the second two shootings were justified in terms of self-defence. It really was him or them, I think. Question marks still hang over the initial shooting though. The story we have so far is that shots were fired in the air and that an object was thrown at the kid. A bottle in a plastic bag by some accounts. I guess it will all depend on whether or not the court will view his situation as life-threatening enough to justify his fatal use of the weapon We will just have to wait and see.
    3
  4224. Trump thinks he was cheated. So do I. Why should he lie down quietly?
    3
  4225. Don't be so silly. Go back to your comic books.
    3
  4226. Do you mean cohesion or suppression?
    3
  4227. Taken down from where exactly?
    3
  4228.  @andrewowens4421  You have been utterly brainwashed. You have been sold a pup. The product was broken before you even got it out of the box. Trump isn't going to jail. On the contrary, if he feels up to it, he will become the next President of the United States, while the REAL crooks and charlatans, who have been robbing and conning the American people for decades, will just have to continue to howl and gnash their teeth in impotent fury.
    3
  4229.  @andrewowens4421  No wonder you're so easily fooled. You seem to think the process of governance is like a cowboy movie. Nobody'd going to jail. All that happens is that the swamp creatures have the trough pulled from under their greedy little noses. Which is why they are so pissed. People seem to forget that Trump's knowledge of the political world comes from the other side: he's been handing out bribes, not taking them. The Secret Service, which polices these things, has nothing on him, despite all their attempts to fabricate evidence. That's why he was such a good President. He really is a man of the people; fallible, egotistical and capable of error but loved not because of what he is, but because of what he is not -namely a career politician.
    3
  4230.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Putin may be a dictator but there's nothing crazed about him. Russia wanted to join NATO after the break-up of the Soviet Union but America prevented it. The military/industrial complex needs an enemy in order to survive. Ukraine is vassal of the American deep state, of which the military and the CIA are an essential part. Apart from subverting the country by flooding it with bribes, they have now come up with a scheme to include it in NATO and make is a US missile base. Putin cannot be expected to tolerate this.
    3
  4231.  @gameoverwehaveeverypixelco1258  Many of the vulnerable die even when vaccinated. Australia's lockdown policy will backfire when the virus sweeps through the population all at once. It's either that or lockdowns for ever and ever.
    3
  4232. Putin has more faith in him than he has in regular army generals.
    3
  4233. As glib as a timeshare ad but much more dangerous. Pure globalist propaganda.
    3
  4234. It's not what's on the ground but what's under it which is important. This little corner of the world sits on around 6% of the world's rare earth minerals, plus vast untapped resources of shale gas, oil, coal and iron ore. In all, worth around $13trillion they reckon.
    3
  4235. bob jones She's got a bob or two - but nothing like enough for that!
    3
  4236. I hope with all my heart that Boris can somehow become leader before the election. He can then go down with the sinking ship and hopefully never be heard of again.
    3
  4237.  @igorm6944  Because Putin is a strong and cunning leader and they are a bunch of clowns.
    3
  4238.  @chefdave3275  Forgive my frustration. My last four replies to you outlining my views have been deleted by YouTube. They were detailed replies but the new censorship prevailing in the world will not accept them.
    3
  4239.  @Gopferteckel  It wasn't Ukraine's nuclear arsenal or bomber fleet. They were Russia's which just happened to be stationed there.
    3
  4240.  @johnkitching2248  So they might vote for someone who they felt represented them.
    3
  4241. I do hope the woman the police shot was black. We could have some proper riots then.
    3
  4242. Should last a couple of days then.
    3
  4243. They can suit themselves then. The longer they hang on, the worse it will be.
    3
  4244. Four more years of peace and prosperity? No such luck. The bombs and the drones will be flying over the Middle East before the year is out and Biden will be being told what to do by some polite Chinese gentlemen.
    3
  4245. I think he's in love.
    3
  4246. Weather records are actually quite suspect. Old ones are frequently altered as they do not fit with the climate crisis theory - the excuse being that they were made on inaccurate equipment.
    3
  4247.  @killerkally7080  The idea that Ukraine had no army is a complete myth. The US and other NATO countries had poured billions of dollars into creating a new Ukrainian army which was, in fact, stronger than the Russian invasion force.
    3
  4248. Thw NZ situation is quite worrying. As I understand it the population has built up little or no "herd immunity" to the virus and so and when and if it hits, it's going to hit hard.
    3
  4249. The United Nations Charter has had its day. While some Western countries will support it it is quite possible that its main instigator -America - will seek to amend it or withdraw from it under Trump.
    3
  4250.  @stephenhill545  Call a policeman then.
    3
  4251. It's terrifying to realise that this YouTube clip comes from a BBC terrestrial broadcast, perhaps watched by millions, who will have no idea of the facts you outline here.
    3
  4252.  @peteryoungpeteryoung965  Your inner fascist is showing again, young Peter. Now, if the worthy inhabitants of the Forest of Dean happened to be black, you couldn't have said that, could you?
    3
  4253. No it isn't. Putin and Hitler are different blokes
    3
  4254. All good news for Russia. Just sayin'
    3
  4255. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sides in taking this action and I would have thought the disadvantages outweigh the advantages in both cases. It is possible this could have been an act of sabotage by crazy partisans ot even accidental as the result of damage caused by earlier attacks.
    3
  4256. It's tit for tat. The US via NATO started this new phase of conflict - what did they expect?
    3
  4257.  @hmq9052  Not a bit as much as Biden!
    3
  4258.  @johnnydoe3603  What are you on about? The national debt was $18.5 trillion when Trump first came to office and $22.72 trillion when he left. Biden leaves with the figure at $35.27 trillion.
    3
  4259. Corruption in Ukraine is away of life.
    3
  4260. We know the C02 alarmists are going to capitalise on this tragedy. The question is: how much were they responsible for causing it?
    3
  4261. The new virus is a result of earlier lockdowns - which were suppose to give the government time to get the health service into shape. Which it hasn't.
    3
  4262. Avelier Plays You are conflating a number of different realities if I may say so. The ecosystem is not collapsing, it is altering -as it has done throughout the course of history. We will certainly have to adapt as we always have. What is dangerous in my view is to wrongly attribute the current changes to a single cause and to make predictions and form strategies based on that dogma. The dramatic drop in insect numbers is very worrying. Once again, however, any serious studies will be stymied by lack of resources. I suggest that grants will only be made available to studies which have the words "climate change" in their title. Human impact on the environment is unquestionable, as you outline in your last but one paragraph. Putting our eggs into one basket - AGW - is a serious mistake, Far more damage is done by a host of individual causes. Climate change hysteria is just getting in the way of serious investigations into these causes.
    3
  4263. Starmer has Brylcream in his side.
    3
  4264. Starmer is just a fish wriggling on the hook.
    3
  4265.  @tzrgazza  The minimal land grab involves land worth around $13trillion in mineral wealth. As to the rest - that's war.
    3
  4266. Orange Man Bad has gone into overkill. I very much fear that the US political establishment will have to resort to plain honest cheating again to keep Trump out of the White House.
    3
  4267. Why not just leave him alone to run his country as he sees fit?
    3
  4268. Russia will step in.
    3
  4269. As I understand it this virus is a relative of the common cold. It is incurable, but it will diminish in its effects until it becomes a survivor -as is the common cold, which our antibodies scarcely bother to waste resources upon. In this sense ALL attempts to contain it are pointless and indeed counterproductive. It should be allowed to run its course. Obviously the vulnerable elderly and frail should be protected and environments such as hospitals, where multiple reinfection can cause antibody overload, should be very closely monitored. The rest of us should keep calm and carry on - while making sure we are well stocked with brandy and lemon. -
    3
  4270. The exact opposite is true. He will provide pragmatic solutions to world issues, unclouded by absurd ideologies and in defiance of the greedy, warmongering thugs who run America.
    3
  4271. Why should Russia give up the wealth of Donbass which Russians have laboured for generations to create?
    3
  4272.  @ballynaxx9175  But he doesn't want Poland - and not many people in Poland want him to have it as far as know. Crimea and Easter Ukraine, however, DO want to escape from Ukraine -and for a number of valid reasons.
    3
  4273.  @boozolini4465  Being Russian in Ukraine isn't exactly safe at the moment.
    3
  4274. It's the unvarnished truth.
    3
  4275. Between them, Trump and Putin will bring peace to the world.
    3
  4276. At least one sixth of Ukraine wants to leave it. Where's the "territorial integrity" in that? Poor little Belgium my arse. Ukraine is a tart of a country whose leaders will sell her to the highest bidder.
    3
  4277.  @martinwyke  Another bloody Irish nationalist!
    3
  4278.  @Pretty_Fly_on_a_White_Guy  Not a lot, I would have thought, other than Fauci's connection to both.
    3
  4279.  @andym9328  No. British and entirely non-partisan.
    3
  4280.  @davidb5333  The information provided by GB News is neither more or less accurate than information provided by other news channels, as far as I can see. You are just getting your knickers in a twist because you disagree with their interpretation and emphasis.
    3
  4281. @ There are a number of fascinating videos about the new, rebuilt Mariupol available on YouTube. I recommend them.
    3
  4282.  @brandenburg2388  I am cautious about conspiracy theories - but there is something rather sinister going on here. I was lucky enough to see the "Frontline Doctors" video on the benefits of hydroxyquoroline, the absurdity of masks and the immense psychological damage caused by lockdowns. It made total sense and was argued with passion and conviction. The fact that the powers-that-be have shut it down and tried to remove all traces is like something out of Soviet Russia. This pandemic is being exaggerated and extended for reasons we can but dimly apprehend.
    3
  4283.  @brandenburg2388  It's very annoying to have to become a conspiracy theorist, but at the moment one has little choice. China and George Soros are my primary contenders for puppet-master at the moment, but whoever it is they have a Very Cunning Plan. of which the coranavirus scandal may only be one part.
    3
  4284. Apart from the four years when he was just that you mean?
    3
  4285. It is nonsensical to pretend that new administrations are bound by arrangements made by previous ones. Treaties are signed with great flourishes, but as circumstances change they become meaningless - if not downright dangerous. The Ukraine war is a case in point. When Ukraine was given the same boundary as the former SSR of Ukraine no-one would have imagined that NATO would spread eastward like some advancing plague, or that the EU would get so full of itself that it felt able to attempt to steal Russian resources in Donbass. The Budapest Memorandum, as meaningless as it is, can equally be seen as a contributing factor. Without it there might not even be a war - in the same way that without the Treaty of Versailles there might well never have been World War II, or indeed that without the treaties signed in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the Franco-Prussian War there would never have been World War I in the first place.
    3
  4286. Some very good news out today for schoolteachers. Latest figures show they have a statistically significant less chance of dying from Covid 19 than any other category of working adults.
    3
  4287.  @ocean_monster1  "Prevent" factual corrections?? Perhaps you are making too many Freudian slips.
    3
  4288.  @TheMasterMind144  It's kinda fun. And I feel it is my duty to try to correct the misapprehensions of the ill-educated.
    3
  4289.  @TheMasterMind144  Why does supporting Russia bring harm? Russia has no interest in harming anyone who isn't causing it harm. Supporting Ukraine is very, very dangerous on the other hand. Why should we risk our countries' well-being by supplying a set of gangsters with expensive weapons? Why should we spend billions on this madness when we have so many important problems to deal with at home?
    3
  4290.  @atifnajib9648  I knew it had something to do with student discontent about the distribution of civil service jobs initially - but like our riots they are now an expression of wider discontents.
    3
  4291.  @brupeboring2082  But not a politician. He is more used to paying bribes than taking them.
    3
  4292.  @RJ-xv1nh Ukraine is basically Russia's creation. Sweden and Finland are not.
    3
  4293. Why bother? Mob rule and election fraud have replaced due process and democracy in America. Live with it.
    3
  4294. @Razvan Razvan No-one apart from the high-ups on either side knows how many men and how much equipment have been lost. It must be considerable on both sides though. As for Crimea and Donbass, Crimea is predominantly Russian and Donbass at least 50% so. Both areas did much better under the Soviets than they have since Kiev took over and there is an incontestable wish among many people to look to Moscow for support and governance.
    3
  4295. @Razvan Razvan Which ethnic Russians are the Russians bombarding exactly? The unfortunate people of Donbass are getting bombarded from both sides but the Ukrainians have been doing it for eight years.
    3
  4296.  @calisto2735  Or a head full of reports from the UN and various other agencies clearly detailing the atrocities. How do you explain the war memorials and the bombed out houses where families are forced to live in cellars?
    3
  4297. Depends who ends up writing the history.
    3
  4298.  @jamesmorrow1646  Sure. Ukraine is caught up in a battle of interests between two old empires in varying degrees of decay. The historical facts remain. Modern Ukraine is largely a construct of Russia: both Imperial Russia and Soviet Russia. The Russian nature of both Crimea and Eastern Ukraine cannot simply be ignored. Maidan was the starting point of this war. It clearly demonstrated the divisions which exist in Ukraine. Although Putin may have thrown down the gauntlet in 2014, America has pursued a consistent policy of aggression against Russia which has its origins not in the cause of world peace, but in the career ambitions of American politicians and armchair generals.
    3
  4299.  @jamesmorrow1646  This is simply not true. Russia has no imperialistic ambitions. The Budapest agreements were arrived at in the immense confusion which resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Minsk agreements were designed to iron out the anomalies, but have been ignored. This is one of the prime causes of Russia's current aggressive stance. Russia feels itself to be diminished by the collapse of Soviet power and seeks only to retain some dignity. The colonisation of Ukraine by the West is an affront which Putin cannot in all conscience ignore.
    3
  4300.  @LividLobster  Sure. WORSE. But as grotesque? The country practically destroyed as a respected world power almost overnight by a transparently incapable President whose very election is of seriously questionable legitimacy?
    3
  4301.  @gothenmosph5151  America will be lucky to even exist a hundred years from now.
    3
  4302. Yes, but those giving these warnings are right. You terribly nice woolly-minded liberals have created a situation which within twenty or thirty years will lead to the utter destruction of the British way of life. It's a great shame that it has had to come to this, but it is you terribly nice, woolly-minded liberals have left patriotic Britons little choice but to rebel.
    3
  4303. It is a sign of extreme intellectual poverty to continually compare the present situation with that in the late 1930s. The differences far outweigh any spurious similarities.
    3
  4304. @ History never repeats itself. To imagine that it does is dangerous because it leads to lazy thinking. The idea that the situation we face in Ukraine is "the same" as the situation in Europe in the late 1930s immediately leads to the drawing of a series of conclusions which are fatally incorrect. One you realise the truth of this you will, indeed, have learned from the past.
    3
  4305. It is a known fact that the election in the UK was won by Koch brothers trolls who invaded social media with subliminal messages. They and other billionaire fascists plan to sell the NHS to Donald Trump and infect everyone with an income less than $1million a year with a Russian supervirus that will turn them into zombies. The UK is the testing ground. The US comes next. Be ready Bernie 2020
    3
  4306. It doesn't stop you getting it. It just slows it down and stops it being so severe, Trump will be fine.
    3
  4307. Unlike the scrupulously careful examination of vaccines, of course.
    3
  4308.  @derekscanlan4641  The Kievan Rus was destroyed by the Mongols in the mid 13th century. It was at its height in the mid-11th century and even then had little interest in the steppes east of the Dnieper, which is the territory in dispute today.
    3
  4309.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  But Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are Ukrainian in name only. The extremely profitable mineral extraction industry there is still largely Russian owned and operated largely by Russians . Why should they be expected to give them up? Like my country, Britain, the Russians have learned that empires are often more trouble than they are worth. In their terms, Eastern Ukraine has little to do with the Ukrainians. The Russians took it from the Ottomans in 1783 and those "Ukrainians" who have colonised it since then have done so largely thanks to agricultural improvements - largely instituted by Russia.
    3
  4310. But where does Ukraine begin and Russia end? That's the question.
    3
  4311.  2manynegativewaves  Were you born blind and with only half a brain? Apart from the Orange Man Bad factor the fact that if hydroxychloriquine treatments could massively impact the profitability of pharmaceutical companies is unquestionable. Follow the money.
    3
  4312. In your dreams.
    3
  4313. Why do people refuse to accept that Russia is celebrating the return of its long-lost Christian identity? Each one of the "experts" trotted out on this channel seems more demented and off-target than the one before.
    3
  4314.  @Katoshi_Takagumi  Many horrible things have been done in the name of religion. Nothing new there.
    3
  4315. Well he won't then, will he?
    3
  4316. Er they said very plainly that they didn't want to.
    3
  4317.  @sammylancelot3053  Ukraine is not a free country. Even if it was its affairs are none of our business.
    3
  4318. Warning: Trump Derangement Syndrome has severe chronic symptoms. These include hallucinations, inability to think rationally and an increasing obsession with legislative procedures.
    3
  4319. It remains a puzzle why Ukraine is sending what few resources it has remaining to wander through largely undefended farmland.
    3
  4320.  @arturobianco848  You got me, and I apologise. I was working from memory and concentrating on over 90s. Yes, France, Germany (and even Italy) have slightly higher percentages of population over 90 than the UK. I grovel and withdraw.
    3
  4321.  @benebeck5628  Check Human Rights Watch. A hospital was hit.
    3
  4322.  @valenrn8657  I realise that. Both were raids carried out by NATO forces using cluster bombs however. Cluster bombs have also been used by Ukraine during the Donbass war.
    3
  4323. The wider issue, of course, is just how useful/pointless/damaging all these arbitrary restrictions have been in the long run.
    3
  4324. This entire pandemic has been stage-managed by Big Pharma for purposes of profit. It astounds me that people can't see this.
    3
  4325. This has been so depressingly predictable from the very earliest days of the present conflict. Russia doesn't want to conquer Ukraine and never did. It just wanted to destroy its army so Crimea and Donbass were safe from invasion. There is every likelihood that this will be achieved and that even further territories will be returned to Russian influence. And why not? What business is it of ours anyway?😮
    3
  4326. What a very successful shyster Boris is! It seems the only people who can see through him are the right-wingers in his own party.
    3
  4327. I daresay it won't be long before the pro-Palestine loonies start claiming that Israel did this to themselves.
    3
  4328. But many Ukrainians and much Ukrainian equipment will be lost trying to stop them - which I think is rather the point.
    3
  4329.  @Sadbuttrue-ThatSwedishGirl  These are foolish analogies. Ukraine was created a mere thirty years ago and by means of a flawed treaty which ignored the geographical and economic realities of the position. The places you mention were Spanish colonies. Donbass and Crimea were never colonies. They were, and are, parts of Russia.
    3
  4330. ​ @DavidJ222  Western Ukraine can become America's poodle if it wishes. But Donbass and Crimea stay Russian.
    3
  4331.  @WinterGK  Except for the fact that a considerable portion of the population of Donbass and Crimea are of Russian heritage and prefer to be ruled from Moscow, rather than Kiev. Furthermore the very substantial mining and steelmaking industries in these regions were created by and financed by Russia and staffed by Russians. The inclusion of these areas in the newly-created country of Ukraine was a mistake which could have been corrected peacefully, but foreign interest in the mineral wealth has prevented this and led to a bloody and needless war.
    3
  4332. A banana republic, in other words.
    3
  4333. woolyimage That sounds wonderful! He's not from Crystal City is he? That's a pretty far-out town. People who live near deserts or on mountains and other windy places are better off than the rest of us now. I think horses can help a great deal in other places though. Maybe even dogs. Dogs like running and we could make giant treadmills with lots of dogs and that would make some electricity. Those wind turbines seem to go round awful slow. I'm sure some dogs could do better than that.
    3
  4334. What's bad about it? There was massive fraud in Georgia (and other states too). Trump is just asking the Governor to do his job. The guy is just scared he's going to get caught for the part he played in it. And this is nothing to do with Democrat v. Republican. It's about the corrupt establishment v Trump.
    3
  4335. No. Paranoia and profit.
    3
  4336. The West's investment in Ukraine isn't paying off. Russia's strategy is working and once the ground hardens the Ukrainians will have to withdraw forces from the south to defend Kiev from a push via Belarus. Russia will then hope to take and secure the whole of Donbass , which is and always has been their prime military objective.
    3
  4337. This dreadful old gangster is probably more responsible than anyone for this war. He initiated massacres in Donbass, banned it from exporting coal and then bought up all the coal, selling it in anonymously in Kiev while pretending it came from South Africa, and so making a fortune for himself.
    3
  4338.  @Shazbat55  Everything seems a conditioned response rather than the result of actual thought. I blame it on the educational process whereby they get rewarded for repeating buzzwords and glib summaries. They are as conditioned as Pavlov's dogs. The word "Trump" makes them bark and slaver.
    3
  4339. @ Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    3
  4340.  @blazzz13  Hasn't buyers' remorse set in yet then? Give it time.
    3
  4341.  @seebarry4068  I am not alone - far from it. I have never before known a government receive such instant disapproval in so short a time.
    3
  4342.  @stephenelkington4971  YouTube seems reluctant to advertise my manifesto.
    3
  4343. Sounds to me as though the US is getting ready to abandon ship. Won't be the first time.
    3
  4344. Astrid Maclean Then we are in agreement. Pity, I was quite looking forward to a bit of a row.
    3
  4345.  @MS-dx6cu  Totally unbiased then.
    3
  4346.  @beeragainsthumanity1420  Not really. Becoming President is not a career move for Trump. It's more of an ego-trip combined with, I think, a genuine sense of good, old-fashioned patriotism.
    3
  4347. They all contained troops or missile launchers.
    3
  4348.  @TimpanistMoth_AyKayEll  They are the victims of their parents' decisions.
    3
  4349.  @judykinsman3258  That simply isn't true. The situation and the history are far, far more complex than this. The roots lie as far back as the end of the 19th century. The nightmare is caused mainly by the intractability of Islamic fundamentalists who refuse to allow Israel the right to exist. The end of World War II saw vast shifts of population in many locations. With the wisdom of hindsight the resettlement of Holocaust survivors could have been handled better, but there is no doubt in my mind that the main obstacle to peace is Islamic fundamentalism.
    3
  4350.  @SadaK-tr6dm  That I simply do not believe. There would have been no need for it, and footage shows that the assailants were clearly Muslim fanatics.
    3
  4351. No it isn't.
    3
  4352.  @christianevanherck6023  Mariupol is looking especially nice now.
    3
  4353. It might be boring, but at least he knows what he's talking about. This was jaw-droppingly silly.
    3
  4354.  @ronlegend2526  Thanks for the tip. They confirm with technical detail what I have merely felt to be true by instinct.
    3
  4355. This is such a stitch-up you've got to be a brainwashed moron not to see it.
    3
  4356. What's going to come first for poor old Labour: humiliation at the polls or the total collapse of a mismanaged economy?
    3
  4357. Badenoch is an extremely clever politician, as well as a true right-thinking conservative. She has no wish to be a performing seal in the ridiculous clown-show that is PMQs - and nor does she want to get involved in a drawn-out technical debate about this so-called "black hole." It's just a trap and she is sensibly avoiding it.
    3
  4358.  @ProfessorTimWilson  Skills at what? Being a circus act? I think possibly your obvious fondness for the theatre gives undue weight to the importance of this weekly audition!
    3
  4359. This just gets better and better!
    3
  4360. It's one last vestige of proper legal procedure left in this travesty of justice.
    3
  4361.  @eaman11  This isn't a trial. It's showbiz.
    3
  4362. 5000
    3
  4363. I wish someone would tell me one specific lie Trump told. As far as I can make out a "lie" is merely saying something the Dems disagree with.
    3
  4364.  @sakha2349  Not really. It is a view backed by historical fact. How was this country governed? What is its history? What are the ethnic origins of its population? Where are its borders? A real country would have answers to these questions. Palestine is the name of an area drawn on a map by the British after World War I. It was a protectorate, not a country. It's population owes itself largely to the efforts of Zionists who purchased land from the Ottomans and set about transforming it into a viable entity, thus attracting Arabs from neighbouring countries who came either as workers or invaders. These are largely the so-called Palestinians.
    3
  4365. Name one from last night.
    3
  4366. Yes. A duck. Not a Nazi.
    3
  4367.  @marqsee7948  A goose step, in fact?
    3
  4368. And he's right.
    3
  4369. YouTube has stopped me replying to further comments on my original thread is this section. Just so you know.
    3
  4370. Jetite While creating the safest, healthiest and most luxurious civilisation mankind has ever known. I agree about the sage grouse though. Naughty Mr Trump!
    3
  4371. How could the west end this tomorrow? Do tell.
    3
  4372. The rules he was breaking were pointless and ridiculous - and no-one knew this better than those who made them. Johnson has broken most of the ten commandments in his sordid career. If he goes down it will be because he broke No 11. He got caught.
    3
  4373. But what about immunity achieved through resistance to existing covids? And T cell immunity? Surely this leads to herd immunity being achieved far more quickly and at very little cost in terms of the loss of life? The mathematical study below seems to indicate that if the R number can be held at 1.4 then herd immunity can be reached with a 26% infection rate and very quickly too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWjVYzvTHwM
    3
  4374. The Muslims are now out on the streets too, and heavily armed. The rights and wrongs of it hardly matter any more. This will turn very, very nasty.
    3
  4375.  @truthseeker6116  Cope? Just listen to yourself!
    3
  4376. China has some balls.
    3
  4377.  @donaldmackerer9032  Even Stevens. Ukraine is a bit more sophisticated I think.
    3
  4378.  @jeremymanson1781  Since when? How does this manifest itself?
    3
  4379.  @vinm300  If the USA is in tatters it's a direct result of the cynical manipulations of the Democrats and their Marxist allies in BLM and Antifa. And Biden has no message. He is just an old hack acting as a mouthpiece for others.
    3
  4380. I love this. It contains not one single scrap of evidence for the existence of man-made global warming. Since it doesn't exist this must be journalism at its best - by Channel 4 standards that is.
    3
  4381.  @Mr.Monta77  Merely that such an extravagant sentiment is unlikely to be matched in Ukraine. Or anywhere else for that matter. Ukraine got itself into this mess by allowing itself too be seduced by promises of a sweet life. The whole world is now suffering on account of that error.
    3
  4382. Ukraine won't win, and there is no reason why it should.
    3
  4383. With enough money and enough time the Prime Minister in, say, twenty years could be a certain Sir Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
    3
  4384. You can't have a fair debate with a trained monkey.
    3
  4385. No it isn't. Never done better.
    3
  4386. Face relentless persecution, you mean?
    3
  4387. Russia is merely taking back by force lands stolen from it by means of a devious treaty. Getting on a moral high horse about this is hypocritical to an extreme.
    3
  4388.  @Moonscafe7  I hope you won't be offended when I say I simply don't believe you.
    3
  4389. There now seems a strong possibility that Omicron is the result of a series of covid 19 mutations in mice. Wow!
    3
  4390.  @olorin4317  Irritating, isn't it? The new YouTube algorithm is quite, quite mad.
    3
  4391. Why do we keep annoying Russia? What's in it for us ?
    3
  4392. If the Ukrainians really did blow up that bridge they were damned stupid to do so. And I don't think they're that stupid.
    3
  4393. I'm sure he will persuade the EU leaders to welcome us back, now that he has such a lovely speaking voice.
    3
  4394.  @dudermcdudeface3674  I don't remember ever being taught to jump to conclusions.
    3
  4395. I hope Trump will do the sensible thing and recognise the merits of Putin's case, and allow Ukraine's boundaries to be readjusted to something approaching what they were before the Bolsheviks stuck great chunks of Russia on to it.
    3
  4396. Your confidence is touching.
    3
  4397. Not ludicrous at all. While there may be a few over-60s Tories who still hold racist views the vast majority are far less colour-conscious than most lefties seem to be.
    3
  4398. Approximately $13trillion of gas, oil, coal, iron ore and rare earth minerals beneath the soil in Eastern Ukraine. The whole are has been mined and developed by Russia over the years, even following Ukraine's independence. The West has set it sights on taking it over.
    3
  4399.  @FYCH45  It's a fix in many ways, of course it is, but we have to be practical and try to reduce the amount of damage and human lives lost while getting out of this mess. Arming civilians with automatic rifles and petrol bombs doesn't seem to me the best way of setting about it. If Putin gets Donbass under his wing, gets sanctions on Crimea removed and a firm promise on NATO he might hopefully go back to Moscow having put Ukraine in its place and scared the living daylights out of the rest of us.
    3
  4400. No.Simple as
    3
  4401.  @vr360experiencetheordinary  Which have yet to be established.
    3
  4402. Ease up on the hero worship. Zelensky has jailed opposition leaders and shut down TV stations which don't follow the party line. He's almost certainly just a stooge for the CIA, chosen purely for his charisma.
    3
  4403. It's a shame barbers might reopen soon. I've thought for a long while now that Boris would look great with a self-shaved head and a walrus-type moustache.
    3
  4404. I think she's got you lot scared. Maggie Badenoch!
    3
  4405.  @Dustie1984  Few people seem to realise that the appearance of these variants is the direct result of restrictions encouraging them to thrive. Several US states are listening to the advice of sensible epidemiologists who know from long experience how these things work out.
    3
  4406.  @ChuckyRed06  Russia is winning on the battlefield - which is where it counts. The value of the rouble against the dollar is irrelevant and Russia is showing tactical and strategic nous in the deployment of artillery and troops- of which the Ukrainians have less and less.
    3
  4407. An interesting fact is that the ICC prosecutor who is taking Putin to court, Karim Ahmad Khan, is the brother of Imran Ahmad Khan, a convicted paedophile and former UK Conservative MP. This is probably irrelevant, but it gives a certain grotesque symmetry to the allegations against Putin, who has done nothing other than remove children from war zones, and from the internationally notorious hell-holes which are Ukraine's orphanages and "care homes."
    3
  4408. How can this be so when every Russian is used to surviving winters with temperatures many degrees below zero? Unlike the Ukrainians they will also have electricity and entirely unscathed supply lines.
    3
  4409. I am a right-wing conservative, but I agree with practically every word in this video. Capitalism married to war is an evil combination. We can only hope that the horrendous debacle currently taking place in Afghanistan will be more than enough grounds for divorce.
    3
  4410. Reform actually IS a political party. It is registered as such with the UK Electoral Commission, and its registered number is PP7931.
    3
  4411.  @fred4687  It's odd how we become polarised. I try with all my heart to be objective and detached, but the pro-Russian content just seems to be so much more convincing. The fact that even making the slightest suggestion that the Russians have a case results in you being called a "Russian bot" just adds to the guilty feeling one gets that it would be a jolly good thing if the Russkies would just hurry up and win.
    3
  4412.  @fred4687  We are a rare breed. I don't know about you, but I'm retired now and have time to nose about a bit. The poor sods who have to slave all day just suck up the first things shoved in the trough. The MSM sets the agenda in cahoots with big business and the politicians. Depressingly, independent YouTubers who ought to see through this often don't, or get sent down blind alleys due to some pre-existing prejudice - or the desire to make more money by appealing to such prejudices. Best of luck anyway. I daresay our paths will cross again in the jungle of YouTube comments threads
    3
  4413. Because it has all been dreamed up by Americans and Americans are as thick as shit.
    3
  4414. -Putting these two entirely separate cases in one bag is typical of the disingenuous approach which made Piers such a crap newspaper editor.
    3
  4415. It seems to me to be an entirely logical step: it hits at infrastructure and also brings home to the Ukrainians what danger they are in.
    3
  4416. He is a registered Democrat and mercenary soldier, fanatical for the Ukraine cause.
    3
  4417. It's not a question of not belonging. It's a question of seeing what's left of your identity being stolen from under your nose.
    3
  4418.  @em945  Not very long then.
    3
  4419. Are they stupid, uneducated, brainwashed or all three? What went wrong?
    3
  4420.  @WhichDoctor1  Perhaps they wouldn't have invaded anywhere if we had been nice to them beforehand. Ever think of that?
    3
  4421. I dunno why, but I'm just not scared of Jews.
    3
  4422.  @claudiaxander  The "foreign dictator" has no interest in owning Ukraine. All he wants are those largely Russian parts of the former Soviet Socialist Republic which were erroneously incorporated into the new country of Ukraine to be freed from control by Kiev.. He has sound economic and historical reasons for this and was fully prepared to agree to a peaceful solution before being forced into the grim necessity of war.
    3
  4423.  @Tinfoilhelmets  I really don't think many people are laughing. Biden seems to cause considerably more amusement.
    3
  4424. It seems a perfectly reasonable response. At this rate the West will suffer more from sanctions than Putin will.
    3
  4425. I don't think Trump will be ALLOWED to win. Simple as.
    3
  4426. Yet another very, very serious mistake by this child-like government.
    3
  4427. But none is PARTICULARLY efficient, is it?
    3
  4428.  @mariannelabanane2589  And to gain Western access to the vast mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea.
    3
  4429.  @timonsolus  Living standards in many EU countries are no better than in Russia. The reason Putin didn't want Ukraine to join the EU was because it would have meant the vastly profitable mineral extraction industry in Eastern Ukraine would have passed out of Russian hands.
    3
  4430. I don't think it matters whether Haitians are eating pets in Springfield or not (although it is entirely possible.) What matters is that the whole election debate is now focussed on the topic of immigration. This suits Donald Trump down to the ground.
    3
  4431. Geffo Me No they're not you idiot. The real "rocket scientists" hold the climatology department in utter contempt. So much so that in 2012 a while bunch of them, including former astronauts, petitioned the UN asking them not to take any notice of the wild predictions their brainwashed colleagues were making. NASA climate scientists tell lies for a living.
    3
  4432. Anthony Cook We are not fucked, many of us are brainwashed though. Australian fires have got as bad as they are largely because Green policies in the huge national parks have led to traditional methods of fire control being abandoned. Air temperature doesn't enter into it. How can it? There is also the suspicion that arson by extremists trying to push the hysteria is to blame, but personally I find this hard to believe. Flooding in England is perfectly normal There is nothing exceptional here. Temperature charts are faked, New methods and new equipment invariably show hotter than old-style thermometers.This allows climate scientists to dismiss previous readings as "inaccurate". The old records often show temperatures far hotter than those of today. In Australia many people are puzzled because their porch thermometers show temperatures up to 10c below those they see on weather reports. Climate science is full of sheep who have to believe what they are told to believe. They are given pre-packed data and pre-programmed computer models to work on, so invariably reach the same results. Raw data is kept secret. Computer programs are under licence and technical details cannot be revealed. Why is all this going on? The answers are to be found in considerable financial gain and the exercise of totalitarian political control. Have you heard of the carbon futures market? That's just a start.
    3
  4433.  @rockbutcher  I've given that game up. I don't think I have star quality!
    3
  4434. Revenge is sweet.
    3
  4435. The buffer zone idea sounds great. It'll save the Russians a fortune in reinforced concrete.
    3
  4436. Jumping the gun a bit, General?
    3
  4437.  @AK-ej5ml  Nonsense. Russia's objectives were clearly set out out in Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published in the Summer of 2021, and in the peace proposals put forward in December of that year. They have not altered.
    3
  4438. Give Putin Crimea. Grant Donbass independence. Stay out of NATO. Simple enough - and happy days will come again.
    3
  4439.  @timbowman6398  Oh YES!
    3
  4440.  @groovytunes2  No. I live in Britain. Where we have sarcasm.
    3
  4441. Democracy has had its day. Modern methods of psychological manipulation completely destroy the ability of individuals to come to rational decisions.
    3
  4442. Imagine how pissed off everyone's going to be when it's finally admitted that the whole lockdown mess was pretty pointless anyway.
    3
  4443.  @DoubleDragon539  Is that a criminal offence? Hard to prove I'd imagine.
    3
  4444.  @DoubleDragon539  Violent thugs are driven to violent thuggery by a complex series of motives, often accumulating over a period of time and often quite incoherent. There is a very large section of the British working class which feels - with considerable justification - that not only are its needs being overlooked but that the government and the police are favouring a new population of immigrants over them in various ways. In order to be guilty of inciting violence you would have to add something to the mix - such as a specific suggestion. Expressing sympathy does not do this.
    3
  4445. Tokenism - just like America's Patriot missiles. The Russian winter campaign starts right now and stands every chance of success.
    3
  4446. Neither does include those who have died from cancer and other illnesses because their treatments were cancelled. (It does actually include those who died at home by the way. Just so you know.)
    3
  4447. But he didn't learn much.
    3
  4448. Trump winning by a landslide is the only result that cannot be disputed. Let's hope that's what happens.
    3
  4449. There has been a substantial increase in the number of younger people dying of heart attacks since 2020. Assassination by Putin can be discounted, but there is thought to be an equally sinister reason for this which, unfortunately, cannot be mentioned in brainwashed Britain. It really needles me.
    3
  4450. Do you expect him to set up an office in the Citizens Advice Bureau?
    3
  4451.  @jonm7272  What, and sit there 9 to5 every day except Sunday? You don't seem to have much idea of what an MP actually is.
    3
  4452.  @Arbaaltheundefeated  This would possibly be true if the invading dictator was bent on world conquest. In this instance though the invading dictator is simply trying to prevent some of his country's existing assets being stolen.
    3
  4453. This isn't as big a deal as it's made out to be - but it will undoubtedly extend the war and lead to more death and suffering. Perhaps that's what America wants.
    3
  4454. The same thing happens to victims of the rape gangs - the police seem to have the same "she deserved it" attitude as the BBC.
    3
  4455. @Cesar J. Lazo Your grasp of history leaves much to be desired. It is sheer laziness to compare then and now. There are far more differences than there are similarities between these two situations. The war in Donbass has been going on for eight years. Indications are that the US was planning to back Ukraine in a big push there, as well as possibly aiding an invasion of Crimea. Putin's reaction has been entirely understandable. The Ukraine invasion can be seen as a pre-emptive strike in defence of his country's honour by a long-established leader, and not as a cold-blooded attempt at expansion by a newly elected one.
    3
  4456. I don't understand. If Labour wants PR it will have to be elected to government first - without PR.
    3
  4457.  @atikameg73  So worth losing their sons and husbands for? How will they feel if he loses?
    3
  4458. Cameron obviously has a dog in this race.
    3
  4459. Fortunately the proportion of hospitalisations to deaths is now around a tenth of what it was in the previous two waves. This should give us some perspective.
    3
  4460. It was beautiful.
    3
  4461. One cannot help but admire the courage and strength of the Ukrainian people. At the same time, it is a great pity that these virtues have been so cynically abused. The people of Ukraine are suffering and dying not to uphold freedom and democracy, as both they and we are told, but to act as cannon fodder in a war between two sets of gangsters. It is the riches that lie beneath the ground which are being fought over, not the human rights of Ukrainians.
    3
  4462.  @reallymakesyouthink  They do. One of the points made is that photographs and films are frequently taken of defendants going in and out of court, with no charges being brought. You are defending the indefensible. Whatever your views on TR might be, it is clearly wrong for the law to be so egregiously manipulated and applied in order to punish a political dissident.
    3
  4463.  @reallymakesyouthink  In his autobiography TR claims that he was approached in the early days of the EDL by apparent representatives of the security services, who tried to persuade him to act as a double agent. He turned the offer down and believes that this at the root of his continued persecution. To me, that story rings true.
    3
  4464. They don't think foreign drivers are the answer. The answer is improving pay and conditions to encourage the literally hundreds of thousands of HGV licence holders currently not driving lorries to do so, as well as clearing the decks to swiftly process the 40,000 or so currently waiting to take the tests.
    3
  4465.  @ad9898  I'm not defending the government by any means - it's just that the sudden exodus of EU drivers may well force the employers' and the agencies' hands. A rather unexpected Brexit benefit perhaps?
    3
  4466. Why can America supply arms to Ukraine but Iran can't supply arms to Russia?
    3
  4467.  @andrewadams6905  There are no comparisons between the two situations. Putin is not Hitler and he was indeed severely provoked into invading Ukraine.
    3
  4468. People are such suckers for the "poor little Ukraine" trope. It is a vassal of the American deep state, largely run by fascist gangsters, made fat by bribery.
    3
  4469. Can't we just try being nice to Russia instead?
    3
  4470.  @skycloud4802  True. But the point is they are not the prime target.
    3
  4471.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  No. It's part of Russia which was occupied by Ukraine for about 23 years.
    3
  4472.  Tomandtob  He has no political debts -because he is not a politician. Elements within the US Intelligence services are clearly hostile to him and resent the fact that they have nothing to blackmail him with, as they have had with previous Presidents. He is right not to trust them. They have been involved in unsuccessful attempts at blackmail, but he has defeated them at every turn. Putin is a great leader, and Trump respects that. Putin, however, misjudged Trump. He didn't realise how tough he is.
    3
  4473.  @displaychicken  Why should I feel embarrassed?
    3
  4474.  @trevaudio  Even if it was deliberate (which is in doubt) there is no doubt that Hamas uses aid convoys for military purposes, as indeed it uses many civilian activities as covers for its obsessive terrorism.
    3
  4475. Our sewage system, our water supply system, our transport infrastructure and out health and social services are at breaking point. "Fourteen years of Tory misrule" or " greedy billionaires" just don't explain this, - as much as some people would like to gain political capital by saying so. The explanation is stark and obvious. The population of this country is far, far in excess of what has been planned for, and in all probability far, far in excess of the official figures. We are bursting at the seams and tapwater tasting of shit is just one symptom.
    3
  4476. So far it's just a bad day or two on the Somme The difference is then the dead were young, active men with much to contribute. The coronavirus victims are generally old or already incapacitated to some degree. As harsh as it sounds the best course of action is to let the illness run its course, keep the emergency hospitals open to deal with those likely to recover and provide what comfort is available for those likely to die. The present strategy seems guided by political expediency and fear of ignorant media censure rather than by anything resembling sound common sense.
    3
  4477. I find it hard to believe these Zelensky groupies actually believe their own BS.
    3
  4478.  @Durnyful  It's not how many weapons you've got - it's how many you're prepared to use. I can't see NATO throwing much more hardware at this war, whereas Russia will fight and go on fighting with everything it can manufacture, buy, borrow or steal.
    3
  4479.  @geraldhewing2076  Something I find particularly nauseating is the way people use this pandemic to advance their own particular political prejudices. If you want to follow what I mean by "engineered" I refer you to a response to another contributor in this thread.
    3
  4480. There will be a Winter offensive, not a Spring one. Russia will almost certainly want to take and secure the entire Donbass at the very least.
    3
  4481. Once again the Democrats and the FBI are proved to be guilty of the very things they accuse Trump of. It's wonderful watching them suffer. May their suffering continue.
    3
  4482.  @chrispotts6727  No. You are. I used to believe the anti-Trump propaganda too, but any detailed study quickly reveals that the political establishment - the Swamp - fears him because he has not had to crawl up the same dirty ditches as they all have. They've got nothing on him, so they have to make things up. With conspicuous lack of success too.
    3
  4483. Do explain how a domestic dispute over private property has any relevance to the war in Ukraine.
    3
  4484.  @dpelpal  Please elucidate.
    3
  4485. Guilty of disobeying a court order not to repeat a libel which many people believe to have been broadly true anyway.
    3
  4486. Putin can bring in troops and equipment any day he likes. His supply routes remain open. His call for a Christmas ceasefire was entirely genuine.
    3
  4487. Of course they exist. They advertise on social media.
    3
  4488. @Dmon ! The very fact that I have sent you five responses only one of which has escaped the YouTube Gestapo rather proves my point that much is being hidden from you. I will, however, stubbornly continue and try to be circumspect. Vaccine programmes are of immense value in slowing the progress of the disease and in reducing the severity of symptoms. The fact that they are of limited efficiency and limited duration of efficacy precludes them from providing a permanent solution, however. The pandemic will continue indefinitely supported by increasing numbers of booster jabs if we continue down this path. A proper cost benefit analysis must take this into account, as well as the fact that a pool of unvaccinated people is needed to beat a path toward herd immunity, plus of course the as-yet unquantifiable number of adverse reactions which are taking place.
    3
  4489.  P.M.  You seem very concerned to check up on me. I wonder why? Do you not believe that old journos in their 70s exist? I will indulge you slightly though with a brief CV. I left school at 16 to work for my local paper. In those days the rule was that you weren't supposed to be in the office unless you were actually writing a story or making telephone calls. This is unlike today when so-called "journalists" seem to huddle in front of computer screens all day, rewriting government handouts. I have laboured in many corners of the vineyard since then; including periods in my younger days when I was part of a team investigating criminal religious cults which preyed upon the foolish. I was the undercover front man because I looked the part and can act a bit. This taught me that there is much evil and deceit in the world and that it is necessary to question everything you are told. My latter years were spent as editor of a small local newspaper in rural England and when this got too exciting I funded and ran a history magazine. I hope this is of help to you.
    3
  4490. I thought the BBC was already run by robots?
    3
  4491. The war going on in the heads of Western politicians and pundits is not the war going on in Ukraine.
    3
  4492. So, in your view, this theory is gospel truth, and people must be forced to believe in it exclusively and be prevented from being presented with alterative views?
    3
  4493. This dreadful old gangster is probably more responsible than anyone for this war. He initiated massacres in Donbass, banned it from exporting coal and then bought up all the coal, selling it in anonymously in Kiev while pretending it came from South Africa, and so making a fortune for himself.
    3
  4494. It doesn't matter if he's guilty or not. What matter is that the Democrats have utterly debased the American judicial system.
    3
  4495. SAGE isn't very clever. Half of them are Commies too.
    3
  4496. I think it is utterly, utterly wonderful that a working-class tough from Luton and a multi- billionaire from South Africa have somehow combined to shake the British establishment out of its disgraceful indifference to the shameful fate of thousands upon thousands of very young white, British, working-class girls at the hands of vicious, unprincipled Pakistani Muslim gangsters.
    3
  4497. Analogies are signs of weak thinking.
    3
  4498. How about Ricky Gervais?
    3
  4499. @ He does seem to lead rather a pleasant life, doesn't he? He's done very well for a grocer.
    3
  4500. Briefly and sarcastically though.
    3
  4501.  @BLK_MN  Does this include all the Americans who voted for him?
    3
  4502.  @dpelpal  How so if Russian is not selling oil on the open market any more? Yet another reason why sanctions are failing. It is other oil-producing countries which will be hit by this, not Russia. They will have to lower their prices to compete.
    3
  4503.  @dpelpal  Russia is not the Soviet Union. And selling oil cheap will provide an effective buffer against the effects of any downturn. That's assuming there will be a downturn. It could well be that Iran and other Arab OPEC members are engineering this price cut in order to actually help Russia, with whom they are becoming increasingly friendly.
    3
  4504. So that's over half the population then?
    3
  4505. Might be sooner than that.
    3
  4506. WONDERFUL!!!!
    3
  4507.  @pidibli  Donbass is now Russian - or most of it anyway. Before that it was two independent republics under constant bombardment by Ukraine. By your definition the Russian invasion was defensive, as it was designed to prevent a major attack on the independent republics.
    3
  4508. Has news of the collapse of the Soviet Union not reached you yet?
    3
  4509.  @Kodakcompactdisc  They are immigrants, certainly, but the people who were there before were Tatars and Greeks - not Ukrainians.
    3
  4510.  @Kodakcompactdisc  No they're not, they're Tatars. There are more of them in Russia than there in Ukraine.
    3
  4511. How are Ukrainians actually going to get to Crimea, by the way?
    3
  4512. Jimbus Rift. I am a 70 year old Englishman which means I have thankfully escaped the brainwashing which you believe to be education. You have been conned bigtly I'm afraid.
    3
  4513. Phil is trying hard enough.
    3
  4514. The prima facie case for massive concerted voter fraud in the US elections is utterly convincing to anyone with a grain of objectivity in their brain. People should concentrate on the words coming out of Giuliani's mouth rather than the hair dye trickling down his face.
    3
  4515. With anything like luck the new variant will evade vaccines, infect large numbers of people. but with mild symptoms, and so create our long-awaited herd immunity.
    3
  4516. He's only saying this because he has to. The symbolic take-over of the Capitol was a magnificent spectacle, ruined by a few hotheads who went on a minor wrecking spree and a trigger-happy cop.
    3
  4517. Yes.
    3
  4518. How do we KNOW she was a nurse? Even if she was, what the hell?
    3
  4519. Masks do not stop you from getting covid. At best they might prevent you giving it to others if you unknowingly have it.
    3
  4520. This doesn't sound like a definition of losing to me. Quite the reverse.
    3
  4521. He's right of course. Whatever the truths may be on climate change untended forests will burn as nature intended they should. Clearing undergrowth and fallen dead wood is essential to prevent this. The dismissive, sneering use of the word "raking" merely reveals ignorance. History shows that around 90% of all "science" is proven to be wrong in the long run. History is littered with the corpses of false conceits. Man-made climate change will soon be one of them.
    3
  4522. You call this SUCCESS???!!!
    3
  4523.  @sardendibs  But I'm not Jewish.
    3
  4524. Koala bears BURNED TO DEATH in Australia!! By the thousand! Killed by Climate Change! Polar bears are dying because they are too tired from heat to catch seals and penguins.. Soon it will be squirrels. And marmosets. This is the Sixth Great Extinction! My friend Millie and I are going to tattoo the XR sign on each other's foreheads. It will hurt, but we need to make our protest PERMANENT!
    3
  4525. @ I dislike analogies, but there are some parallels. In this situation I would suggest that Donbass and Crimea resemble Northern Ireland in that both have substantial populations loyal to an occupying power. A major difference is that in NI the British took over from the Irish, whereas in Donbass and Crimea the Russians took over from the Turks and Ukrainians played no part in proceedings.
    3
  4526.  @unworthy42  Lame. Very lame.
    3
  4527.  @Grouchy8108  Not all of them go armed, however.
    3
  4528. And why shouldn't Putin supporters' views be heard?
    3
  4529. Of course if Ukraine had the sense to surrender and find out what deal Russia was offering, nobody would need to die.
    3
  4530.  @SCOTTEDM  Were the Minsk Accords legal? Would the treaty being hammered out in Istanbul have been legal if it hadn't been scuppered by greedy outsiders?
    3
  4531. Russia will only agree to a ceasefire when all its demands are met. To think otherwise is an act of folly.
    3
  4532. Putin has always be ready to negotiate. But his basic terms must be met.
    3
  4533.  @Jack-ul8nn  There have been quite a number of clinical trials, a meta-analysis of which can be found below. As you will see there is robust evidence that ivermectin reduces the risk of death to a considerable degree and overall infection levels by up to 86%. American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021 - Volume 28 - Issue 4 - p e434-e460
    3
  4534.  @Jack-ul8nn  You might find this of interest also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yVTrNem3d8
    3
  4535.  @superhumantrueman  If the police had done their job more intelligently in the first place, none of this needed to have happened.
    3
  4536.  @lesvampyres5429  So your plan is to constantly bombard empty territory then? Seems an expensive way of going about things.
    3
  4537.  @Trin978  Oddly enough Putin has said that the ideal relationship between Russia and Ukraine would be similar to that which exists between Germany and Austria, or Canada and the USA.
    3
  4538. The man you love to hate.
    3
  4539. Bring back the hereditaries!
    3
  4540. Or when they know that despite all the rhetoric they're actually in deep doodah.
    3
  4541.  @kirkwhite8600  The retreat is probably tactical. Anyway, even if the Ukrainians do take Kherson they're a long way from taking Donbass, which is far more heavily defended as well as having two armies of battle-hardened separatist veterans. The only quick answer is for the Ukrainians to get to the negotiating table.
    3
  4542. We still seem to be waiting for the Americans to be prosecuted for all their war crimes. And what about the RAF bombing hospitals and refugee conveys in Bosnia in 1999?
    3
  4543. Sadly, William seems a big a moron as his father.
    3
  4544. They were guided by Allah - dressed as Uncle Sam.
    3
  4545.  @GlasgowCelticBhoy  The earth is not flat. And atmospheric carbon does not cause global warming. Arrhenius has been harnessed to give credence to a theory based upon coincidence. Science has been manipulated in an entirely shameful way to give scarcity value to a by product. Those in the know are making millions, from Al Gore down to traders on the carbon futures market who will make a killing after the results of the Glasgow conference are announced.
    3
  4546. If you are on a state pension it is virtually impossible to get pension credit. It exists mainly for early retirees who do not yet get the old age pension.
    3
  4547. Though incorrect. The algorithms don't recognise nuance, they reward compliance.
    3
  4548. It is. Have a think about it.
    3
  4549. Having been hypnotised by the infamous "Shrivel-armed Baba" on the steps of the barbers' temple in Kathmandu back in the early '70s I can testify to the efficiency of his technique, which was to set you rocking gently back and forth while sitting cross-legged and staring down at a religious picture set behind reflective glass and balanced on my knees. I was out of my face for weeks.
    3
  4550. The USSR ceased to exists more than 30 years ago. Where were you|?
    3
  4551. Unfair? Who told you life was going to be fair?
    3
  4552.  @Klown_cinematography  No. Deaths where Covid 19 has been detected are fluctuating between 150 and 80 a day. This is completely different to the steep almost vertical climb in deaths which began in March and ended in June. The latest figures show that death rates as a whole have been completely normal since July and that Covid 19 related deaths are only a tiny fraction of them All that is happening is that some elderly people who would have died anyway as the winter approaches have now tested positive. That's not a pandemic. It's all in here. There's a lot to go through but all you really need to do is look at the graphs. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending9october2020
    3
  4553. The fires are the direct result of you climate change loonies stopping farmers from burning firebreaks before the summer season starts. Wankers.
    3
  4554. Ukraine must talk peace. There is every chance that Putin's terms will be entirely reasonable. The longer this goes on the weaker Ukraine becomes and the fewer cards they have on the table.
    3
  4555.  @joeb578  It was reclaimed, in Russia's eyes. Having said that, Putin might well be content with Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson east of the Dnieper, all of which have substantial Russian populations and whose relative prosperity is the result of Russian investment.
    3
  4556.  @Turamwdd  This has always been Russia's position. The rest is just threatening noises. His envoys have made it clear that the above, along with a firm assurance that Ukraine will not join NATO, is all Russia requires at this point. And there is no reason to think otherwise. The alternative is prolonged civil war.
    3
  4557.  @ADifferentBias  As an organisation, yes, but the US and other individual NATO countries have invaded dozens - often at the behest of America.
    3
  4558. Here we go again. He never called for a delay. He merely suggested in a tweet that they ought to think about it -which they should. The November election can do no other than show a meaningless result.
    3
  4559. And it's nothing ,like $61billion once you unwrap it.
    3
  4560. It's easy enough to fight this war inside your own head. What is actually happening on the ground, however, will inevitably be somewhat different.
    3
  4561.  @dangermouse2235  Each to his own.
    3
  4562.  @MegaLeonidovich  Not me. Man called Patrick Lancaster he has been covering the war for eight years. He is currently in Mariupol at the heart of the fighting interviewing inhabitants. Go to his YouTube channel or other social media.
    3
  4563. Follow the $cience.
    3
  4564. It's like the boy who cried wolf. This new strain actually could be the wolf.
    3
  4565. Don't worry. In that other universe you daughter's teacher is a Trump supporter.
    3
  4566. This shows just how much Russia has been holding back. It could turn much of Ukraine to dust if it wanted to.
    3
  4567.  @AngryGnome87  They are hitting military targets left right right and centre. The civilian targets are hit by failed Ukrainian missiles and falling debris.
    3
  4568.  @christophergray7330  You don't think he could possibly be fibbing do you? Perhaps he lives in a care home and comes from a morbidly obese family of Nigerian taxi drivers. I crave enlightenment, I really do.
    3
  4569.  @jamesallen4050  The pursuit of truth? He was well enough to make the claim, he should be well enough to elaborate upon it.
    3
  4570. The two aren't necessarily exclusive.
    3
  4571.  VINLAND_777  But now it belongs to Russia again. Cope.
    3
  4572.  @aleph8888  That was then and this is now. And they weren't Ukraine's nuclear weapons, they were USSR weapons stationed in Ukraine and only capable of being fired on orders from Moscow.
    3
  4573. It will increase his support among the oppressed. Being oppressed will do that.
    3
  4574.  @DerrickJenkins-s6c  He has never incited racial hatred. He is not a racist. He has friends and relations of all races. He is purely opposed to Islamification, so if you want to rail against him at least do so for the right reason.
    3
  4575. This incident will surely rebound on the Ukrainians out of all proportion to the inconvenience caused to Russia, I really don't think they did it.
    3
  4576. Not a great deal of point to this since the police seem unwilling or incapable of upholding the laws as they stand. Changing the law won't give them bigger balls.
    3
  4577. I've just heard about a new TV game-show called Brainwash. where contestants get points for repeating climate crisis slogans, quoting false statistics and telling lies about polar bears and forest fires. Prizes include the chance to extend your carbon footprint and an audition be become a presenter on Channel 4.
    3
  4578.  @badenburns9765  Go for a brain scan.
    3
  4579. There is no such thing as Islamophobia.
    3
  4580.  @yothistk2857  They weren't killed, like it says in the thumbnail. Could just be carelessness but the ES does this sort of thing so often I'm sure it's intentional.
    3
  4581. Absurd. Indications are that around 5% of victims will experience long-term symptoms; some severely, others not very much at all. Once again, as with deaths and hospitalisations, the older people are the worse this will be. This is not the sort of situation which cripples economies
    3
  4582. But Trump already has been - and he was doing a great job until the pandemic hysteria hit.
    3
  4583. When will people realise what a lying crook this man really is?
    3
  4584. Time to call a halt https://gbdeclaration.org/
    3
  4585. It's a bit embarrassing to have Russia on the verge of winning after years of saying it would be impossible.
    3
  4586.  @bassbuffricky  Then why ask? No single party actually started it; it is the result of series of miscalculations by a number of players. Putin's predecessors made the mistake of allowing the new country of Ukraine to be created on the same geographical footprint as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine - which wasn't a country at all, but a largely Russian-run unit of the Soviet Empire. This has led to anomalies which no-one has been able to fix, especially since Western companies have constantly sought to cash in on the mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine which, by right, still belongs to the Russians who have financed it and worked it for centuries.
    3
  4587. Much of the estimated US$1.5billion raised by BLM so far has found its way to Democrat coffers. If Biden gets in they will want what they paid for - power at the heart of government. Anarchy and civil war can be the only outcomes should this occur.
    3
  4588. Absurd and deadly - as have been ALL responses to the pandemic, which have almost certainly killed more people that the virus itself.
    3
  4589. Whichever way it goes, the old America dies on September 1, 2021.
    3
  4590.  @jethrobradley7850  Yup.
    3
  4591.  @Vero_Smittty  Not many votes there.
    3
  4592. The average person contributes 8.6 tonnes of C02 a year towards the total in the atmosphere. A transatlantic flight contributes 1.6 tonnes per person. Giving up meat, incidentally, reduces your contribution by .8 of a tonne per year. And yes, the gangster organisation called the UN should be disbanded. The climate crisis is just a protection racket they are running.
    3
  4593. Why do you want to stop them? Are you incapable of judging for yourself what is likely true and what isn't?
    3
  4594.  @rogerphelps9939  It's not about lying. It's about appealing to a particular readership. It is a mistake to imagine that newspapers tell lies for political reasons. They just reinforce prejudices in order to get people to buy the product.
    3
  4595.  @davidhoyle6626  Standards of education in this country really need close examination, I feel.
    3
  4596. More nonsense from la-la land. I'm a regular visitor to afternoon tea-parties with Russian oligarchs and they titter with amusement when Times Radio is mentioned.
    3
  4597. I look forward to Trump's return and pardons and compensation for these fine patriots.
    3
  4598.  @BillSilver-kg8hs  Alas, such a thing is impossible. We all have our particular partialities. They may seem inconceivable and wrong to others, but we still have the right to them.
    3
  4599.  @Vladi0310  America is poking the bear. Zelensky is the stick.
    3
  4600. Your man Abbott is OK on many things, but he's wrong on this one. All Russia has done in Ukraine is respond to decades of US attempts to undermine it. The war in Ukraine is essentially a defensive action.
    3
  4601. And were bitterly disappointed afterwards.
    3
  4602.  @fredatlas4396  The Left lies just as much, if not more, you know. Just judge by results.
    3
  4603. Where's the Democrat to beat Trump? What kind of horrorshow does Greg envisage?
    3
  4604. Although perhaps economically disadvantageous in the short term, leaving the EU was a correct decision politically. These artificial constructs are doomed not only to failure, but to eventually cause enormous hardship as their effects spread. Just as one example: without the EU there would not now be a war in Ukraine.
    3
  4605. Given the astonishing successes achieved by previous lockdowns these protestors are obviously living in a parallel universe.
    3
  4606. How do you know where they were? Are you relying on photographs taken by members of an organisation dedicated to Trump's downfall?
    3
  4607. It's all over anyway, sunshine.
    3
  4608.  @Lara__  Do you want this war to end or don't you?
    3
  4609.  @goldslcc02  What's scary about a peace treaty?
    3
  4610. Just like the Dems, Labour are now starting the lawfare game. You can't beat your enemies in a fair fight, so you get the rozzers in. After Badenoch becoming Tory leader, and Trump's resounding victory, I am now hoping and praying that Elon Musk will buy MSNBC and give Tommy his own show. That'd larn yer!
    3
  4611.  @emm_arr  Still no reasoning, then. Just the usual childish badmouthing.
    3
  4612.  @emm_arr  Was that reasoning? I don't think you even know the meaning of the word.
    3
  4613. Whether or not the Russians have attacked refugees remains to be seen. What is beyond doubt is that the Ukrainians have done so, as well as firing upon people queuing up for food from Russian distribution points.
    3
  4614. The word has gone out on all Trump supporting conservative sites to avoid walking into a trap. The world will see a senile President going through a meaningless ceremony surrounded by armed troops - just as in some banana republic.
    3
  4615. This what you get when you push people too far. The Dems have destroyed democracy and actions like this are all patriotic Americans have left.
    3
  4616. Parliament makes laws, not judges. If Parliament believes judges are misapplying its laws it has every right to ignore any judgements it wishes until such times as those laws may be amended or rescinded.
    3
  4617. Getting rid of Starmer ASAP would solve these difficulties.
    3
  4618.  @MissMan666  Your analysis is somewhat flawed, I'm afraid.
    3
  4619. Job done. The Ukrainian army has been crushed in the 'meat grinder' and will be reduced even more when it tries to take it back.
    3
  4620.  @murph5290  Very sentimental about children, the Russians.
    3
  4621.  @ScottishAtheist  You must realise that there are a great many Russian families living in the war zone. To them this is not an invasion. It is a liberation. To admit this would place them in a potentially difficult situation, as I'm sure you can imagine. Therefore, if they send their children to relatives in Russia they can avoid reprisals by claiming they were kidnapped. There is nothing "sickening" about this. It is common sense.
    3
  4622. @Andy N I'm sorry about your mum. Yes the figures are being wickedly manipulated. There is something very,very sinister going on here.
    3
  4623. @Arfur Fuxxakes Arfur, I really think you are cracking up. As I've explained I'm not calling the doctors liars nor am I impugning their integrity. They are following accepted medical practice when in a pandemic situation. Death is rarely a simple matter. Most deaths have several possible causes. If someone with cancer has a heart attack, did he die of cancer or heart failure? In the present instance did he have breathing difficulties and a high temperature too? Doctors have been instructed, as is usual in pandemics, to include the possible presence of coronavirus as a factor on death certificates. Those deaths then go on the list of coronavirus related deaths. I''m not making this up. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is a simple statement of fact. Try Googling it or something. Several doctors are quite peeved about it while others think it's okay to do it this way. It's never been a problem before but this pandemic has become political, so it is.
    3
  4624.  @neilhedley6080  So is it just the distance that bothers you? If his mum lived in Watford would you still be complaining?
    3
  4625. No. It's peace through strength. And it's happening at incredible speed.
    3
  4626. The ICC is a joke.
    3
  4627. I have a horrible feeling that the ghastly crooks who REALLY rule America are seeing just how much they can get away with.
    3
  4628. "The hand that signed a treaty bred a fever, And famine grew, and locusts came; Great is the hand that holds Dominion Over man by a scribbled name." - Dylan Thomas
    3
  4629.  @nicadi2005  I didn't say a vaccine is infectious. As I clearly implied it it is a mild infection in a way because it stimulates the immune system while creating few or no symptoms.
    3
  4630. I like this guy. He's got Alex Jones off to a T!
    3
  4631. What massive odds? Ukraine's army was between 360,000 and 600,000 strong, well trained and well-equipped (using OUR money) while the Russian force was less than 200,000 and its usual shambolic. ill-equipped self. That has now changed somewhat. Which was the object of the exercise.
    3
  4632. What's massive is that the filthy corrupt media are trying to make it news for political reasons. They are failing this time but they'll be back soon with another barrowload of nothing aimed at us thickos.
    3
  4633.  @scottyd3138  I know people from there too. They are delighted with the new accommodation and new schools etc the Russians have provided.
    3
  4634. Although it must be very nail-biting for all you paranoia junkies out there to think that the pandemic might be grinding to a halt, it is a distinct possibility you know.
    3
  4635.  @rnp497  There is massive evidence of fraud and electoral malpractice. And the electoral college was designed by the founding fathers to prevent rural affairs being controlled by ignorant city dwellers. Nothing at all to do with slavery.
    3
  4636. Why bother? You get better immunity from the disease itself.
    3
  4637. There is an even chance that this massacre has been faked in order to bolster western support.
    3
  4638. Hmmm. An Hispanic lady with strong religious convictions would be nice.....
    3
  4639. Uk Gamer Islamaphobia is a funny word. I and many other people in this country find radical Islam utterly terrifying. That doesn't mean we dislike Muslims. Priti Patel is an excellent Home Secretary. I don't know what you mean about her hiding away during Trump's visit. I was referring to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid - another excellent member of the Government - and not to Sadiq Khan the Mayor of London, who is a ghastly little shit.
    3
  4640. Uk Gamer I see your point and agree entirely. The trouble is that, apart from the very sensible fear of Islamic terrorism there is a real possibility that Muslims will stop being a minority before long. Birth rates and immigration are leading to a steady rise and some predict a Muslim majority by 2050. I don't see that myself but, with all due respect, I don't relish the prospect of your religion dominating my country at any time. Even without the terrorism aspect there is much about Islam that I and many others find distasteful - the attitude towards non-Muslim minorities, for example. Does this make us Islamaphobes? I think not, for it is not bigotry and blind hatred which motivates us, but a genuine fear for the cultural and political future of our homeland.
    3
  4641. Different experiment.
    3
  4642. Joe Biden?
    3
  4643. There was no reason to attack the pipeline, but a false flag on the bridge makes a great deal of strategic sense.
    3
  4644. God, this is pathetic. It isn't the wound he took which is important - but the deadly wound he avoided by a hairsbreadth.
    3
  4645. Support peace CNN and you might just get back some of those many lost viewers
    3
  4646.  @johnmoore9862  Would you suggest therefore that Reform UK represents xenophobic, jingoistic nationalism rather that patriotism?
    3
  4647.  @peterspowage5752  I don't think I entirely agree. Nationalism may be what patriotism turns into when patriots feel their country is threatened, and whatever hatred and distrust they feel is directed at those they feel are threatening them and their country.
    3
  4648. Forking out £4million to Italy should help enormously. (Isn't that a lovely suit Sir Keir is wearing, by the way? Italian shot silk, isn't it? What exquisite taste our beloved leader has.)
    3
  4649. Labour is easily conned these days.
    3
  4650. How is this relevant to Russia's purchasing power since trading is now generally conducted in neither roubles nor dollars but in the currency of the nation being traded with or, with increasing frequency, by a direct exchange of goods?
    3
  4651. It would be a very good idea for Johnson to immediately replace Sunak - so that when the Tories crash and burn the political career of this dangerous clown might well be finished forever.
    3
  4652. The only long-term plan for peace is for the Arab people to utterly reject the control of Islamic extremists such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
    3
  4653.  @chewieqtpie  Yemen has Isis. Biden tries to slow up Saudi bombing Yemen and starts bombing the forces in Syria largely responsible for defeating Isis there. Conclusion: Dem hawks want Isis back to give them excuses for starting more profitable wars.
    3
  4654.  @garcialovesme  BS excuse. The bandits are back in the White House and they want war in Syria to resume - and in other parts of the Middle East too. It's called America is Back.
    3
  4655. They tried in December. Ukraine - bullied by the US - rejected Russia's very reasonable terms.
    3
  4656. As ever, Labour has a blinkered, forensic view of such problems. It is not the fact that laws are being broken which is important. It is the fact that a centuries-old way of life is being undermined.
    3
  4657. This is possibly one of the most important elections in the history of the modern Western world. Much depends upon its outcome.
    3
  4658.  J S  You can add condoning the use of violence to obtain power to the list of fascist characteristics. And creating division by stirring up racial hatred.
    3
  4659.  @rtorres4132  Sound in principle, but holding a fair referendum in Ukraine is near impossible. Bribery and intimidation are ingrained into the very fabric of society.
    3
  4660. Forget polls. The deep state will stitch up the election for the candidate who suits them best - and that's still got to be Biden. Bloodbath? Maybe.
    3
  4661. Bridgen is a voice of sanity. The Tories - like nearly everyone else - are in the pocket of the vicious evil that is the international pharmeceutical industry.
    3
  4662. Don't use the word "justice" please. You don't know what it means.
    3
  4663. The excellent Simon Webb on his "History Debunked" channel has pointed out that the sausage error is actually contained in that classic spoof history book "1066 and All That." He suggests that it may have been lurking in Starmer's mind for many years and just popped out due to some Freudian impulse. I do hope that Sir Keir is not going mad. It's a bit early for that.
    3
  4664. Just as well.
    3
  4665.  @basilboris  And you must be simple minded not to realise that attack is often the best form of defence. Russia is defending itself against US imperialism.
    3
  4666.  @LudwigHollywood66  And this channel is so NICE to Trump, isn't it?
    3
  4667. @ Biggest pipelines, fleet of old tankers owned by Asian entrepreneurs?
    3
  4668. Julia, so often on target with domestic matters, is missing the real point here. Putin simply cannot allow Ukraine to become a NATO missile base. The West made a huge mistake in preventing Russia joining NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO now primarily exists as a vehicle for the career ambitions of American generals and hawkish politicians, and the present crisis is yet another consequence of the idiocy and weakness of the Biden administration. Does anyone really think this could have happened if Trump had retained the Presidency?
    3
  4669. Putin is winning and has very nearly won completely. Of course any settlement will favour him. How could it be otherwise?
    3
  4670. Because there is no Russian threat. That's just something they've shoved in your mind so this bloke and all the others like him can go on earning a living.
    3
  4671. @ There's a difference between a military subterfuge and a policy. Ukraine and Russia had been more or less at war for a decade - or rather poor Ukraine was chosen by Americans like this bloke as the battlefield for their continual war with Russia - a war for profit, by the way.
    3
  4672.  @TheGearsofwar2010  They didn't. Their statement, designed to keep them in the clear what ever happens, says he "may possibly have been in minor breach of guidelines" but that they propose to take no further steps in the matter. Bit of a difference,huh?
    3
  4673. Vast majority? No way!
    3
  4674. Donald Trump has more sense of humour in his little finger than the entire UK Labour Party. The only "demented rant" I'm hearing is the one coming out of Phil's mouth!
    3
  4675.  @slawomirozdoba4605  I'm sure that isn't true. They can only hit targets in Kursk, I believe.
    3
  4676. Lockdowns didn't work. Death rates in those countries where they hane been impsed are horrendous. By contrast, in Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, there have been just 883 deaths. In Uganda, with a population of 43 million there have been just FOUR. Both these countries use hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against malaria. People take it small doses a couple of times a week in order to mitigate the worst effects of the illness. Other countries where malaria is dealt with in this way have experienced similarily low death rates from Covid 10. There is no mystery in this. The treatment works in the same way by preventing infection from spreading.
    3
  4677. The chances of reaching herd immunity do not increase with more vaccination. The vaccines would have to be 100% effective and long-lasting for that - and they are neither. It can be argued that vaccinating more than a certain percentage of the population is harmful because it reduces the number of people who become immune through infection - which is the only way out of this mess.
    3
  4678. It can certainly be argued that both the officer who shot Blake and the teenage militia-man both acted in self-defence. I can't see how any charges can be brought against the officer, since he was acting according to protocol. If the kid ends up in court the second death and the wounding were clearly in self-defence and the first death may well have been also. It's unfortunate that so much sympathy has to be spent on these victims. We are all God's creatures but they all had criminal records. The first guy shot by the teenager had a conviction for sex with a child while, oddly enough, Blake was in the process of being arrested on the same charge. The other guy killed by the kid had merely beaten up a girlfriend and the one whose arm was shot had a conviction for waving a gun around while drunk. It would be nice one day to find a perfectly decent black person shot by a policeman from sheer malicious racial hatred, but these cases seem few and far between.
    3
  4679. What's the difference between a Nazi salute and a salute used by the Nazis? There is one, you know.
    3
  4680.  @boink800  Of course it isn't. Check any source you like. Anyway, what do you mean "ethnic"? Ukrainian isn't an ethnicity. Ukrainians are generally Slavonic, same as Russians. And the people of Kursk speak Russian, and are Russian . Briefly, during the 18th century, parts of the oblast came under the governorship of Kiev, but that's really about it. The confusion arises because the Russians called all this area south of Moscow The Ukraine which just means something like "the provinces" or even "the back of beyond". Ukraine only became a country, as such, in 1991 and unfortunately these histories have made this new country a deeply divided one.
    3
  4681.  @RichardFraser-y9t  He's not my hero - just a working-class hero.
    3
  4682. @thechurchofsound🤘 Send them out to buy groceries with a voting slip.
    3
  4683.  @Think666_  A passing thought, no more. It strikes me, however, that any attempt to create a federalised Europe and thrust it into the complexities of already dangerously unstable geopolitical model might be asking for trouble. Without the EU there would be no war in Ukraine, and now the same thing is going to happen in Georgia (for the second time). This seems an excessively large price to pay for the possibility of cheaper groceries.
    3
  4684.  @herrglotzenschnitzengruber1510  Reform UK was initially set up as a private limited company, which meant that its members were essentially shareholders. However, in September 2024, Nigel Farage announced a significant change to the party's structure. Reform UK transitioned from a company limited by shares to a company limited by guarantee, making it member-owned. Under this new structure, members have more control over the party's policies and leadership. They can vote on policy motions, participate in leadership elections, and even trigger a no-confidence vote against the party leader if 50% of all members request it. This change aims to enhance transparency and ensure that the party is accountable to its members rather than a small group of shareholders.
    3
  4685.  @kimwit1307  Yes. It happened automatically in September.
    3
  4686. I do hope the time comes soon when we stop hero-worshipping this little shit. Zelensky has lead his country into ruin and the whole world to the brink of nuclear war.
    3
  4687.  @Fawkes42  They did cross his red lines. They refused to implement Minsk and got NATO to give them a brand new army instead.
    3
  4688.  @benoitbvg2888  It didn't surprise the Russians. The US and NATO had spent an estimated minimum of $60 billion on creating a new, highly efficient Ukrainian army. Destroying this army was the purpose of the SMO - NOT gaining territory.
    3
  4689. He never once said anything of the kind! Congratulations for posting this nonsense on multiple channels and gaining so many likes!
    3
  4690.  @sadephillips9645  I haven't the faintest idea - and nor I suspect, does anyone else. A small proportion of victims suffer long term and permanent organ damage but whether reproductive organs are affected I just don't know.
    3
  4691. NOAA is bent. Any reputable oceanic scientist will tell you that coral goes through a natural cycle and bleaches out every few decades before replenishing itself fairly rapidly. This doesn't suit the Climate Crisis Mafia though. We have to have these doses of The Fear from time to time.
    3
  4692. Look on the bright side. This war could finally bring the curtain down on the curse of American imperialism.
    3
  4693. @ Why not? We get cheap gas and the threat of Russia bombing us is lifted forever.
    3
  4694. And yet CNN and other MSM channels totally supported similar repressive measures in the US. Hypocrisy or what?
    3
  4695.  @stephensuddick2557  No. Realistic. They realise that support for Ukraine was, is now and forever will be not only pointless but dangerous. If we had left these two countries to sort their differences out by themselves there would have been no war, nobody would have died and the end result would have been pretty much as it is now going to be. Realistic. Get it?
    3
  4696. War is now showbiz and countries are run by clowns. Talk about the end times.
    3
  4697.  @riveness How can separating two versions of the same crime be defined as defending paedophiles? The abuse and prostitution of young white girls by predominantly Pakistani Moslem gangs is in a different category to the abuse of children of both sexes in institutions, and by individual clergymen. It just is, and has to be dealt with differently.
    3
  4698. With all due respect, this is a naive interpretation. Although many members of the Russian "intelligentsia" with Western contacts and attitudes may feel this way, Putin remains highly regarded among the mass of ordinary Russians. If the Kursk incursion were to lead to Putin's downfall (which is extremely unlikely) the danger is that he will be replaced not by people inclined to surrender to NATO's advances, but to Kremlin "hawks" who will not hesitate to unleash the full force of Russian armaments upon Ukraine.
    3
  4699.  @Tricia_K  In order to find evidence of fraud. Which they did. What would have been the point of re-counting forged ballots ?
    3
  4700. Because they don't. Tommy Robinson is not a Nazi for a start.
    3
  4701. Apparently such a thing is near impossible with the weapon he was using at that distance.
    3
  4702.  @giuseppeanoardi3973  Russia invaded Ukraine purely to attempt to destroy the Ukrainian army on its own territory, instead of in separatist- occupied Donbass, which was where Ukraine intended the war to take place.
    3
  4703. How can you hand something over that isn't yours?
    3
  4704. There have already been several variants of Covid 19, most involving alterations to spike protein enabling the virus to penetrate cells more swiftly and efficiently and thus allowing it to spread more quickly. Does anyone know what makes this mutation especially significant? The fact that Prof Ferguson is involved in promoting this latest scare makes me deeply suspicious. He is either mad or a communist agitator or possibly both.
    3
  4705. t least 100,000 would have died anyway being in their eighties and nineties or suffering from an existing condition. Current death rates from all causes are in no way remarkable.
    3
  4706. Are you aware of the legal term "scraping the bottom on the barrel"?
    3
  4707. Getting rid of Labour is enough of a policy at the moment.
    3
  4708.  @simonoleary9264  Careful what you wish for. Labour today isn't what it was.
    3
  4709.  @martynblackburn9632  After its appalling conduct of the covid pandemic the WHO is clearly not up to the task.
    3
  4710. @ I am quite educated. And I don't know what's so bad about Russia that people hate it so irrationally.
    3
  4711.  @pinkrose5796  Not as far as we know. But then, as far as we know, no-one attacked any of them and threatened their lives.
    3
  4712. What a relief! The BBC telling us to worry about climate change again. The rona plandemic must be nearly over.
    3
  4713.  @dpelpal  Ok. I take it back! Don't hurt me please!
    3
  4714. Christmas and the New Year just wouldn't be the same without this grim warning. Thank you BBC for keeping a fine tradition alive.
    3
  4715.  @Kolljak  Pretty good in my opinion. Here are some of them: 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    3
  4716. @ Excuse for what? Are you one of these people who stand on the sidelines and look on this dreadful war as some sort of spectator sport?
    3
  4717.  @ailinofaolin8897  These people simply have no idea of what is going on - and the media and the politicians certainly aren't going to tell them. They seem to think this is some kind of football game!
    3
  4718. How?
    3
  4719. If Sweden and Finland stay out of NATO Russia will do them no harm. If they seek to join they may well be inviting it, as Ukraine has.
    3
  4720. None of this matters. It's going to be fixed again.
    3
  4721. It was never really theirs. Not really.
    3
  4722. Then there is hope for her - and the white British working class.
    3
  4723. If they decide to allow Zelensky to hit inside Russia with NATO missiles it will undoubtedly lead to World War III.
    3
  4724. Militant Islamism presents a huge threat to freedom. We should all be grateful to Israel for having the courage to tackle it.
    3
  4725.  @borabayindir4510  In the UK the UK Health Security Agency produces a Covid Vaccination Surveillance report each week. It regularly reveals over 65% of those in intensive care are fully vaccinated, as are over 83% of those who die. This is entirely reasonable, since those who end up in intensive care or in the morgue are going to be very elderly or severely immuno-compromised in some other way. It is hard to believe the situation is in any way different in the US. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I do, however, have considerable and justifiable reservations as to their safety and efficacy.
    3
  4726. No. Because they recognise the threat of rampant Islamism to the peace and well-being of our nation. It has little to do with race.
    3
  4727. Are we at war with Russia? I seem to have missed the announcement.
    3
  4728. None of this true. Go to Tony Heller's video "The Real Arctic v the Imaginary Arctic of Climate Scientists" for the full facts.
    3
  4729. What do you mean 'bad' ? If you mean it's warm this year try looking up the temperature records for the early 1920's. And even if the current warming does continue Alaska can look forward to increasing prosperity as more and more shipping from China and Pacific rim countries goes to Europe via the Arctic Ocean - which is 40 per shorter than going via Suez.
    3
  4730. Nor is Israel.
    3
  4731. Let's hope so. Possibly the worst Prime Minister in Britain's history.
    3
  4732. The Abrams is typically American, too big, too full of itself and too liable to have a nervous breakdown when you are rude to it.
    3
  4733. Name one lie.
    3
  4734. TB Yup - and it looks like war. The Church of Woke and the Church of Carbonophia v The Holy Empire of Sanity.
    3
  4735. The war is to all extents and purposes over. The fighting will stop as soon as people realise this.
    3
  4736. Unprovoked? Sovereign nation?
    3
  4737.  @suzanned5859  What's your point exactly?
    3
  4738. A con -and very, very, very ugly!
    3
  4739. This is disruption, not destruction.
    3
  4740.  @kotulkin  It is not Kremlin propaganda. Organisations such as Human Rights Watch have details of many atrocities committed in Donbass, especially by the notorious Ukrainian Azov Battalion. The separatists and the Russians are far from guiltless though.
    3
  4741. The Democrats are the hawks these days.
    3
  4742. James Watson Thank you for your concern My dead parrot was called Captain Harold, but he wasn't named after any particular person, I don't think. If my new parrot is a boy parrot do you think it would matter if I called him Greta just the same? btw
    3
  4743. I guess he doesn't watch Time Radio much then.
    3
  4744. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Ukrainian history will realise that Putin has every right to act as he did. Whether he ought to have exercised that right is debatable, but the right it there.
    3
  4745. The British establishment makes up the law as it goes along. Moloch has a shrine here and his worship is protected.
    3
  4746. The deep state and the media are the enemies of the people.
    3
  4747. Why should the UN support Ukraine? The support of member nations is far from unanimous - and probably much less than appears on the surface.
    3
  4748. People in America are older and fatter. India being the way it is few people get to be old or obese. America's high death rate is due to hamburgers which may you fat, and healthy exercise, which makes you live longer. Sometimes you just can't win.
    3
  4749. @ Russia doesn't carpet bomb because this conflict is a military one, as far as possible. Russia genuinely looks upon Ukraine as an errant child, but its own child nonetheless. This war has been a tragic mistake, caused by Western greed for the immense natural resources of Eastern Ukraine.
    3
  4750. @ Security from what?
    3
  4751.  @ianl1052  But enough to affect the outcome of the referendum?. And Islamophobia and xenophobia are not synonymous.
    3
  4752. As I understand it Covid 19 has already been through several variations, most affecting the spike protein and making cell penetration swifter and more efficient. Can anyone tell me why this mutation is so especially alarming?
    3
  4753. Is Brexit going to cause the imminent collapse of the dollar too?
    3
  4754.  @dalecrockersotherbraincell2538  At last! I have a clone account! I really was beginning to feel neglected. Thanks whoever you are.. This will be fun.
    3
  4755. Yes. And it is.
    3
  4756. I do hope you're not speaking from personal experience.
    3
  4757.  @stream2watch  Who knows? Probably less, but the result is inevitable.
    3
  4758. Lots of nasty creatures left flapping in the mud.
    3
  4759. There can never be a truly sensible and objective way of dealing with these threats as long as they can be manipulated for profit by the pharmaceutical industry.
    3
  4760. Whips are called whips for a reason. Hounds which stray have to be kept under control. Having said that, the very fact that Tory MPs are now talking out of school on tactics used is a sure sign that the Johnson regime is crumbling.
    3
  4761. But Ukraine hasn't existed for centuries, so how can that be?
    3
  4762.  @jrivera5272  So your chief complaint is that "people look at you closely when you walk into stores"? Is that it? Is that all you've got? Have you any idea how pathetic that sounds?
    3
  4763. But these mitigation measures have ALWAYS been a distraction, one way or another. Their purpose has been far more psychological than practical and I remain utterly bemused that so many of you good people have been so continually fooled.
    3
  4764. Traumatised toddlers who were in no danger whatsoever from the disease?
    3
  4765. No "could" about it.
    3
  4766. No. That's old-style Democrat thinking.
    3
  4767. Perhaps we should supply spray paint to BLM yobs and see what they come up with as a symbol of national pride.
    3
  4768. If there's anything likely to make people turn to Trump it is the disgusting misuse of the justice system by his demented opponents.
    3
  4769. Russia's strategy throughout has been to exhaust Ukraine into submission. It is now well on its way to achieving this objective. When and if it does I think people may well be surprised by the concessions Russia requires to cease operations.
    3
  4770.  @JohnRussell-y3m  There are no Fascists any more, or at least none worthy of the name. All there are are angry, frightened people, and those who recognise the justification for this fear and anger.
    3
  4771.  @kathyweddle4874  They do. They have consistently tried to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, as far as is possible within the constraints of attempting to achieve military objectives. Ukraine, on the other hand, has a shameful record of positioning military units in civilian areas - including hospitals, orphanages and schools.
    3
  4772.  @buschtaxi75driver55  It is not to the highest standard, I agree. Pro-Zelensky propaganda is really going downhill lately.
    3
  4773. Wow. Just wow! So many nails hit right on the head! Tucker Carlson gives me hope that the current madness might end.
    3
  4774. He's an MP, not a parish priest.
    3
  4775. If the Ukraine conflict proves anything it is that Europe continues to exist militarily merely as a battlefield between America and Russia. It has no more say in its own security than do cows in a meadow.
    3
  4776.  @luisbustamante9869  Ghosts is about it. And bogeymen.
    3
  4777.  @anthonyhulse1248  Try as I may I can find few similarities between the situation in Britain in 1940 and in Ukraine today. As for these figures -they are probably plucked quite literally from thin air. I realise that Ukraine supporters in these troubled times may need a morale boost - but that's all this is.
    3
  4778. What insurrection? 99% of the US population doesn't know what you're talking about.
    3
  4779.  @timmcardle5764  Russia does not nor ever has wanted Kiev.
    3
  4780.  @relaxedhigherself  Not at all. I am no racist - which is why I hate it when the race card is played. It is tragic and regressive when this happens.
    3
  4781.  @andrewoliver8930  Why? I don't like George Soros, but that doesn't make me anti-Semitic.
    3
  4782.  @alexboston343  Yeah, march. That's fine. A protest march is all it was until a few hotheads took it too far. The idea that this was an attempted coup led by Trump is utterly insane.
    3
  4783. Putin has already won.
    3
  4784.  @richardsanders.4624  Not as yet.
    3
  4785. Sounds ideal.
    3
  4786.  @courgette3401  Not a bit of it! Clear your mind of prejudice, forget all the propaganda that has been shoved down your throat and you will see a witty, sarcastic individual holding the audience in the palm of his hand as he destroys his opponents as they deserve to be destroyed. And this is the edited version don't forget!
    3
  4787. I don't know about the average person, but there are enough of us who are grown-up enough to see through all the hyped-up Zelensky worship which has led to the needless continuation of this needless war.
    3
  4788. You have no idea what this war is about.
    3
  4789. Why should we defeat Putin? It is surely in our best interests to allow him Donbass and Crimea. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to imagine that whatever further ambitions he may possibly have could extend to military action against the UK. In fact there are good reasons for our two countries to enter into economic agreements and military treaties.
    3
  4790.  @thomasmoore1499  To quote Nelson Mandala; "NATO has long outlived its usefulness and represent a real threat to the prospect of world peace."
    3
  4791. The last genuinely effective Labour PM in Britain. Downhill since then.
    3
  4792. Only if your brain isn't working as it should.
    3
  4793. If it was you or me we wouldn't be there in the first place.
    3
  4794. It just prolongs the agony. And when you break it down this deal doesn't amount to what it seems at first sight. All Ukraine will be getting immediately is whatever stuff America's depleted armouries can spare, plus credit to buy other equipment from ---- well, who from? This amounts to just under $14billion. Meanwhile Russia is increasing military production and seems set to overrun Ukraine's southern defences at any moment. America has written Ukraine off as a poor investment. This package is little more than a face-saver.
    3
  4795. Jihad?
    3
  4796.  @Pikaling3408  I agree. But Jihad doesn't rely solely on violence. It has far more insidious ways of promoting Islamic dominance, such as the gradual takeover of institutions ranging from education to the police - and including ,it would appear, the governance of the city you are so proud to inhabit.
    3
  4797.  @billpugh58  No comparison. The "far right" hardly exists and if you refer merely to patriotic Brits fearful of a Muslim takeover then they, at least, do not espouse a religion which enjoins the murder of those who disagree with it.
    3
  4798. Those allegations are true. It is gangs of Pakistani Moslem men who commit this particular crime, which is a separate issue to the usual run of sad kiddy fiddlers or families with a long tradition of incest. The reason they are allowed to continue is the fear of losing the Muslim vote, nothing more and nothing less.
    3
  4799. Kemi is a black Margaret Thatcher. If the Tories lose this opportunity she should go and join Nigel.
    3
  4800. TDS will soon be a notifiable disease. Take heart. Help is at hand.
    3
  4801. Like it or not, Putin's account is the true one.
    3
  4802. Russia just wants to be left alone.
    3
  4803. How come the Russians are breaking through all over the southern front then?
    3
  4804.  @markmelnyk9897  It is quite true that Kiev was created before the inhabitants moved up river and created Moscow -but that was a thousand years ago and much has happened since then, especially the Mongol invasions which destroyed the Kievan Rus .
    3
  4805.  @geraldhewing2076  All human institutions are, I think. The Tory party is extraordinarily resilient, however.
    3
  4806. Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of troops and isn't getting any more equipment from the West, worth speaking of. So how is it stronger?
    3
  4807.  @paulwalker797  I wouldn't entirely disagree. Russia is a tough country to run - but things are nothing like they were back in Soviet days. The fact is that Russia is getting slowly better in this regard, while we seem to be getting slowly worse.
    3
  4808.  @benddawson  The WHO lied about the virus from the start. They are owned by the Chinese, as are many UN organisations and are not to be trusted.
    3
  4809. The crazy thing is that new studies are indicating that CO2 plays NO PART AT ALL in global warming! The atmosphere is a self adjusting masterpiece of nature and CO2 and the other "greenhouse gasses" are part of a system which redistributes heat up, down or sideways to keep it that way. Surface temperature on earth depends upon a combination of atmospheric pressure and proximity to the sun - as is the case with all other planets in the solar system.
    3
  4810. Why were raids such as this not carried out BEFORE the ground invasion? Answer this question and you will answer several others.
    3
  4811. It will make a refreshing change to having my mind poisoned by the BBC.
    3
  4812. Political expediency and the pursuit of profit characterised our wonderful government's reaction to the pandemic. Now we have soaring all-cause death rates in all age groups. Heads should roll.
    3
  4813. Underestimate The Don at your peril.
    3
  4814. Democracy has been railroaded by crooks and no longer represents the best and fairest way of deciding human affairs,
    3
  4815. ,Sanctions for Russia are like prohibition for bootleggers.
    3
  4816. @Cliv Ings I use the WHO dashboard. Why the difference? I don't get it.
    3
  4817.  @sallywilton2236  I don't mind being in the minority. It's better than being in the wrong.
    3
  4818. This is wonderful stuff apart from being a tissue of lies. Scientists using weather balloons have just proved that carbon in the atmosphere does NOT retain heat and that there is no greenhouse effect in the real world. It exists only in faulty computer models.
    3
  4819. He didn't praise Putin, but the point he made is entirely true: without Western interference this war would never have happened. To make matters worse it now seems very much as though Putin will end up with considerably MORE than he asked for in his pre-invasion peace proposals. Tens upon tens of thousands will have died to no other purpose than to afford Western investors an opportunity to derive financial benefit from a geopolitical situation which was mostly of the West's making. Where is the shame?
    3
  4820. What part?
    3
  4821. Peanuts!
    3
  4822. Even without this threat there is no rational reason whatsoever for the UK to provide military aid to Ukraine. Why are we doing it?
    3
  4823. But why has the UK variant suddenly become so successful? Surely it must be because it operates more efficiently in lockdown conditions. It us therefore perfectly logical to argue that without lockdowns the variant would not have emerged.
    3
  4824. Great to see so many black and brown Karens are out and about on the streets of Washington. System racism does not exist in the real world. It is a construct of Marxist ideology which requires the existence of oppressed groups in order for the revolution to succeed. This is different to individual instances of racial prejudice which of course do exist and will always do so to one degree or another. There are only three reasons I can think of to support these protests. 1) You are a gullible fool - or at least somewhat optimistic. 2} You have a pathological urge to control others.(Karens and Commies) 3)You see them as an opportunity to steal or destroy the property of others.
    3
  4825. This analysis assumes that lockdowns and vaccines have greater effects than they do, Lockdowns slow the progress of the disease. Vaccines reduce symptoms. Neither provides anything like total protection. This can only be approached through immunity via infection. The old adage that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" has never been better illustrated than by the way in which governments have reacted to the pandemic.
    3
  4826. Russia is within inches of achieving all its military objectives.
    3
  4827. Because Islam isn't a race?
    3
  4828.  @peterebel7899  There's something of a difference between xenophobia and a rational fear of people who want to utterly alter your way of life and to kill you if you decline the offer.
    3
  4829. Why do Western commentators not accept that Russia has recovered its long-lost Christian identity? There is no ulterior motive here, other than perhaps to prove that Ukraine's leadership has lapsed into cynical materialism and religious persecution.
    3
  4830. Mild to moderate.
    3
  4831. It was justified in an historical context. Slavery was accepted, normal practice among all nations until the Enlightenment of the 17th/18th Century in which British thinkers played a considerable part. It was largely their efforts which caused people to think this through again.
    3
  4832.  @slinkymotion  I don't get it because it's not true. Any number of extensive peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown that lockdowns do nothing to reduce deaths or even hospitalisations. They can buy time but governments have signally not used this time to gear up to meet what is now clearly a seasonal demand. A severe shortage of fully trained ICU nurses is the main issue - healthcare workers get ill and sometimes die due to repeated infections caused by staff shortages. It would be cheaper to train nurses and have them on standby if necessary than pay compensation for lockdown losses in business profits and salaries. The amount of damage caused by lockdowns far, far outweighs the benefits a slight slowing down in infection rates may bring. Not only do they create economic disaster at home but their effects spread worldwide. The WHO estimates that more than 1.6 billion people will be forced into extreme poverty as a direct result of lockdowns in developed countries. How many Third World babies should die of malnutrition to give a senile, incontinent British 90-year-old a few more months of existence would you think?
    3
  4833. But a presidential candidate does not have the right to defame any citizen.
    3
  4834.  @jaxonl7810  Now Chechnya is at peace. That's what happened.
    3
  4835.  @mormacil  Making concessions is not surrender. Appeasement is not surrender. There is more to this than semantics though. In plain terms, the West must make concessions to Russia in order to bring peace and ensure Ukraine's future. Constantly fuelling the fire is exactly the wrong thing to be doing.
    3
  4836.  @mikedon5205  You're wrong. You should read the essay he wrote shortly before the invasion, which makes his position very clear. However regrettable it may be, he accepts Ukraine's decision to turn its face towards the West - but it can't have Crimea and Donbass. And it can't join NATO.
    3
  4837. You have this completely wrong. This man is a former Welsh choirboy whose Christian beliefs led him to reject extremist Islamism due to a prophetic revelation which occurred while watching an episode of Coronation Street, first broadcast on the anniversary of the death of Princess Diana.
    3
  4838. Left-wing protestors are SO well-organised! As a right-wing libertarian who opposes The Bill as much as they do, I thank them and Mr Soros from the bottom of my heart.
    3
  4839. There are many problems with PR, not the least of which is that rural areas will always have their interests subordinated to the prejudices of city dwellers. The idea that political power is some sort of popularity contest is both simplistic and dangerous.
    3
  4840.  Манька Облигация  I agree with you more or less completely.
    3
  4841.  @joe-dirt697  A nuclear torpedo exploded out to sea could send a tidal wave of radioactive water hundreds of metres high , sufficient to drown Britain completely, destroy New York or the West Coast. The question remains: how would the US or the NATO countries respond to something like this? Would they initiate all-out nuclear war - or draw their horns in and set about negotiations? More to the point, what do the Russians think we would do? How much of a risk do they think a pre-emptive strike might be?
    3
  4842. Beats sanctions doesn't it? Russia could have done this any time but Zelensky just won't learn who's boss.
    3
  4843. I didn't think Times Radio could get much dafter. I was wrong.
    3
  4844. Isn't that a lovely suit he's wearing? I wonder where he got that from?
    3
  4845. If there are civilians in there, then once again the Ukrainians are cruelly using them as human shields in a bid to minimise the Russian attack.
    3
  4846.  @andylane247  Ceaseless media brainwashing might lead you to think so. A strong economy, historically low unemployment, peace initiatives throughout the world and strong resistance to the corrosive insanity of globalist-inspired woke ideology say otherwise.
    3
  4847. I'm really looking forward to living underground for a few decades.
    3
  4848. It scarcely matters since Trump will simply not be allowed to win in November.
    3
  4849.  @Wagoo  Ukraine must share the blame for civilian deaths.
    3
  4850. These variants have been well documented from the start, but only in specialist literature. The general trend, as might be expected, is towards increased transmission but less virulence. Covid 19 doesn't want to kill us, it just wants to have sex with us - ie to use us to enable it to reproduce.
    3
  4851. Jack Richardson Lies and cherry-picked data.
    3
  4852. I know. I never let my children out of the house unless they are wearing a tinfoil hat to protect their brains from harmful cosmic rays and a crucifix to keep the vampires at bay. These are such simple basic precautions, and no trouble at all.
    3
  4853. Peace and prosperity. Just you wait and see.
    3
  4854. High
    3
  4855. Philosophers have been trying to define truth for ten thousand years. It is very conceited for Mr Starmer to believe he can do so.
    3
  4856. Whatever happens, Ukraine will have to move troops from the south, thus leaving Russia the chance to take over the rest of Donbass. That might well be its sole objective at this stage.
    3
  4857. Just a bit.
    3
  4858. Ever heard of the Alley of Angels? It's a memorial in Donetsk to the hundred of Donbass children killed by Ukrainian air strikes in the eight years leading up to the present stage of the conflict.
    3
  4859.  @YouTube2021FM  Naah. Only about $13trillion at the last count.
    3
  4860.  @darrylsimpson4744  He comes from a non-wimpy generation.
    3
  4861. He's the right man for the job. The US healthcare and food processing industry is entirely profit-orientated with benefits being practically incidental. RFK's scepticism is exactly what is needed to help set matters right.
    3
  4862. I wonder if Joe Biden might ever consider putting up Hunter for the job?
    3
  4863. Collusion between Ukraine and ISIS is entirely possible. Perhaps Zelensky has learned from NATO how easy it is to get foreigners to fight and die on your behalf.
    3
  4864. ... or by entering into sensible treaty arrangements with Russia?
    3
  4865.  @tonypredergast5782  It depends what you think the problem is. He might only be a stopgap, sure; but as of now he's all we've got. America is run and owned by crooks and psychopaths. Trump is no angel either, but at least he represents no sinister forces. He's just a businessman. But he's also a patriot and has a genuine regard for the American people.
    3
  4866. Sunak and Starmer are two cheeks of the same arse - so what does it matter?
    3
  4867. But none actually in on-the-ground operational positions. How could an administrative shake-up have had such an immediate effect on performance?
    3
  4868. @ Those years of conditioning are going to take time to cure.
    3
  4869. Always was.
    3
  4870. The excellent Simon Webb on the History Debunked channel has just pointed out that this error is included in the classic spoof history book "1066 and All That." It seems as though much of Starmer's thinking could be the result of ideas formed in adolescence.
    3
  4871. @jugy This must be one of the daftest Trump conspiracy theories yet. The patent ran out years ago and it's made all over the world. One of Trump's subsidiary companies once upon a time had some shares in Sanofi worth a few thousand dollars. The company is huge and makes many, many products. It values Plaquenil so highly that it is giving away 100million doses away for free. You can buy hydroxychloroquine in the US for $37.50 a 100. The recommended dose is two A WEEK. Now can you really see anyone, let alone Trump, getting involved in a business with that kind of cost to profit ratio? What you need to do is wait for a company to come out with a miracle Covid cure that costs $2/3,000 a shot. Now THAT would be a business worth investing in. And it will be interesting to see who does. And that's why Big Pharma is trying so desperately to badmouth hydroxycloroquine. If it gets widespread use and stops people dying the "cures" they're working on won't be worth jackshit.
    3
  4872. Omicron goes in slow and gentle and takes 11 days to do what Delta does in three or four. It can produce up to five billion new viruses without you even noticing. This kid will go far.
    3
  4873.  @eyeofthepyramid2596  I watched it myself ten minutes ago, but you're right it's now gone. Hmm Lets try this one: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-tanzania/president-queries-tanzania-coronavirus-kits-after-goat-test-idUKKBN22F0TG
    3
  4874. No US President has been "in charge" since Roosevelt. JFK and Trump both tried - and look what happened to them!
    3
  4875. Because airline pilots have to concentrate and Presidents just have to do what they're told. Except Trump, of course.
    3
  4876.  @WeirdoBusters  No-one's asking anyone to leave. Ukraine is one-sixth Russian and those of them living in the East don't want to be ruled by Kiev. If Ukraine allows this and promises not to join NATO then Russia will leave on the spot.
    3
  4877.  @MeekaYammi3554  No .All Russia has ever wanted is that Ukraine recognises the independence of the Russian heritage provinces to the East and does not join NATO. Ukraine has been pushed into refusal by the US and this has caused the war. It could be over the second Ukraine agrees.
    3
  4878.  @MeekaYammi3554  Putin doesn't want Ukraine. He just doesn't want America to have it.
    3
  4879. Winston Shih This has nothing to do with climate change. Air pollution is a separate issue.
    3
  4880. I prefer putting my fingers in my ears and whistling "Dixie".
    3
  4881. Got an example?
    3
  4882. Wagner has just taken the centre of Bakhmut after conquering the heavily defended steelworks which was the Ukrainian's main HQ.
    3
  4883. Why?
    3
  4884. Biden was in the pocket of warmongers. Trump isn't. That's all you really need to know.
    3
  4885.  @flyingpenandpaper6119  Why should I demean myself wearing a diaper over my face when the chances of me having Covid are 200 to 1 against and even if I did have it the chances of me passing it on would be five to one against? It only kill old people, fat people and people who are already ill. The more healthy people who get it and get over it the better.
    3
  4886. Do try to keep up Professor. There is no minerals deal. Zelensky is an obstacle in the path to peace and always had been. Chucking him out of the White House is symbolic of the new approach to world peace - which will mean all you Ukraine junkies and Putin haters are going to have to suffer a few severe withdrawal symptoms as realists tidy up the mess you have made.
    3
  4887.  @jamesmorrow1646  In the immortal words of the late Mandy Rice-Davies; "Well, they would do, wouldn't they?"
    3
  4888.  @Aaronwhatnow  Thank you for the advice. I suppose I must take you seriously since you can see China, India, the Pacific Rim, the Middle East and much of South America and Africa from your bedroom window.
    3
  4889. Obviously Putin is behind this. Trump must have known.
    3
  4890. He's right. We were all conned.
    3
  4891. Such a pity all the expensive equipment the Americans sold them doesn't work. They'll have to get by with Molotov cocktails and army-surplus automatic rifles.
    3
  4892.  @joancooley1387  ..because taking them in the first place was a war crime.
    3
  4893.  @danielbaxter3713  It is Israel which is being oppressed.
    3
  4894. He's not kidding. America's utterly inept interference in Ukraine has upset the delicate balance of nuclear threat which has kept us safe for more than 70 years. US warmongers have REALLY done it this time.
    3
  4895.  @MELODYMUNRO  A total of 13 as of two days ago. All elderly "with" other co-morbidities and "with" Omicron. .
    3
  4896. Such as?
    3
  4897. A great many people made serious errors in dealing with the pandemic - including this channel which relentlessly championed nonsensical and dangerous countermeasures.
    3
  4898.  @cloudycolacorp  Both Russia and the US (as well as China) are guilty of this. How could it be otherwise? But the USA is especially bad at it since its efforts so often result in outbreaks of the most horrific violence - which isn't actually the idea. The idea is to establish economic control over other countries by a gradual takeover of its political system. America just crashes about in its big boots thinking itself no end of a fine fellow as thousands die.
    3
  4899.  @cloudycolacorp  I would simply like to remind you that the Soviet Union became defunct more that 30 years ago and the only "pinkos" around these days are occupying positions in the USA and Europe.
    3
  4900.  @sandemike  Why is the fact that you had a flu vaccine make what I said nonsense? People are going to die of influenzas this year, vaccine or not. There are umpteen different kinds of it for one thing.
    3
  4901. This is not justice. It's a TV show.
    3
  4902. Glory days! The battles won and the ungrateful bastards end up voting Tory! Good job there's so much of this terrible racism about to help keep the red flag flying.
    3
  4903. If only Obama and Biden had done this instead of starting a war to get them.
    3
  4904. It would be rather interesting to see an interview with Col Douglas Macgregor on this channel.
    3
  4905.  @jeremysmith8035  The attempts to stop millions of people dying have resulted in a continuing spiral of unnecessary deaths from cancer, heart disease and other untreated, undiagnosed ailments and have had little or no appreciable effect on the numbers dying from covid.
    3
  4906.  @Thor.Jorgensen  What stage is the US at right now?
    3
  4907.  @daddyandy9591  It is, horrifically, quite likely.
    3
  4908. At least there is one adult in the room to keep all you hysterical children in check.
    3
  4909. Bit behind the times, aren't you? Russia is barrelling westwards and will secure Donbass and much else before the winter is out.
    3
  4910. I do urge caution. The forces which govern us are entirely capable of infiltrating this support and turning it around by various nefarious means. There is a lot at stake here. Mainly money. Lots of money. Watch out for false flags. Be careful of figures suddenly thrust into the limelight which turn out to have feet of clay.
    3
  4911.  @dominicalexander737  I don't see what point you are making. The Ukrainian army was created mainly to try to sweep the independent Luhansk and Donetsk armies from the territories they had occupied. It could probably have done so if the Russians had not intervened so dramatically.
    3
  4912. Yes - they are desperately destroying Kiev's air defences.
    3
  4913. Where does this "three days" thing come from? I can find no source for it.
    3
  4914. Can we stop this "Far Right" nonsense? What we are seeing is a genuine working-class reaction to an appalling situation imposed by a governing elite. I doubt the "Far Right" even exists in this country.
    3
  4915.  @jim2376  I'm sure that must be true. Your post was the first I've heard of this place, so I Googled it and it seems it has now closed down. (I am English, by the way, and living in England. It is rather pathetic to believe that anyone who disagrees with Ukrainamania has to be a Russian agent.)
    3
  4916.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  He does exaggerate a bit. It was a ditch. https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    3
  4917. You lefties really are utterly humourless, aren't you?
    3
  4918. Two wrongs don't make a right, but Ukrainian proclivities in this area are well attested. Both countries share a similar ethnic and historical background, and it would be odd if it were otherwise.
    3
  4919. Russians own much of Ukraine's mineral wealth, and have done so for centuries.
    3
  4920. Quite apart from the fact that the link between atmospheric carbon levels and global warming remains purely theoretical and disputed in some quarters, fossil fuel companies are of course investing heavily in alternative energy sources, both in the inefficient methods currently being grandstanded and research into more viable alternatives. The fanatical, spitting rage exhibited by this reporter and his interviewees does much to reinforce my view that climate change hysteria is a form of religious madness and at least as financially profitable as previous religions have proved to be.
    3
  4921.  @mrb.5610  As I say' utilising renewables does have some virtues, but the Net Zero madness is another thing entirely. It is typical of the hysterical over-reaction which so often gets us into trouble these days.
    3
  4922.  @mrb.5610  Not necessarily. But in any case there is no way the world can stop relying on fossil fuels for at least a hundred years.
    3
  4923. They won't be . This looks like an out of context fake video.
    3
  4924.  @Statueshop297  The others should first look into the background of the case before giving out death-dealing weapons, I feel. In any case the analogy, like most analogies, is childish and absurd. The Russian parts of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine were appended to the new country of Ukraine in a treaty which was deeply flawed, possibly deliberately so. To allow you your analogy, the ownership of the property is far from clear-cut. You might be dealing with a case of the neighbour attempting to recover property which had been stolen from it.
    3
  4925.  @ThoriberoCaroli  Oh dear. What a world of fantasy you loveable left-wing loonies live in!
    3
  4926. The more Zelensky carries on the more I'm convinced it was his lot wot dun it.
    3
  4927.  @Geffo555  More than sensible. The very fact that the political establishment has gone to such lengths to denigrate the man shows that he's on to something. Which he is.
    3
  4928.  @jamesjewell3515  I never watch Fox News.
    3
  4929.  @MrRecrute  Three million Russian Ukrainians HAVE moved to Russia - to escape being murdered by Ukrainians. Modern Ukraine is entirely a Russian creation. It only become a country in 1991 and then its history and ethnicities were not taken into account - and nor were its borders, for that matter. Donbass and Crimea were stuck on by the Soviet Union as a matter of administrative convenience, that's all.
    3
  4930.  @rbrkid8914  Because in Kenosha the march had degenerated into arson , robbery and violence: bad for the town and bad also for BLM.
    3
  4931. No, that's Zelensky
    3
  4932. Shooting down $12 party balloons with $400,000 missiles is typical of the Biden administrations solution to inflation.
    3
  4933. As with Brexit and the "Climate Crisis" constant fearmongering is the order of the day from press and politicians alike when it comes to Covid 19. Fortunately in this instance we will be able to see very quickly if these fears are justified or not.
    3
  4934. I'm sure he's right. The war was caused by Western (mainly US) business interests using Zelensky as a weapon to attempt to secure the vast mineral resources of Donbass, while covering potential losses by continued investment in the arms industry and predicting fluctuations in the money markets. Trump has no irons in these particular fires and would almost certainly have persuaded Zelensky to negotiate and to accept the main provision of the Minsk treaties, which was to grant regional autonomy to Donbass.
    3
  4935. It's the American dream.
    3
  4936. Found guilty or not, Trump just wins, wins, wins.
    3
  4937.  @rocketscience4516  I was merely being ironic, pointing out that comparisons between the Gestapo's methods and those of the present UK government are no more relevant than referencing their uniforms. The 2020 US Presidential election was fraudulently conducted on a massive and varied scale in order to neutralise Trump whose continued appeal to broad sections of the American public was -and is - a threat to the New World Order's plans to dismantle capitalism in its present form and replace democracy with a permanent system of governance.
    3
  4938. Depends where and under what circumstances!
    3
  4939.  @Luke-ri8od  Four years in which a less-than-perfect old New York property developer showed just how vicious, evil and corrupt the US political system has become.
    3
  4940. I think the Alphabet People should include the whole alphabet. This can be done relatively easily with orientations ranging from abasiophilia (being attracted to people in wheelchairs) to zoosadism (getting gratification from inflicting pain on animals.) Remember: diversity is our strength!
    3
  4941.  @daydays12  These are just details of the ceasefire. The main thrust of the Accords was to allow Ukraine to pave the way to granting regional autonomy to the two breakaway Donbass republics. This Ukraine failed to do, and instead use the time to take billions of dollars from the US and other NATO countries to build up its army. These treaties are typical of treaties which are designed to fail. They contain details which will invariably be broken, thus allowing the main participant to ignore its responsibilities. The technique was developed by the Americans when making treaties between Native American tribes as a pretext for exterminating them. Ukraine exists - but mainly on paper. The territory it occupies is the territory of the former SSR of Ukraine, which was created by Moscow. The eastern and western parts have deeply divided loyalties and interests.
    3
  4942.  @Michele_PoeTreeWitch  Very little - and nothing compared with the lives that will be saved.
    3
  4943. Keep following. This channel provides a fascinating insight into the mindset of the logically-challenged leftie.
    3
  4944.  @twmbwen1402  A world where grown up people can discuss their differences and come up with viable solutions, mainly.
    3
  4945. It's just the print version of "clickbait." Plus of course(as I know from experience)it is very difficult to sum up a story in a few attention-grabbing words. You take journalism far too seriously!
    3
  4946. It was a genuine expression of righteous anger. Like it or not there are millions of Americans who believe with considerable justification that the election was fraudulent. Democracy is a contract won by actions such as this, and that contract has been broken. Since no tribunal can be found to address the claims protest on this scale is really the only course open to the aggrieved. Personally I thought it was magnificent.
    3
  4947. I know, let's be like America and make a fortune out of wars!
    3
  4948. The climate crisis is a scam. By restricting the amount of carbon industry is allowed to produce, permissions to produce it are of great and varying value. Hedge fund managers are now making vast fortunes by trading in these permissions.The so-called science behind the scam is attractive enough in its way, but exists only in the laboratory and in computer models, Data obtained through measurement is routinely manipulated to fit the theory. There is no empirical evidence that man-made carbon emissions affect the climate in any way. There is, however, considerable empirical evidence that the climate in the quite recent past was warmer than it is today.The Medieval Warm Period is a fact of history and now those scientists who are in on the scam, and are profiting from it, have failed to airbrush it from the records they are attempting to claim that it was small and localised. This report in Nature is, broadly speaking,, a part of this strategy. Evidence of the MWP, or indeed of the earlier Roman Warming Period, is obviously far greater in Europe because this is where we get our history from. New evidence from China and Japan giving details of the crops grown at the time are, however, showing very clearly that it was warm there too. Tree ring evidence from the USA and Canada also supports the case. Obviously evidence that it was warmer for at least two quite lengthy periods of time during the past two thousand years than it is today entirely scuppers the climate crisis theory and the vast profits to be made from demonising carbon and restricting its output through legislation. Although some scientists are in on the scam, very many others are duped into supporting it by the intellectually stimulating nature of the research and further coerced by the fact that unless they follow the party line they will very soon be out of a job. Ignorant journalists and hysterical commentators add greatly to the scam and its grip upon the fearful public. For measured accounts and citations of the facts outlined above I suggest viewers go to the work of Tony Heller and 1000frolly Phd. The skeletons of Vikings who farmed Greenland in places that are now barren snow-covered rock have been found pierced and twisted by the roots of the trees that were planted on their graves. The solar system, bound together by forces of gravity and magnetism beyond our comprehension is speeding and spiraling through space at many millions of miles per hour, passing through clouds of elemental particles the function and purpose of which we are equally ignorant. Do you not think it more likely that the earth's changing climate over the millennia is due to the effects of this awesome and ancient dance than it is to the piffling farts and burps of we tiny, concieted and frequently misguided humans?
    3
  4949. The party division in the US is no longer Democrat v Republican. It is MAGA v the rest. When will you people realise this?
    3
  4950.  @lilyadam7318  Everyone is allowed to lie as long it is not made too obvious or employed too often. Johnson fails on both the latter counts.
    3
  4951.  @indricotherium4802  She has done many Tories a great favour. She has said out loud which many of them believe but could not say - for obvious reasons.
    3
  4952.  @paulgibbon5991  You're catching on.
    3
  4953. He's entirely correct. If you suspect your postal vote hasn't been counted you can check on line. If it hasn't registered you can then vote in person. If by any chance your postal vote becomes registered in the meantime it will show up and you won't be able to vote again. Equally if it does show up AFTER you've voted in person it will be discounted. That's the theory anyway - but American elections are pretty chaotic sometimes.
    3
  4954. Why?
    3
  4955.  @blazednlovinit  I gave what I thought was a fair an appreciative response to your comment.... ...but of course YouTube deleted it.
    3
  4956.  @jimthompson9370  I don't see why I should have to. Rather demeaning, really.
    3
  4957.  @jimthompson9370  To be honest it wasn't all that important - which makes it even odder that the extremely odd new fascist YT algorithm took it down. In fact, trying to suss out what exactly YT is up to with this abortion of a program is of greater interest than anything I have to say at the moment. Is it just incompetence or something far more sinister?
    3
  4958.  @denisbainbridge4813  Since the US now has a war--mongering autocratic dictatorship created by fraud and owing allegiance to foreign powers Trump's handling of the pandemic has to be put into perspective, don't you think? Biden will do no better. And the Capitol incident is just a sign of things to come as the country falls deeper into chaos. Cheats never prosper.
    3
  4959.  @denisbainbridge4813  The USA covid deathrate continues unabated under Biden. It's not his fault, not Trump's that so many Americans are so bloody fat. Biden has enthusiastically supported every wat the country has been engaged in for the past half century. Already in less than two weeks he has begun sending troops back into Syria, caused bombers to buzz the Iranian border and his staff have said that Iran could have nuclear capability "within weeks." He has signed more executive orders in his first days of office than any previous President. He is a dictator, but a puppet dictator whose strings are pulled by a variety of sinister forces - unlike Donald Trump who is entirely his own man, owing his actions to nothing but God and his conscience.
    3
  4960.  @run2cat4run  Autonomy for Donbass. Crimea recognised as Russian. Ukraine stays out of NATO.
    3
  4961. ​ @niio111 Who says a region can't secede without permission of the majority? And Ukraine's claim to nationhood with its present borders are both recent and disputable . Without Western interference these difficulties could have been resolved without bloodshed.
    3
  4962. ​ @superhumantrueman When Russia holds the referendum everyone wants to be Russian. When Ukraine holds the referendum everyone wants to be Ukranian. The majority, I'm sure, would prefer the solution that doesn't involve living in war zone. Ukraine has been a Russian fiefdom for most of its history. Crimea and much of 'Little Russia ' to the East of the Dnieper was only added on very recently (by the Russians!)for reasons of administrative convenience. It only became a 'country' to give the USSR an extra seat in the UN. Putin's original peace proposals were entirely reasonable and most Ukrainians would have probably accepted them, if somewhat grudgingly. T his did not suit the US ,however, and the Zelensky government has beenbribed into sacrificing tens of thousands of its people in order to attempt to advance America s commercial interests. The invasion is an attempt by Russia to forestall a planned invasion of Donbass and Crimea by Ukraine 's new US/NATO financed army. In this it has so far been entirely successful.
    3
  4963.  @applerunner1184  I can only refer you to: American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021 - Volume 28 - Issue 4 - p e434-e46 It is difficult to see why any of these studies should be deliberately slanted towards promoting Ivermectin. On the other hand it is very easy to see why the vaccine manufacturers would wish to disparage them. Big Pharma is Bad Pharma. A book of the latter title by Dr Ben Goldacre clearly demonstrates the deceits used in the pursuit of profits. While the current covid vaccines are of undoubted benefit their marketing and the deliberate undermining of cheap readily available potential alternatives is particularly egregious. As for India and Peru both have succumbed to pressure, despite evidence firmly supporting the benefits obtained by the drug. Just check out the death rates in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala for a clear indication of this. Big Pharma and the WHO have turned disease into a business which expends billions on promoting profitable products while deliberately vilifying cheap alternatives. It is quite disgusting.
    3
  4964. My comments in this thread have all been deleted - but I still get notice of new comments.
    3
  4965. As long as it keeps 'em out of mischief!
    3
  4966. A madman, undoubtedly. His action achieves nothing and was based upon an utterly twisted view of reality. And I bet he regretted it deeply as the flames began to hurt.
    3
  4967. What IS this obsession with Russia running out of stuff? It isn't, as events continue to prove. Wishful thinking is all it is.
    3
  4968. The idea that a nationwide majority opinion will miraculously result is the best decisions is just plain bonkers. Democracy only works when constrained - and it doesn't matter a great deal what those constraints are. The present system is just about as good as any.
    3
  4969. The military relies on power infrastructure just as much as civilians do.
    3
  4970.  @iura_ch  That's the trouble with creating countries from scratch. Ukraine is an independent country on paper, but it is deeply divided and its industrial heartland is largely Russian-owned and run in real terms.
    3
  4971.  @usucktoo  The conspiracy comes from the other direction. Until about May of last year every public health body in the world, including the CDC and the WHO, advised strongly against the wearing of facemasks by the general public. It had been that way for years. What suddenly happened to change this strategy? The covid 19 virus is a virus like any other. It speads in the same way and yet all of a sudden masks become a magic bullet. This is clearly nonsense. Masks are a political statement, a badge of submission to authority and little more.
    3
  4972.  @razorramon780  Santa has his elves - Vlad has his Koreans!
    3
  4973. Hunky Dory Millions are being made every day by playing the carbon futures market. Wake up.
    3
  4974. There were similar schemes put forward in the 1920's when climatic conditions matched those of today. Anyone investing in such enterprises is likely to meet with disappointment because the arctic regularly goes through quite extreme changes of weather, as do many other regions. It has nothing to do with the so-called climate crisis - which does not exist.
    3
  4975. It was the Ukrainians. They went to the same school.
    3
  4976. @ It would be nothing like that at all. This is even madder than people trying to compare the war in Ukraine with the war in Europe in 1939-45.
    3
  4977. This is an absurd comparison. Britain is drowning and needs rescuing from what looks like being one of the worst governments in its history. Brexit was an escape from being dragged into a federalist state.
    3
  4978.  @ElkaPME  He makes wild guesses from time to time, but his up-to-date info is generally accurate.
    3
  4979. There is a theory that all Putin is doing is allowing the Ukrainians to destroy themselves by throwing their forces against unimportant targets which are being defended by expendable resources. Both sides lie in wars, and Sky seems to be sucking on the Ukrainian/US version somewhat greedily.
    3
  4980. It scarcely matters since the country seems to be run by faceless figures in the background anyway. But at least Trump has the balls to defy them.
    3
  4981. Iwer Sonsch So the only debate you allow is one of detail between scientific papers which re-iterate variants of the same process of indoctrination? Or have I misunderstood you?
    3
  4982. The fact that your carers are now more likely to be foreigners is in part due to the fact that the care system now has many more people to care for - many of them foreigners.
    3
  4983. Most of these are fakes, and proven to be so. I think this one probably comes in that category.
    3
  4984. It's actually 11% RC and 67% Orthodox.
    3
  4985. Johnson is as responsible for this war as anyone. Him and his bloody Winston Churchill complex!
    3
  4986. They don't allow statistics or reasoned arguments. A chess channel was taken down the other day for implying that a certain colour was superior to another colour.
    3
  4987. @ What makes you think that? What possible evidene do you have?
    3
  4988. Bring on the gulags.
    3
  4989.  @edaleman2758  Which is most refreshing.
    3
  4990. Can someone tell me why we are spending billions supporting one set of Eastern European gangsters against another set of Eastern European gangsters?
    3
  4991.  @ruprect8858  Interesting to note that my first two attempts to reply to this were taken down by YouTube, only to re-appear once the third one got through. Utter madness. ...and now the first two have been taken down again!
    3
  4992. How can they be unelectable when they've been elected? And the public don't elect the PM, the ruling party choose him/her.
    3
  4993. devoted2trouble I'm getting tired of saying this now but air pollution has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. The US has some of the strictest air pollution regulations in the world, which is why cities in China and other countries are choking with smog and cities in the US are not.
    3
  4994. Which obviously it is.
    3
  4995.  @deadly-roblox3101  I'm not quite sure what you mean by a catalyst for infections. In any case while it is obviously true that children mixing together at school will infect one another it is the impact of those infections which is important. Children do not suffer so badly and most of these infections are asymptomatic. A huge surge in school infections means very little in such circumstances. This study published in the British Medical Journal gives a somewhat broader picture. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588
    3
  4996.  @vitae8408  Teachers can get it alright, but their survival rate is among the highest in the country. Take comfort! Best of luck to you and your family.
    3
  4997. Name a lie.
    3
  4998. I think both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia had similar legislation.
    3
  4999.  @JOHN-wm2on  No. I just think that the police behaved entirely correctly and that this guy was so stupid, or so stoned or so angry that he brought this entirely upon himself. He could well have been going for a gun. And even if he was planning to drive off - what about his kids in the back? I simply don't understand what you mean about standards. Cop, criminal or civilian we owe it to ourselves and those around us to behave with some degree of responsibility. He didn't. The police did.
    3
  5000. Sadly, to quote Chris Packham - I cannot support this channel's motives, as noble as they may be. Nature does not love us. Communism, in whatever guise, invariably results in oppression. I have admired Packham and Attenborough both over the years but their espousal of these doctrines seems to me to go against the very nature of Darwinism. Quite frankly I do not see how it is possible to be both a socialist and to believe in the principle of the survival of the fittest.
    3
  5001. They have even commissioned studies to find out how much reduction on performance should be allowed when hiring staff on a DEI basis.
    3
  5002. Two great leaders.
    3
  5003. Blackrock and the international arms industry welcome this historic move.
    3
  5004.  @joashjohnson5077  You don't even need an article. Just check his autopsy. Then trawl around to confirm that death certificates in this country usually contain at least three contributory factors and that doctors are instructed to indicate the possibility of covid infection as one of these, should it be apparent. This is normal practice in pandemics. The death is then recorded as coronavirus-related and appears as such in the official statistics.
    3
  5005. On the contrary, good people with morals will see that his persecution is an immoral act and will vote him back into power.
    3
  5006.  @GreenMachine-u3n  He's guilty of ignoring a court injunction, and of defamation, according to the law.
    3
  5007. Dodgy Dave has backed the wrong horse again.
    3
  5008. Tyros 43 Yes to the planting. Grain seeds have been found in glacial and seabed sediments. And if the tax collectors visited what form of tax do you think they were after? Grain of course. They wouldn't take a cheque, would they? The settlements lasted for almost three hundred years and largely failed due to climate change. From warm to cold. Just as is store for us before very long. (I think you have been watching a climate alarmist video designed to minimise this embarrassing contradiction to their crackpot theories..)
    3
  5009. So what do you call cowards who flee their homelands and leave women and children to suffer?
    3
  5010. Is there an agency where one gets all these retired generals from? How much do they cost to hire?
    3
  5011. Talk about fake news! Man-made climate change is a con-trick cleverly thought up by Marxist globalists, promoted by duplicitous scientists and journalists and sadly taken as gospel by millions. Your hot air balloons were a clever image. Here's another one. Imagine a large room; a classroom perhaps, and imagine it contains the earth's atmosphere. The amount of carbon in that atmosphere would scarcely fill a standard-size box of Rice Krispies and Britain's industrial contribution would amount to one Rice Krispie. Do the maths yourselves. Climate cultists claim that the carbon content of the atmosphere now runs at 400 parts per million if that helps. The fact that they take readings around active volcanoes is neither here nor there, I suppose. Oddly enough we weren't there to take readings millions of years ago so we rely on 'proxy' data.- by testing the contents of ice cores. These show carbon contents ranging from 150ppm to 300ppm. This would appear to show that, yes, the carbon content of the atmosphere has shot up dramatically of late and that, coincidentally, this has occurred at the same time as the industrial revolution. It's just another coincidence that we've only had the equipment to measure these levels since the industrial revolution. Should the ice-core measurements turn out be inaccurate then the whole shooting match goes up in smoke. Testing prehistoric carbon levels by other means, such as the remains of long-buried leaves, show them to be much closer to modern levels.. If I had the money I'd buy a house jn Fairbourn when prices drop. Al Gore, the first Apostle of this new religion has just bought himself a coastal home in Florida, incidentally, at a location which according to his earnest predictions should be under tens of metres of water by now.
    3
  5012. Shouldn't take more than a couple of seconds.
    3
  5013. The Speaker's duty is to protect the integrity of Parliament as an institution. This duty supersedes any notions of political neutrality.
    3
  5014.  @AlwaysAC  Your definition of fascism can be more or less what you want it to be, seems to me. The word actually comes from the Latin "fasces" which is a bundle of spears bound together around a central double-headed pike - strong men gathered around a leader. Racial purity and patriarchal hierarchy don't enter into the picture at all. Trump's description of the insidious infiltration of Western institutions by Marxist iconoclasts holds just as much water as yours as a definition of fascism. They are certainly operating a set of economic and social principles and are prepared to defy democracy and civilised values in order to promote them.
    3
  5015.  @wandah9468  I don't live in a Russian world - but plenty of Brits and Americans do. Visit a couple of YouTubers - Sam's Russian Adventures, Anna in Russia, American in Russia. Apart from all that snow, life in Russia doesn't look at all bad.
    3
  5016.  @gustavmeyrink_2.0  No. They're not. There has been a slow grind forward which now seems to be speeding up. And Ukraine is running out of ammo.
    3
  5017.  @iceteal3mon108  Very rich. There's at least $13trillion in gas, coal oil and rare earth minerals under there.
    3
  5018.  mrb.9822  What would you rather own, a 300 acre cornfield or a 300 sq ft entrance to a goldmine?
    3
  5019. Great news for schoolteachers! Latest figures show they have suffered fewer deaths from Covid 19 than any other category of adult. Well done Sir! Well done Miss!
    3
  5020.  @boink800  There was a treaty which would have prevented war. Then Boris turned up and had a few words with Zelensky. And then there was no more treaty. Makes you think, don't it?
    3
  5021. What for? Starmer's excuses are pathetic.
    3
  5022. And why shouldn't the US form a closer relationship with the Russian Federation?
    3
  5023.  @leeselset5751  This idiotic comparison between Hitler and Putin and the situation today and the situation in Europe in the 1930s is a sign of mental weakness.
    3
  5024. This would include African countries, I take it?
    3
  5025. What a disgrace! If we HAVE to live in a police state it might as well be a competent one. Tommy Robinson is a martyr to freedom. This insane action by the dumbass plod can only help the cause he represents.
    3
  5026.  @estebanperez4171  Minsk would have let Ukraine keep Donbass, just stop it being included into any EU deal. Now Ukraine is not only going to lose Donbass completely but a heap of other territory too
    3
  5027.  @andrewfrancis3591  Russia is winning, despite losses. This is an unavoidable fact. As to the ownership of of the resources of Eastern Ukraine, these have been invested in , owned and worked almost exclusively by Russians for decades, if not centuries. It is totally unfair that they should be handed over to US or European companies simply because the area was mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine when it was created just over 30 years ago.
    3
  5028.  @andrewfrancis3591  Russia's diplomatic solutions have all been rejected, which is why it has been forced into the grim necessity of war. In war, of course, nothing is certain but Ukraine's only hope now is for the West not only to throw good money after bad, but also to risk nuclear war by openly using its own troops in the conflict. Neither is likely, I feel.
    3
  5029.  @sardo.numspa  It depends upon the circumstances. In this instance the people of Ukraine have, I believe, been bamboozled into acting as proxies for foreign interests. They are not defending their country as such, but fruitlessly sacrificing their lives to advance those interests.
    3
  5030. Do the Palestinian authorities allow Palestinians to marry Jews?
    3
  5031. Whoever MAGA invites to lunch it ain't gonna be anyone in the Labour Party!
    3
  5032. Checked on deaths per 100,000 lately? Cases figures are meaningless.
    3
  5033.  @deanbarnett8538  It supplied the ANC with money and arms and has become a close ally as a result. It's no coincidence that both countries are in BRICS.
    3
  5034. ​ @joshuabetts2484  A study of patients at the Ford Health System in Michigan found that only 13% of patients given HQ died as opposed to 26% who were not. This was four days ago I think. The study was of around 2,500 patients. The study published in the Lancet recently decrying drug has been exposed as a deliberate fraud. I may have got the wrong tweet in mind. Which one did you mean?
    3
  5035.  @matt014908  Don't tell me to grow up. Whatever he did he did it on his own time and with his own money - not as a crooked, bribe-taking paid public servant like Joe Biden.
    3
  5036. "Famous last words?"
    3
  5037. It is not the likes of Farage and Robinson who are responsible. It is a succession of governments aided by left-wing civil servants who have placed the interests of immigrants above the interests of the native British population.
    3
  5038.  @josephleonardi1421  Ever hear of the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics?
    3
  5039.  @josephleonardi1421  A Soviet is simply the Russian word for council or committee. That aside, history tends to show that any movements towards a socialist or egalitarian system of government inevitably fail, and increasingly totalitarian measures are needed to prop them up. Socialism (or Communism) rebranded as wokeism has gained ascendancy in the West and now those who oppose it are being destroyed. This is not a good thing.
    3
  5040. America.
    3
  5041. She is doing exactly what is expected of her. Getting the cops called in was a BIG mistake.
    3
  5042. ..and bombed themselves when they moved out, after painting "children" on the courtyard outside. They did the same on the missile they fired at Kramatorsk station.
    3
  5043.  @rubensalsa8128  But every evidence that he needed to be restrained.
    3
  5044. Stop press: a new properly-conducted study from Belgium has proved that hydroxychloroquine, if administered in the correct doses and soon enough, reduces Covid 19 deaths by almost one third. Trump was right about that too.
    3
  5045. Not if they have the sense to get rid of Zelensky.
    3
  5046.  @HectorHectorious  I see no great similarity. The Warsaw uprising was an act of desperation. Oct 7 was a foolish act of aggression - although I am not at all averse to the idea that Israel encouraged it in order to justify the present severe reprisals.
    3
  5047.  @gerrya4818  It's the proximity to Moscow that's important. In any case the nuclear threat is only part of the picture. Russia wants to destroy Ukraine's large, new NATO funded army and also to keep its hold on the vast mineral wealth of the Donbass, to which it feels entitled since it has mainly been exploited by Russia and Russians in the past.
    3
  5048.  @LudvigIndestrucable  Has it crossed your mind that Russia doesn't WANT to be considered a threat? Maybe it just doesn't want to be hassled by greedy Westerners - but is prepared to stick up for itself when pushed too far?
    3
  5049.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  Putin has no such ambitions.
    3
  5050.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  No he didn't. He said that while restoring the borders of the Russian empire seemed a wonderful idea, it was impractical and even undesirable to do so. And the Baltic States were indeed once part of the Russian Empire, but they are no longer and are likely to stay that way.
    3
  5051.  @johnmunro4952  No. The CIA overthrew him.
    3
  5052.  @ionnanskilliorus  No. They simply accepted a better offer from the Americans.
    3
  5053. This is symbolic of many things. If anything it should tell us all to put the past behind us and concentrate on the present.
    3
  5054.  @Waverlyduli  I can only find propagandist allegations.
    3
  5055.  @sydneyashworth8515  I do. I've read his speeches and his famous essay published in the summer of '21, detailing the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. There is all the difference in the world between the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. For a start the Soviet Union was atheist. The Russian Federation id Christian. The SU was communist. The RF is capitalist. The SU was expansionist. The RF is not. They are as different as chalk and cheese - or as you and someone with a brain.
    3
  5056. A one-party state with perhaps a permanent dictator works a great deal more efficiently, don't you think?
    3
  5057. Such as losing the Ukraine's industrial heartland and three-quarters of its coastline?
    3
  5058.  @jamesjack6769  Why should it?
    3
  5059. On the contrary the country is foolishly bankrupting itself by supporting Ukraine.
    3
  5060. We are kind to homeless beggars in the UK.
    3
  5061. I can't quite see how this fits in with the fact that schoolteachers have the lowest covid death rate of all occupations in the UK.
    3
  5062. Which is what he has done. The documents have either been processed by the relevant authority or were in the process of so doing.
    3
  5063.  @Calvito-  I am not a troll nor a Russian. I am a concerned British citizen fearful of seeing my country dragged into a needless war with an imagined adversary. The war in Ukraine is a quarrel over mineral rights which should not concern us in any way. The collapse of the Soviet Union was partly due to being over-extended in an unwelcoming Europe - so why on earth would the Russian Federation want to make the same mistake?
    3
  5064. There's every chance we'll end up with the deal Putin put forward before the invasion even started - and a quarter of a million people will have died for nothing.
    3
  5065. Russia took it from the Turks in 1783. It has been Russian ever since. The handover to Ukraine on 1954 was purely for administrative reasons. There was no bridge back then. Putin built it.
    3
  5066. Roisin Mangan She is employed by We Don't Have Time, a hedge-fund company posing as an environmentalist group. Go to their website to find out more.
    3
  5067. Starmer may have rubber stamped the decision, and the decision may have been the right one given the unlikelihood of obtaining a conviction. But Johnson's accusation remains valid.
    3
  5068. The people who did the survey reckon twice as many - but no-one will ever know. Russia is used to heavy losses. They reckon getting killed is part of a soldier's job.
    3
  5069.  @dpelpal  I don't think the Ukrainians are laughing much. They're getting a right pounding at the moment - and retreating all across the front.
    3
  5070. Her sex and her colour scarcely entered into it. As Phil says, it's the price of groceries mainly - plus a resentment at the intellectual arrogance of the university educated wokeists.
    3
  5071.  @allanedwards1036  That is in some dispute. I could tell you - indeed I have just tried to do so- but my comment was instantly deleted. This is very telling, as is the fact that although excess deaths in some countries, including Australia, are currently running at between 6% and 20% in some cases, depending upon age group and statistical methods employed, no public enquiries into cause have been instituted.
    3
  5072. Why doesn't Ukraine just surrender and give Russia back those bit of Russia which were mistakenly attached to the new country of Ukraine when it was created in 1991?
    3
  5073. Can anyone tell me what percentage nine is of 2,621? I keep making it around a third of 1%. Is this right?
    3
  5074.  @Paul-wo3qh  Not at all. Reports on the war are upfront, frontline stuff, not pontificating nonsense from a distant studio. You get a proper background to events too, not some vague "good guy, bad guy " crap. Try iEarlGrey, just for starters, plus Patrick Lancaster of course. You'll realise how much we're being taken for a ride.
    3
  5075. Coherent and factual - what a contrast to our own politicians! Perhaps the fact he doesn't have to suck up to voters and the media helps. Makes you think. don't it?
    3
  5076. More lies from CNN. Russia has set up camps to house Russians formerly living in Eastern Ukraine, fleeing in terror from Ukrainian Nazis. There is no kidnapping involved. Children are being housed and protected and they and their families are later found homes in towns and cities all over the country. The standard of Western propaganda really is falling lately.
    3
  5077. How very intolerant.
    3
  5078. I would imagine the FBI will be very relieved that their highly suspect case will now not face the embarrassment of public scrutiny.
    3
  5079.  @ElTigre12024  There are absolutely no similarities whatsoever between the two situations, other than perhaps in the minds of simpletons.
    3
  5080. If you think about it, it must be true The aid prolongs the war and thus there are inevitably more casualties.
    3
  5081. Zelensky should quit ASAP. He has a great and lucrative career ahead of him appearing on chat shows.
    3
  5082. Trump, for all his faults, has confirmed the suspicion that for decades America has been run by greedy, warmongering crooks who have to be run out of town if the nation is to survive.
    3
  5083. Ain't gonna happen.
    3
  5084. You say "reclaim" but has it not always been like this? Has there even been a period in history when the wealthy and the powerful have not colluded to in this manner?
    3
  5085. The sound of the bottom of barrels being scraped at Times House is setting my teeth on edge.
    3
  5086. And it's nothing like that much in real terms.
    2
  5087. It is the biggest problem the country faces, and the cause of many of our ills.
    2
  5088.  @jankench1731  I think you put in an exclamation point instead of a question mark.
    2
  5089. Stick to the point. Stop trying to divert attention from the REAL issue. Have you no shame?
    2
  5090.  @mikeclifford7740  Simply that the likelihood of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli feeling and behaviour in the UK is ten times likelier demographic terms.
    2
  5091.  @rocketscience4516  Can we shake on it?
    2
  5092.  @rogerout8875  NY Times, 18 Oct 2021 and 14 Nov 2022, Guardian 27 Han 2021 etc etc And do you really think Ray Epps worked alone?
    2
  5093.  @hik.horticultures  As I say, there seems little alternative though. Language seems unable to admit a more sophisticated form of differentiation.
    2
  5094.  @garypowell1540  No they are not. This one is very selective in whom it kills. We planned for a universal pandemic, killing old and young alike, as do most influenzas to a considerable degree. This one is even racially selective.
    2
  5095.  @stevelufc64  To say nothing of hydroxychloroquine.
    2
  5096.  @MrVibeless  Very well put.
    2
  5097. It's ironic that the absurd regulations which BJ imposed and then cynically ignored are now proving to have resulted in the deaths of thousands.
    2
  5098.  @arty4308  What charges?
    2
  5099. Why would he want to?
    2
  5100.  @christianevanherck6023  So?
    2
  5101.  @christianevanherck6023  I think it was a decision many came later to regret.
    2
  5102.  @thedave7760  And the rest.
    2
  5103.  @mairedaly4926  That must include every world leader there's ever been then!
    2
  5104.  @grodan33  What a cartoon of a world you appear to live in.
    2
  5105. ​ @danellis-jones1591  The media is about making money. Until recently owners and investors have known that socialist regimes will mean a reduction in profits, and so have campaigned vigorously for the alternatives. Capitalism is, however, undergoing a major overhaul. The globalists have realised that socialism provides systems of social control and compliance which may be readily manipulated to financial advantage. They have great influence in the US, Canada, Australia and NZ, to name but a few of the countries which are making the transition to a controlled economy and social conformity under an ostensibly leftist banner. If the UK ever gets a Labour government again it will be because international multi-billion investment companies think it's a good idea.
    2
  5106.  @jonovens7974  Multi-national finance can scarcely be compared with a co-op, so that idea is best abandoned. As I tried to explain, utilising socialist/Marxist techniques in order to restructure capitalism has nothing to do with idealism. It is simply that the new world order capitalists have recognised the effectiveness of such techniques as instruments of regulation and control. Everything is related to everything else, one way or another, and we are currently in the midst of a revolution in the structure of these relationships. If this is a conspiracy, it is a very open one. These ideas are readily available for inspection, and can be found in the works of George Soros as well as WEF essays. Their practical application is clearly visible in the changing nature of government in the US, Canada etc where conformity is increasingly demanded and contrarian, conservative views are suppressed by the state and in social media.
    2
  5107.  @markwelch3564  Everything comes at a price, and the price of liberty - as the saying goes -is eternal vigilance. When it is necessary to surrender liberties and turn a blind eye to lies, and when the invigilators are the organs of state or oligarch-run social media companies, then it is time to wonder whether this "prosperity" (such as it is) is such a good deal. You might think a society of compliant slaves whose every action is dictated by mega-wealthy elite is a jolly good thing. I don't.
    2
  5108.  @lukefarmer7242  No we don't.
    2
  5109. There are plenty. Fifty of them want a debate but the Speaker has turned them down. There was a cracking speech today from Sir Desmond Swayne who I want with all my heart to take over from Bozo as Prime Minister.
    2
  5110. Of course he is. He's negotiating for the supply of minerals, including lithium and aluminium, and US companies may possibly take over the Nordstream pipelines.
    2
  5111.  7charlierox  Could well be. The first SARS peaked when temperature stated hitting the 18c mark.
    2
  5112. Behave. Or else.
    2
  5113.  @garylovell6017  Very much so. Tommy has confronted the system head-on and has suffered greatly as a result. Although Tim's approach has been much more restrained and considered he is still, like Tommy, a classic British liberal with ideas of personal freedom and liberty of thought uppermost in his psyche.
    2
  5114.  @garylovell6017  I don't know that I shall need to. He remains on the side of truth and justice against the false "justice" of the establishment and even if he dies in prison he will have right on his side.
    2
  5115. I think King Charles often does the same thing.
    2
  5116. The fact that the ECHR decides that illegal immigrants are not illegal immigrants is reason enough for Britain to leave it.
    2
  5117.  @ADifferentBias  But if they are not there to explain it, then no explanation is required. Precedent is removed, and actions are taken according to the will of the people, as legislated by their duly elected representatives. This is called democracy, I believe.
    2
  5118.  @johnrussell3961  We should still have absolute control of our borders, and be fully entitled to define the status of those wishing to cross them.
    2
  5119.  @petergaskinuk-1785  Deciding on their legal status is where the problems lie. Admission to this country should be a privilege granted by this county, not a "right" accorded by some exterior body or bodies.
    2
  5120.  @johnrussell3961  Firstly, by preventing the problem by not allowing them in in the first place. Secondly by insisting upon your own definition, and if the second country refuses to take back any who escape the net, to imprison them as illegal aliens, thus discouraging others from making the same mistake.
    2
  5121. What is the matter with our politicians? Those who put the interests of Islam before the interests of the country are traitors and should be dealt with accordingly.
    2
  5122. What will he do with your husbands? And why have you got more than one?
    2
  5123. I don't know about the poorest, but it certainly started this war with a multi-billion dollar army paid for by the US and other NATO countries.
    2
  5124. This is just another example of America's rapid degeneration. We are witnessing the collapse of an empire.
    2
  5125. Pedro Pfeiffer Araujo Don't think about it much. When they do they don't believe it. "Naaah. Load of bollocks,"
    2
  5126.  @nicocrestmere9688  Buy roubles now. The values is going to skyrocket when Putin gets his peace deal.
    2
  5127. The polls lied so the results of the stolen election would not seem so obvious. At the moments dozen upon dozen witnesses are testifying before state senate committees about the multiple fraudulent practices that unfolded before their eyes in gangster-run US cities. And the BBC serves up this twaddle. It's utterly disgraceful that it should even pretend to be an impartial news organisation.
    2
  5128. Peekaboo!
    2
  5129. Soyboys in space! The sickening self-righteousness of these people leaves one dumbfounded. I wonder what the real astronauts and the real scientists think of this alien invasion. The Innuit are just one of several Eskimo tribes. The others are often peeved to be included under this umbrella. Siam isn't even the name of a country any more. Ultima Thule was included on maps centuries before the Nazis existed. What's next? Shall we rename Mars because of its connection to war and toxic masculinity? And Jupiter - a flagrant symbol of the patriarchy! And how about Venus? Sexist terminology at the very least! And the Milky Way, with its connotations of whiteness??
    2
  5130. ​ @mickelodiansurname9578  It was brief list of significant Russian Enlightenment figures, some Russian inventions, and a gentle reminder that Russia is in no way unique when it comes to assassinations. I am fascinated by these deep psychological urge which has planted in Western minds to denigrate everything Russian. It really is primitive. Medieval, one might say. Or even slightly Bronze Age.
    2
  5131.  @mickelodiansurname9578  In what regard? Peter the Great and Catherine the Great both welcomed Enlightenment ideas, and philosophers and reformers from across the world were invited to their courts. Lomonosov and and Shuvalov pioneered education, and Russia today has one of the highest percentage of people in secondary and tertiary education in the world. In Donbass mining engineers from Wales were imported to build and run the mining industry and the Siberian Railway, the longest in the world, was completed in 1916. Russians have contributed hugely to science in many areas. History, as they rightly say, is written by the victors but your somewhat slanted version is jumping the gun in that regard. I beg to differ with it.
    2
  5132.  @drcommonsense1  This is certainly true of most Muslims, I am sure. But you have to admit that there is a substantial extremist wing of Islam which follows the more extreme precepts of the Koran. It is here where the danger lies and Muslims must be aware of this, and be prepared to do something about it. I fear that most are not prepared to do so, however.
    2
  5133.  Hope C  You really should take your own advice instead or relying on newspaper articles which have a vested interest in sensationalising the facts. As you will clearly see from the official figures and graphs here below, hospital admissions continue to be minimal in numerical terms and as a percentage of cases. News outlets cherry-pick data to suit their purposes. If the number of admissions goes up from five to fifteen it is - shock! Horror! a STAGGERING 200 per cent increase. But it is still only fifteen people in hospital out of many thousands who could be there. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
    2
  5134. North Korea?
    2
  5135.  @leyubar1  Then the sooner we escape from these alliances the better.
    2
  5136.  @Odirile.molaolwa  It could go either way, but right now Russia is getting what it wants and the Ukrainian army is too knocked about to do much about it it.
    2
  5137.  @Odirile.molaolwa  It's really just a question now of who can last the longest - at that really depends in continued Western support for Ukraine. Russia will stop sometime and dig in deep, I'm sure. The trouble is if Ukraine gets too frisky Russia has the capacity to level Kiev - even without nukes.
    2
  5138.  @BadOompaloompa79  They missiles still keep coming though. And the Russians have some nasty big stuff they haven't used yet. We have consistently underestimated the Russian arsenal -or even the purposes for which it is employed.
    2
  5139. Helping what?
    2
  5140. Seasonal deaths in most areas of the UK are perfectly normal. As predicted, Covid 19 has taken over as the prime cold weather respiratory infection. The vast majority of those who have died have been the extremely elderly.
    2
  5141. The evidence has not been heard by any court. Cases have been rejected on technicalities - largely because there is no court with the guts to take on what could well prove to be political dynamite.
    2
  5142. If not from Iran than from at least a dozen other countries, new or second-hand. The idea that Russia is going to run out of armaments is just one of the many idiocies Western propagandists try to push.
    2
  5143.  @dannylad1600  They don't want the rest of Ukraine, and never have. Donbass is where the money is.
    2
  5144.  @verystripeyzebra  Doesn't everything?
    2
  5145.  @ShantKing1  It's not the only reason for behaviour like this. But it was in this instance.
    2
  5146.  @Lotus78aze  I think these are generally the result of personal factors, largely unrelated to religion.
    2
  5147.  @Lotus78aze  Shame Muslims seem to find it so hard to agree then, isn't it?
    2
  5148.  @briangriffiths937  I don't understand this obsession with GDP as some kind of measure of strength or greatness. Possession of nuclear arsenals is possibly of greater significance in this context.
    2
  5149.  @TreforTreforgan  I don't think any nation is in the crosshairs. Both the USA and Russia seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that dominance is brought at too high a price.
    2
  5150.  @BohemianRaichu  What if he is planning to join with Russia and then for both to ally with China, after an appropriate period of jostling? I think this must be at the back of his mind.
    2
  5151.  @boozolini4465  I don't see why. It would remove a great deal of tension and lead to trade deals of benefit to both countries, and to the rest of the world.
    2
  5152. @ The minutes of meeting are pretty clear. I agree that it doesn't amount to much, but then again the Budapest Memorandum which Ukraineophiles wave about so frequently is little more than the minutes of a number of meetings in condensed form. All treaties and agreements tend to become less and less relevant as time goes on, and situations change.
    2
  5153. @ I agree. These references to past agreements which may or may not have been made, or promises that may or not have been kept, are of little relevance once the tanks are on the road. I think I'm right in saying that all Russian leaders - Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin - made tentative enquiries about joining NATO but were instantly rebuffed. After all, what's the point of having a defensive alliance if there's no-one to defend against?
    2
  5154. They're always behind with the Nus.
    2
  5155.  @jennifersadler4870  Amen to that.
    2
  5156.  @richardlong7291  How do you know when all earlier records have been homogenised ?
    2
  5157. We can be thankful that Indian states such as Uttar Pradesh and Goa have beaten covid by the widespread use of Ivermectin. Big Pharma's panic-stricken lies and false "studies" cannot alter this truth.
    2
  5158. What's going to happen when your draconian restrictions are lifted, do you suppose?(If they ever are!)
    2
  5159.  @MattTheSpratt  Could we have a National Association of WHITE Journalists, do you think?
    2
  5160.  @benwilson6145  Not as much as the whole country is in America's pocket. In any case donations from these so-called "oligarchs" are absolutely minute in terms of international finance.
    2
  5161.  @vladimirputin4822  You're quite welcome to them. They are past their sell-by date.
    2
  5162.  @highpath4776  The west won't strike first -but Russia might.
    2
  5163. Am I right in thinking that a twisted version Hitler's rise to power is all that is taught by way of history in US schools these days?
    2
  5164.  @Raygo.  Free and democratic it isn't. It's run by gangsters, same as Russia. The present tragedy has been created by Western expansionism. The children are dying due to US greed and EU ambition. Losing valuable economic ties and allowing missile bases there are clearly very much against the interests of the Russian people. Whether Putin is justified in taking this action is disputable, but casting Ukraine as an innocent victim is absurd.
    2
  5165.  @robertscott961  It took two goes, admittedly but the situation with Ukraine is somewhat different. I really can't see how Ukraine has a chance in the long term - any more than the Chechens did really.
    2
  5166.  @judithmyers-rooke7063  Simply untrue.
    2
  5167.  @user-nb3xs3wu9v  Propaganda is what you've been listening to, I'm afraid.
    2
  5168. Has anyone thought how it is the same paranoid mindset and the same reliance on absurd computer modelling which has turned the pandemic into a dangerous farce that has created the so-called "climate crisis" - which never seems to amount to anything in the world of reality?
    2
  5169. A sound idea in principle, but with the disadvantage that those who have died had an average life expectancy of less than two years, whereas the refugees can be expected to live a great deal longer and to breed.
    2
  5170. Sarah D Too true. Very many other insect species besides.Global warming is, I think, about number 9 on a list of 11 recently put forward as possible causes for this. Far too much of our natural concern and energy is being diverted to the issue of man-made climate change which is, I have now sincerely come to believe, exactly what "deniers" say it is: a clever scam created for sinister political and financial purposes.
    2
  5171.  @skitballesnorapa  Which they have.
    2
  5172. I warm to this man more and more. Being rude to people is something of a lost art.
    2
  5173. Why?
    2
  5174. I can't help feeling that this student-like support for a romantic cause will prove disastrous for this country. It is based on the long-standing myth that Putin's Russia is somehow expansionist, and wishes to recreate the Soviet Empire. There is no evidence for this. In fact, common sense ought to tell us that over-extension being a prime cause of the SU's downfall, the Russian Federation would have no wish to repeat the same mistake. The war in Ukraine is a border dispute over the ownership of valuable resources and the tragic involvement of the West in this conflict is due to the fact that if these resources were wrested from Russian control, they would fall into Western ownership instead.
    2
  5175.  @PlanetaryCitizen  There was. The language was being phased out and Russians being replaced by Ukrainians in senior positions. Street names were being changed, as well as certain religious practices. De-Russification was a general policy, and after the Maidan Revolution Azov Brigade mercenaries were sent in to supress rebellion by any means necessary. Their activities are detailed in a UN report, and they are of such a nature that YouTube will not allow me to report them here.
    2
  5176.  @ProfessorTimWilson  You might say they were all Ukrainians but very many in Donbass and Crimea do not and did not consider themselves to be such. A process of de-Russification was well in place before the invasion, including suppression of the language. After the Maidan Revolution the Kiev government took extreme measures in attempting to eradicate Russian sympathisers. Attempting to prevent such behaviour has been an excuse for Putin to invade, but the real reason is probably that the vast mineral wealth of the area - which remained largely under Russian control and influence - was going to be parcelled up and sold off to the Americans.
    2
  5177.  @PlanetaryCitizen  Good. I have nothing to hide.
    2
  5178. It's only a word. What you have to remember is that those of us in our late seventies or eighties used the term when young in no more of a derogatory sense than black people today use it to describe one another.
    2
  5179. It won't be the first time many will die defending a myth.
    2
  5180.  @bonnie7898  All these are reasons. You don't have to have just one reason to go to war. The main reason of course is the one rarely mentioned - keeping hold of the vast mineral resources of Donbass. They are worth trillions, making the war very pointful indeed. As to finishing it, this will be when Ukraine is exhausted and the West realises that it's probably not going to get its hands on all that gas, coal, oil and rare minerals after all. I get the feeling that point is rapidly being reached.
    2
  5181. Purely out of interest, this is approximately ten times the number of people under 45 who have died in the UK with coronavirus mention on their death certificates.
    2
  5182. Biden's only doing it to secure Muslim votes. He knows full well that Israel will ignore the ceasefire and Israel knows he knows it.
    2
  5183. Where do the working class get their money from in the first place?
    2
  5184. This is my eighteenth go at trying to beat YouTube's new fascist algorithm which seems to be very, very fond of Boris Johnson. His behaviour in Ukraine, where his ego and his Winston Churchill complex prevented a peaceful solution, is enough on its own to see him forever exiled from world politics. YouTube too should step back from that arena.
    2
  5185. No.This what is SUPPOSED to have happened. Unfortunately Covid 19, like the climate, is refusing to behave as it should and so a new terror must be invented. I wonder what it will be?
    2
  5186. Nicholas Santos They only let us live so we can buy stuff off them. Who needs cars and central heating? Who needs computers and fridges? In the old days people had horses and wood fires. It must have been great. Bernie 2020 Yaaay!
    2
  5187.  @primalconvoy  Marmite is the food of the gods. Chocolate is just chocolate.
    2
  5188.  @felixautomaton5314  I am contrite about the Marmite. My shame is, however, outweighed by my relief at this news. I do not like thinking ill of anyone, and Justin Trudeau is obviously not so bad as people make out.
    2
  5189.  @yuriimarshalofficial  Not doing a great job of it at the moment, are they?
    2
  5190.  @anthonyhulse1248  No. That's the official line which so many, like you, have swallowed. In fact we are supporting one set of oligarchs who want to transfer the vast mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine into American hands, as opposed to another set of oligarchs who want it to continue to belong to Russia, as it has done for centuries.
    2
  5191.  @MrBudgiejoe  Entirely factual though.
    2
  5192. I worry about New Zealand, and indeed Australia. There are signs that this type of virus is sensitive to temperature - or at least it thrives in conditions where temperature affects human resistance Both countries have instigated policies which have mitigated against the possibility of herd immunity. With Spring upon us and temperatures rising, countries in the Southern hemisphere could be in for a nasty shock. The following is from a study by the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford, England. " Analysis of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Taiyuan found the optimum environmental temperature associated with the SARS cases was between 16 to 28 degrees Celsius, which may encourage virus growth. A sharp rise or decrease in the environmental temperature related to the cold spell led to an increase of the SARS cases because of the possible influence of the weather on the human immune system. This study suggested a higher possibility for SARS to reoccur in spring than in autumn or winter." I hope and pray my fears are unfounded. I am not a scientist; merely a concerned citizen who has become increasingly worried by the confused and contradictory way the Covid 19 pandemic has been handled by politicians and their scientific advisers.
    2
  5193.  @user-aero68  Much will depend upon the position when a peace agreement is reached. Russia will need a land bridge to Crimea, certainly, but this need not necessarily mean occupying Kherson or Kharkiv. I think it probable that Russia will continue to grind slowly forward and that therefore it is in Ukraine's best interests to agree peace terms as soon as possible. The question is does Putin, in fact, have the resources to enable him to take Kherson. Kharkiv and Odessa and does Ukraine have the resources to prevent him? At this stage I think it would be foolish of Ukraine to try to find out and I'm sure many sensible Ukrainians must think this. Zelensky, who has allowed this dreadful war to happen at the behest of the Americans, must be relieved of office before these solutions have any possibility of becoming realised.
    2
  5194. The crooks who rule America will simple not allow Trump to win even if he wipes the floor with Harris in the debate.
    2
  5195. No, they seem to be blaming global warming on this. They have to find someone or something to blame for something or the other every day. It's what they do.
    2
  5196. I think probably the last time there was a serious outcry about political gestures in sport was the row over giving the "European salute" at the 1936 Olympics. Just a thought.
    2
  5197. The whole point of restrictions is to give time for healthcare facilities to be developed to meet future demand. This the government has failed to do. This does not mean we should continue down the same path. Conditions now are as ripe as they will ever be to break the back of the pandemic by going for herd immunity. Yes, there will be deaths and hospitalisations and long covid. But there will come a time, relatively speedily, when it will be over. To go on as we have been just spins out the agony and will result in just as much damage in the long run - if not a good deal more.
    2
  5198. "Promoting American values" is just a euphemism for economic warfare. USAID has been instrumental in deliberately creating instability in countries all over the world. Indeed, if it wasn't for the activities of USAID and other CIA-backed organisations the war in Ukraine would never have happened, and nor indeed would many other wars.
    2
  5199. Something he has in common with many great leaders.
    2
  5200. Floyd's death was clearly the signal for the start of a pre-arranged plan of intimidation organised by the Marxist BLM and other sinister agencies - a plan which the loathsome BBC is only too eager to support.
    2
  5201.  @alexanderkhara  Not really. Diplomacy was still being attempted until recently.
    2
  5202.  @ArthurTanner-d7s  Who broke Minsk? Who broke all the treaties used to placate native Americans and used them to commit genocide? The only reason this war did not happen twenty years go is because Russia was foolish enough to believe Man Who Speak With Forked Tongue - that's Uncle Sam to you.
    2
  5203.  @davidk7262  I generally dislike analogies, but the situation in Ukraine does have more in common with American policy towards the Indian tribes than it does with Hitler's rise in Germany.
    2
  5204.  @vinylrulesok8470  A totally false parallel between two totally different situations. Germany in the 1930s has nothing in common with the Britain of today. Economic chancers being smuggled across the channel by gangsters to take advantage of the British taxpayer have nothing in common with Jews living in Germany for many years, many of whom were very wealthy. The list goes on, but these childlike comparisons just make me tired and not a little despairing. They are bollocks.
    2
  5205. Thanks Joe.
    2
  5206.  @eyemallears2647  Invaded. Not destroyed. That's moderation.
    2
  5207. The Ukraine adventure was a poor investment for America, apart from being morally heinous. Trump is quite right to get out of it. European countries which were foolish enough to hang on to Biden's coat-tails will have to think very quickly which route to follow now.
    2
  5208.  @elizabethnjoki6186  This doesn't apply since Putin is far from being a psychopath.
    2
  5209. Yes. America.
    2
  5210.  @crimsonfox8496  Then the inhabitants of the US must stop referring to "America" in their patriotic songs and such terms as "The American way of life " and "American democracy."
    2
  5211. This farce has brought nothing but shame to the American judicial and political systems. The only good thing about it is that enough people have seen through the scheming and corruption to hopefully ensure Trump's re-election.
    2
  5212.  @RaRa-eu9mw  Plenty of reason, I would have thought. A poke in the eye for American conceit and arrogance as much as anything.
    2
  5213.  @IshtarNike  No, I'm one of those idiots who believes that the best way to be saved from drowning is not to pay 5,000 euros to cross the channel in a rubber boat. (And the poor sods only get full bed and board and £45 a week spending money.)
    2
  5214. Who keeps inventing these "red lines"? It doesn't seem to be Putin.
    2
  5215. Keir Stalin.
    2
  5216. Why don't we all just sit around bonfires until Ukraine surrenders and Russia turns the gas back on again?
    2
  5217. Just one among many. You guys in your lefty bubble just don't realise how many thoroughly pissed-off US citizens are out there.
    2
  5218.  @ag-bf3ty  I suppose I should apologise for the quotation marks, but I don't feel inclined to do so. It is clear by now that Covid 19 is pretty exclusively fatal to the elderly, those with pre-existing medical conditions or those who have been subjected to repeated re-infections over a short period of time. Much the same can be said of hospitalised severe cases. Even at its peak the death rate per percentage of population was relatively low and now in many countries it is almost negligible. In countries where hydroxychloroquine is widely used as a prophylactic against malaria the death rate has been negligible from the outset. Of course a vaccine will be an ultimate route out of the pandemic, but in the meantime therapeutic and prophylactic treatments which could have vastly decreased the impact of the disease have been DELIBERATELY shoved under the carpet in order to emphasise the need and urgency for a vaccine. This makes me angry. It is my view that at the end of the day it will be realised that the measures we are taking to reduce the effects of this disease will prove to be far more harmful to the health and prosperity of the human race than the disease itself. You can call that a conspiracy theory if you like; but in my experience a fair proportion of conspiracy theories do turn out to have been conspiracies in the end.
    2
  5219.  @mastercommander4535  Hydroxychloroquine was available over the counter in France. Following the Lancet piece it was put on the poisons list. It was banned in several countries and studies, including on organised by the WHO, were abandoned. This lasted for at least three weeks, even longer in some cases. There is still a cloud of suspicion hanging over this drug even today. I said thousands of lives, and I stand by it. The Lancet is not alone in suffering a recent and very dramatic drop in standards. Lies are told in many other once-respected journals on a regular basis but such immediate and potent ill-effects are not so readily observable as in this instance.
    2
  5220.  @nathantudor5763  Ah! You were being sarcastic! My apologies! I took you literally since such absurd assessments are far from uncommon among the brainwashed.
    2
  5221. Wonderful and uplifting.
    2
  5222. More gobbledegook and doublespeak! Global warming is only now global? In the bad old days before we clever scientists were around the earth only warmed in PATCHES? There is no empirical evidence that human activity contributes to climate change to any measurable degree. It was warmer in Europe -and probably the world over - between 1000AD and 1300AD when the Vikings farmed Greenland and the River Rhine dried up from time to time. Proxy data makes this clear, as I am sure this young man and his colleagues are aware. Notice they are now saying that human activity merely "speeds up" global warming rather than causes it. It's probably going to get a bit hotter over the next few years before, as various intensely powerful cosmic forces come into play, it will - quite suddenly - become very, very cold indeed. In the meantime the worldwide conspiracy of hedge-fund managers who have succeeded in creating a market for carbon emission permissions are laughing all the way to the bank. The whole scam is so bloody clever that one can almost admire their skill and cunning.
    2
  5223.  @Martinhodso007  Because he is too committed to defying Russia.
    2
  5224. Are these not footings for some kind of reinforced concrete structure?
    2
  5225. So Boris and Trump are dangerous to democracy because they say things he disagrees with? Is that it? Surely the pig-headed globalist Marxism you can see seeping out of this man's every pore present a far greater threat.
    2
  5226. You're just making yourselves look ridiculous.
    2
  5227. England alone has a 10-19 age category which shows that 32 people in this age group have died with covid between June 2020 and June 2021. The numbers for the other three UK countries are too small to be included and also it might be possible, because the numbers are so small, for journalists to trace the individuals concerned.
    2
  5228. Something to do with it meaning the collapse of the world economy.
    2
  5229. What was the question again?
    2
  5230. kim warburton its a shame ur so thick and dont see ur being used by hedge funds to support a con trick and protection racket while yr attention is being diverted to the false flag of fossil fuel pollution. Sucker.
    2
  5231.  @kim-ys2fs  Absurd analogies and plain falsehoods do not make a very convincing argument, I'm afraid.
    2
  5232.  @elcerrado  Cheerio then. Hope you'll find some peace and happiness there.
    2
  5233. Every time the West does this it prolongs the war. A peaceful resolution is entirely possible. Russia wants it. Washington doesn't. Meanwhile the corrupt and foolish Western media cons us into believing there is some high moral purpose behind this warmongering.
    2
  5234.  @davidpowell6098  Careful. Your inner Nazi is showing.
    2
  5235.  @WinterGK  It wasn't Ukraine's nuclear arsenal. It was Russia's.
    2
  5236.  @annalieff-saxby568  These are cases brought by individuals, not by the Trump team who are carefully structuring their campaign in order to steer the case through the court systems of the corrupt Democrat cities where he majority of the fraud took place in order to hopefully reach the federal Supreme Court where there is at least the chance of an unbiased hearing.
    2
  5237.  @samuelrowe1454  They're not. The cases you refer to were brought by individuals, not by the Trump team.
    2
  5238. When a party which waves the flag of Palestine and scorns the Union Flag comes into power, we're in trouble.
    2
  5239.  @lolaadesina5362  I plead not guilty. I really don't know what the truth is but these last-minute extra allegations simply sound warning signals to me.
    2
  5240. If Russia achieves its military objectives before Trump's inauguration - which seems entirely possible - then all he has to do is sanction a fait accompli.
    2
  5241.  @zoomeraygun1  These are victims of Western imperialism. And Putin IS good at what he does - which is leading one of the most volatile countries in the world. Being a good leader involves taking difficult decisions - such as going to war rather than allowing your country to be bullied into submission.
    2
  5242. There is no doubt that a percentage of people in these areas genuinely wish them to join with Russia. This war is a border dispute, and one with which the West should never have become involved.
    2
  5243. Many Crimeans don't though.
    2
  5244. Two utter frauds hopefully on their way to political oblivion.
    2
  5245. You forgot risking World War III.
    2
  5246. Not much happening on the front line except the Russians are over-running Ukrainian positions every day, cutting supply lines and breaking through into virtually undefended territory. This bloke is going to come in very useful over the coming weeks in helping to convince the poor, brainwashed Western public that the Russian victory is - in fact - a defeat.
    2
  5247. Are you SURE???
    2
  5248. What has WWII got to do with anything?
    2
  5249.  @Boghopper9999  It never does. Not exactly. There are always differences which are generally more significant than the similarities, which is why historical analogies are so dangerous.
    2
  5250. There will only be a ceasefire when Russia's entirely reasonable demands are met.
    2
  5251. @Orcbotbasher Not a bit of it. Russia says that the bits of Ukraine it wants aren't really in Ukraine at all. And it's a point of view which has considerable and historical and indeed moral merit.
    2
  5252.  @tnndll4294 No-one's invaded, according to the Russians. They are liberating their own territory from foreign control. Also their action was designed to pre-empt Ukraine from invading those parts of Donbass under the control of the separatists.
    2
  5253. Putin's actions are entirely rational and are a direct response to insidious US aggression.
    2
  5254. What a great sense of humour Donald has. He is that rare thing - an American who understands irony.
    2
  5255. It ain't funny, is it?
    2
  5256.  @saberint  I believe every word - and I speak as someone in his seventies. You've just got to stop being so sentimental. It destroys the power of reason.
    2
  5257. Russians already own much of these resources, and have done so for decades, if not centuries.
    2
  5258.  @carlossaraiva8213  What's false about it? According to Phil the statue-topplers were justified because they were "doing the will of the people." The will of the people, if such a thing exists, can only be judged by a democratic vote. You can't just decide it for yourself.
    2
  5259. ​ @mrb.5610 It isn't in Ukrainian territory. It has annexed former Russian territory and is currently attempting to ratify its ownership thereof.
    2
  5260.  @FightCollective  And most elderly people would agree with her I am sure. The government's thinking is wrong from top to bottom. The negative effects of lockdown measures are spreading across the world. How many black babies in Third World countries have to die from malnutrition to give some demented, incontinent 90-year old white Westerner a few more months of miserable existence?
    2
  5261.  @asherloat8570  Check again then.
    2
  5262.  @braveheart4603  I don't think they want to. If they can take Donbass completely and secure a land route to Crimea while the Ukrainians are distracted by attacks to the north, Putin's war arms will be achieved. My bet is he'll then sue for peace, but if Ukraine doesn't crumble he'll dig in deep and permanent and see what Ukraine throws at him.
    2
  5263.  @seag1492  Probably after he drops his first nuke and says there's more coming if we don't start behaving ourselves.
    2
  5264. Here you go then. The fact that cases have risen in the UK while the very small rise in deaths and hospitalisations is in accord with seasonal variables shows that herd immunity has almost certainly already been reached.
    2
  5265. It's a sure sign of insanity to believe people you disagree with are mad.
    2
  5266. Lots have left. Which ones come back will depend on which side gains the disputed territory.
    2
  5267. So he kept documents in the bathroom. Wonder where Biden kept all the cash he's got in backhanders over the years.
    2
  5268.  @lolwalters2936  The claims made in the many hours of testimony offered at various state senate hearings have NOT been examined in any judicial sense. They have merely been rebutted here and there by various interested parties. My point stands: you and they simply saying "Go away. Nothing to see here!" does not satisfy the genuine concerns of the millions of Americans who are entirely justified in thinking that perhaps there is something to see here. Something very nasty indeed. Until these doubts are overcome democracy in the US is a dead duck.
    2
  5269. Don't worry. Free treatment for TDS will soon be available in a clinic near you.
    2
  5270. There's a strong case for treating Muslims as RCs were treated under the Reformation. Like the Catholics they have split loyalties and they should be required to prove their loyalty is to Britain rather than the jihad or the caliphate.
    2
  5271. Pointless tragedy.
    2
  5272.  @casteretpollux  I find myself in agreement with much of what you say. I strongly believe in closer ties with Russia, rather than it being treated as some kind of pariah. The problems have more to do with the career ambitions of US hawks than anything else. Sabre rattling gets votes and armchair generals get more stars on their sleeves when they indulge in brinkmanship. But I still think Britain's role is relatively minor. Because of NATO we have to be seen to do our part -which rather begs the question: what's the point of NATO anyway? The UK military is really just a mercenary force when you come down to it. It's small, but it's good at its job and this is why the US orders its deployment. I can't see much of a shooting war developing in the Ukraine, just a stand -off. Common sense and pragmatism will hopefully be restored if Trump or one of his surrogates gain the Presidency in 2024.
    2
  5273.  @johnrussell3961  They usually put the clearing up out to contract - at a very profitable rate.
    2
  5274. What Ukrainian army?
    2
  5275. Criminal incompetence in handling the covid pandemic and support for America's immoral proxy war in Ukraine will lead to Britain's ultimate destruction. Brexit? Forget it.
    2
  5276.  @PumpkinHoard  That too. But he is clearly deranged. I find it hard to understand how seems not to have received any treatment.
    2
  5277. But they can stop the war if they do just that.
    2
  5278. All these people should take DNA tests and then emigrate to their countries of origin, leaving Australia to its original inhabitants who can then revert to their ancient lifestyles and survive by eating grubs and kangaroos.
    2
  5279. Who cares any more what judges say? They do not represent truth and justice. They are just cogs in a machinery of repression.
    2
  5280. If Putin did this (and he probably didn't) how can it be terrorism when his own soldiers, supporters and fortifications were so badly affected?
    2
  5281. I haven't even watched this because I know it's crap.
    2
  5282. Who is this one supporter whose dark secrets are being exposed? I demand you name this person! Otherwise I will have report you to the International Society for the Protection of the Apostrophe!
    2
  5283. Not bad for someone with senile dementia who can't read, was it?
    2
  5284.  @SalemSalem-br6vn  False sense of security; increase of virus transfer due to adjustment. More or less total ineffectiveness.
    2
  5285.  @jameslyons532  Surprise surprise! YouTube blocks direct links to the mass of evidence which does not support the use of facemasks by the general public. This was a pretty universal medical opinion until about April. Go to Swiss Policy Research and look for a paper entitled Are Face Masks Effective which provides access to the studies upholding this view.
    2
  5286.  @joedowning2428  No. Many scientific studies published before about April which warned of the ineffectiveness and potential dangers of mask-wearing by the general public. Magic Masks are a political ploy, nothing more. Go to Swiss Policy Research and a document called Are Face Masks Effective for links to peer-reviewed studies. If I provide a direct link YouTube will delete this post.
    2
  5287.  @joedowning2428  As I said, the vapour that doesn't escape gets breathed back in - apart from the amount which condenses on the inner surface of the mask. If you go out on a frosty morning you will see vapour pouring out behind mask-wearers like steam from a train. There's more of it too, because you have a faster rate of breathing when wearing a mask.
    2
  5288. Russia is cursed with an institutionally incompetent army and navy - but blessed with an especially competent and intelligent leader. The competence of Western armies remains in some considerable doubt, as does the competence and intelligence of many of its leaders. The result favours Russia emerging victorious from the present conflict, one way or another.
    2
  5289. Ukraine has one of the most corrupt governments in the world. It includes gangsters who make Russian oligarchs seem like choirboys. Many senior officials are unashamed Nazis, as Putin says. American gangsters who are not much better have been using the country in much the same way as the Mafia used Cuba once. Billions upon billions have been secured in loans from the IMF which have been spirited away into personal bank accounts, some of it sticking to the fingers of the likes of Hunter Biden and his dear old pa on the way. That's bad enough. But to expect Putin to allow it to also become a NATO missile base is just a bit too much. Russia has both right and reason on its side. We can only hope that this war will be swift and conclusive and that it does not embolden Putin to seize other territories by force.
    2
  5290. Insane environmentalists stopping burning land for firebreaks.
    2
  5291. I suppose some might suggest that the single mother on income support hasn't contributed a great deal to the public purse, whereas a pensioner who has worked all their life has probably paid in more than such a woman might earn in her entire lifetime.
    2
  5292. No guesses why they left out Xi. The Chinese government would have been less than pleased. I think the others left out mean obscene or uncomfortable things in other languages. An "epsilon" is a slang Turkish term for sexual act too horrible to mention I believe.
    2
  5293. Winston Churchill invented the siren suit. Enough said.
    2
  5294.  @rmdomainer9042  I'm not shilling for Russia, I am shilling for peace. I am trying to point out how this needless war has been caused by the greed of people who are not dying in it, and how it can be halted without further loss of blood if Russia's very reasonable and historically defensible demands are met.
    2
  5295.  Dimwits Vote Tory  And created one of the strongest economies the US has seen in decades, brokered peace in the Middle East, and made inroads into the gross corruption which has disfigured US politics. The latter has been his downfall. If it wasn't for coronavirus and massive electoral fraud he would be riding into a second term right now.
    2
  5296.  Dimwits Vote Tory  What's so childish about objectively assessing situations instead of going along with Stalinist-style smear campaigns just because your mates do? I was as contemptuous of Trump as anyone when he was first elected. It took me two years of weighing up the pros and cons to realise that his vilification was based on fear. The corrupt political class in America have made fools of you all.
    2
  5297.  @caballoloco100  The institution of democracy has been largely undermined by the massive electoral fraud committed by the people pulling Biden's strings. In fact, it is no more. Democracy is a contract between the state and the people, usually won by violent means. Once that contract has been broke -or even if enough people believe it to be broken - then obviously it can only be re-instated by violence unless the offenders are brought to justice. The Capitol invasion was merely a demo that got out of hand at the last minute. The fact that you fools believe it to have been some sort of failed coup shows just how weak-minded and brainwashed you are. Pearl Harbour? 911? Give me a break!
    2
  5298.  Dimwits Vote Tory  I have a battered old Shorter Oxford and am addicted to cryptic crossword puzzles, so I have a fair idea of what most words mean. In this context I accuse you of a lack of objectivity for insisting on passing all information you receive through the twin filters of left-wing ideology and a pathological hatred of Donald Trump inculcated by a relentless campaign of vilification engineered by the media on behalf of the political establishment. I don't think anyone can lay claim to totally objectivity but my conclusions have been arrived at by an examination of the facts, rather than being the result of succumbing to propaganda.
    2
  5299.  @bobfisher1916  Not at all. I am employed by the Koch brothers and am a humanoid troll. Trump's record of de-regulation, economic growth and full employment, added to his far-sighted foreign policies are considerable achievements. His withdrawal of troops from foreign part and his efforts to broker peace in the Middle East are indeed efforts worthy of the Nobel Prize, as tarnished a trophy as this has become. Even now he has swiftly taken steps to improve the political status of Taiwan before Beijing Biden can assist his masters in their efforts to invade or subvert it. I tend to avoid predictions if I can but imminent carpet bombing and drone attacks in Syria and elsewhere might begin to wake you up.
    2
  5300. The hats should be lined with tinfoil, just in case.
    2
  5301.  @fishgreed8098  Now you're just being silly.
    2
  5302. The only "scandals" have been those created by lying, scumbag media and lying, scumbag politicians. When their lies and false narratives are exposed they still keep trying to con us with false propaganda narratives like this one. Better learn to code, guys and gals, your days as "journalists" are numbered.
    2
  5303. Man-made climate change is a big lie with a tiny, tiny drop of truth in it. If we sensible people manage to fight off the demented alarmists you will have to accept the truth in time. If not then economies will collapse and most of us will starve to death.
    2
  5304.  @Pat20247  Can you get it through your head that someone who disagrees with you is not a Russian troll? Like me HE IS JUST SOMEONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU!!!
    2
  5305.  @BlyatimirPootin  There are no woods or trees down rabbit holes.
    2
  5306. This is hopefully a great victory for freedom. Until now Republicans and Democrats have been virtually indistinguishable. The MAGA wing of the GOP is really all that can save America from itself. With the excellent Jim Jordan as Speaker there is hope that disaster can be held off until - hopefully - Donald Trump returns as President in 2024.
    2
  5307. Another hideous blunder by this incompetent administration. It can only encourage the Russians to step up their air attacks before the system is up and running. America is getting better and better at starting wars and prolonging them, but is utterly useless at bringing them to an end.
    2
  5308.  @joebloggs416  Which ones?The ones when I'm trolling nitwits or the ones where I'm laying it down like it is?
    2
  5309. @E KL Historically, Ukraine is little more than a Russian province. This has to be acknowledged of it is to attain true sovereign status.
    2
  5310.  @Zikar  Ukraine is currently occupying territory belonging to Russia for centuries.
    2
  5311.  @gigmcsweeney8566  The Kievan Rus existed a thousand years ago. It was the name given to the Vikings who sailed up the Dnieper and created first Kiev, then Moscow. The Kievan arm of this aristocracy deteriorated, while the Muscovite one prospered. By the 18th century "Ukraine" (meaning the borderlands) had been occupied by a succession of invaders ranging from Poles and Lithuanians to Turks. The Eastern steppe was occupied by tribes of Tatars. The territory was brought under the control of the Russian Empire, firstly by Peter the Great, then by Catherine the Great. After the Russian Revolution it became a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, subservient to Moscow. Crimea, Donbass and other areas were added during this period for purely administrative reasons.
    2
  5312. @E KL How do you make that connection? Laws, to have any meaning, must be the result of lengthy precedent in the interests of a discrete community. "International Law" does not fulfil these criteria. It is an exterior imposition and of ridiculously recent vintage. It is far from sacrosanct. Indeed, it very much requires constant amendment if it is to serve any purpose - that is, of course, assuming that it is needed at all.
    2
  5313. @Arfur Fuxxakes Hi Arfur! How's it going? One thing I've often wondered. Is why you leave such big spaces between your paragraphs.
    2
  5314. There'll be a long wait. The ice cap isn't melting, despite all the lies that say it is.
    2
  5315. Just under 2,000 people a day die in the UK at this time of year as a rule. Now, about 4% have covid mentioned on the death certificate. Nearly all are over 80 and many are over 90. The current death rate is 12% above the five year average giving rise to the increasing suspicion that more people are dying as a result of lack of treatment for existing illnesses than can be directly attributed to covid.
    2
  5316. Sunak has to pay his subs to the globalist club. Using our money, of course.
    2
  5317. It is owned by Reach PLC which is itself owned by a variety of investment companies many of which are ultimately owned by a company called Vanguard which, along with a sister company BlackRock, is the major shareholder in around two thirds of the world's media companies .
    2
  5318. We simply have to stop treating Zelensky as the good guy. He is a glib fool in the pay of oligarchs and a channel for funds to corrupt US politicians. He has to go - and go quickly, before it is too late.
    2
  5319. In fact being tried by a jury which cannot be impartial will provide still further grounds for appeal.
    2
  5320. Verify is an Orwellian con-trick.
    2
  5321.  @Guesthunter  A list of Russian invasions, coups, and interventions since the break up of the Soviet Union. Syria Chechyna Georgia And by comparison, here is a partial list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Phillipines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine
    2
  5322.  @iam5085  A NATO country which attacks another country on behalf of the US is doing so in its capacity as a member of NATO. Just because the godfather doesn't call in the whole mob doesn't mean it's not a mob hit.
    2
  5323. UK also records deaths as Coronavirus-related simply if it is mentioned on the death certificate. Up until now a doctor simply had to think it possible before entering it as a possible contributory cause. All Covid statistics all over the world are to total cock.
    2
  5324. With Blacks and Hispanics finally coming to their senses by the thousand, the Democrats obviously need to create a new reserve of underprivileged election fodder.
    2
  5325. Why traitors? Are we at war with Russia? Why did no-one tell me?
    2
  5326.  @weswheel4834  Otherwise to what? It didn't directly address the Pakistani Moslem gang issue and took examples from only very few incidents and in general terms. What is needed is a report specifically into this problem or - preferably - more direct and immediate action.
    2
  5327.  @thehum1000  Having a rough time, but not collapsed. Personally I think this could be a good sign for Russia. It appears the international money market could be gambling on a sudden upsurge once the rouble re-enters the market following Russia's victory. Vast fortunes could be made.
    2
  5328. You don't have to be mad to be an Islamist terrorist - but it helps.
    2
  5329. I confidently predict you are in for a wonderful time.
    2
  5330.  @danieldrew2356  Yes it is. Systemic racism is a Marxist construct. The fact that BLM needs to target the past proves that it can find no targets in the present.
    2
  5331.  @MikeJones-eh4zv  It is not the proportion of white to black people in the general population that is relevant. It is the proportion of them in custody. The figures should be available on you FBI source. I'm sure you will accept that black people -for whatever reason -end up in custody more than white people and therefore more of them will die there. This makes a nonsense of your figures which are based on a general demographic rather than the demographic of those held in custody. Systemic racism does not exist. The sun does. You really must learn to distinguish between an intellectual construct and a physical object.
    2
  5332. Pot, kettle, black?
    2
  5333.  @paddington1670  Perhaps you're right. Russia is aggressive to its near neighbours from time to time, while America travels thousands of miles.
    2
  5334. Joseph and Mary were looking for a bed for the night. They didn't want to move in permanently.
    2
  5335.  @BD4-ManchesterIsRed  The evidence from the swing state senate enquiries cannot be ignored. Nor can the expert analysis of Dominion election machines. Biden and Harris will have to fight off increasingly powerful challenges to the legitimacy of their administration as the months pass.
    2
  5336. Think Again They either won't exist or they'll think what a bunch of twats you were for believing this rubbish..
    2
  5337.  @capitainebonhomme1609  Absolutely not. Ownership of Crimea and Donbass has to be ratified, that's all. Trying to occupy Western Ukraine would mean unending civil war.
    2
  5338. A Korean-style end without end is an entirely likely outcome. Russia is already preparing very strong 200km long defences to protect Crimea. It will do the same when it finally stops the present advance - wherever that will be.
    2
  5339. What's this a deathwish? We have no business sucking up to the beastly Americans as they pursue their proxy war in Ukraine. Without this continued interference from the West Rußia and Ukraine would have sorted out their differences months and months ago. Tens of thousands have died for American greed and ambition. The UK too bears a burden of shame.
    2
  5340.  @nkosipwl  Nonsense. America has things Russia wants, Russia has things America wants - and in any case Russia, being run by crooks, has a far larger economy than the one which shows up on the books.
    2
  5341.  @Jthaw-mp7ew  No. The idea that Trump has committed major financial crimes is a hoax, The SC ruling is what it is and no more,
    2
  5342. After having successfully begged for billions, they now want us to steal more billions for them. How typically Ukrainian.
    2
  5343.  @wlhjr77  and who decides who they are? You?
    2
  5344. BBC -fascist iconoclasts clearly supporting a strategy designed to provoke the race war BLM needs to pave the way for Marxist revolution.
    2
  5345.  @cun7us  Hook, line and sinker, muggins.
    2
  5346. With the death to infection rate only a fraction of that in previous waves, herd immunity might actually be achieved within a matter of weeks. Thousands of people a day are becoming immune, and closing down the pathways of infection. I hold no brief for this government but they may actually have hit upon a solution - if only by accident.
    2
  5347. Was Prighozin killed on Putin's orders - or by the military? It strikes me that Putin realises that he cannot control the military as much as he would like.
    2
  5348. Little chance of that. It will be up to the new Republican congress to try to bring a halt to this mad adventure.
    2
  5349.  @richardkey1678  I don't watch Tucker, but I gather he has had the sense to come to the correct conclusions about the origins and motives of this war. American taxpayers, witnessing the state of affairs internally, will certainly be putting pressure on their representatives to cease throwing good money after bad. In any case, despite all the hype, the military package is not all that useful to Ukraine once you start to unpack it.
    2
  5350. Because the chances of your kid dying or getting seriously ill are virtually zero?
    2
  5351. Michael RCH Why do you think that experiments using a guessed-at model of the atmosphere and carried out in sealed conditions on the surface of the planet have anything other than a peripheral relation to the actual behaviour of carbon in the troposphere? Just asking.
    2
  5352. In the 1969 Hong Kong Flu epidemic in this country a mere 30,000 died. More than half though were children and in terms of years of life lost it was several thousand times worse than this pandemic. No lockdowns. No masks. No panic. It was as it was. What's gone wrong with us?
    2
  5353. Why make excuses? It's gonna be fixed anyway.
    2
  5354.  @TheParadoxDestroyer  Join the club! The YouTube algorithm points to a grim future of repression, governed by a faceless and implacable deity. Four of my replies to you have been deleted.
    2
  5355.  @TheParadoxDestroyer  Pretty much. Rigid orthodoxy is the order of the day. All heresies are cast into eternal darkness, humour and irony go uncomprehended and you may actually be silenced without explanation or the possibility of redress. It's a Brave New World.
    2
  5356.  @Dreamwrvr I'm British and addicted to understatement.
    2
  5357. Depends what you think its job is.
    2
  5358. It is Biden's incompetence and failure to stand up to Washington's warmongers and expansionists which has led to this. The more Putin is boxed into a corner, the more likely he is to exercise the nuclear option. And he will if necessary
    2
  5359. And supplying a foreign army with billions of dollars of weaponry isn't?
    2
  5360.  @bluemoon3264  I think you missed the question mark!
    2
  5361.  @luciusesox1luckysox570  They were nothing like that at all. They merely required that Ukraine stay out of NATO, acknowledge Crimea as Russian (which it is) and grant regional autonomy to Donbass, as promised in 2016.
    2
  5362. More Liberal tears!
    2
  5363.  @Boujois23  Absolutely not. They are pragmatic people who just want to create a viable country. Their concern is for the world we live in. The fanatics are those who want to build an empire for religious maniacs to briefly live in before they enjoy eternal bliss after death.
    2
  5364. This government is such an almighty screw-up that my old Auntie Blanche could beat it. And she's dead.
    2
  5365.  @TheGeosto  You are quite disgustingly immoral. And what makes Russia our adversary?
    2
  5366.  @rensinclair4218  I imagine what you know about history could be engraved on a peanut with a sharpie.
    2
  5367. Ukraine will probably take Kherson - but at great cost. Once again we are seeing the Russian tactic of attempting to cripple the enemy by engaging them in territory they don't really want that much.
    2
  5368. That isn't abseiling. I know The Independent gets things deliberately wrong for perverted political purpose, but I hadn't realised inaccuracy was general editorial policy.
    2
  5369.  @StCreed  To prevent the American financed Ukrainian army invading Donbass and Crimea.
    2
  5370.  @StCreed  An no socialist worthy of the name will fail to recognise that this war is the direct result of US provocation.
    2
  5371.  @MorningtonCrescent  Do some research yourself into the combined histories of Ukraine and Russia, the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the motives and consequences if the Maidan riots of 2014. And who decides these "international behavioural norms?"? America does, that's who.
    2
  5372.  @bentels5340  Crimea was stapled on to Ukraine in 1954 as purely an administrative and logistical convenience. It only ever became a "country" because Stalin wanted an extra vote in the UN. The idea that this former Soviet Socialist Republic is a discrete entity is a romantic fallacy. It is, like Russia, an oligarchy and this war is a turf war between two sets of oligarchs. We are foolish to get caught up in it.
    2
  5373.  @MorningtonCrescent  Ukraine has transferred from being a vassal of the Soviet Union to being a vassal of the United States. Zelensky was brought into power by Kolomoisky, who owns half of downtown Cleveland and a good chunk of the US steel industry, as well as several prominent US politicians. It just galls me that turf wars between gangsters should result in the deaths of tens of thousands and the collapse of entire national economies. Gung-ho support for either one side or the other is particularly nauseating.
    2
  5374. Badenoch is the new Maggie Thatcher. Be afraid, lefties. Be very, very afraid.
    2
  5375.  @boink800  They actually seem quite effective at dealing with drone attacks.
    2
  5376.  @JeffreyGoddin  Which have always been with us, and generally more so than today. It's a con trick.
    2
  5377.  @ec.marquez  Do you?
    2
  5378. On the contrary. It is the light of dawn.
    2
  5379. Why should they? He stands by them mostly, and they by him.
    2
  5380. The climate crisis con is just a new form of colonialism. Instead of getting ivory and slaves on the cheap our new buccaneers are buying carbon permissions. This whole sham is just an annual price-fixing bonanza.
    2
  5381. @ So far Columbia has backed down on preventing the return of migrants and Mexico has just sent 10,000 troops to the border.
    2
  5382. He would say that , wouldn't he?
    2
  5383.  @dogisgreat1  Haven't you got a safe space to go to?
    2
  5384.  @verystripeyzebra  I am flattered to think that I and the highly intelligent Vladimir Putin can arrive separately at the same conclusions.
    2
  5385.  @Lynnefromlyn  I disagree. The EU is not only a failure, it is inimical to world peace as the war in Ukraine clearly illustrates.
    2
  5386.  @kameleonlizardman8721  It's purely a legal nicety, like calling the invasion "a special military operation".
    2
  5387.  @chrisrobert5252  I don't think it shows any such thing. It merely shows that lengthy TV exposure is at least as efficient in determining election results as traditional methods of intimidation and bribery.
    2
  5388.  @anastasiawhite7482  I don't see what you are so cross about. All I have said is that there has been a policy of replacing Russian with Ukrainian - and I agree it hasn't been very successful until now. Russia certainly used this policy as one of its excuses for supporting and encouraging the separatist movement in Donbass and speaking Russian was equally an excuse for the Azovs and other forces in the area to arrest and torture suspected sympathisers.
    2
  5389.  @anastasiawhite7482  This a brief extract from the UN report on the war in Donbass published by Human Rights Online in 2021. Were the events of 2014 onwards not published much in Ukraine? Did you not know of this? Methods of torture and ill-treatment on both sides of the conflict line included beatings, dry and wet asphyxiation, electrocution, sexual violence on men and women (rape, forced nudity and violence to the genitals), positional torture, water, food, sleep or toilet deprivation, isolation, mock executions, prolonged use of handcuffs, hooding and threats of death or further torture or sexual violence or harm to family members. Among Government actors, the most common perpetrator of arbitrary detention and torture was the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). During the initial phases of the conflict, “volunteer battalions” were also regular perpetrators.
    2
  5390.  Comment Auditor  Have you ever heard of the Azov Battalion?
    2
  5391.  @flowpipe  Just let him have which is rightfully his.
    2
  5392.  @flowpipe  Not often. In any case Russian TV presenters seem as silly and as ill-informed as their Western counterparts, and should not be regarded as voicing official policy.
    2
  5393. A factor must surely be that since the pharma companies have apparently managed to legally prevent themselves from being sued for liability, politicians and media who so vehemently championed the vaccines could be in line for private prosecution and claims for damages.
    2
  5394. Which one is which, in your view?
    2
  5395. These home-grown raids by a few crazies could end up playing into Russia's hands.
    2
  5396. A cure is on the way.
    2
  5397. If found guilty. It's now looking more and more that the guy didn't know what it was and was actually pissing beside it, not on it.
    2
  5398. Donald Trump is probably the only US President in recent history who was not the puppet of sinister forces. Kennedy may have tried to kick over the traces - and look what happened to him.
    2
  5399. What happened? You're supposed to make money being President, not lose it. Perhaps he was too busy running the country to attend to his business affairs. Not a mistake Joe will make, I think.
    2
  5400. Has the news of the collapse of the Soviet Union not reached you yet?
    2
  5401. Ukraine's success in this war will be a victory for Black Rock and US expansionism. It is a war being fought with lies and perverted history. The involvement of Australia - or indeed any other country than the two combatants - is both foolish and highly dangerous and should be resisted at every level.
    2
  5402.  @jamesmorrow1646  I wouldn't know. I live in Southern England.
    2
  5403.  @jamesmorrow1646  No. I just like the truth.
    2
  5404.  @jamesmorrow1646  The Budapest Memorandum was just one of hundreds of treaties and border agreements which have come and gone over the centuries. It has failed the test of time and peaceful alternatives more firmly based in reality have been rejected by Ukraine. Ukraine has no territorial integrity. It is a made-up country in many respects, as history will tell you. The territory occupied by the "country" of Ukraine is merely the territory of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - which was created by Soviet Russia.
    2
  5405.  @fred4687  Exactly. It's selective justification. Both sides can cite various agreements and treaties, but the very fact that there is a war going on proves that none of them have worked.
    2
  5406. Is your bizarre theory that Trump is turning into Karl Marx a distraction from the more plausible observation that Keir Starmer is turning into Enoch Powell?
    2
  5407.  @Iazzaboyce  Well I'm arguing it for one. And so are the fighters of the LPR and the DPR. So too are many occupants of Crimea and Donbass who have seen their living standards drop since Kiev took over and their language and culture criminalised, to say nothing of being shelled in their homes by the Ukrainian army or being dragged off and tortured to death by the Azov Battalion.
    2
  5408.  @Iazzaboyce  For an end to this awful and needless war, mainly. The best way to achieve it is to recognise historical reality and concede that Crimea is Russian and that while modern Ukraine to the east of the Dnieper is Russian too, granting autonomy to the Donbass republics would at least satisfy Russia's claims to its mineral riches.
    2
  5409.  @fireiron369  I came to dislike and despise the Democrats because of Trump. For the first two years or so of his Presidency I swallowed the Orange Man Bad propaganda and cackled and tittered while watching CNN, Young Turks etc etc. Then it started to wear thin. Nothingburger after nothingburger. Lie after lie. Checking out the other side it became clear the reason Trump was hated because he was an interloper. They didn't have anything on him - as the establishment and the media always do on anyone who treads the usual political path. So they were making stuff up. I set two simple tests. If Russiagate turns out to be crap and his economic strategies work then I am onside with what he represents. The rest is history. Trump is basically an ordinary guy who happened to be born into money and has done what a great many ordinary guys in his position would have done. The political system in the US is corrupt and rotten to the core. Biden typifies it. He and his cronies will be tossing out free gifts to the moronic peasantry while lining their pockets. Watch out for wars and deals with China. Watch out for the suppression of free speech and contrarian views. Watch out too for civil war. Biden and Harris have no idea of the true nature of the people they have got into bed with. (Well, you did ask!)
    2
  5410. The verdict will bring Trump more votes - especially from the very many Americans who feel themselves to be abused and cheated by their government. But it will, however, give the Democrats an excuse for winning, despite the polls saying they shouldn't.
    2
  5411. The two situations are entirely different. If India had, for instance, decided to accept vast sums of money from NATO in order to finance an army in order to take over parts of Pakistan the ownership of which is in dispute - then there might be certain similarities.
    2
  5412. That's what the other side want you to think.
    2
  5413. He makes films that get seen by 50million people and writes books that top the Amazon best-seller list.
    2
  5414. "Democracy" is now nothing more than a slogan used by a governing elite to convince us that we are somehow in control of our destiny.
    2
  5415. @Liam Wright BIG WORDS HIDE SMALL THOUGHT! (MATE)
    2
  5416. @Liam Wright All of what?You don't seem to understand that so-called racism is being used as a lever to enable unscrupulous political entities to try to gain power they cannot attain by democratic means. Anti BAME racism in the UK and the US is residual and largely insignificant. Intersectionality , however, demands that oppressed groups should exist, and if they don't exist they should be made to appear to do so. The working class in both the US and the UK have largely rejected socialism, so Marxist ideologues have seized upon "racism" as a substitute for class oppression. If you are a Communist yourself and realise this strategy for what it is then you have my grudging respect, for what it's worth. I f you actually believe all this crap you have been regurgitating then you are a fool.
    2
  5417. @ They were Soviet nukes which just happened to be stationed in Ukraine. They could only be fired from Moscow. They were not "given up in return for security assurances" but as part of the general arrangements made for distributing Soviet equipment following the collapse of the USSR.
    2
  5418.  @Klemheist-vf1hx  I suppose it would have been possible, if somewhat dangerous, to reconfigure the weapons, but this isn't the point. There were lengthy discussions after the collapse of the USSR over the distribution of Soviet assets. Not everything left in a particular country automatically became the property of that country. In the case of the nukes stationed in Ukraine it was agreed by all parties that they should be transferred to Russia and dismantled. Other former Soviet materiel; tanks, ships, planes etc did indeed become the property of Ukraine. It is utterly disingenuous and just plain wrong to suggest that Ukraine gave up the nukes in return for assurances on security.
    2
  5419. Exactly. It was designed to distract from the actual issue.
    2
  5420.  @JOEFABULOUS.  What BS have you been listening to?
    2
  5421.  @genoric4094  Wrong. Most have not been investigated. The machinery does not exist to do so.
    2
  5422.  @ionnanskilliorus  What hidden knowledge? I have the same facts available as you, bit my interpretation of them is probably more cynical, that's all.
    2
  5423.  @ionnanskilliorus  Doesn't everybody? Anyway, my narrative is that a question mark hangs over the legality and veracity of the result. Which it does.
    2
  5424. And why should he?
    2
  5425. Bolsonaro displays good, firm pragmatic leadership. The frail and elderly should be protected but the rest of us should get on with it. The lockdown mentality will lead to this disease lingering for decades. The WHO, like the UN - and indeed the BBC - is run by Communist globalists who are using the situation for political advantage.
    2
  5426. I bet you lose at poker quite a bit, don't you?
    2
  5427.  @Chrishagen  I've never worn a mask. They are more or less totally useless.
    2
  5428. They weren't "their" arms. They were Russian arms and merely stationed in Ukraine.
    2
  5429. Ukraine cracked the dam. Ukraine will lose this war.
    2
  5430. Mass bribery is the only explanation.
    2
  5431. It isn't Trump on trial- it's the US judicial system.
    2
  5432.  @andrewadams6905  I'm not discussing, I'm predicting.
    2
  5433. NATO started this war. Russia will finish it.
    2
  5434. There is a fairly comprehensive UN report.
    2
  5435.  @heikos4264  Yayyy!? How very grown up.
    2
  5436.  @ethancoster1324  But most importantly it would have denied Russia access to their incredibly rich mineral resources in Donbass, mined, developed and paid for by Russians for centuries.
    2
  5437.  @DiegroßeStille  Not quite. The puppet was duly elected, and was replaced by an American puppet , following a rebellion.
    2
  5438. You're not far off. Isn't it wonderful? I think sanctions will be lifted too.
    2
  5439.  @jackjones7062  There was and is plenty of evidence for both cases. Having a wealth of evidence and getting it through the courts are two different things, however.
    2
  5440. Do they teach anything except the history of Nazi Germany in schools these days?
    2
  5441. I Kerr It isn't just burnoffs though. is it? It stopping stock grazing in national parks and designating whole areas as "protected" because some rare orchid or insect has its habitat there. It's allowing undergrowth to build up year after year and putting locked gates across access routes. It's interference in rural affairs by woolly-minded do-gooders. This is the full video from which a clip in this programme was taken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    2
  5442. Orange Ban Mad?
    2
  5443.  @pppLT19  They must have been referring to three attacks which took place on stations some distance from Kramatorsk the evening before. These stations were being used for the transport of war material and thus were legitimate targets.
    2
  5444. I'm puzzled. Do our defence chiefs believe that Israel, Russia and Hamas are planning to attack Britain?
    2
  5445. The number of people under 40 who have died of covid in the UK is statistically negligible.
    2
  5446. The definition of "shortage" is interesting in this context. There is no shortage of petrol in refineries and storage facilities. Transport difficulties and media-induced panic buying have created what is an entirely artificial crisis, capable of swift resolution. The biggest shortage is a shortage of common sense, as usual.
    2
  5447.  @Yeknodathon  No-one has ever suggested injecting bleach (not even President Trump!). Ultra-violet light does indeed destroy viruses, as evidenced by the fact that they mostly disappear in the summer months. Unfortunately it has proved impossible to reproduce this effect by artificial means without the risk of creating over-reaction in the form of cancers. Hydroxychloroquine, while of little use once the disease has taken a hold, has undoubted benefits as a prophylactic, as evidenced by numerous peer-reviewed studies and strongly indicated by the remarkably low covid death rate in countries where it is widely employed as an anti-malarial drug.
    2
  5448.  @Yeknodathon  No. Real science. Not bodged-up science peddled by politicians to keep mugs like you under their thumb.
    2
  5449. Plus he initiated much of the killing in Donbass.
    2
  5450. The changes were at the top and in advisory bodies. It is difficult to see how they could yet have affected the day-to-day running of air traffic control.
    2
  5451.  @chaoscorsair  I don't think they ever wanted all of Ukraine, Putin is on record as saying so and the progress of events seems to bear this out. A regime change would be useful, but the main objective is to reclaim those mineral-rich parts of Russia which - according to Putin - were erroneously included in the new country of Ukraine when it was created in 1991.
    2
  5452. Maybe going for an American boyfriend wasn't such a good idea, eh Ukraine?
    2
  5453.  @theophany150  The jails just aren't big enough.
    2
  5454. So was Al Capone.
    2
  5455. This dreadful old gangster is probably more responsible than anyone for this war. He initiated massacres in Donbass, banned it from exporting coal and then bought up all the coal, selling it in anonymously in Kiev while pretending it came from South Africa, and so making a fortune for himself.
    2
  5456. This bunch of nutters payed for by the CIA isn't going to worry Putin one damned bit.
    2
  5457.  @Leonard-j3x  That was a war worth fighting. This one isn't.
    2
  5458. The time for legal niceties is passed I'm afraid,
    2
  5459. @ That incident was extremely bad manners by whoever was responsible - but it really wasn't directed at the British nation in any way, was it?
    2
  5460. krakkos99 But what do you when the alarm keeps going off and there's no fire? Been like that for close on 20 years now.
    2
  5461. Freedom Fighter I have great faith in science when it is properly applied. Climate science is no longer a science, however. The shameless "adjustment" of data to make it fit a theory is not scientific method -and it must call the theory itself into serious question.
    2
  5462. That rather depends on how well this one goes, doesn't it?
    2
  5463.  @markargent4962  There are around a million holders of HGV licences in the UK who currently work in non-driving occupations. A substantial cash initiative and a good salary of £60,000 plus should certainly entice some of them to get back behind the wheel, as well as persuading others to train for the job. (In my head socialism SHOULD be concerned with the business of improving pay and conditions for the unpropertied classes. It is a great shame that middle-class pseudo-intellectuals have taken it over and turned in into something else.)
    2
  5464. Why not blindly trust journalists instead?
    2
  5465.  @mrglide7078  Can't be bothered or just can't?
    2
  5466.  @mrglide7078  You wouldn't know where to start!
    2
  5467. It clearly has since this seems to be the only history taught in school these days.
    2
  5468. Wouldn't it be funny if Omicron was the virus's evolved response to vaccines and only vaccinated people can get it? I'd laugh anyway.
    2
  5469.  @johnnydoe3603  I'm not. These figures come from the US Treasury Department.
    2
  5470. It is totally illogical to pretend that this incident was anything other than an accident of war. If Putin wanted to terrorise civilians, thousands would die, not just the odd handful.
    2
  5471.  @vetinaris1297  Reduction in the cost of living , primarily. Plus full employment. But the Trump revolution is about far more than that. It's about redefining how America is run, and what its place is in the world.
    2
  5472. No it isn't. That's just what you've been told. Fascism exists throughout the political spectrum and the Left are now its chief exponents.
    2
  5473. Ah, the smell of freedom!
    2
  5474. How can you be so stupid? He threatened and withdrew the threat once he got his own way. That isn't folding.
    2
  5475.  @Lepocoloco  The Minsk was supposed to stop the war. And it would have done if Ukraine had done what was expected of it instead of arming itself for the next round.
    2
  5476.  @Lepocoloco  You are becoming hysterical. Nothing I have written is copy/pasted. It is simply the result of a reasoned assessment of the situation.
    2
  5477. No. He got the job last February. What efforts he has made we don't know. He was himself criticised for being involved with a firm which helped negotiate PPE contracts.
    2
  5478.  @jamil027  What a silly response. I am British and - at the moment - not at all happy about it.
    2
  5479. Tommy Robinson MP?
    2
  5480. This is all so predictable. The support for Ukraine has been a commercial decision, based on the prospect of the West getting hold of the $14trillion of oil, gas a minerals under the ground in Eastern Ukraine and which has been historically mined and exploited by Russian investment and labour. It isn't working out and, inevitably as costs outweigh the chances of profit, the West will cease its investment and stop throwing good money after bad. You could see this happening months ago.
    2
  5481. Why not?
    2
  5482. It will indeed.
    2
  5483. Most Americans have completely forgotten this minor incident.
    2
  5484.  @VaucluseVanguard  He didn't lie. He made a basic journalistic mistake of believing sources without question - though only a few of them. The main thrust of his film is entirely correct.
    2
  5485.  @trevordodd2019  The media did a bad job in trying to build up the incident as racially motivated, and a splash of water as "water-boarding." TR tried to contradict this assessment, but went too far in that he included testimony which he didn't check, and which was ,in fact, exaggerated. Bad journalism on both sides.
    2
  5486.  @jokubasmirinas116  It's not that far. Seriously, there is no reason to suppose transport is inadequate. The Russian war machine production has been going full blast - which is not to say it is going to be a GOOD army. It will be more like blotting paper, as was case in the second phase of the SMO.
    2
  5487.  RichJW  The Bayeux Tapestry has a picture of a guy with an arrow in his eye. Not Harold though.
    2
  5488. America loses. Russia wins. But Russia is NOT a colonising power, unlike America. The war in Ukraine is a defensive war on Russia's part, undertaken to keep America and its allies at bay. The world will benefit from America's defeat. How tragic that so many tens of thousands of lives should have been lost to make this point.
    2
  5489. This aid package needs close examination before assessing its impact. Once again wishful thinking seems to be at the core of the pro-Zelensky stance.
    2
  5490.  @rocketscience4516  Never one to disappoint, are you? I assure you, yet again, that I have no contact whatsoever with the Kremlin. The fact that you persist in this delusion really does diminish all arguments you make.
    2
  5491. That's the ;lockdown lies sorted. Now how about a detailed analysis of the relative efficacy of vaccines and the true extent of their aftereffects? We might as well take an objective look too at the alternative treatments demonised by Big Pharma in its obscene rush for profits . The pandemic could have been over a year ago if the right voices had been heeded.
    2
  5492.  @jenniferreynolds1398  You're going to have to explain yourself more clearly. I'm interested though.
    2
  5493. @ I am not a Tory, just a realist. The data says we are spending enough on Ukraine to halve our "black hole" and that the economic downside of excess immigration far outweigh any benefits.
    2
  5494. No surprise. The Russians knew sanctions were coming and took steps accordingly.
    2
  5495.  @mariogmajner6549  Well, it is a war of propaganda. Ukraine's poster-boy leader typifies the situation. Like the country itself he has been trotted out as a surrogate and potential whipping-boy for the real forces at work here.
    2
  5496.  @peterebel7899  You like lists? How about this one: A list of Russian invasions, coups, and interventions since the break up of the Soviet Union. Syria Chechnya Georgia (Afghanistan and the other countries you mention are all pre Putin. You are still confusing present-day Russia with the former Soviet Union.) And by comparison, here is a list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Philippines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine It is also worth mentioning that the Chechnya and Georgia interventions were both purely means by which to secure Russians borders. Only the Syria intervention can be interpreted as a means if securing commercial interests. All the NATO interventions have been in this category, however, and were basically acts of aggression carried out on behalf of the US military/industrial complex.
    2
  5497.  @BlackWolf6420  Because they might counteract some of Ukraine's lies, that's why.
    2
  5498. Nothing evil about countries standing up to US bullying.
    2
  5499. The Ukraine parliament is already considering impeaching Zelensky.
    2
  5500. @ There are articles in EA Daily, The Hindustani Times and The Economic Times today.
    2
  5501. Suddenly, gossiping is a crime?
    2
  5502.  @crankjazz  So who was slandered or libelled in this instance?
    2
  5503.  @dlevi67  Where did the race come in?
    2
  5504.  @dlevi67  It takes two to tango. (By which I mean that everyone has the right to discount anything anyone else says.)
    2
  5505.  @dlevi67  Honestly, people are so thin-skinned these days!
    2
  5506. Oh these sanctimonious hypocrites! Britain is NOT part of the European continent and Europe is a geographical term, not a political one. The EU's attempts to alter this fact is one of the main causes of the present war in Ukraine. The refugees are their problem. We're well out of it.
    2
  5507. Job done. Many enemy killed and more set to die if they try to take Bahkmut back.
    2
  5508. But if this strategy does work (and it could) all you hysterical moaners are going to look foolish and Bojo's past errors will be forgotten. The end of the plague will be just another nail in Labour's coffin. Failure will mean Johnson goes- which is what many Conservatives want anyway.
    2
  5509. These border skirmishes by a handful of crazy mercenaries backed by the CIA is of so little concern to Putin that scarcely any forces have been assigned to contain them. The real fighting is going on further south where the Russians are gaining momentum as they gradually approach the Donbass border.
    2
  5510.  @achosenman9376  Indeed yes. And look what happened there!
    2
  5511.  @nanban1896  What date of map? Issued by what country?
    2
  5512.  @achosenman9376  Perhaps you can help me out then? Just direct me to a reliable source, if you would be so kind.
    2
  5513.  @gilh3947  Then why are there two self-declared independent republic in Donbass which have their own armies which have successfully fended of Ukrainian attacks for eight years? True, they didn't necessarily want to become part of Russia and true the Russians have encouraged their rebellion greatly, but if Ukraine had kept to the spirit of the Minsk agreements none of this dreadful business would have occurred.
    2
  5514. It makes sense because Reform voters believe that Brexit failed because it was deliberately badly mishandled by political opponents and the Civil Service
    2
  5515. Only $30 million? Much more, surely?
    2
  5516.  @superhumantrueman  I meant that by advertising mass protests and then no-ne turning up opposition has been weakened. If this was deliberate - and it does seem likely - then the process can be repeated till the police and the plastacines get fed up with turning out and at that point.....
    2
  5517.  @tyranneous  The one in which he emphasises the shared history of the two countries and bemoans the West's attempts to wrest Ukraine away? The one in which he says Ukraine doesn't need Donbass? There's nothing there about conquering Kiev. He just doesn't want Ukraine to become another American vassal.
    2
  5518.  @rockrabbit253  More of a partnership. What he mainly wants though is the vast mineral wealth of Donbass.
    2
  5519.  @isolationnationn  I got it wrong. The gun was in his right hand. He slung it behind the fence and turned to put his hands up. The cop, not knowing he had ditched the gun in that split second, assumed quite naturally that he was turning to fire. This is revealed in videos actually supplied by the police. A good overview can be found on Officer Tatum's YouTube channel. Twitter threads at the time of the boy's funeral refer to him by his street name and there are oblique references to his unfortunate choice of career.
    2
  5520. Congratulations BBC! You didn't blame climate change!
    2
  5521.  @Andrew-ob5ij  The population of the Donbass region is predominantly Russian. Like Crimea, it was only included into Ukraine by the Soviet Union, and them purely for administrative convenience. Until very recently everyone was a Soviet citizen. The separatist movement is entirely genuine, although obviously supported by Russia.
    2
  5522. Islamism is a threat to democracy and freedom. There is a case to be made for Islam to become proscribed religion, as was Roman Catholicism in Protestant Britain in the 16th -18th centuries.
    2
  5523.  @boink800  Donetsk is an independent republic and sends representatives to Russia's Federal Assembly. An invasion by Kiev seems very unlikely, considering the current Ukrainian position.
    2
  5524.  @dpelpal  You seem to have forgotten to use your cod grammar. You do bad thing. Big boss angry.
    2
  5525.  @dpelpal  What do you mean "no resource". The US and NATO spent billions of dollars on the Ukraine army before the invasion even began. It was larger and better trained and probably better equipped than the Russian invading force. And Russia doesn't need Kharkiv or Kherson north of the Dnieper. They were just killing grounds, as was all of Western Ukraine.
    2
  5526.  @dpelpal  You're overdoing it a bit this time.
    2
  5527.  @stephenhill545  "Internationally recognised" just means recognised by America and its stooges. The nature of international recognition is likely to change quite soon.
    2
  5528. Mainly because other countries are experiencing the same problem.
    2
  5529.  @helmutzollner5496  This is worldwide problem, being experienced in differing degrees and in differing countries and even in different areas of the same country. The US is badly hit by supply chain problems created by responses to the pandemic .A survey of German retailers by the Munich-based Ifo research institute found that 74 per cent are experiencing logistics problems, largely because of global supply chain difficulties such as shipping costs, shortages of microchips and semiconductors, and longstanding issues around lumber prices. It more than probable that the UK situation has been brought into sharp focus by the sudden departure of EU drivers and food processing workers, but this has nothing to do with the underlying causes of what is destined to be a worldwide economic meltdown. Your turn with come. Soon.
    2
  5530. Name one.
    2
  5531. Little doubt Musk and Soros are both employing reflexivity techniques for personal gain. But at least Musk is fighting tyranny and anarchy, while Soros encourages both.
    2
  5532.  @Gh-jo1sr  By trying to rid countries of globalist hierarchies using the corpse of socialism for their evil ends.
    2
  5533. How? Why? When?
    2
  5534. And the BBC!
    2
  5535.  @DrWrapperband  Tell you what, why don't we all kill ourselves now just to be on the safe side.? You go first.
    2
  5536. No chance. All that can happen is that the courses could be confiscated. And that won't happen either.
    2
  5537. This channel lives in la-la land.
    2
  5538. Either the BBC or YouTube immediately bans any information which supports this view.
    2
  5539. I assume he did not have a family history of this condition, since potential sufferers are highly recommended not to have covid jabs.
    2
  5540. Legitimate views and fears are being supressed by a paranoid, leftist elite. We are well on the road to a totalitarian state.
    2
  5541. Absolutely first rate analysis.
    2
  5542. Victoria seems to be a police state. I've just watched a video of a bloke in what appears to be an all-black Nazi uniform positively salivating over the fact that he and his boys can now smash car windows and drag people out to establish their identities.
    2
  5543.  @synicyst9925  They clearly aren't, otherwise there wouldn't be a war.
    2
  5544. I found them riveting too - largely due to the spectacle of the Democrats attempting present a case with no apparent evidence to back it. I was also much encouraged by the performances of some of the young Republican congressmen who ripped this farrago of hearsay and bile apart in fine style. Which one of them will replace Trump when he leaves office in 2024 I wonder? I am a Brit too and once thought as you do. Nearly four years of watching the MSM and the the Democrats commit ritual suicide has changed my view. Trump is a showman and a hustler. He lies like a car salesman - which is different to the way politicians lie and this confuses them I think. If re-booting the economy and reducing taxes and returning the military to the status of a world police force, rather than mercenaries, represents a danger to America and the world then let's live dangerously I say.
    2
  5545. Anna Lieff-Saxby Your assumption is correct, I have become very right-wing of late and I must say I'm enjoying it immensely. The sense of freedom it gives one is really quite exhilarating. You should try it sometime. You don't have to worry if anything you say is going to offend anyone. You can express your innermost thought and doubts without wondering if the thought police are going to get you and you can be as patronising as you like. Tens of thousands of repugnant folk queue up to attend Trump rallies; repugnant folk who vote in that great democracy and who will ensure that the God Emperor re-assumes his rightful position in the world come next year.
    2
  5546. Anna Lieff- Saxby Suit yourself. (You can say that when you're a right wing extremist.)
    2
  5547. Anna Lieff-Sexby Enjoying your lunch dear? In case you haven't noticed someone with views like mine is at the helm of the most powerful country in the world. As well as introducing successful economic reforms, lowering taxes across the board and reducing military presence overseas to its lowest levels since World War II, he has overseen sweeping prison reforms. As far as I am aware no Democrats have yet been imprisoned for their views. It's your lot who are into shouting down all opposition and ostracising people who disagree with you. It is the Left who frogmarch people into gulags for speaking out of turn. Us right-wing extremists don't let other folks' crazy ideas bother us too much. Dem black folk is seein' sense too, thanks to the excellent Candace Owens, Turning Point and the #walkaway movement. Unemployment among African Americans is at an all-time low and latest polls suggest that of those who do vote 34% will vote for Trump. You really are a silly girl.
    2
  5548.  @wiamoaw  The reason they are not public knowledge is because the BBC and other MSM do not tell you about them. The allegations are many and extensive. There are around 200 court cases in the pipeline at the moment, each backed by sworn testimony from ordinary people who are risking their liberty by drawing attention to the many malpractices that have been carried out. These include straight forgery of ballots, backed up by failure to check signatures and manipulation of voting machine software, as well as bribery and intimidation. Several arrests have already been made. And it is early days yet.
    2
  5549. There is still no reason to suppose the Russians did this. There is an equal chance it was done by Ukrainians sweeping the area for collaborators after the Russians left. Both nations have a high proportion of people who are savages by most Western standards.
    2
  5550. Lies, all lies. The last 16 years are NOT the hottest ever recorded, and even if they were, so what? Reliable records only began in the late 19th century. What is a fact is that average temperature has not increased one jot over those 16 years. Commandeering pseudo-science for political gain is morally reprehensible. A few fun facts for you: *Although no-one, as far we know, was keeping records in Roman times they were certainly growing grapes for wine up against Hadrian's Wall in Northern England in locations where these days you'd be hard-pressed to grow potatoes. And what about all those bare knees?! Similarily, during The Medieaval warm period hundreds and hundreds of castles were built in Northern Europe which became virtually uninhabitable after the Mediterranean-style climate was suddenly replaced by the Little Ice Age, which began in the mid 14th century and lasted until the mid 19th, at which time Christmas Fairs were being held on the frozen River Thames in London. (They featured large bonfires to keep people warm) Unless witchcraft was involved there is no possible human involvement which could have affected these weather conditions. * There is no scientific proof that increased carbon emissions lead to increases in temperature. They go hand in hand sure, but detailed study shows that temperature rise comes FIRST. *Q. If the earth's atmosphere was contained in an average-sized high school classroom what size of box would you need to contain all the carbon atoms? A: A Rice Crispies box. *Q: If the US was to decide to destroy itself by reducing carbon emissions to close to zero, how many rice crispies would be removed as a result? A: One, or possibly one and a bit. *Q: If all the exhaust emissions of all the vehicles on all the roads in the world over a 24-hour period were reduced in atmospheric scale to fit the classroom, how many matches would you have to strike to equate the amount of carbon thus released into the atmosphere? A: One. *Q: How do we know that there was less carbon in the atmosphere all those thousands and thousand of years ago? A: We don't, obviously. The figures are based on guesswork relying on the examination of icecores. If the science is flawed and the estimates are wrong then the whole man-made global-warming hypothesis goes up in smoke. Q. Do we calculate present-day atmospheric carbon levels using this method? A: No. We can't. It takes several hundred years before the ice is compacted enough. Instead we take carbon levels in the atmosphere, usually at sea-level and often near to volcanoes where the carbon levels higher. I wonder why? Q: How long does a carbon molecule remain in the atmosphere after being emitted from earth? A: About five years. Jolly hockey sticks!
    2
  5551.  @dpelpal  A Trichobezoar for Vovchansk?
    2
  5552. I was going off Boris a bit but this blathering loon has made me think again.
    2
  5553.  @BigHenFor  Bigot
    2
  5554.  @primalconvoy  We can play tennis like this all day if you like. My serves will be from scientists though, not hack journalists with a propagandist agenda to follow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXleN7KFqdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac&t=1724s
    2
  5555. Don't be silly. Only Republicans die of covid. It's their punishment for accepting Trump as their leader.
    2
  5556. What a totally magnificent con-trick this all is! Every time we have these events and pathetic "news" organisations like the BBC promote their nonsense prices on the carbon futures market shoot up and traders make millions. And that's all there is to it. Man-made climate change is a myth created by clever people to screw money from fools.
    2
  5557. From tragedy to farce - and for what? The Office of National Statistics has just released provisional death figures from all causes for July. There were 38,179 deaths registered That is 1,435 LESS than in July 2019. Deaths where Covid 19 was an UNDERLYING cause amounted to 2.6% of the total. No deaths were recorded where it was a primary cause. The more "cases" the better. Each one is a further step towards herd immunity.
    2
  5558. Yes?!
    2
  5559. So good. Newsnight last night made me feel almost physically ill with its hypocrisy and cynical manipulation. One guy walking through Hyde Park with a video camera is now worth more to the world than the entire BBC! news structure! Very well done.
    2
  5560. Shhh. It is nonsense.
    2
  5561. Too big to rig this time - unless a few million votes suddenly appear from under the counter.
    2
  5562. ​ @haggler Russia is defending itself against US aggression.
    2
  5563.  @jonsteele7227  I think I'm right in saying that Smith's Law allows for anomalous mutations but which, by the very nature, burn themselves out relatively rapidly. I take your point about the low covid death rate, but I think it must be more than co-incidental. As a respiratory infection it only causes death in those whose physical condition cannot withstand its effects on lung tissue and consequent complications. Paradoxically enough it seems that affluence creates such conditions in terms of increased age, diabetes, obesity etc. As for HIV I imagine that its very limited modes of transmission put it into a somewhat different category.
    2
  5564. In America it isn't Democrat v Republican any more. It's MAGA v The Rest.
    2
  5565.  @editor4578  Yes. But this isn't one I think. I may have expressed myself badly. but the present war in Ukraine and the 2014 revolution are both indications that the EU's meddling in Russian politics have had dire consequences, and that it is as well we are no longer directly involved in such shenanigans. The latter follows on from the former.
    2
  5566. This is such a put-up job it's enough to make one weep. Whatever Putin may or may not be guilty of in other areas, these children are being removed from potential battle zones for their own safety - and to prevent them being used as human shields by the Ukrainians.
    2
  5567. There is no such thing as stochastic terrorism.
    2
  5568. When are people going to realise what a danger to humanity this coke-addled crook actually is?
    2
  5569. With Ukraine kicked out of Kursk Russia is in a commanding position at the conference table.
    2
  5570. Currently Covid 19 is killing and harming about the same number of people as seasonal influenza, which it has replaced simply by getting in there first. There have been at least a dozen new variants since it arrived in the Spring. As might be expected these evolutions make the virus more transmissible but, very probably, less dangerous to health. The virus has no interest in causing harm. It merely utilises our cellular material to enable it to reproduce, which it cannot do on its own. Creating severe outcomes and causing death defies this purpose, which is why the numerical gap between "cases" severe outcomes and deaths grows larger by the day.
    2
  5571. All socialists who come to power end up with their noses in the trough or their fingers in the till.
    2
  5572. This iconoclasm is sad and ridiculous. BLM has so relatively little to go on in terms of evidence of present day repression that it is forced to visit the past to find its bogeymen. Also they clearly want to spark a violent reaction among Southerners so as to inflame the race war they need to happen to pave the way for Marxist revolution.
    2
  5573.  @funlovinism180  He's not orange any more. More Persian than Marmalade these days.
    2
  5574.  @Stephanie-bl8je  You really don't understand this game, do you?
    2
  5575.  @lisal9829  Utter bollocks. He has accomplished nothing.
    2
  5576. "One can never hope to bribe or twist Thank God, the British Journalist. But considering what unbribed he'll do There really is no reason to."
    2
  5577. It is now.
    2
  5578.  @cockoffgewgle4993  Nonsense. The chances of anyone catching covid at this event and passing it on to a vulnerable relative are utterly miniscule.
    2
  5579.  @TicketyBoo.  I did say YOUNG women. Around 200 women under the age of 30 have died WITH covid. in the UK, most of whom had pre-existing severe medical conditions. Generally only the very elderly, the very frail or those subjected to rapidly repeated infections die as a result of contracting Covid 19. The chances of a death occurring as a result of these events are really very small.
    2
  5580.  @sakurakuro2417  Are you waiting for an answer?
    2
  5581. Surely Musk is very open in his views? This isn't exactly an undercover operation, is it?
    2
  5582.  @enigma1000  Exactly. He is entirely rational and his views are very worthy of consideration.
    2
  5583.  @boink800  Putin's war is arguably a war of self defence.
    2
  5584.  @salnaturile8653  Already almost TEN PER CENT of one per cent of the population has died, many of them people in their 80s with severe pre-existing medical conditions and months of precious life ahead of them. Over a quarter of one per cent are already infected. The spring is not soon enough I'm afraid. In order to beat this thing we must all stay indoors until 2032 at the very earliest.
    2
  5585. But children don't die from it - or even get particularly ill, except in very isolated instances.
    2
  5586.  @joeordinary209  What expansion? He's having a tough time trying to hold on to what he's been left by Yeltsin.
    2
  5587. But oh oh oh if she had been BLACK what a different tune you would be singing!
    2
  5588.  @xpusostomos  Around a sixth of the population of Ukraine are Russians, mostly concentrated in Crimea and Donbass. The chaos which reigned in both Ukraine and Russia subsequent to the collapse of the SU has been resolved in different ways and with varying degrees of success. Putin has stabilised the economy, increased wages and kept the oligarchs under a semblance of control. Russians and Ukrainians living in Donbass have been denied this. Like many Russians, some even regret the passing of the SU. The heavy-handed response to the Maidan troubles of 2014 has hardened their resolve to hitch their wagon to Moscow. The language issue is one which naturally inflames resentment. To the people of Donbass the imposition of Ukrainian is a symbol of repression, much as the imposition of Russian could have been viewed by people of non-Russian extraction during the days of the SU.
    2
  5589.  @xpusostomos  Many have gone home to Russia - an estimated million or so since the civil war began in 2014. Around half of the people of Donbass are Russian by ethnicity and language. They are mostly the descendants of Russians imported by the Soviet Union to replace the native Tatars, who didn't take naturally to coal-mining and factory work. The newly-created Ukrainian government has taken many measures to suppress the Russian language, including replacing it in many schools and in official documents etc. Ethnic Russians are often bypassed for promotion and generally treated as second-class citizens unless they conform to the diktats from Kiev.
    2
  5590. The job is too huge. The demand and pressures are just too great. It would take many, many billions to upgrade the system to meet the demands placed on it. The water companies have realised this and are just taking the money while patching up here and there.
    2
  5591. What democracy?
    2
  5592.  @analogdistortion  But we WANT them to spread it, don't you see?
    2
  5593. Just the same in World War II when all those Americans joined the English.
    2
  5594.  @goodfortunedj  The principle is the same. It is no more a sign of weakness for Putin to welcome North |Korea than it was for Britain to welcome Americans in World War II. As to their relative fighting capability - well, that remains to be seen. The N Koreans gave America a lot to think about back in the 1950's, I recall.
    2
  5595.  @jordancobb7553  You're all hat and no cattle, partner.
    2
  5596.  @WestermanT.  That tired old myth has about run its course, don't you think?
    2
  5597.  @alexsilent5603  I imagine not to do something like this. I think Zelensky's regime must be deeply divided by now. It would be odd if it wasn't.
    2
  5598. This is such crap. When are you Democrat spin doctors going to stop treating people like idiots?
    2
  5599.  @GilmerJohn  So?
    2
  5600. Polls show support for Conservatives constant at 42/43% and for Labour at 32/33%.
    2
  5601. Boris Johnson is a dangerous clown who thinks he is Winston Churchill. His chief contributions to life (and death) on this planet have been to be instrumental in starting the war in Ukraine and overseeing a disastrous response to the covid pandemic.
    2
  5602.  @fdk7014  Russia now controls much of the Donbass region which sits on at least $13trillion in gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals. This counts as a victory, despite the cost.
    2
  5603.  @sherry8444  Sure. It's only when it can be proved beyond doubt that this encouragement directly resulted in arson and murder that a criminal offence was committed. In this case there is no such proof.
    2
  5604.  @Construimus_Batuimus  Putin is not insane. He has been pushed into a corner by US meddling in Ukraine and has had little choice but to respond.
    2
  5605.  @ronsworld7544  No. Gas would be cheap, Russia would be our friend and the war in Ukraine would be the relatively minor border conflict it has been for the past eight years. It might even be over.
    2
  5606.  @КристинаЙорданова-р8л  Sadly I think the Budapest accords failed to recognise the true borders of Ukraine -which do not necessarily include Crimea or Donbass. As for the nukes they were SU nukes, not Ukrainian. Mistakes were inevitably made in the confused aftermath of the collapse of the SU. It is a tragedy that those mistakes have escalated into this dreadful war. With every day that passes a peaceful compromise becomes more and more distant.
    2
  5607.  @davidjwilliams5214  Being a drag queen isn't a perversion in itself. But drag queens these days are a step beyond pantomime dames and Danny La Rue. They are being employed not as entertainers but as agents of the sexualisation of children. That is a perversion of the grossest kind, especially when it encourages children into homosexuality.
    2
  5608. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    2
  5609. What money is needed? A message is sent out on social media and the crowds gather.
    2
  5610.  @tonupharry  You are living in a fantasy world. Do you realise that?
    2
  5611.  @azul8811  Because it would bring an end to the killing. Ukraine is only holding its own because other countries are foolishly supporting it.
    2
  5612. No. It just means that someone with HIV has an immune system that's shot to hell.
    2
  5613.  @theAverageJoe25  I am not a Russian and I'm not backpedalling and nor am I making propaganda. So that's three things you're wrong about from the start. All evidence points to the fact that Russia is doing its best to minimise civilian casualties. Apart from anything else there are a hell of a lot of Russians in Ukraine! The object of the exercise is for Russia to hold on to what it's got, plus perhaps an advance in the two Donbass republics to exclude the Ukrainians from their northern sectors. That, and keeping Crimea, are the sum total of Russia's ambitions and always have been.
    2
  5614. No. There are verifiable videos.
    2
  5615.  @MrGatzby  Because war is good business.
    2
  5616. @Quote Ukraine in NATO is not a threat? This war is America's war.
    2
  5617. What democracy?
    2
  5618.  @stream2watch  And you can still feed a family of four on six dollars.
    2
  5619. No. It just means you have to prove it first.
    2
  5620.  @davidburke2132  I think I must agree. Thank you once again for the conversation. You have called into serious question at least two of my wilder speculations!
    2
  5621.  @alanrogers989  It makes a great deal of sense. The Democrats have made it clear they have lost all moral compass and will cheat and lie and do anything to get rid of Trump. If they can support riots they can buy up votes. Trump's base is the old America: decent working people for the most part and with Christian values of decency and proper behaviour. The Democrats constant pressure for postal voting makes it clear they have deceit in mind.
    2
  5622.  @dylaanowen  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0&t=71s I have every idea what Marxism is, and Joe Biden isn't a Marxist or even a socialist - but his party has been infiltrated by Marxists and he owes them a debt which he will have to repay if elected. BLM, a Marxist organisation, raised an estimated billion dollars on the pretence of using it to help black people but gave it to his campaign instead. Biden is a politician of the old school who is used to getting favours and paying them back once in office. Marxists and Muslims both believe they have the answers. Anything that prevents them supplying those answers to the rest of us must be overcome, whatever the cost. In Muslim countries no other religions are permitted. Under Marxism no other political opinions are permitted. These are facts, not prejudice. As for the pandemic:: unless you are very old, obese or suffering from another life-threatening condition your chances of dying from Covid 19 are practically zero. And if masks are supposed to protect us, then wearing a mask to go to the polls should be enough, shouldn't it? The Democrats insistence on postal voting comes because they know how easily it can be manipulated. And it will be. The electoral college exists for a purpose, and a very sensible one. Without it people in low population rural states would be entirely disenfranchised. Democracy is about fair representation of local interests more than it is about electing a glorified class captain.
    2
  5623.  @rocketscience4516  Oh dear Rocket. You don't really believe I'm a Russian agent, do you? Get a grip.
    2
  5624. @BEN TWOONEZERO Haven't I heard this somewhere before?
    2
  5625. It's simply not an argument Badenoch should get involved in. She is not there to defend the inadequacies of her predecessors, but to confront Labour with its own inadequacies. Which doesn't look as though it's going to be too difficult.
    2
  5626. I hope they bottle out of replacing him - at least Trump might have some chance of beating the system.
    2
  5627.  @Sly_fox379  Putin has never told me to do anything. How about you?
    2
  5628. Re: Shaun King. Am I allowed to say that BLM seems to contains lot of white people who wish they were black as well as some black people who have a guilty hankering to be white? (Thoroughly admire Tim's passion here, by the way. He's one of the few REAL journalists we have.)
    2
  5629. They are Russian territories - have been for hundreds of years.
    2
  5630.  @RussCR5187  He isn't the Messiah. He's just a naughty boy sometimes. And he is as fit to hold public office as anyone. More than Biden who is just an old-school political hack and as corrupt as they come.
    2
  5631. There is absolutely nothing the UK government can do about this. We have tagged along with Americans following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as we had to do, and now we must face the consequences. Trump was on his way towards resolving the dilemma, but the Washington swamp needs to keep Russia as a permanent enemy.
    2
  5632. @⚛︎ bailee bon bancroft ⚛︎ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Wf8i7ztyA
    2
  5633.  @jeanclaudejunior  How about an A+ for creativity?
    2
  5634. For all of Johnson's failings he would never, ever, misplace an apostrophe in the entirely egregious way you have done. Just sayin'
    2
  5635. @Hope Green But I replaced it with an apostrophe; replacing letters being one of the several functions of an apostrophe. You, on the other hand, replaced an apostrophe with a comma which is very, very naughty INDEED! (Unless of course you were being sarcastic, in which case I commend you heartily.)
    2
  5636.  @boink800  Assuming a steady rate. But there is now a sudden advance, as I am sure you are aware.
    2
  5637. @Tom I don't think we can be sure of that. The conditions which allow a variant to become dominant are not understood. Omicron appears to have developed in mice - obviously unvaccinated and not social distancing, much less wearing masks or going into lockdown! It is entirely possible that in attempting to crudely suppress covid we have created conditions which allow a rogue strain to gain a foothold. It is certainly something which requires investigation.
    2
  5638.  @AH-ml4vi  Leaders have to subdue such delicate feelings if they are to save their country and their people from the depredations of others. Taking delight it such excesses - or indulging in them needlessly - is perhaps an indication of some form of mental illness which can be labelled psychopathic, but I see no evidence that Putin falls into such a category. He is simply doing what he has to do to maintain control and prevent Russia from becoming enslaved..
    2
  5639. And if he refuses?
    2
  5640.  @Keyoke200  Russia didn't want Ukraine. Just the Russian bits. Which it has now more or less got.
    2
  5641. Sure - let her back in. On condition she does a nationwide tour denouncing her foul creed.
    2
  5642. You get it!
    2
  5643.  @tomfinney3416  Sure. But why is evidence of corruption? How can this practice affect any decisions Moggie may make as an MP or minister?
    2
  5644. Russia is winning and will win. Thankfully there has been so much misinformation pumped into Western sucker-brains that it's going to be quite easy to make it look like a defeat.
    2
  5645. Ukraine can no longer get Crimea despite its American bosses demanding it. They knew they didn't stand much chance so the bust dam is a blessing. As for the rest......
    2
  5646.  @justmythought7658  Funnily enough General Kellogg did mention how the objectives of the Afghan invasion were achieved in the first two years, but how there was little coherent focus after that.
    2
  5647. Google: Here Is The Evidence.
    2
  5648. I get the strong feeling that Trump and Putin are the only two people in the world who really know what's going on here. The deal is on the table. It now only has to be dressed in pretty clothes to please the idiots.
    2
  5649. It will go directly to appeal if he is convicted. There are already sufficient grounds in the jury selection procedure and some of the judge's comments. This will take years- unless Trump gets back in the White House and puts a stop to it.
    2
  5650. You don't have to be their friend. Anyone can join in.
    2
  5651.  @Talinthis  They would say that, wouldn't they? Trying to evade active service by pretending illness or disability has to be discouraged. The Russian Army may not be much good but there is a huge pool of healthy and trained or semi-trained men available. Can't you recognise anti-Russian propaganda?
    2
  5652.  @enriqueperezarce5485  It just needs more or them on the front line. Russia is now in a defensive position, trying to hold on to Donbass, but they are heavily outnumbered.
    2
  5653. The BBC is pathologically obsessed with race.
    2
  5654. What counter-offensive?
    2
  5655. Look on the bright side. The world is now safer for pet squirrels.
    2
  5656. @Robin Sherwood Absolutely. He is a very dangerous man. I defy anyone to work out where he's coming from these days, but since all his early years were devoted to making money more or less for the fun of it I don't think that's changed much. Money is addictive, and so is fun! He is far too intelligent to be a Marxist. His support for extreme left wing causes must be part of some huge feedback loop strategy. He might want to end his time on earth having shorted the mighty dollar, but the trouble is as soon as you think of something he might be doing, you can be sure that's not it. When I put my tinfoil hat on I even see him manufacturing the entire global warming crisis in order to create a world currency of his own, based on carbon bonds. Trouble is, now I've thought of it, it can't be that either.
    2
  5657.  @fredfredrickson5436  Two sentences. Two sillinesses. Well done.
    2
  5658.  @fredfredrickson5436  A Marxists with a sense of humour! What a very rare thing. Is it allowed?
    2
  5659.  @fredfredrickson5436  But Karl Marx wasn't. Did you know that?
    2
  5660.  @fredfredrickson5436  I once wasted an otherwise pleasant month or so in Goa trying to wade my way through Das Kapital. I don't actually know anyone who's read it though. Do you? The Communist Manifesto is easy enough, but the trouble with Marx seems to be that he is so dreadfully dull and difficult that people are always trying to tell us he meant things that perhaps he didn't. I think people tend to confuse Marxism with the idea of being terribly nice to the working classes. From what I understand of it, it is something rather different to that. His analysis of history seems to leave out a great many important factors, which I suppose is the main reason Marxism fails so miserably when brought into practical application.
    2
  5661.  @fredfredrickson5436  I gather all schoolchildren in modern Russia are required to read a cut-down version of Sollzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. It is a practice which should be introduced in this country. The successes of the centrally planned economy depended upon the death and misery of millions. Your social safety net might owe something to Socialism, but nothing to Marxism. And Socialism itself has its roots in Christianity. Marxism is a busted flush. Only muddle-headed idealists or cynical opportunists can see any advantage to it.
    2
  5662.  @fredfredrickson5436  The deliberate starvation and working to death of millions cannot be compared to the occasional errors of capitalism. Marxism and its centrally planned economy could only be sustained through slavery, corruption and terror. American prisoners are in prison because they have committed crimes, not because they have been arbitrarily selected or denounced. They live in conditions which would make citizens of the mid 20th century Soviet Union salivate with envy. Marxism corrupts Socialism, which is why until comparatively recently the British Labour Party forbad all relations with it. The fact that it now welcomes its various unwholesome manifestations into its midst is the reason for its constant rejection by the electorate. I disagree with Marx's critique because it is wrong, It fails on many levels, but predominately it fails because it does not take into account the fact that there are a great many utter bastards in the world, and the bastards will win whatever system is operational. Capitalism recognises this fact but imposes restraints on the worst excesses of the entrepreneurial psychopath through a system of financial regulation. Marxism refuses to admit differences in personality and insists we are all the same and equal and that our behaviour is governed by purely economic forces. They soon find out they are wrong when the psychopaths rise up through the ranks of the various committees and local soviets necessary to run their clumsy system and impose a regime of terror. It always happens this way and always will. Only societies which evolve through time survive and prosper. Those which attempt to impose a system thought up by some bloke with a beard and a pencil are doomed to fail. The only question is how long will it take and how many people will die in agony in the process.
    2
  5663.  @fredfredrickson5436  Show me your pile of bodies. We can compare its height with those left by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Capitalist imperialism is exactly the strategy being followed by China right now. It has retained the repressive structure Communism needs to make a centralised state work and is busy colonising the world. It has its concentration camps too. There is no "late stage capitalism." There is just capitalism. Economic success certainly leads to imperialist expansion and it always has done. Once spears and chariots, guns and gunboats were needed. Now they are not, We have grown more sophisticated in our methods. This has led to the unlikely marriage we see today between Marxism and capitalism so typified by the Chinese phenomenon. Communism needs strict state control over individual behaviours in order to even begin to try to succeed. In China it has not succeeded but the control of the population has remained and is now being applied very successfully to the expansion of state capitalism. China's economic success is dependent upon the slavery of the proletariat. China's model is now actively being pursued by Western capitalism in the form of globalism, which requires centralised control and the subordination of the individual to a bureaucratic elite. Marx was quite correct in seeing labour as a form of capital, but he did not envisage how the administrators of his creed would be forced by economic realities to spend that capital. Marx was always wrong. Now he is both wrong and irredeemably old-fashioned. Your attachment to him is romantic and naive. This discussion began with George Soros. As I said, his gigantic intellect is beyond the comprehension of lesser mortals but it provides a rich territory for speculation. It seems to me that what he is doing is very similar to what China is doing, Based upon the principles of reflexivity he influences outcomes by acting in several roles, one of which is the infiltration of political structures and ideological movements and using them to pave the way for the expansion of his strategies. China builds roads. Soros builds BLM and puts puppets in charge of US and Canadian cities. China and Soros are both utilising Marxism, but neither is Marxist.
    2
  5664.  @fredfredrickson5436  What was the question again?
    2
  5665.  @fredfredrickson5436  The sovereign right of a nation to govern its own affairs,
    2
  5666.  @fredfredrickson5436  Not sure I understand you. I see globalisation as an effort to subsume national identities, and over-rule the will and interests of individual nations by a process of homogenisation. National sovereignty must be a casualty of that process.
    2
  5667.  @bobhawke7373  Ukraine. Not one single step was taken to find ways of granting regional autonomy to the two breakaway republics which was the main thrust of Minsk 2. Both sides were guilty of minor violations, as was inevitable in such a fraught situation. Minsk 1 - to which I assume you refer - was made irrelevant by Minsk 2 which was signed on February 12, 2015.
    2
  5668.  @Captain-l-12p  He's read the Koran for one thing. And written a book about it, putting it in the correct historical order. He also likes Kant, I believe - but finds Schopenhauer a bit childish. I'm with him on that one.
    2
  5669.  @basit730  It's a manual of hate and depravity. At least Robinson's book gives the world an idea of how and for what purpose it was constructed.
    2
  5670. The ONS, sadly, isn't what it was. I think many people will tend to doubt these figures - or at least they way in which they have been assessed and presented.
    2
  5671. Tom Crump. No to the first part of your question. Yes to the second! The standard of journalism in this country has always been pretty poor, but the idiot lickspittles and self-regarding toadies of the present moment are a disgrace, not only to their so-called profession but to the human race as a whole. I spit upon them!
    2
  5672. It's hardly insider trading if everyone knows about it, is it?
    2
  5673. He was cheated. I think he's taking it very well, all things considered.
    2
  5674.  @fireblade-uk  Not at all. His input will be essential.
    2
  5675. Every weapon given to Ukraine extends the war and brings more bloodshed and destruction. It's as basic as that.
    2
  5676.  @oasis67  Give me one example.
    2
  5677.  @strangeke7750  Go on then. Ukraine has been shelling Donetsk for ten years, aiming artillery and missiles at purely civilian targets, such as street markets. It seems clear to me that Russia is targeting infrastructure and military positions, civilian deaths are collateral damage. The same cannot be said for Ukraine.
    2
  5678.  @dinooldman6671  The new normal then! Yes, of course you are right. I must confess I have been patronising Amazon, a thing I have never done before. I think the elderly and vulnerable can be protected easily enough though: simply by applying precautions to them which have been applied to all of us. And this should become less and less necessary as the pandemic recedes, as I'm sure it will.
    2
  5679. This absurd alliance with Ukraine is potentially suicidal.
    2
  5680. Once again I hear the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped.
    2
  5681. What a contrast to the previous nonsense video about Musk! We on the Right have similar problems. It just goes with the territory when people start thinking for themselves instead of blindly accepting their conditioning. Mind you, it must have taken a great deal of teeth-gritting to accept gruesome Starmer as a route towards destiny. And yes - many of us have similar reservations about that nice Mr Farage.
    2
  5682.  @kh5736 Not quite sure what you mean here. Ukraine's army, financed by NATO, has expanded enormously since 2014. Russia's has not.
    2
  5683.  @unworthy42  As indeed is the Ukrainian army.
    2
  5684. Thanks for this. It explains quite a bit. I might steal some of it, if that's all right?
    2
  5685.  VINLAND_777  Weighing things in the balance I do not think that Putin has any desire to take over the whole of Ukraine, much less other parts of Europe. It would be an impossible task and, in the end, simply not worth it. One of the reasons for the collapse of the USSR was its inability to control rebellious outlying provinces, and there is no need for the Russian Federation to make the same mistake.
    2
  5686. What's the point in having an army when no-one's threatening you? Russia certainly isn't, despite moneygrubbing propaganda to the contrary.
    2
  5687. He's quite right. Only Western interests are preventing an end to this horrorshow - the same interests which caused it to start in the first place.
    2
  5688. This "investigation" is more and more starting to look like a put-up job. After the mid-terms it will be even more irrelevant.
    2
  5689. And why would America buy it in that case?
    2
  5690. @ There are plenty of other sources, both in the US and from abroad. Canadian oil is heavily discounted and really only sold into northern states on account of the distances involved reducing transportation costs.
    2
  5691.  @ffotograffydd  Not at an increased price they don't. In any case it would probably not be technically possible and also quite dangerous to Canadian suppliers' viability to do this.
    2
  5692.  @sybrandwoudstra9236  Thank you.
    2
  5693. Abusing the judicial system in order to try to defeat a political opponent has demeaned the Democrat party, and the US generally, in the eyes of the world. And still you persist.
    2
  5694.  @dhoffnun  Of course the forest floor needs to be cleared. Its the build up of brush, fallen branches etc which provides the tinder for these fires.
    2
  5695.  @mikedon5205  Practically everything. The attempts to crush Russian culture and language for a start and the fact that NATO advances over the last 30 years are deliberately intimidating. The idea that the Russian Federation wants to recapture the old Russian Empire is ludicrous. It's just bogeyman designed to support warmongering capitalism, which needs such threats to justify its existence and keep the economy going.
    2
  5696. Can we be allowed to tell Muslims to fuck off?
    2
  5697.  @AndreS_22246  YouTube won't let me.
    2
  5698.  @porecemusnox8805  Happens to me too! I
    2
  5699.  @almac9203  But they don't infect them. Child to adult infection is extremely rare. You stand afar greater chance of being infected by an adult.
    2
  5700. @Buster Nutt There's vaccines and there's vaccines. There's no way one brought out in a hurry like this can be 100% safe.
    2
  5701.  @almac9203  How long as Taiwan been communist? I must have missed that. (PS. They all take hydroxychloroquine there, as in many other Asian and African countries.)
    2
  5702.  @calicocat8213  Only part of the reasons, agreed.
    2
  5703. As ever I am astounded by the pathological hatred expressed in this comments section. This medieval desire for revenge, incarceration and imprisonment can only reflect the growing influence of Islam on the British character.
    2
  5704. Absolute nonsense. The recommended anti-hydrochloroquine treatment is two tiny doses per WEEK. And if not dying is a minor improvement, it certainly seems to have that effect. The "scientific studies" which produce the results you mention involve giving massive daily doses to patients whose symptoms are too advanced for it to have any effect.
    2
  5705. Destroyed? Seems not. Looks as though this could be fixed in a matter of days, if not hours. If could even be a false flag by the Russians.
    2
  5706.  @DM-dk7js  I'm an enemy of hypocrisy, not democracy.
    2
  5707. Belt and Road is a Chinese Communist Party initiative to extend its influence worldwide by financing infrastructure schemes. He ain't called Beijing Biden for nothing.
    2
  5708. @ What is?
    2
  5709. But surely deaths and hospital admissions are way down in relation to the number of cases? One death and seven admissions yesterday. The strategy is working.
    2
  5710. The BBC continues to display blind prejudice in its continuing efforts to hoodwink the British public. This is not news. This is not journalism. This is Soviet-style propaganda and anyone who does not see through it is a fool. In Georgia they were counting votes with unverified signature. Meaningless. The Giuliani press conference presented a firm prima facie case for unprecedented electoral fraud by the Democrats, with the undoubted fact that there is much more evidence very sensibly not being presented to the utterly discredited legacy media, but which will presented to the proper court. The BBC is not entitled to decide who is President of the United States, nor to prejudge the outcome of court proceedings.
    2
  5711. Beause it was a previous administration which was foolish enough to start this war.
    2
  5712. Kill a granny for George! Deluded, self-righteous ignoble sheep!
    2
  5713. How can a country sitting of trillions and trillions of$$ in oil, gas, coal and rare earth minerals run out of money?
    2
  5714.  @caeruleusvm7621  Which, unlike in Africa, Russia has been doing for centuries, The expertise, the infrastructure and the investment are already in place.
    2
  5715.  @stephenhill545  And food is 7 x more expensive.
    2
  5716. When did Nabiullina say this.? I have just re-read her 2023 report to the State Duma and can find nothing which might be interpreted in this way. Could you point me to the source of these assertions?
    2
  5717. Look on the bright side -just for once. We don't know yet if Omicron is mild or not -but if it is and is also highly transmissible it will mean the end of the pandemic.
    2
  5718.  @Yeknodathon  Merely a traveller down life's highways and byways, searching the hedgerows for scraps of truth. The ole horsepaste (or at least the human version) has saved the populations of Uttar Pradesh ,Goa, and Japan and many others from covid and it might have saved us too if fools like you and Boris Johnson weren't such suckers for Big Pharma's money-grubbing propaganda disguised in dubious, poorly researched papers.
    2
  5719.  @alexiswinter6948  I'm no gun expert, but this Brandon Herrara guy is and he used the same rifle that Crooks used. He actually took the shot closer because it would be near impossible, using that weapon, to intentionally hit an ear at that distance. Apparently you can only guarantee getting your shot within a five inch circle.
    2
  5720. No point. You don't have any money.
    2
  5721.  @peterhernandez7817  Gee thanks! You might be worth suing after all!
    2
  5722. This is going to be a shock for all the millions who have been conned into thinking Zelensky is a demi-god, super hero. He isn't. He's an incompetent who has destroyed his country. Trump is showing exactly who's master.
    2
  5723. The Liberals started bleating on about PR as soon as it became clear they would never form a government again. Just sayin'
    2
  5724. There are around 140,000 members. Reform stopped being a company limited by shares four months ago. It is now limited by members.
    2
  5725.  @nickpr5964  I don't think that's true at all. In a context like October 7, when there was a deliberate attack on civilians for no military purpose, words like "slaughtered" or "murdered" would be considered appropriate. The current action in Gaza, whatever you make think of it, has a clear military purpose, namely the eradication of Hamas, and therefore those who die are victims of war and less emotive terms may be used. I agree it's all a bit bonkers, but that's just the way the language of journalism works.
    2
  5726. There is absolutely no way the American political establishment will allow Trump to regain the Presidency.
    2
  5727. A slight exaggeration. They were found in a ditch very near a river. https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    2
  5728.  @armand9404  Exactly so. There is every chance that this virus will mutate into something close to its near relative, the common cold.
    2
  5729. But Trump was right. The election WAS fixed.
    2
  5730. This is such absurd propaganda. Around 3million people of Russian heritage have left Ukrainefor Russia since the war began, including many children. They are classified as collaborators and traitors and they and their family members remaining in Ukrainian territory face the direst penalties. The only way to avoid this is to pretend they have been abducted.
    2
  5731. ​ @duckcensorship7446 When will you learn that this war has little to do with taking territory?
    2
  5732. The Russians are highly suspicious of the Red Cross, believing the organisation to be infiltrated by CIA and other spies. It is worth mentioning that the Russians are themselves bringing in many tons of food and medical supplies to stricken Mariupol.
    2
  5733. Surely two world leaders having a working relationship has to be a good thing? Why do you lefty loons need bogeymen to keep your juices flowing?
    2
  5734.  @chidigit  ..which have been manipulated.
    2
  5735. Once again the BBC is helping make the world safe for hypocrisy.
    2
  5736. It's not so much greatness as humanity. Trump is an ordinary Joe who happened to inherit billions. He's also rather clever in a great many ways.
    2
  5737. There is no way in which renewables can hope to replace fossil fuels as things stand at present. Although the UK only buys a relatively small proportion of its gas and oil directly from Russia it is the knock-on effect of the war in Ukraine which will lead to energy shortages this winter. That and nothing else.
    2
  5738.  @knowledge.3563  The losses are truly terrible. We can only hope they will not be in vain.
    2
  5739. Try ZOE on YouTube.
    2
  5740. Is she real or some sort of advanced hologram?
    2
  5741. The current situation has nothing to do with "bloody foreigners coming over 'ere and taking our jobs and women." It's about Islamification. It's about the imposition of alien culture and values and the failure of the Moslem community to integrate.
    2
  5742. The majority of those who will died this winter will do so because pre-existing conditions have not been treated properly. When the butchers' bill is drawn up it will show that lockdowns have killed many times more people than covid itself.
    2
  5743. He isn't wrong.
    2
  5744. Why should he have handlers? He's his own man.
    2
  5745. Have you paid your membership fee to this channel yet?
    2
  5746. Ukraine has a (or had) a large, well-trained and well-equipped army, paid for by the USA and NATO.
    2
  5747.  @michaelmcleod8598  A good idea. If would syphon off all the unelectables and allow Labour to possibly - just possibly - become a reasonable enough party of opposition to put the wind up the Tories. Which is what it's for, really.
    2
  5748. Anyone who believes US Presidential Elections are fairly run is living on planet La-La. If Trump wins it will only be because his team have been clever enough to outwit the frauds and the fixers.
    2
  5749.  @stoufer2000  Hi Stouf! She should come round to your house and shout at you. It might do you some good.
    2
  5750. The Ukrainians are fighting like devils. But they can't win in the long run. They will eventually be betrayed by their government as it bows to the inevitable Russian victory.
    2
  5751. Seems to be going to plan, doesn't it? Columbia accepts deportees. Panama promises to cold-shoulder the Chinese and Mexico sends 10,000 troops to the border to help keep the migrants on their side of the fence.
    2
  5752.  @stephencapel5630  In fact until November the number of under 45s deaths was around 700. I admit I guesstimated the extra 300 but I doubt it will be any more. The numbers game is pretty distasteful. There are as many people trying to make this look worse than it is as there are trying to minimise it. I suppose it has something to do with a psychological mindset. The fact is that when the novel coronavirus hit in Spring it hit hard - simply because it was novel and immune systems were ill prepared to deal with it. Since then it has done what many epidemiologists predicted it would and become a seasonal respiratory infection. If there is any surprise at all is that it has more or less replaced influenzas. But none of this really affects my original point. If we are citizens of the world we must act as such. In terms of years of meaningful life lost Covid is a babe in arms. There is no comparison with HIV or many earlier influenzas. The Hong Kong flu of 68/69 killed well over 40,000 in the UK, very many of them children and young people. There were no lockdowns or anything like that; just simple precautions and we got on with life until it went away. Which it did. That's what we should be doing now instead of acting like cowards who think they somehow have the right to live forever.
    2
  5753.  @stephencapel5630  There is no evidence that the long term effects from Covid 19 are any worse or more common than is the case with many influenzas. Some immune systems over-react to some pathogens and this is something which is constantly being researched. Life's tough, but that's no reason to huddle under the duvet with your thumb in your mouth. (Actually there WERE lockdowns during plagues. The very word "quarantine" comes from old Italian for the 14 days ships' crews had to stay aboard when arriving at port during such times.) Surely the fact that health systems have improved since 1969 should mean there is less need for lockdowns than more? As for living forever I do sometimes think that death is regarded as an abuse of human rights by a certain class of people.
    2
  5754.  @ClarkyGuitar  Okay I get you. The fact that it's a covid not an influenza has certainly and understandably caused concern. The fact that it arrived in the Spring and created such havoc certainly put it into another category. The point I'm making is that we now know what it is being insanely afraid of it is, in my view, entirely counterproductive. The lockdowns are causing far, far more damage nationally and internationally than the disease itself. A lot is going to depend on the behaviour of the new variant which is, incidentally, only the latest of a dozen or so - all of which have tended towards being more infectious but seemingly less harmful. If this variant follows that trend then it really will be time to take down the shutters and throw away our masks. We should know by the end of February.
    2
  5755. Politicians lie .Haven't you noticed?
    2
  5756. An essential difference, of course, is that the CPTPP has no federalistic political ambitions. As far as I am aware it does not wish to become a global power and interfere in the geopolitics of an increasingly dangerous world. It is concerned exclusively with trade - as the dear old Common Market used to be before it pulled its jackboots on and changed its name.
    2
  5757. Why, if the neighbouring countries are largely inhabited by people living in small towns and low-density cities, and where there are few, if any, large care homes for the elderly occupied by people in or approaching their nineties? Geographical proximity is irrelevant. It's what's going on INSIDE a country that counts - not what your neighbours are like.
    2
  5758.  @catherineandpaulfuters2523  Didn't he run America quite effectively for four years?
    2
  5759. Unlike the deadly serious accuracy of Western propaganda, of course.
    2
  5760.  @josephzajac3696  It really is weird. I don't know why my algorithm served it up but I'm grateful. I had no idea that such conceited, illiterate, brainwashed idiots existed in such large numbers. And some of them are even old enough to vote I guess. Sends shudders down my spine.
    2
  5761.  @verystripeyzebra  Not by the people who have to put up with them.
    2
  5762.  @englishsteve1465  But the use of "learn" as synonymous with "teach" is (or was) quite common in the North of England. And I must also defend my use of "misprint". I could, of course, have said "literal" which would be a more precise printing term and although we live in a digital age, words do still appear in a semblance of printed form, do they not? And "mistake" would have implied, surely, that the poster made an error of judgement, rather than a simple digital (ha!) misdirection. Sometimes pedantry can be quite relaxing, don't you find?
    2
  5763. This is a somewhat naive and idealistic view of politics. Corruption comes with the territory and cannot be avoided. All we can hope to do is to contain it within reasonable limits, and the British Parliamentary system does this quite as well as any other. You can't prevent politicians from pursuing personal advantage. All you can do is hope to catch them at it.
    2
  5764. I think there as an agency for them.They can also be hired to open fetes and supermarkets
    2
  5765. Very well put. Such a shame that so many people either stick with the first for too long, or rush into the second without due consideration.
    2
  5766. But we know that the Dems actually DID end democracy by perpetrating a massive fraud.
    2
  5767.  @andreasc.2182  But Russia has just lost an empire and has realised that it is better off without it. There's about as much chance of Russia invading Poland as there is of Britain invading India.
    2
  5768.  @truthseeker6116  It's 13.9billion after deductions, and most of that is in the form of old tat dragged out from America's depleted armouries. It's Ukraine's that finished, I'm afraid.
    2
  5769. But a marriage of great INconvenience as far as America is concerned.
    2
  5770. What a nice young woman! Such a pity she's a brainwashed idiot.
    2
  5771. Americans must learn that the importation of black slaves to their country is far, far from being the only example of racial exploitation in the history of the world.
    2
  5772.  @pevlez  And look what has happened when they've been crossed.
    2
  5773.  @Ji_hadJoe  I couldn't agree more. The media and the pharmaceutical companies have killed tens of thousands of people with their obsessions. They deserve to rot in hell.
    2
  5774.  @marktrotter8971  History is written by the winners.
    2
  5775. This is a great plan. The Arabs were given Gaza and billions of dollars in start-up money, as well as established businesses. They blew it on weapons, fancy uniforms and luxury lifestyles for their beloved leaders. Now it's time for civilised people to move back in.
    2
  5776. r @beigefox6579  Here's how the law works: if a court says something is so, then it is so. Your personal opinions don't count for anything. You can cross state lines when you feel like it. You can carry a gun if you are legally entitled to carry it and Kyle was legally entitled to carry his gun because its barrel length classifies it as a hunting rifle, which you can carry when 16. Got it? The OJ Simpson trial was a sick joke. The Proud Boys are not white supremacists. That's just propaganda you've been sold because they oppose BLM and Antifa and all the "woke" crap which is destroying America. They have members of every race and their President is a black guy from Cuba. The OK hand sign is a wonderful joke played in you mutton-headed lefties by 4Chan who took this old gesture and convinced you that it meant white supremacy. You've been suckered! Killing someone in self defence does not count as murder. We've just had a trial re-iterating that very point. Your example of right-wing media lies is pathetic. I'm not familiar with the case but I'm sure it was a joke which you leftoids didn't understand because you don't have much by the way of a sense of humour. And it doesn't really compare with the mountain of lies told for six years trying to convince people that Donald Trump was "in collusion" with Russia, does it?
    2
  5777.  @beigefox6579  Naughty Mr Manafort's tax evasion had nothing to do with Trump, and the other items you mention don't even amount to a can of beans to go with your nothingburger. The Dems got their lackeys in the FBI to go around making a big fuss and scaring people but at the end of the day it was all just bluster. No big trial. Nothing. Just smoke and mirrors and a conjouring trick that flopped. You are an idiot. You start by saying "please lets not change the conversation to Russian collusion" and then you go on with a great long screed all about Russian collusion! What's the matter with you? All these "crimes" are of no consequence, even if true. America, as Trump says, has missed a big, big opportunity of setting up all kinds of mutually useful deals with the Russian Federation thanks to this infantile nonsense. The Proud Boys are not "confirmed white nationalists" that's just what you've been told, you silly boy. They are proud nationalists but many of them are black, brown and Asian (whatever colour they're supposed to be.) You've been sold a pup. You've been conned. You live in a bubble of yes illusion designed to keep you on the Democrat plantation instead of thinking for yourself. I'm not going to look up page 2 of Muller's report. I really don't care what the old fool says. I only care what he COULDN'T say-that there is any evidence at all of any improper relationship between Team Trump and anyone in the Russian government. And I've hardly ever watched Hannity and Kyle Rittenhouse has helped enormously to turn the tide against lies and depravity of the left. Anyone who has watched the trial and compared it with the versions put out by CNN and MSNBC etc now KNOWS what filthy liars they are. And as an added bonus it seems Antifa and BLM are now less keen to go around burning businesses and terrifying innocent folk now, doesn't it? Their principles aren't up to the idea of all the copycat Kyles waiting out there with their AR15s. Cowards as well as bullies, liars and fools.
    2
  5778. PEACEFUL Palestinians????!!!
    2
  5779. And that is relatively normal. Currently deaths from all causes are only slightly above average and that more likely due to lack of treatment due to lockdowns as much as directly "with" covid.
    2
  5780. This is a great day. Millions of ordinary people have defied the arrogance of the charlatans and intellectual snobs who despise them.
    2
  5781.  @Zoltan1412  I'd say it was, actually! But at least we didn't go to war over it.
    2
  5782. Is this your Christmas wish list? Scarcely any of it actually true, as much as you'd like it be.
    2
  5783.  @billfromgermany  For a start Britain's death rate from covid is around the 28th highest in the world, not the highest, and the interpretation of legislation currently being considered is absurd to the point of idiocy.
    2
  5784.  @handarokadath1515  Very little of it is true. Most is merely extremely biased opinion and the only actual fact quoted (in capital letters) is blatantly false. Britain's death rate from covid is not the highest in the world by any means. It ranks about 28th by head of population.
    2
  5785. And it will be America's fault for poking the bear. My God - what an incredible series of ill-judged moves have been made in recent years!
    2
  5786. I'm puzzled. Why is Sky Aus so anti-Biden, yet all gung-ho for his war in Ukraine?
    2
  5787.  @jiversteve  I get terribly confused by all this. Did you just reply to my post, or was it the impersonator? Or are you the impersonator? How will I ever be able to tell?
    2
  5788.  @jiversteve  But that's exactly what a clone account would say.
    2
  5789. Diplomatic is right. You will notice that Fauci is careful not to mention that hydroxychloroquinine is not being advanced as a cure but essentially as a preventive. Giving it in large doses to patients in advanced stages of the illness is useless, as indeed many studies have shown. I must also call the BBC to task over its supercilious racism towards Dr Immanuel. She is an ordained pastor as well as a doctor and her brand of Christianity has its origins in Nigeria, where she is from. It has evolved through spreading the word of Christ through imagery understandable to former devotees of witchcraft. Hence her often colourful use of metaphor. To castigate her for this betrays the hypocrisy of of the BBC. It seems that middle-class white liberals only support black people when their views coincide with their own left-wing agenda.
    2
  5790. Farage is entirely right about the West provoking this dreadful war. Without NATO and the EU sticking their oars in it would never have happened.
    2
  5791.  @rushelm8101  Supporting is perhaps too strong a word, but I certainly see the reasoning behind the pre-emptive invasion. There is every sign that if Russia had not acted as it did then Ukraine's US and NATO strengthened army would have attempted to retake Crimea and dramatically ramped up the eight year campaign against the Donbass separatists.
    2
  5792. Little doubt that this outbreak is a direct result of lowering general immunity caused by the hysterical over-reaction to the covid "pandemic." When the final sums are done it will become clear that lockdowns, social distancing and mask wearing killed far more people than they saved.
    2
  5793.  @OakleyMoodie  No. We're stuck in 1984 right now. This could be a way out.
    2
  5794. What is this non-stop obsession with Trump? You got rid of him as President by fair means or foul, but you still won't stop featuring him each and every day. What are you scared of exactly?
    2
  5795. We should be kind to homeless beggars - but there are limits.
    2
  5796.  @jamesmorrow1646 One man's criminal invasion is another man's liberation of an oppressed people. A fight for mineral resources covers both, really.
    2
  5797.  @nimmha6708  I don't believe ANYBODY! Truth is the first victim of war.
    2
  5798. Trudeau is a fine example of a corrupt and self-serving Left-wing politician. Sanctimoniousness and cynical greed in roughly equal quantities.
    2
  5799.  @seanquinn2476  The former Ukrainian territories are now Russian territories again, with representatives in the Russian parliaments.
    2
  5800.  @Leptospirosi  I am English, and have no connection with Russia.
    2
  5801. I don't think the Islamists would have him
    2
  5802.  @Tom_YouTube_stole_my_handle  Hopefully they are double-vaccinated too. If not, that's sort of their fault. People in vulnerable categories should continue to isolate -if they wish to.
    2
  5803. Donbass was all Putin ever wanted. The people there voted for it, and have been fighting for it for eight years.
    2
  5804. If the Ukrainians did in fact blow up the bridge they were very, very stupid to do so.
    2
  5805. Yet this variant seems to have evolved to enable it to bypass vaccines. The southern African countries, incidentally, have much higher vaccination rates than those further north.
    2
  5806. I think the hope is that in the time it might take for this movement to have an actual effect and force an election the Right will somehow manage to form itself into a coherent body which can take Labour on and beat it. That's my hope, anyway. (All former Labour supporter welcome.)
    2
  5807. Didn't work, did they?
    2
  5808.  @byrnemeister2008  Resources which are being diverted to help line gangsters' pockets. Do you think that's right?
    2
  5809.  @Dionysos640  They should certainly complain that their services are being abused.
    2
  5810.  @lellyparker  No-one NO-ONE is suggesting murder! But allowing ourselves to be emotionally blackmailed in order to help line the pockets of criminal people-traffickers should not be a cause of any great satisfaction, should it?
    2
  5811.  @khalidacosta7133  If tried very hard to understand this analogy but it makes no sense at all.
    2
  5812. His reasons for this bombardment are, officially, in retaliation for Ukrainian raids on Russian territory.
    2
  5813. Whatever financial advantages the EU may bring (if any)they are far outweighed by the geopolitical impact of an artificially federalised Europe. Without the EU there would be no war in Ukraine, just for starters. Putin has no territorial ambitions, other than to maintain the integrity of the Russian Federation. To think otherwise is to fall into the trap created by US war hawks to protect certain financial interests within America. Donald Trump is not part of this cabal, which is one of the main reasons for the vicious campaign of denigration against him - yet another con-trick this channel has fallen for. That's three so far. The EU is a con-trick, NATO is a con-trick and Orange Man Bad is a con-trick. Being good-natured and wishing the world well is no excuse for such a degree of credulousness.
    2
  5814. So could listening to Putin's peace proposals.
    2
  5815. Even if this is true ( which is doubtful) the country as a whole will continue to suffer unless urgent steps are taken to adapt infrastructure to deal with the vast increase in population immigration necessarily creates. This will, in fact, be beyond out means and collapse will inevitable follow. All immigration is doing is creating a spiral of dependency, with more and more people being needed to service more and more people. Britain is already nearly destroyed and will cease to exist in any recognisable form unless immediate and drastic action is taken. Sorry, but there it is.
    2
  5816.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  Deaths have increased entirely in line with expected patterns since October 9 as far as I can see; increasing slowly in fits and starts, as one might expect. We could be in the low hundreds by January and as long as the total deaths remain within average it will mean, as I say, that Covid might be helping to kill people rather than other respiratory infections. It is your comment about Shipman which is ignorant. He killed people. I'm just sharing government statistics. I don't understand what you mean about co-morbidities, They are just serious conditions mentioned on a death certificate, aren't they? If any of the recent deaths had Covid 19 as the sole cause I would be very much surprised.
    2
  5817.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  But everything you say is almost entirely related to the impact of the spring pandemic. That was then an this is now. Flu and pneumonia are now killing more people than those where Covid 19 is present. Anyway, as I said before even if all the current Covid 19 related mortalities can be exclusively attributed to Covid 19 itself (which they can't) then the actual death figures are still statistically insignificant. I dispute that any measures we have taken have had any impact on deaths and serious cases. All they do is kick the can down the road while destroying the economy and livelihoods and causing more deaths from other causes than they prevent from Covid 19. The virus infects everyone capable of being infected. It kills and debilitates all whose immune systems are compromised sufficiently for it to do so. Fortunately that number now seems to have reached its limit. It will only be added to by people weakened by winter conditions or who become decrepit due to the natural ageing process or having to deal with some severe life-threatening condition. All viral infections result in a very small number of people suffering long-term effects. Many of these are due to ill-judged medical intervention.
    2
  5818.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  The only impact of the measures is to put off the number of cases and infections until the measures are lifted - at which point the virus attacks those who have emerged from whatever outer darkness the silly government has condemned them to. There are even studies which suggest that when this happens the total number of fatalities is greater than would otherwise have been the case. The measures cannot make the virus go away. They should only be used sparingly in order to buy time for medical facilities to be optimised. That time has now long passed. I realise that it will be difficult for those who have developed a morbid attachment to this disease to give it up. But you really must try.
    2
  5819. Fortunately there is just about enough mineral wealth in Western Ukraine to compensate the US for the money it has forked out so far - and if sensible relations are established with Russia, Putin might well allow the US to buy product from the East at a reasonable price.
    2
  5820. Lockdowns extend the pandemic, allowing more vaccines to be sold. Sky News is ultimately owned by the Vanguard asset management group, which also has controlling interests in major vaccine-producing pharmaceutical companies. Go figure.
    2
  5821.  @boink800  Remind me again how this President left office. Lost an election, did he?
    2
  5822.  @boink800  The real one, of course, in which America and the EU tried to wrest control of the mineral-rich Eastern Ukraine from Russia.
    2
  5823.  @boink800  Ever heard of a chap called Ihor Kolomoysky? Ever wondered why Hunter got that plum job?
    2
  5824.  @boink800  Name one and I'll tell you.
    2
  5825.  @boink800  It is in the nature of conspiracy theories to be difficult to prove. That's what makes a good conspiracy. In this case though the fact that thousands are dying on a bit of land which contains 6% of the world's supply of valuable minerals might enable you to conclude that this is what is being fought over.
    2
  5826.  @davidmacdonald1695  Bizarre ignorance rather than paranoia. Ukraine is a Russian creation, and a very high proportion of the population of Crimea and the industrialised areas of Eastern Ukraine are Russian by blood, tradition, religion, culture and preference. This why so much of the population of these areas have fled not to Ukraine but to Russia and are now coming back as the areas devastated by this needless war are rebuilt. The Ukrainians west of the Dnieper are welcome to become western if they wish.
    2
  5827.  @cognitivedissident9825  You're losing me a bit. I don't even know what LFTR is. I do think that nuclear has got to be the future and these hideous bird-killing windmills are a total aberration, but beyond that I only hope that there are enough scientists who have retained sufficient sanity and dignity to steer us out of this political mess. Shellenburger is hopefully not just trying to sell his book but is heading up a long-awaited reaction to the bandwaggon of hysteria created by the man-made global warming fanatics.
    2
  5828. 0.1 %? Excuse me while I rush out and put a deposit on a Lamborghini.
    2
  5829. They already have it. Ever heard of the Internet?
    2
  5830. These idiots are merely fuelling what is nothing more than a gigantic financial scam.
    2
  5831.  @T5Zplayer  America's record: 1914-1918 - a series of invasions of Mexico. 1914-1934 - Haiti. After numerous uprisings, America brings in its troops, the occupation continues for 19 years. 1916-1924 - 8-year occupation of the Dominican Republic. 1917-1933 - military occupation of Cuba, economic protectorate. 1917-1918 - participation in the 1st World War. 1918-1922 - intervention in Russia. In total, 14 states participated in it. Active support was provided to the territories that separated from Russia - Kolchakia and the Far Eastern Republic. 1918-1920 - Panama. After the elections, troops are brought in to quell the riots. 1919 - COSTA RICA. ... The landing of US troops to "protect American interests." 1919 - American troops fight on the side of Italy against the Serbs in Dalmatia. 1919 - American troops enter Honduras during elections. 1920 - Guatemala. 2-week intervention. 1921 - American support for militants fighting to overthrow Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera for the benefit of the United Fruit Company. 1922 - intervention in Turkey. 1922-1927 - American troops in China during the popular uprising. 1924-1925 - Honduras. Troops invade the country during elections. 1925 - Panama. US troops break up a general strike. 1926 - Nicaragua. Invasion. 1927-1934 - American troops stationed throughout China. 1932 - invasion of El Salvador from the sea. There was an uprising at that time. 1937 - Nicaragua. With the help of American troops, the dictator Somoza comes to power, having removed the legitimate government of H. Sakasa. 1939 - the introduction of troops into China. 1947-1949 - Greece. American troops are involved in the civil war, supporting the Nazis. 1948-1953 - military operations in the Philippines. 1950 - Uprising in Puerto Rico is suppressed by American troops. 1950-1953 - armed intervention in Korea about a million American soldiers. 1958 - Lebanon. The occupation of the country, the fight against the rebels. 1958 - confrontation with Panama. 1959 - America sends troops to Laos, the first clashes of American troops in Vietnam begin. 1959 - Haiti. The suppression of a popular uprising against the pro-American government. 1960 - after José Maria Velasco was elected president of Ecuador and refused to comply with US demands to break off relations with Cuba, the Americans carried out several military operations and organized a coup. 1960 - US troops enter Guatemala to prevent the removal of a US puppet from power. 1965-1973 - military aggression against Vietnam. 1966 - Guatemala. ... US troops entered the country, massacres of Indians were arranged, who were considered potential rebels. 1966 - military assistance to the pro-American governments of Indonesia and the Philippines. ... (60,000 people were arrested for political reasons, 88 torture specialists officially worked under the government). 1971-1973 - bombing of Laos. 1972 - Nicaragua. American troops are brought in to support the government, beneficial to Washington. 1983 - military intervention in Grenada, about 2 thousand marines. 1986 - attack on Libya. Bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. 1988 - US invasion of Honduras 1988 - The USS Vincennes, which was in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian plane with 290 passengers on board, including 57 children. 1989 - US troops quell riots in the Virgin Islands. 1991 - large-scale military action against Iraq 1992-1994 - occupation of Somalia. Armed violence against civilians, killings of civilians. 1998 - Sudan. The Americans destroy a pharmaceutical plant with missiles, claiming that it produces nerve gas. 1999 - ignoring the norms of international law, bypassing the UN and the Security Council, the United States launched a 78-day air bombardment campaign by NATO forces against the sovereign state of Yugoslavia. 2001 - invasion of Afghanistan. 2003 - bombing of Iraq. 2011 - Libya. 2014 Syria US and allied invasion of Syria 2015 Yemen US missile strikes on Yemeni Houthi rebel positions and active support for the intervention of Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen 2015 Cameroon US military operation in Cameroon 2015 Libya Second intervention in Libya .......and so on and so on and so on. Might mention estimated $25billion on arming Ukraine to fight Russia.
    2
  5832. The world is re-aligning and it is foolish to prevent it. Under Trump the US will stop being the world's self-appointed policeman and other countries can decide for themselves whether to form trade alliances with it or not. There's nothing special about being "West" any more.
    2
  5833.  @buddy1155  Whose coast?
    2
  5834.  @nickd.6365  Lies were undoubtedly told - or overly optimistic predictions at the very least. This does not alter the fact that in the long run Britain outside Europe will survive better. Escaping from such travesties as the ECHR - and eventually NATO (along with the US) will ensure peace and prosperity for these islands while Europe plunges into chaos.
    2
  5835.  @upnorth2421  We are not poor yet. The race is now on to see if a united Britain or a chaotic EU can better survive the severe challenges the next few decades will undoubtedly throw our way.
    2
  5836.  @michaeldunham3385  Nobody but the most senior people on either side has any idea of the casualty figures, and even then they only know their own.
    2
  5837.  @luisekjeldsen1515  They know the losses experienced in their immediate vicinity, but they do not know the total or the number of losses experienced by the enemy. All these figures are going to be very high, but to suggest a ratio of 7 to1 is pure silliness.
    2
  5838. That would be the Republican Party. Have you watched any unedited coverage of the Republican Convention by any chance?
    2
  5839. Rob Reeves You are obviously very intelligent. Can I come round your house and sell you a gold brick?
    2
  5840. Yes he should. Then we can find out what he's on and hopefully get some for ourselves.
    2
  5841.  @mickreaddin4979  Untrue. More than 70% of those dying in the UK are fully vaccinated. (It's because they're mostly old and so far gone vaccines do nothing to help.)
    2
  5842. What "global community"? No such animal.
    2
  5843. This war is a chronicle of ineptitude and miscalculation by Western warmongers. They have brought us to the brink of extinction.
    2
  5844.  @aidanknox122  It's a question of degree, isn't it? Shutting down IVF clinics doesn't really compare with constant rocket attacks on civilians, for example. And Israel is neither religious nor ethno-centric. These sort of people are very much in the minority, whereas they are the majority in many Muslim countries - or at least under the thumbs of their religious leaders so much that it appears so. I find Khan deeply offensive on many counts. He has certainly had contact with extreme Islamists and his brand of Socialism combines the very worst of far-left ideology with the idiocy of wokeness. As for LGBTQ rights my personal jury is out on that one. He might be sincere but on the other hand his support could be purely strategic.
    2
  5845. It works both ways. The protestors believed that the Democrats had committed treason by rigging the election, thereby overthrowing the rightful leader and the rightful government.
    2
  5846. I'm old enough to remember the Common Market and how General de Gaulle tried to keep us out of it. It was never intended to be a world political force - just a sensible economic partnership. Now the overweening ambitions of its bureaucratic aristocracy have led us to the brink of nuclear war, and reduced its poorer members to near bankruptcy. Bleat on as much as you like about the insanity of Brexit, and the urgent need to rejoin, history is against you. The EU is an experiment doomed to fail, perhaps even sooner than you may think.
    2
  5847. Probably equipment donated to Ukraine and sold on by Ukrainian crooks.
    2
  5848. The mask obsession is totally psychotic. It goes beyond covid. These weaklings think they are conquering death.
    2
  5849.  @fred166  Trump's four years were the longest period in modern history in which America was not engaged in war. Unlike many, he does not see war as being good for business. So there.
    2
  5850. Wise man.
    2
  5851. Would you?
    2
  5852.  @philipcovell3272  The object of the SMO has been to destroy Ukraine's NATO-subsidised army on Ukrainian soil. The capture of towns and territories is largely irrelevant. All Russia really wants is Donbass and Crimea, although now Kherson to the east of the Dnieper may be needed to protect Crimea from invasion. Actual re-distribution of former Ukrainian territories will depend upon the degree of Russia's success in the field.
    2
  5853.  @dpelpal  I think the Moskva was a bit of a setback - even though it was old and not really built for modern navy tactics! As for the rest - as can been seen from history and the current battle in Bakhmut the Russians are notoriously profligate with both men and equipment. We tend to look at their behaviour through Western eyes, but while Western armies tend to try to minimise casualties and losses, the Russians don't care as much. They keep all their old equipment and throw it in to battle when needed, as they do their often ill-equipped and poorly trained soldiery. It's just the way they are. They were certainly far less bothered about leaving their stuff behind than any Western army would have been. To them an army is blotting paper as much as it is a fighting force.
    2
  5854.  @stonem0013  I am merely trying to present a balanced view. Certainly though, a win for Russia is likelier in the short-term, and would end the carnage - something surely to be much desired?
    2
  5855.  @colleenpeck6347  Then why has he said he is only putting the sanctions off for a month? Get real. It's entirely clear that Trump is using the threat of tariffs to get what he wants - and he's succeeding.
    2
  5856. Can Sky News Australia not broadcast the entire video sequence? I suppose you realise that this channel is now watched by conservatives from all over the English-speaking world as one of the very few MSM outlets to have escaped the curse of wokeness. I saw the whole thing, and it was a revelation.
    2
  5857. If you're American you are guilty of supporting wars which have killed millions - including this one.
    2
  5858. I am genuinely disgusted by this vindictive attitude. I generally look upon fulminations of this channel with a kind of amused contempt, but that it should appear to support the incarceration of this foolish woman and then call for more sacrificial victims to be dragged before the courts simply highlights the compete political inadequacy of the left in this country. You are treading a dangerous path. It is quite clear by now that the social media posts which sparked these riots came from foreign sources, which cleverly seized upon the very genuine and understandable fear and resentment simmering beneath the surface of our society over the consequences of mass immigration. By revelling in the consequences of this strategy you are playing into the hands of people who are at least a hundred times cleverer than you are.
    2
  5859.  @chrissouthgate4554  This is ridiculous. Her views are shared by many, and although she may have expressed them rather forcefully there is no possibly way in which they could have influenced any of the rioters to take the action they did.
    2
  5860.  @jmas1219  Free speech IS an absolute concept. The law is wrong in this instance and protesting against unjust and wrong laws is the duty of all free-thinking individuals. Your view paves the path to genuine fascism - not the silly version you silly people so often accuse people like me of promulgating.
    2
  5861.  @mikethespike7579  Russia is merely protecting existing interests. That is not expansionism. Ukraine was offered the opportunity to grant regional autonomy to the disputed regions, but refused because Western agencies were still insisting on taking over the mineral resources there. It's NATO and EU expansionism which has caused this war, not Russia's reaction to it.
    2
  5862. Nothing could make me happier that I somewhat reluctantly support Brexit than to realise that, as I suspected, the EU is not a mere trading bloc, but a would-be imperial power. This will not end well.
    2
  5863. Russia wiĺl win and Western hegemony will end forever. (Those tiny bits of land are sitting on around $13triĺlon of mineral riches, by the way.)
    2
  5864.  @janstapaj9689  No treaty lasts forever and 30 years is pretty good going. Circumstances change and treaties no longer fit the new situation. That is what has happened here.
    2
  5865.  @janstapaj9689  I don't think the Afghanis tried to invade Russia, did they?
    2
  5866. America has already doled out more that $50 billion to Ukraine and it's not showing the quick return they anticipated. This visit is for reassurance only. The US will be doing the dirty on Zelensky before the year is out.
    2
  5867. @adrianocelentano3997 Your faith in the Ukrainian democratic process is truly touching.
    2
  5868. Meanwhile his fellow prisoner at Belmarsh, Tommy Robinson, has just been arrested in Canada.
    2
  5869.  @Paul-pf6rm  Yes. Charges are unclear. He was arrested yesterday evening after giving a talk in Calgary on freedom of speech.
    2
  5870.  @Hooyahfish  On paper.
    2
  5871. Can it really be true that Trudeau is the natural son of Fidel Castro? Apple? Tree?
    2
  5872. I agree it's VERY dangerous to have a US President committed to achieving world peace by negotiation.
    2
  5873. They look more like adolescents to me.
    2
  5874. Keir Starmer is a dangerous buffoon.
    2
  5875. The Nigel Farage we see on our screens today is of course not the Nigel Farage who once lead UKIP. That man died ten years ago and has now been replaced by a KGB agent with facial surgery. Tommy Robinson does not exist at all. He is a hologram. I know this is true because a man down the pub told me so.
    2
  5876.  @almac9203  At the same time Russia has every reason to feel discomfited, especially since it was promised after the Soviet collapse that NATO would not extend further East. The idea the Ukraine might also join (which seemed an increasing possibility) was a bit too much for Russia to take. Understandably so perhaps.
    2
  5877. A despicable person and a gargoyle who is just about the only defence we have against the entire collapse of Western civilisation. God works in mysterious ways
    2
  5878. Another brilliant appointment by Trump. The FDA has for far too long been more or less a commercial arm of the pharmaceutical and food processing industries. This time Trump really will be clearing the swamp, and RFK Jr is just the man to get to work on that particular fetid corner.
    2
  5879. This is such nonsense! He waved the threat of tariffs and got what he wanted!
    2
  5880. A newly produced single Patriot battery costs over $1 billion, with $400 million for the system and $690 million for the missiles in a battery. Each unit takes 90 highly-trained personnel to operate and it takes up to four month to train them. By the time the batteries arrive and are set up and running, the blitz could be over. In the meantime Shahed 136 drones cost £20,000 apiece. If Patriots can be calibrated not to respond to drones and only to high-speed missiles, then all Russia has to do is flood the skies with unarmed decoy missiles (cost unknown. Without warhead probably around $1 million) to not only drastically deplete the Patriot systems, but also to allow their sites to be identified for attack by immediately subsequent armed missiles. Result: a shitload of money going up in flames and Russia gaining the advantage.
    2
  5881. Starmer is a disaster, both at home and abroad. America and Europe are playing him for the buffoon that he is. Comparing him with Putin is like comparing a poodle with a ravening lion.
    2
  5882. The BBC has been putting out harmful health misinformation for years.
    2
  5883.  @dioghaltasfoirneartach7258  Why? They can't hold it. They can hold Crimea and Donbass though, because they have large Russian populations.
    2
  5884.  @glintongordon6811  Agreed.
    2
  5885.  @st-ex8506  Obviously he encouraged the separatist movement, and did so very effectively. Ukraine then made the mistake of going in hard with the pathologically anti-Russian Azov's etc and hardened their resolve. Things had quietened down slightly since 2017 or thereabouts, but obviously Ukraine was planning to step up the war which is why Putin decided to get in first.
    2
  5886.  DVTX Media  I was obviously talking about the actual WORDING you muppet!
    2
  5887.  @jasondevon481  But the WORDS man, the WORDS! Simple concise and to the point.
    2
  5888. I'd love to see it on X with Musk as the moderator.
    2
  5889. The Soviet Union collapsed more than thirty years ago. Why are we living in the past?
    2
  5890.  @HenriHattar  You're not making any sense. Ukraine invaded separatist Donbass in 2014. Around 14,000 people were killed, most in the first couple of years. There was a sort of peace treaty agreed in 2016 but instead of talking things through Ukraine built a huge army, paid for by NATO.
    2
  5891.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  What question haven't I answered? As far as Ukraine is concerned it was never a country until Russia made it one, and that was only to get an extra seat on the UN. You can't create a country like that, or even by signing a bit of paper decades later. There are more than eight million Russians living in Ukraine as it is today, mostly in Crimea and in the industrial cities of Donbass. They have rights and Russia cannot be blamed for resenting seeing all the billions of roubles it has invested and the sweat of its citizens abused by a gang of crooks in KIev.
    2
  5892.  @andrew30m  What exactly is he threatening? Mob bosses don't usually appeal to the decency and honesty of people they are trying to persuade, I think. Which is what Trump is doing here.
    2
  5893. Climate change is a natural cyclic process. Man-made carbon emissions have little impact other than perhaps to add to the thermostatic mechanisms in the atmosphere which regulate what proportion of heat reflected from the earth's surface is reflected back again, as opposed to the proportion which passes into space. The anthropogenic global warming(AGW) fallacy has arisen due to an initial misunderstanding of proxy data obtained from ice cores. These show a correlation between peaks and troughs of surface heat and atmospheric carbon density over long periods of time. It was claimed, wrongly and egregiously, that temperature rises follow atmospheric carbon rises. This is not the case. The latter follow on from the former even more often, but neither is the cause or the effect of the other. They are simply both symptomatic of the natural cyclic process mentioned above. The error has been greatly compounded by a rigid adherence to the theories of a Swedish scientist called Arrhenius who in 1906 proposed that increased atmospheric carbon does, in fact, cause a direct increase in surface temperature. This theory is based upon experiments carried out more than a hundred years ago. They were purely laboratory experiments and conducted with no substantial reference to cosmological data; a fact which must call their conclusions into question. How was that for you?
    2
  5894.  Graham Cook  I bet you believe in unicorns and Santa too.
    2
  5895. Sounds like you're paving away for the inevitable stolen election.
    2
  5896. @Eco Watchmen You are as stupid and conceited as you are gullible.
    2
  5897. Washington warmongers need the Russian threat to justify their very existence. Without it they go bust. Putin knows that the Soviet Union collapsed partly due to being over-extended. He has even written essays and articles on the subject. He will not make the same mistake as his predecessors. This woman is just trotting out a script. All she is thinking about is her damned career prospects.
    2
  5898. Warmongering Yanks are going to lose this wicked proxy conflict - no matter how much they throw at it.
    2
  5899.  @callmethreeone  Russia has held back, believe me.
    2
  5900.  @Stonemonkie1  Why not?Anyway he doesn't talk about the virus itself, just the way sanctimonious media hacks treat it and use it to attack him. Calling the term "Kung Flu" racist is just plain daft.
    2
  5901. There are crimes against civilians on BOTH sides. We must not forget that.
    2
  5902.  @silafaupaulmeredith7251  I don't think so. Apart from the Western nations, many other countries are merely paying lip service. Many hope that Russia will win the day and thus hasten the end of American hegemony. Russia is far from isolated and trading happily with other nations, including both China and India.
    2
  5903. RussCRE 187 The truth is often merely what they are told.
    2
  5904. Things actually seem to be going pretty much to plan for Putin. He's well on his way to outlasting the Ukrainians and the West's much-vaunted promises of support are not quite what they seem in many respects. They come nowhere near to the tens of billions of $$$ invested so far.
    2
  5905. The whole speech is quite astonishingly good. Go to RT for want of anywhere else. Contrasted with Greta Thunburg's effort, as well presented and professional as it was, Trump is really a grown-up talking to children.
    2
  5906. The BBC is utter crap.
    2
  5907. Once again computer modelling has failed. There is something seriously wrong with the way we rely on computerised predictions - from global warming to the spread of Covid 19 and now the creation of this algorithm it is clear that we do not fully grasp the technicalities of the monster we have created. Computers can design battleships - but they cannot predict outcomes it seems.
    2
  5908.  @applesandpairs1564  Who can say?
    2
  5909.  @applesandpairs1564  Absolutely not. No way.
    2
  5910.  @applesandpairs1564  Not the Abrams specifically. They seem to have had very little impact.
    2
  5911. No it's 2024. Wake up.
    2
  5912.  @sciencefliestothemoon2305  A hell of a lot of people are getting their faces coughed on then Seriously though, are you saying that all these people have only tested positive because of temporary infection from another party?
    2
  5913.  @sciencefliestothemoon2305  And a good thing too. We need more people developing long-term immunity at the cost of a few sniffles.
    2
  5914. We already are.
    2
  5915. Restore Minsk accords for a start.
    2
  5916. Surely this week must be one of the worst in CNN's political career? Or what's left of it.
    2
  5917.  @kingflynxi9420  No they bloody don't.
    2
  5918. All politicians lie. Trump lies magnificently and shamelessly and thereby spreads great confusion among his enemies - including Channel4!
    2
  5919. Not in the slightest. He is a practical man who gains pleasure from power, not from inflicting pain.
    2
  5920. I cannot understand why Russia's police action in Ukraine is interpreted as some sort of imperialist aggression. As far as I can see the UK has nothing Russia could possibly want - or nothing which we couldn't swap for some of their cheap gas. So why the sabre rattling and the paranoia? Can't we forget all this cold war nonsense and just TALK???
    2
  5921. Second only to the billions made from peddling a treatment for a man-made disease which is both ineffective and life-threatening.
    2
  5922. Your obsession with the "far right" is just as disruptive as anything RT might say. It merely confirms the entirely justifiable working class resentment of the fact that they are considered to be ignorant by the ruling classes, and incapable of forming their own opinions without some kind of tuition.
    2
  5923. It woke up.
    2
  5924.  @alancane1482  Look up his essay on Ukraine/Russian relations published shortly before the invasion.
    2
  5925. They did it in Mariopol too these heroes
    2
  5926. Trump won in 2020 too. Twenty million votes were chucked into the pool to get rid of him - this time round though his victory was too big to rig.
    2
  5927. These texts don't come from racists - they are from angry lefties causing trouble.
    2
  5928. It's not all that deluded, surely? Labour owes its current success to the simple fact that it is not the Conservative Party. I doubt very much that people other than Party activists have much of an idea of what its policies actually are. Reform, on the other hand, has very clear policies: stopping immigration and deregulation being prominent among them. They got a substantial percentage of the votes this time around and once people begin to believe their votes won't be wasted, we can surely expect that percentage to increase sufficiently for Reform to overthrow whatever Labour or Lib/Dem Tory substitute has been lucky enough to get in this time around.
    2
  5929. And Labour only exists to steal from the rich?
    2
  5930. I expect he is fully aware of the immense amount of damage this man could cause to Britain - and indeed to the world in general -if he is allowed to occupy this position of power for very much longer.
    2
  5931.  @jom1727  Why? Geographical proximity is entirely irrelevant.
    2
  5932. You've got to laugh, otherwise you'd cry.
    2
  5933. These children have clearly been removed from a war zone for their own safety. What's wrong with that? Most are almost certainly of Russian heritage and Ukrainian in name only. To try to disguise what is a very sensible measure as some kind of sinister plot is cheap propaganda at its worst.
    2
  5934. It's the Ukrainians who have been shooting up the humanitarian corridors. They need as many civilians as possible to stay in order to inhibit an all-out Russian attack. The Western narrative is false. I have seen several videos of Russian troops rescuing civilians imprisoned by the Ukrainians in bomb shelters and cellars - for weeks on end in some cases.
    2
  5935. Russia doesn't want all of Ukraine - just Donbass. And advances there are substantial, hence the Kursk diversion.
    2
  5936. No longer correct. As from September Reform UK is member-owned, not shareholder-owned.
    2
  5937. God.! British journalists are such a bunch of whining children! Do they give each other points for calling out the most trivial questions?
    2
  5938. NATO has had its day. It ceased to have a true function after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has become little more than a showcase for the arms industry and a vehicle for American commercial colonisation. The Trump administration, unique in post-war US administrations, does not see a condition of permanent war as essential to its business model. Hopefully he will have time to overcome generations of prejudice and begin to form ties of trade and mutual interest with the Russian Federation - something which should have happened thirty years ago.
    2
  5939. On the contrary the drones can be made to fly high. They have been used to tempt fighter planes to fly higher and so make them easier to hit with ground to air missiles.
    2
  5940. People wear masks because they have subconsciously convinced themselves that doing so will stop them from dying. Weak-minded people will go on wearing them long after covid has ceased to be a threat. They will be the last visible sign of the madness which swept the world.
    2
  5941. Thank God there are some legal representative left in America who are capable of halting the rot in the judicial system. SCOTUS is standing up for liberty, freedom and justice in the face of political corruption.
    2
  5942.  @fastfreddy19641  There's a minority school of thought which suggests that new variants actually explode into prominence as a reaction to lockdowns. It certainly makes sense to me.
    2
  5943. He does.
    2
  5944. Conservatives, like Covid, are good at producing new variants. It ain't over yet.
    2
  5945. Are you really a pensioner on pension credit? I am told that no-one actually receiving a proper state pension can qualify for pension credit.
    2
  5946.  @rafd3593  Don't be so silly.
    2
  5947. Sam Vince Not it will stop us starving to death.
    2
  5948. This could well have been an accident - and if not, who knows what this "aid convoy" was carrying?
    2
  5949. The virus is running through anyway. The restrictions do very little indeed to prevent it. Take comfort though; the pandemic is following the usual pattern of such events. It has probably caused the deaths of most of those who are vulnerable and herd immunity is rapidly approaching. It may even be here already.
    2
  5950.  @rocketscience4516  You've nailed it! Is it so dysfunctional though? It saves me going out in the rain.
    2
  5951.  @debeichmann236  Can you cite the specific legislation?
    2
  5952. Why the assumption that Russia wait until Spring? They could launch new offensives within days.
    2
  5953. Nazi behaviour? Both sides have been guilty of obscene acts - and to pretend otherwise is foolish. As to the reasons for the war they are the same reasons which start most wars - a battle over resources; in this case the vast mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine, added to considerably by the recent discovery of a half-million tonne deposit of lithium near Mariupol. I am astonished that Professor Wilson seems to have lost all objectivity in his assessment of this conflict. One expects this sort of thing from brainwashed adolescents with their talk of "orcs" and "Putler" but not from an academic with access to the facts.
    2
  5954. The Russians will fall back The Western media will be ecstatic Thousands of Ukrainians will die. The Russians will then advance again. This will continue until the West stops resupplying Ukraine. The sooner this happens, the better.
    2
  5955. A very good plan!
    2
  5956. No chance.
    2
  5957. Putin is playing chess while the West (and Ukraine) think it's American football.
    2
  5958. Too scared.
    2
  5959. Why inject children when their immune systems can deal with covid very adequately on their own?
    2
  5960.  @Rene-pn4kb  You've got me mixed up with someone else on this thread. I never referred to Macron as "little Napoleon". Nor did I use WTF. I dislike these computerspeak acronyms.
    2
  5961.  @Rene-pn4kb  Fully accepted. I've done similar things myself!
    2
  5962.  @Elkarlo77  And.....?
    2
  5963. As in Ukraine, NATO and its puppet have failed to implement peace proposals. As in Ukraine, American self-aggrandisement lies at the root of violence and bloodshed.
    2
  5964. Eric Bray Seventh grade is about it. The real science is far, far more complex. When world economies are being driven by junk science aimed at children and the witless we are in real, real trouble.
    2
  5965.  @herringfly  Irony it is! And yes, they have.
    2
  5966. We owe nothing to Ukraine. And Russia presents no threat to this country as long as we immediately stop supporting war-addicted US politicians.
    2
  5967.  @stephenoneill245  Well you know what they say about economists - line them up head to toe from the equator to the North Pole and they'll still all point in different directions.
    2
  5968. MI5 tried to recruit Tommy Robinson back in the early days. He turned them down and has never been forgiven for it. His charisma and leadership qualities present a real threat to the deep state and they will do anything to silence him.
    2
  5969. TDS does seem incurable. I suspect poor relationships with fathers could be an underlying cause.
    2
  5970. Badenoch is a real star. With any luck she will become Britain's Black Thatcher.
    2
  5971.  @JJRM8  Look it up on the Internet. I live in Saffron Walden.
    2
  5972. We should ensure that ALL avatars are Black or Brown. There is no place for white supremacy in the metaverse.
    2
  5973. Of course it isn't. These mangrove forests have been subject to tidal waves and cyclones for thousands of years. If the sea level is rising there why isn't rising on the other side of the Bay of Bengal?
    2
  5974.  @jonathangeorge787  It just astonishes me that all locations where evidence of rising sea levels is cited have other, localised explanations for the "rise." They are in fact sinking because of ground conditions, or being flooded by changes in river systems at the deltas of which they are situated. If oceans were rising, they would rise at a constant level all over the world.
    2
  5975. DieFlabbergast Surely the whole concept of a "leader" is contrary to modern thinking? The Labour Party should be run by a committee. Or a camel - a camel being a horse designed by a committee.
    2
  5976.  @solskjaer1195  He said with not from. Big difference.
    2
  5977.  @shahzadakram4667  Well, it's not exactly a high bar on this channel, is it?
    2
  5978.  @normanlazarus1836  For "Internationally recognised" read : decided by the American Empire.
    2
  5979.  @johnkitching2248  No. People dying of other diseases neglected due to the obsession with covid.
    2
  5980. @Tom They were caught up in the panic too. Unfortunately the GP system has more or less collapsed, otherwise many of the cases could have been treated at home.
    2
  5981. @Tom By GPs with Ivermectin. Or anything likely to reduce symptoms, such as analgesics and antipyretics. Anything they would have got in hospital but NOT intubation, which killed many in the early days.
    2
  5982. But how many Ukrainians are actually going to be left over?
    2
  5983.  @stoufer2000  Hi Stouf! You haven't seen the video then? Personally I think they weren't ballots at all but just Christmas cards which the operators were naughtily using Dominion machines to put addresses on. Nothing to see here. Move on. Move on!
    2
  5984.  Praxis Alba  I rebut the extent of global warming and the extent of humankind's role in producing it -as do a great many others. I do not rebut Covid 19 but the facts are as I have stated them. You can continual in a state of denial as long as you wish, but it won't alter the facts as they exist.
    2
  5985. Wasn't this in Arizona in 2020?
    2
  5986. ​ @garethhanby  I did include it. These figures are from Macrotrends and are admittedly pretty broad. The 1% increase doesn't seem enough, considering the Covid spike in the Spring. They are for the total UK. ONS splits up into countries and they estimate the total number of deaths in England and Wales so far this year as 567,199. There were 530,841 in 2019 and 541,589 in 2018. So in actual terms the percentage increase in deaths is nothing like the 20% you cite. I think the idea of excess deaths comes from a notion of how things ought to be as compared with how they are. All kinds of things are factored in - population, age range etc etc to arrive at these figures. In order to keep things in perspective numskulls like myself have to ignore these somewhat esoteric manipulations and stick to the idea of actual numbers of dead people involved.
    2
  5987. Putin will stop when he gets what he wants and what he has asked for - and that won't be long now, the way things are going.
    2
  5988. It's not a question of "surrender". It's a question of making good the enormous damage done by Trump's predecessors in fuelling a needless war.
    2
  5989. Why are you now picturing Trump with his bandage on the wrong ear? That's twice now.
    2
  5990. Sky News Australia is about the best mainstream outlet in the Western world.
    2
  5991. @ I cannot take seriously anyone who cannot review the situation in Ukraine without constantly harking back to the events leading up to World War II.
    2
  5992. @ But the UN is becoming increasingly irrelevant, as is NATO. Saying something is so doesn't make it so. Placing the new country of Ukraine on the same geographical footprint as the former SSR of Ukraine was a huge mistake. The SSR was NOT a country, as such. It was an administrative unit of the Soviet Union.. Historically , ethnically and economically Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are parts of Russia.
    2
  5993.  @TheSquidUK  That's a very kind offer, but unfortunately I don't use other platforms, being somewhat behind the times with technology. I do, however, actually have an X account and a Facebook account which I don't use. It would be a test of my ingenuity if you were to fire a first salvo on either of these and I will try to pick it up and respond.
    2
  5994.  @toi_techno  Meanwhile spendthrift America going bust.
    2
  5995.  @jasonhaven7170  Of course Reform cares. A genuine concern about the future of this country is the basis of its entire ethos.
    2
  5996.  @jasonhaven7170  As a political entity - not as a collection of complainers.
    2
  5997. Biden's budget is going to increase the national debt to 30 trillion, experts say. What a class act he is!
    2
  5998. "This is not science it is advocacy." Coral growth is cyclic and these "scientists" are cherry picking sections of growth cycles to bolster the claims of the climate crisis religion.
    2
  5999.  @PaulK-ve1pu  I would maintain that if you are pregnant you are in charge of two bodies - your own and the child's. I agree, however, that these decisions are difficult for men to have a say in. What I do not agree with is that the right to have an abortion should be hailed as some great victory for feminist ideals, and a cause for celebration.
    2
  6000. Its end as the world's dominant currency is very near.
    2
  6001.  @caterthun4853  The bubble is yours. Such losses of friends and acquaintances are in no way exceptional without covid - especially if you are of a certain age. As to your young neighbour he is indeed unfortunate - but he is a rarity. As with hospitalisations and deaths the older you are the more chance there is that you will suffer worse and longer. Shit happens. He could have broken his leg playing football and suffered similar inconvenience.
    2
  6002.  @atomiccritter6492  What's sensible about injecting children with a drug they don't need when it's long term effects are not known?
    2
  6003.  @TheMixCurator  As I said, shit happens and in varying degrees of unpleasantness. Bad things happened before covid and they will happen after it has taken its place on the roll-call of the many affliction human flesh is heir to. There is nothing repugnant or uncaring about this; it is merely a sober assessment of the facts
    2
  6004.  @Ghengiskhansmum  You have misunderstood both me and the term "herd immunity." It occurs in nature but often at huge cost. Helping it along with medical assistance doesn't alter the fact that herd immunity is what we are trying to achieve.
    2
  6005.  @lazytitan9987  I give up too. We'll just have to agree to differ and wait until all this over and the books are written to find out who was right - if there is ever a consensus, that is. Or indeed, if it's ever over. Your maths are sound but I believe it is necessary for a random factor to be introduced to actually give variant b the opportunity to find sufficient hosts to transmit to. But I could be wrong. It's been kinda fun anyway Thanks.
    2
  6006.  @sonyb8017  You can buy it in the US at $3,75 a 100.
    2
  6007.  @sellersbonus  And they were hostile because he wouldn't get out of the car.
    2
  6008. Children don't suffer with covid because the immune systems in their noses and throats deals with it before it gets to their lungs. Equally this means that they rarely pass it on to others. The way they have been treated is even more insane than the way the rest of us have been bullied by the virtue-signalling paranoia junkies who have made the pandemic several thousand times worse than it needed to be through their inept meddling. Teacher, leave those kids alone.
    2
  6009.  @gulaggreens296  It was 47! When he got back to base he ate a whole roast suckling pig with onions, drank three bottles of vodka and had sex with the entire chorus of the Kiev Opera Company.
    2
  6010.  @oleopathic  But there's very little MSM coverage. It seems to be based almost entirely on this rather shaky video. If it DID happen then it is such a major story that I would expect everyone to be all over it. I really dunno what to think.
    2
  6011. Yup. The Chinese will be one step closer to world domination and the US will once again start bombing civilians in the Middle East. You will have to wear a facemask for the rest of your life and your every move will be monitored by an app on your phone, while any expression of discontent will result in the loss of your credit rating and possible imprisonment. Sounds like heaven.
    2
  6012.  @ionnanskilliorus  It had little choice.
    2
  6013.  @APW554  It was part of Russia long before the coming of the Soviet Union. Russia fully accepts it is no longer an empire, but is not prepared to surrender areas in which it has a long-standing economic and historical relationship to another empire - the American one.
    2
  6014.  @anastasiiaf8311  Then why are you all speaking Russian? And why in the last census did so many city dwellers identify themselves as ethnic Russian? In the country as a whole over 17% said they were Russian - that's over eight million people.
    2
  6015.  @strictlysport3624  I don't suppose anyone knows. The 6,500 figure is what comes up when you Google it. Other estimates put the number at less than a thousand. Wars are full of lies.
    2
  6016.  @Rjsjrjsjrjsj  It does seem unlikely - but I Googled the 2021 estimate and got this: "Altogether the Armed Forces of Ukraine included about 780,000 personnel, 6,500 tanks, about 7,000 combat armored vehicles, 1,500 combat aircraft, and more than 350 ships." The simple answer is no-one outside of the top military in Ukraine actually knows. NATO is accused of paying huge sums to rebuild the Ukrainian army post 2014, even so this seems a huge number, as does the figure of 600,000 new personnel constantly put forward by Col Douglas Macgregor. But you never know.
    2
  6017.  @timothykrause2327  That is entirely possible.
    2
  6018.  @seanlander9321  Who are we supposed to be defending ourselves against exactly?
    2
  6019.  @Joe-ey7cu  America and its NATO lapdogs, obviously.
    2
  6020.  @rogerphelps9939  An ordinary bloke driving round in his car showing bright new buildings rising up everywhere is a "propaganda video" ? Of course Russia can afford it. Donbass is worth trillions and trillions. A half million tonne lithium deposit was discovered in Mariupol only a few years ago. Some say it was this which sparked the war.
    2
  6021.  @PeterSedesse  Why do you have to believe such nonsense? The Video from Mariupol 2024 compilation shows building after building. And there is a tour of a typical apartment in another video. What possible propaganda advantage would there be in faking something like this?
    2
  6022. Me too. The more people who get it the quicker we get herd immunity and its all over.
    2
  6023.  Khadija Aamir  A common error. Antibodies diminish, as they do with all infections (otherwise our our bodies would be packed tight with them!) but generally T cells take over. They memorise the genetic code of an invading pathogen and if it returns they recognise it and immediately reproduce in vast numbers to go out and very efficiently fend off the new intrusion. They actually convince the viruses to commit suicide, which is rather amazing. It has been found, for instance, that those who caught Covid 19's predecessor, SARS-Cov-1, back in 2003, were still immune to it 17 years later. It will be the same for SARS-Cov-2 I'm sure. Don't believe what you read in the papers -especially when it sounds scary!
    2
  6024. Hurrah! Everyone was happy until these horrible people came along. We had horses instead of cars and candles instead of electric light and lived in proper houses, not apartment blocks with noisy, expensive central heating. We crossed the seas in sailing ships instead of aircraft polluting all over the place. We gathered around the fireside and all sang songs together. We didn't play Fortnite on our cellphones. My parrot has just died due to Climate Change, and I am very angry about this. I think these people should be punished. Bernie 2020 Yaaay!
    2
  6025.  @rocketscience4516  So democracy falls before the moral indignation of a minority then? In this instance it has worked out quite well, but it does set an uncomfortable precedent.
    2
  6026.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Now you've gone and spoiled it. I only have reservations about vaccines.
    2
  6027.  @Bob-us9di  What a great service she did then! One of my ghastliest childhood memories is being forced to drink a third of a pint of lukewarm milk at around 10am.
    2
  6028.  @Bob-us9di  She did us a favour. One of my worst childhood memories is being forced to drink a third of a pint of lukewarm milk in the middle of the morning!
    2
  6029. America has clearly taught Zelensky the advantages of getting foreigners to fight and die on one's behalf.
    2
  6030. Food and medical supplies are being delivered to the city in large quantities - by the Russians
    2
  6031. An interesting fact is that the ICC prosecutor who is taking Putin to court, Karim Ahmad Khan, is the brother of Imran Ahmad Khan, a convicted paedophile and former Conservative MP. This is probably irrelevant, but it gives a certain grotesque symmetry to the allegations against Putin, who has done nothing than remove children from war zones, and from the internationally notorious hell-holes which are Ukraine's orphanages and "care homes."
    2
  6032. These schoolbook economics take no account at all of black market activity - a permanent and integrated element in Russian financial affairs. More goes on off the books than on them. Russia can sell all the gas and oil it wants to China, India and beyond -and do it through reciprocated "money off" deals that are beyond the understanding of we buttoned-up. law-abiding Western shopkeepers. Inflation in Russia is running at around the same as in Europe, but is expected to drop to 5% within a few months. The supermarket shelves are fuller than in the UK and employment is at a virtually all-time high. It looks to me as though Russia is winning the economic war as well as the shooting war in Ukraine.
    2
  6033. Russia has won. Time to stop NOW and end the killing - on both sides.
    2
  6034. Do you not think have allies on the other sides of the borders might help?
    2
  6035. @user-xb2jx9zx1k I'm fully aware that many Ukrainians are bi-lingual. What's your point?
    2
  6036. And then Russia steps up the ante, possibly going nuclear. Maybe not such a good idea.
    2
  6037.  @kobalov1  We will have to see. It is perfectly possible that Putin has indeed underestimated the amount of hardware Ukraine will get, and of what type. However it does seem likely that the nature of the war will change soon. Putin is likely to retire into Donbass and defend it. In order to retake it Ukraine will have to be the aggressors and restrictions on the supply of aggressive rather than defensive weaponry will have to be lifted. Putin has used his airforce and missile capability very little. He can use it and existing armour to defend his front while bombarding Ukraine attacks from the air and with missiles, some of which can of course be launched from the sea. He never wanted Ukraine, I don't think. He just wants Donbass and Crimea and a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO. He might well still get all that.
    2
  6038. Or as a glib clown who led his country to utter ruin and the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.
    2
  6039.  @mrkeithmorgan1  Even a week is a long time in politics!
    2
  6040.  @Doomskay83  Have you heard of gain of function research?
    2
  6041.  @brianconnelly-s5e  Sure. He used them to get into Parliament. The deal is that he will now protect their interests. An MP is a representative, not some kind of community cheerleader.
    2
  6042. If the working class need a leader from a truly working-class background a certain Stephen Yaxley-Lennon comes immediately to mind
    2
  6043.  @weswheel4834  No. To avoid police persecution. "Tommy Robinson" is a modern version of Robin Hood.
    2
  6044.  @johnpirie4804  Yup. That's what you call REAL working class!
    2
  6045.  @mayamelagia  He's doing what any normal working class guy would do if he came into a bob or two. He's one of us.
    2
  6046.  @mayamelagia  What grifting are you talking about? The guy gives his all for a cause which truly reflects the opinions and aspirations of very many patriotic British people - and gets persecuted for it. Why can't he have a holiday? I mean, he's not up to Starmer standards on freebies, is he?
    2
  6047. Frankly my dear, I couldn't give a damn. A great response to ALL leftie posturings.
    2
  6048. Of course postal voting leads to fraud - in the UK as well as the US. Electoral misbehaviour of all sorts is considered perfectly acceptable by certain sections of the community in both countries. They get away with it too.
    2
  6049.  @danieljwebb  Nobody know hoe common or uncommon because policing it is so difficult In the UK the effects are probably less than in the US. All signs are that the November presidential elections are going to be riddled with malpractices of all kinds. When you get people who believe the imposition of their world view on others outweighs all other considerations, then the niceties of democratic practice can be justifiably scorned.
    2
  6050.  @bonnie115  Two sorts of people (both beginning with M) both believe very strongly that imposing their world view on others outweighs all other considerations. Cheating to them is a praiseworthy activity. The very fact that postal voting leads to the possibility of fraud means that fraud will take place.
    2
  6051. Fraud is US elections is commonplace and long-established. They say that JFK would never had become President but for the occupants of the graveyards of Chicago. There is considerable and specific evidence of widespread fraud by Biden's team some indications of which are listed below Unfortunately the judicial system seems as corrupt and partisan as the voting system so the chances of Trump winning through are sadly very slim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation
    2
  6052. It's odd how states with the highest vaccination rates have the highest rates of infection right now though. It's also odd how the CDC reports that in America hospitalisations and deaths are much higher among the vaccinated, whereas in most European countries it's the other way around. Must be doing something right I guess.
    2
  6053. Time for Ukraine to surrender and accept the fact that Crimea and Donbass go back to Russia.
    2
  6054. Georges Prat We'd all rather get screwed than get killed I suppose. Been nice talking with you.
    2
  6055. Plenty of question marks over this one. It's even possible that it's not as bad as it looks, and the Russians might use it as an excuse for further attacks on civilian targets, notably Odessa.
    2
  6056.  @Millionairemedialie  Islam means "submission." Think about it.
    2
  6057.  @Millionairemedialie  YouTube is making it very difficult for me to answer. I'm trying to point out that until quite recently Christianity worked hand in hand with the State to help ensure stability and conformity of behaviour. It no longer has that kind of power and reach. Islam, however, does.
    2
  6058. Eeh by gum, that were a right rant there lad. Tis pity thou were't talkin bollocks! That'll larn 'im!
    2
  6059. He actually spends billions in grants to various causes through his Open Society Foundation.
    2
  6060. Of course it's fake. Everything about the election is fake. The decision has already been taken: Kamala Harris will be the new puppet of the US Deep State and all this fuss is just show and window-dressing.
    2
  6061. @SlurpentisCEO Something over 200 million.
    2
  6062.  @niftynige  I was waiting for answers like these! I was hoping someone would say they eat them, to make a change from potatoes!
    2
  6063. Just like Al Capone, huh?
    2
  6064. Nobody attacked it. It was a Ukrainian a defence missile missing is target. Where do yo think these missiles go when they miss?
    2
  6065. The BBC employs this fool. Have a heart.
    2
  6066. We thought we were getting a steak and kidney pie, hot from the oven. Instead we got a slice of soggy Sunblest.
    2
  6067.  @kassygendron3022  Stupid prizes?
    2
  6068. What kind of fantasy world are you living in?
    2
  6069. I fully expect that Trump and the American people will be cheated again. The crooks who have ruled the country for decades aren't going to give in that easily.
    2
  6070. Trump represents the freedom of the individual. That is high priority.
    2
  6071.  @timothykrause2327  A highly imaginative fantasy. Congratulations!
    2
  6072. Not that amazing. The balance of advantage and disadvantage is split fairly evenly.
    2
  6073. @@craigsteddy8331 No. Russians by ethnicity and heritage. There have never been many Ukrainians in Crimea. They are outnumbered by te original inhabitants the Tatars but most people are direct descendants of Russians who have located there over the years since Russia took it from the Ottomans in 1783.
    2
  6074. As opposed to insidiously imperialist regimes, such as America's?
    2
  6075.  @rafflesmaos  I have to disagree. Ever since the end of World War II America, through NATO in Europe and CIA infiltration in many parts of the world, has sought to undermine existing regimes in order to promote US interests, both in terms of acquiring access to natural resources and finding new markets for its products. This has led to many conflicts. All Russia has done since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been to seek to maintain its existing borders and interests - in the face of considerable pressures from the sources mentioned above.
    2
  6076. What border deal? Since so many black Americans are starting to desert the Democrat plantation they have to be replaced with grateful brown folks from foreign climes. That's all this about.
    2
  6077. War criminals are entitled to their point of view, I suppose.
    2
  6078. Why waste a missile on him? Putin could bribe him at a fraction of the cost.
    2
  6079.  @marijo1951  He has been elected by default. He does not represent the views or interests of the British public any more than Musk does.
    2
  6080.  @sporkafife  He's not very good at it, is he?
    2
  6081.  @DavidMoxham957  So what? Being the biggest error is no great recommendation.
    2
  6082. The fact remains that Putin has far more valid reasons for acting as he has than the US ever did for most of its own transgressions in recent decades. Furthermore, Biden up to his eyes in the corruption which is an integral feature of Ukrainian politics. This childish "good guy, bad guy" version of events is absurd.
    2
  6083. I think this guy used to be a professional soccer player in England. Could be wrong.
    2
  6084. No. Israel has offered power sharing to Arabs many times but Islamic nut-jobs have prevented it.
    2
  6085.  @marchughes2461  He never said anything like that. It was just viciously clever editing. Watch the whole press conference and you will see how it was done.
    2
  6086.  @slyesttrash6778  I'm am not in favour of anything other than a rapid end to this unnecessary suffering. We have to face reality. Although, as you rightly say, most countries have diverse populations, the situation in Crimea and Donbass has been drastically highlighted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent division of its resources between packs of greedy but clever gangsters. Who do you choose to exploit you? Oligarchs from Russia or oligarchs from Ukraine? If you find yourself suffering at the hands of one group, can you then fall into the arms of the other? In this instance, many of the Russians of Crimea and Donbass think they should and can. Do not imagine it is patriotism or love of democracy which prevents this from happening. It is greed - and American greed in particular. The present suffering of the people of Ukraine can only be resolved by the division of the country into a Russian-orientated sector in the southeast and a Western-orientated sector in the northwest. The sooner this happens the better.
    2
  6087.  @kaptinbarfbeerd1317  Thank you for this. The great tragedy is that the people of Ukraine, whatever their ethnicity or opinions, are caught up in a battle between Russia and America, and will suffer a great deal more than the inhabitants of either of these two countries.
    2
  6088. One can't help but having unworthy thoughts about his visit to Kiev. Johnson and Zelensky are a right pair of crooks!
    2
  6089. And these very efficient countries are now suffering unprecedented rates of excess deaths. There's a lesson there.
    2
  6090.  @MadSwede87  A number of studies have come to this inescapable conclusion. Analysis conducted by Eurostat found that excess mortality rates across the European Union rose by 19 per cent in December 2022, compared to the average number of deaths in the same period between 2016 and 2019. According to EuroMOMO, over 101,000 deaths were recorded in December 2022, compared to 109,000 recorded in 2020, when SARS-COV-2 was in high circulation in Europe. So, despite the fact that the number of deaths attributed to covid has dropped dramatically, excess deaths from other causes in December (and even now) are much higher than at any time in the past five years. If you actually are Swedish you will be pleased to learn that your country's excess death rate is only around 9% compared with , say, Germany where it has reached over 40% in recent weeks.
    2
  6091. Royalty provides a focus. It is actually priceless.
    2
  6092.  @chris6559  It's called strategy. TR is coming up in the world.
    2
  6093.  Julia Sutton  I don't believe you. Statistics from all countries show that over 90% of all Covid 19 deaths occur mainly among the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions. Deaths are down in most countries and so are hospitalisations. Many hospital wards set aside for Covid cases are empty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGUFfhIkA9E&t=668s
    2
  6094. Is America the most hypocritical country in the world or what?
    2
  6095. Ian Wilson No! I didn't know that. Does this mean the whole idea is scuppered? Just a minute ago someone was telling me that we only need to plant 380 million trees to absorb the 100 million tonnes of carbon we emit each year.Damn!
    2
  6096. Wishful thanking and absurd propaganda- such as that constantly trotted out on this channel - have led to a very slanted view of the current situation in Ukraine. Both sides are running out of men and munitions but Russia has air and artillery superiority - as well as a newly built line of fortified defences to fall back to. As things stand at the moment Russia is very much favourite to win this stage of the conflict.
    2
  6097. So you are comparing Jewish children under the Nazis with economic tourists with smartphones and bank accounts are you?
    2
  6098. The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty. It is purely aspirational.
    2
  6099.  @rayisafitzpatrick9523  They weren't their weapons. They were Soviet weapons which happened to be stationed there.
    2
  6100. @ What treaty would that be then? The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty and Putin didn't sign it anyway - Yeltsin did.
    2
  6101. @TheBritishCousin But it was only a memorandum, not a treaty and Putin disagrees with it. He said so at the time. There is no reason why one administration should be expected to be constrained by the mistakes of a predecessor.
    2
  6102.  @elenadunn15  That is a point which those who hold up Budapest as some sort of Holy Writ tend to ignore.
    2
  6103.  @JG-pk6gq  But they weren't Ukrainian. The SSR of Ukraine had no control over them and the SSR wasn't a country anyway, in any real sense. It was merely an administrative unit of the Soviet Union, which was essentially controlled by Russia.
    2
  6104. @DanyYnady Yes. Rebuilt. There are a number of YouTubers in Mariupol documenting the city's transformation.
    2
  6105. Trump was on his way to a long-needed accord with Russia. One of the reasons spineless nonentity Biden was shoehorned into the Presidency was to prevent this. As ye sow etc.
    2
  6106. It is scientifically impossible to test the IQ of a rock. They might be quite intelligent for all you know.
    2
  6107. Money well spent. Not so sure about the aid given to Ukraine though.
    2
  6108. It was masterly showmanship and entirely defused what could have been very tricky situation.
    2
  6109. Take a couple of hydroxychloroquine tablets a week. They will inhibit the virus from replicating and keep symptoms to a minimum. You've got little to lose. You can get a year's supply for around $40.
    2
  6110.  @billm9775  It works very well - despite the assertions to the contrary. And just look how great America was in the 1950's compared to the mess it is today!
    2
  6111. Oh yes it can.
    2
  6112. Me and several million others.
    2
  6113. If Elon wants a country of his own to rule, then we've got one right here. All he has to do is get naturalised and there will be no problem with his forming and financing his own political party and filling the gaping vacuum that currently exists in the UK political landscape.
    2
  6114.  @James-sh4zf  I agree entirely with Trump's position on all of the above. Bigotry, fascism and assaulting women don't come into it.
    2
  6115. Er. Is this burning rainforest your bold lad is walking through, or is it land cleared of timber about five years ago and which is now being made ready for agriculture? Ghastly dagoes! Doing David Attenborough out of a job just so they can feed their families!
    2
  6116. I hate to disagree with so eminent a strategist, who is so rarely wrong in his predictions, but it strikes me that Putin is not going to fall into this trap. The Ukrainian force is obviously top-notch and will take a great deal of beating. Unless it attacks any important targets, such as the power station of the mines, it might as well go rushing around the countryside until its vehicles run out of fuel.
    2
  6117. Maphiro611 That's because Trump knew the FBI was acting on behalf of his political enemies. That is the real scandal.
    2
  6118. Yes. Switch it back on and forget this madness.
    2
  6119. Very Astute Despite The Capitals!
    2
  6120. The BNP is not banned.
    2
  6121. A real vote-winner there!
    2
  6122.  Make it lucid  I'm finding it hard to comment because I know so little about the situation in Israel Overall all though I tend to go along with those epidemiologists who believe that masks are pretty useless and lockdowns pretty much a disaster. The economic damage has been huge and the future will see them as having been a serious mistake - a knee jerk reaction, fuelled by media hysteria and political cowardice. The fact that the disease is so selective in whom it kills suggests that it would have been far better to isolate such people and allow healthy under 65s to mix together and so build up herd immunity within that age group. This would have been sufficient to cut off routes the virus could have followed to infect the vulnerable. Wise after the event I know, but there we are.
    2
  6123. A flow turning to a trickle.
    2
  6124. Those that are immediately accessible are in the Russian-controlled East. The stuff in the West is there in theory but far less accessible and really not worth the investment of trying to get it out.
    2
  6125. I think you mean patriotic.
    2
  6126.  @hootowl6354  Russians who oppose Western interference in their national affairs understand fully the meaning of patriotism. While a handful may have fled, most resent the fact that since the collapse of the SU their country has been expected to become yet another American puppy dog.
    2
  6127.  @Vladimirthetiny  I think the aviation industry in Russia must be just about the greatest sufferer from the effects of sanctions. Is this not so? The future is very uncertain but in the long run market forces will prevail. But I bow to your expertise.
    2
  6128.  @Maniak-e8b  I'm not. But the military "experts" do seem to make a lot of mistakes. Perhaps they are not all that clever.
    2
  6129. Every word Jenrick said is true. If the grooming gang scandal is the glue which binds the Tories and Reform together in a joint effort to forever rid this country of the new and stomach-churning version of woke globalist socialism typified by the Labour Party - then so be it.
    2
  6130. That'll learn 'em!
    2
  6131.  @superhumantrueman  But as the original comment said this could be a "big mistake" by Russia So it is entirely possible therefore that it was done by Ukraine - or even by a third party.
    2
  6132.  @mattgs1671  You could be right - but if so it's premature and a serious tactical error on Russia's part.
    2
  6133. No. Just brainless stupidity.
    2
  6134.  @jiversteve  Time will tell who the idiots are.
    2
  6135.  @anniejuan1817  Because it would be impossible to find a jury whose members are not prejudiced either for or against him.
    2
  6136.  @porecemusnox8805  I really don't know. Perhaps not bringing the case at all would be the best answer.
    2
  6137.  @porecemusnox8805  I think every case should be treated separately. A famous film star, for instance, although people may admire him or not, can be expected to have his criminal behaviour separated from his activities as a film star in the minds of a jury. Politicians come into a different category, and politicians aiming for the highest position in the land come into an even further category. To stick to the case at hand it is clear to me that this case has been bought for political reasons, in order to reduce Trump's chances of becoming President. It has nothing to do with seeing that the law is respected. This immediately undermines the proceedings. If you maintain this is not so, and that Trump is just an ordinary businessman caught out in a bit of minor creative accountancy, then the case could proceed. But he is not. He is in a special category and if his activities are considered to be heinous, then the only charge that could justifiably be brought against him would be one of treason. Which is clearly ridiculous. Whoever wins this case, one thing is certain - the law has lost.
    2
  6138.  @porecemusnox8805  This scarcely applies if, for instance, the judge was shown to have political affiliations contrary to those of the defendant. The judge in this case faces the same difficulties as the jurors.
    2
  6139.  @porecemusnox8805  The Declaration of Human Rights is an interesting document, but one which suffers from close examination. All very worthy - but is it all practical? But, once again sticking to this particular case, Trump is not nor ever can be Mr or Mrs Smith. He is in a category of one. It really doesn't matter all that much if he is guilty or not. What matters are the reasons for the state bringing the prosecution in the first place. They could very well be more reprehensible than the crime itself - so where does that put us?
    2
  6140.  @luisfelix7989  The Russian military provided support to the separatist armies, certainly. Anyone showing any kind of pro-Ukrainian resistance would certainly have been in some danger I imagine. I have no idea of the actual percentage of population wishing to remain under rule from Kiev as opposed to wishing for independence, or even rule from Moscow. Do you?
    2
  6141. Surely he's trolling. It's what he does.
    2
  6142. Black lives don't matter to Black Lives Matter - nor do anyone else's.
    2
  6143. The question now is when is Russia going to stop? Where will its front line be? There will come a point when it occupies as much of the former "Little Russia" to the east of the Dnieper as seems possible. It will then surely dig in deep, behind strong permanent fortifications, and become the defending force, rather than the attacking one. There has never been a war quite like this one, certainly not in modern times. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the future shape of the world will depend upon its final outcome.
    2
  6144. Truss failed simply because her economic ideas (as sound as they are) were rolled out in too much of a hurry and with insufficient thought as to their likely reception by the financial establishment. Badenoch strikes me as being far more cunning. I have great hopes for her. The idea of a black Margaret Thatcher is just too wonderful to ignore. The fact that she chooses to surround herself with subordinates rather than set up yet another talking shop is yet another indication of her political maturity.
    2
  6145.  @cobbler40  Absolutely.
    2
  6146.  @wolfen210959  Then I'm intellectually challenged, since the arguments against trickle down economics seem to me to be based on a number of falsehoods and the studies which indicate that it is otherwise have a suspect political and ideological bias for the most part.
    2
  6147. NATO is defunct.
    2
  6148.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Jewishness is an ethnicity, not just a religion. A very high proportion of Israelis are atheists. I sometimes can't help wishing the same can't be said for Palestinians.
    2
  6149.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Zionists have been in Israel for much longer than 70 years. The movement began at the end of the 19th century, when Jews from America and Europe bought land from its Ottoman owners and transformed it from a state of neglect into one of growing prosperity. The whole area was vastly underpopulated until this prosperity caused Arabs from neighbouring countries to arrive, either as workers or, in some cases, as invaders. When the survivors of the Holocaust arrived in large numbers it did indeed create much ill-feeling and bloodshed. There were scenes like this all over the world though, as populations displaced by war sought new beginnings. In these other cases the situations have resolved themselves. Not so though in Palestine. You have to wonder why. It couldn't have anything to do with religious extremism, could it?
    2
  6150.  @ahbenjamin2889  That's what you say. But does everyone believe you? Has the US been tested against another nuclear power? After all, it has lost against Afghan tribesmen and Vietnamese peasants. And apart from the military aspect the other factor is economic clout. The dollar as the currency against which all others are measured. Isn't that idea becoming a little shaky all of a sudden?
    2
  6151. Which is why Russia doesn't want Ukraine - just Donbass and Crimea.
    2
  6152. Why spoil the fun?
    2
  6153. This money is next to nothing and will achieve next to nothing. I am more and more coming to believe that the Labour government is colluding in a globalist strategy to replace the population of Britain with foreigners.
    2
  6154.  @Steven-vo4ee  You are obviously not familiar with the theory of displacement.
    2
  6155. These numbers are really insignificant when compared with the total population. Less than 100 children under 18 are thought to have died of covid in the US, mostly in the upper age group and very probably all with a pre-existing condition. Sad to say it appears that most hospitalisations and deaths occur in children who are morbidly obese.
    2
  6156.  @johnd.ingleson799  I'm aware of VAERS and I certainly have reservations about some aspects of the vaccination programme, but I don't see how this relates to my comment that the handful of children who have died in this country were almost all morbidly obese. Having said that, if you are suggesting they may also have suffered adverse affects from vaccination I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand either.
    2
  6157. All one can say is that Ukraine launched some sort of attack and that Russia to some degree repulsed it.
    2
  6158. A Storm Shadow is a fleabite compared with the destruction wrought last night by the Russian ICBM attack on Dnipro. I doubt Putin is more than mildly irritated, much less in a state of panic.
    2
  6159.  @Believe-you-me-  Too true. The government's. This though seems to add up: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588
    2
  6160.  @dougcoombes8497  You seem to have fallen for propaganda. There have been no verifiable figures released by either side and the news media is full of footage taken from other conflicts and training exercises. No-one really knows what's going on. The Russian army is huge, well-equipped and well-trained. It is capable of reducing cities to rubble within days, as I said. It would certainly appear that Putin's plan is one on conquest with minimal casualties and damage to infrastructure. Although there have been anti-war protests these have generally come from the urban elites and are relatively minor in nature. Hopefully peace talks will begin quite soon and as long as Putin gets to keep Donbas and has firm assurances that Ukraine will not join NATO. and perhaps also the EU, there is even a chance he will withdraw. He doesn't want a lengthy civil war on his doorstep.
    2
  6161. What's "Western Unity" done for us so far, except involve other countries in needless wars?
    2
  6162.  @cyclewisconsin105  I think probably any target which affects Russia's capabilities in the Kursk conflict is considered legitimate. The Yanks don't want the Ukrainians going doolallysquat and try to wipe out Moscow.
    2
  6163.  @petergaskinuk-1785  Utterly ridiculous. The war began in 2014 when the EU indicated that a referendum was needed in Ukraine. That was the economic trigger. Do you really think that an astute political animal like Putin would imagine the EU to be destabilised by Brexit, or even if it was it would make any difference to his military response?
    2
  6164. What about the increasingly used Arctic sea route? The one that goes through Russian waters.
    2
  6165. Jack Richardson You're one clutching his sacred texts to his chest.
    2
  6166.  @jamesmorrow1646  Defeat for Ukraine - or at least the Zelensky regime.
    2
  6167. No they were hurty words. That's all. An expression of an opinion. If you really think that anyone reading them immediately rushed out and set fire to an immigrant, then you're even more bonkers than she is.
    2
  6168. Not if we give him what he wants now. Which we should.
    2
  6169.  @wavemaker2077  The Asian explosion was curbed - some say -by the widespread use of Ivermectin. In Japan Tokyo's chief medical officer recommended it. In Goa the government handed it out for free to everyone over 18 and while it was actually banned in other parts it is alleged that much was smuggled in from India.
    2
  6170.  @paulagilbert1982  Whose side are you on anyway? It was a wind-up.
    2
  6171.  Qwfwq66  I think I know how he felt.
    2
  6172. The West missed an opportunity for peace after the collapse of the USSR when instead of welcoming the new Russia it continued to cast it as an enemy. That opportunity is being presented to us again. Instead of feeding the voracious arms industry we should seek ways of forming economic and political ties with Russia.
    2
  6173. Zelensky's gotta go.
    2
  6174. Why?
    2
  6175. About time!
    2
  6176. I suppose this is the sort of treatment we might expect from police if we refuse to obey lockdown rules. It's already happening in Australia.
    2
  6177.  @CarreraTrack  Ukraine and South Korea might be slightly worried. But they're only foreigners, so it doesn't matter.
    2
  6178. The task Trump faces is to allow Russia to keep its military gains - while making it look like a defeat for Putin and a victory for his statesmanship. This might not be as hard as it sounds, given the mass of disinformation we have been subjected to over the past three years.
    2
  6179. You don't seem to get it. Not everything is a matter of principle. That is just the old self-righteous, chapel-going genes showing through. I'll make it simple: Few rich, highly-productive immigrants: good. Millions of poor unskilled immigrants locked into medieval cultures: bad.
    2
  6180.  @oldshiny3012  There's a good chance you're right.
    2
  6181. They have considerable scientific evidence to back them. Numerous peer reviewed studies have shown that lockdowns do not reduce death rates and only slow down infection rates to some degree. The coronavirus stopped "raging" some months ago. No more people have died this winter than in many previous years and the problem of excess hospitalisations should have been dealt with by training nurses up to ICU standards. This is what we should concentrate on now in preparation for next winter when there is the possibility that Covid 19 will once again emerge as the preponderant seasonal respiratory infection with a higher level of serious, but generally non-fatal cases to be dealt with.
    2
  6182. The NATO trained and equipped Ukraine army seems to be in tatters.
    2
  6183.  @runtsgal  Been trying for thirty years.
    2
  6184. This is war on the deep state. These people are Trumps' attack dogs.
    2
  6185. Braindead teenagers in their bedrooms here. lol.
    2
  6186. Who owns the government, do you think?
    2
  6187. The Prof just misses the point. This is not a trade war - it is an ideological war in which tariffs are being used to force other countries into toeing the Trump line. And it's working very well.
    2
  6188.  @ronpool3114  A third of Ukrainians speak Russian as a first language anyway - including Zelensky.
    2
  6189.  @kateryna5284  I am somewhat stuck in my ways. Is it Moscow or Moskva? Paris or Paree?
    2
  6190. This wonderful, wonderful video left me in a weeping heap over the fate of our nation where climate change induced rainfall can cause so much suffering and destruction. I must also commend the reporter's tone of voice which so magnificently captured the sense of sorrow and tragedy we all must feel when confronted by the horrors of man (and woman)- made global warming.
    2
  6191.  @Tuck-Shop  Sir Keir Stalin.
    2
  6192.  @MySipuli  That I can believe!
    2
  6193. There is already a very cheap and effective anti-viral drug available. It's called ivermectin.
    2
  6194. America either acquiring Greenland or subsidising its independence makes perfectly sound geopolitical sense. The idea that this might be achieved by force is utterly absurd. TDS up another notch!
    2
  6195.  @TVIDS123  Well plenty of people do, including a number of very senior scientists and researchers. The test kits being used weren't designed for the job. As to the lack of new cases among over 70's higher levels of isolation, if they exist, are an unlikely explanation for such a dramatic difference. The whole situation is riddled with anomalies and misinformation.
    2
  6196. Because there isn't one?
    2
  6197. Your touching faith in Magic Masks is entirely misplaced. There is no real-world evidence of their efficacy unless they are of a very high specification and used in very particular circumstances. And, as all scientific opinion agreed before the start of the pandemic, they can lead to dangerous outcomes when used improperly by the general public.
    2
  6198.  @Prognosis__  More than a few. Some estimates suggest that around a million people may have moved to Russia from Donbass over the course of the civil war. Makes sense to me.
    2
  6199. Are you religious by any chance? There is no link here!
    2
  6200.  @starmersbarber  Are you actually Starmer's barber?
    2
  6201. 13% fewer tests - but 30% fewer positives. Go figure.
    2
  6202. Every channel I watch on the progress of the war seems to show Russia making steady advances.
    2
  6203. But the police were only trying to protect us from the evil coof! Just think how many lives were saved by the brutal manhandling of disobedient women!
    2
  6204.  @kirstieangellotti9900  Only if you have had your mind invaded by absurd notions.
    2
  6205.  @DFenV  Once I put on my tinfoil hat I can think of all sorts of reasons!
    2
  6206.  @ucouco78  It depends where you live and who your doctor is.
    2
  6207.  @ucouco78  Not by population! And by case is impossible to quantify.
    2
  6208. Nilavra Pathak I have to say I have seldom seen so much laughable naivety contained in a single paragraph. You are truly ahead of your time. Before very long the size of your "carbon footprint" will be decided for you by the government. If you exceed it your cellphone or your home computer will tell them so, and you will be taxed or fined accordingly. The only way to avoid this will be to be rich enough to buy extra "footprint" on the carbon futures market. This extra will come from allocations made to the governments of poor countries where people don't have cars or much industry and where a Mediterranean diet would be a luxury beyond their widest dreams.
    2
  6209.  @Grandmaster_1776  On a procedural technicality. He still did it
    2
  6210.  @rizeagle33  The case has not yet come to court, much less a guilty verdict. So no crime as yet. Wisconsin gun laws are confusing and contradictory. One says that it is illegal to carry a long gun if you're under 18, but another says it's under 16 if certain conditions are met. And another one seems to imply that if you have a pistol licence you can carry a long gun at 16. Compared to the murder charges all this seems pretty small beer though, doncha think?
    2
  6211.  @sumpplug  Not very often.
    2
  6212.  @alantheinquirer7658  I think the feeling was, however foolish, that the Tories were going to do something about immigration problems. The feeling now is that Labour is gearing up to welcome immigrants wholesale.
    2
  6213.  @jimijames9642 Perhaps the crimes Trump is accused of are those regularly committed by those accusing him, then? Have you thought of that?
    2
  6214.  @jiversteve  I have explained my position. The alternative to a swift victory for Putin is a long and bloody civil war and a continuing threat to world stability. This Putin Bad, Ukraine good scenario is absurd. It is purely the result of US propaganda. You simply seem incapable of seeing this conflict other than in terms if some sort of football match between Good and Evil. It is simply not so.
    2
  6215.  @jiversteve  Do try to steer clear of these absurd and simplistic historical analogies. They are invariably misleading. For thirty years Ukraine has been at the front line of a struggle for power between Russia and the US. The oligarch gangsters who rule the country fix elections according to which of these entities bribe them the most. The Russian invasion has come about simply because Putin has recognised American weakness as embodied in the person of Joe Biden and illustrated by the disaster of the Afghanistan withdrawal. As commendable as Ukrainian resistance is it can only result in tragedy. This is entirely different to the situation in Britain at the time of World War II when our nation was indeed fighting against invasion by a tyrannical power. If Putin gains control he will merely install another pro-Russian government. The Ukrainians, or at least the growing Westward-looking urban middle class, will resent this but their resentment is small price to pay for averting the possibility of World War III.
    2
  6216.  @jiversteve  I'm not happy to see any civilians killed. That's rather the point. An ideal solution would be a quick victory for Ukraine and for Russia to disappear into a parallel universe. Since that's unlikely to happen the next best thing is for a swift Russian victory and Ukraine trying to become Westernised by gradual and peaceful means which don't involve selling itself to America.
    2
  6217. michael welby Distinct signs of paranoia I think. The oligarchs will be crawling out of the walls soon.
    2
  6218. @Alle Warten Auf Das Licht Even that is not certain.
    2
  6219. That carpet is a bit tasteless.
    2
  6220.  @ianpalfrey8744  A very poor deal.
    2
  6221.  @ianpalfrey8744  Hitler and Stalin would doubtless have agreed with you.
    2
  6222.  @andrewowens4421  You really are quite astonishingly naive; but take heart, there are very many like you. Chants of "lock her up!" are crowd pleasers, that's all. As with QAnon you don't have to believe, you just have to believe that your opponents believe. It always surprises me that Trump supporters, who are often not college graduates, understand this instinctively whereas the "educated" Liberals seem unable to recognise rhetoric and insist on taking everything literally. The election was fixed; and it was fixed very well and very professionally by people who have been fixing elections across the world for decades. Unpicking how it was done is a mammoth task as the various state audits are discovering. Thankfully it is no longer necessary to prove it. Efforts must now be directed towards preventing such a shameful occurrence in the future.
    2
  6223.  @andrewowens4421  The Maricopa audit alone revealed around 5,000 votes to be suspect for one reason or another. Normally they would have been subject to scrutiny, and most rejected. That Dominion machines CAN be easily manipulated to produce skewed results has been clearly demonstrated. Whether they WERE is very hard to prove. In any case, as I say, history has overtaken events. Finding evidence of fraud, finding a tribunal suitable for judging such evidence, let alone allowing such a tribunal time a adjudge the case would always have taken far, far longer than Biden's four year term. Everyone knows that. We can just be grateful for the fact that he is saving us the trouble by proving to be such a monumental failure. At the very least future elections OUGHT to be subject to far closer scrutiny. If they are not, you can be sure that democracy in the US is well and truly dead and buried.
    2
  6224.  @andrewowens4421  As I think I have already said there is little point in pursuing enquiries into the 2020 election fraud. There are too many obstacles and, in any case, events in the now are overtaking the need for any enquiry. It will be for history to judge; assuming of course that history is allowed in the future. A globalist/Marxist system of governance will certainly ban it in any meaningful form. So we might as well just carry on moaning for now! As for the Jan 6 nonsense it is interesting that you should draw a comparison between the two events. A few Trump supporters get a bit carried away and are arrested on minor charges and you look upon that as some sort of victory. Meanwhile rich and powerful people subvert democracy to pursue personal interests and, because they are good at what they do, you are blind to the implications. It's as though you're pleased at catching a couple of kids breaking windows while your entire neighbourhood is being run by gangsters.
    2
  6225.  @andrewowens4421  You really do live in some sort of storybook land. Were you always this credulous? Jan 6 was going just fine until a few hotheads got carried away. Thankfully wiser heads prevailed and little real harm was done. To pretend that it was an "insurrection" or a serious attempt to overthrow the government is clearly absurd. To compare it with month upon month of violent, destructive and deadly riots engineered after Floyd's death is just too ridiculous for words. The 2020 election fraud is yesterday's news. If there is hopefully to be a future Trump administration then the mechanics of it could be looked at and vast volumes can be written but as far as the current political situation it is mere background noise. There's nothing defeatist in that. The mid-terms are the next field of battle and only if similar techniques are used there can trouble be expected. The Rittenhouse verdict comes before that of course and that will be a flashpoint, whichever way it goes. I simply can't believe you put inverted commas around the BLM "riots" by the way! If justice is served and Rittenhouse is acquitted and more "riots" ensue as a consequence then there will be more on the ground resistance and people are going to get shot. If he is jailed there is no telling what will happen.
    2
  6226. Yup. It'll be fixed again, so don't worry.
    2
  6227. The handlng of the covid epidemic killed more people than covid itself. For many it was not a health issue - it was a business opportunity.
    2
  6228. This conflict has been created by American interference and intransigence, but it is Europe which will suffer.
    2
  6229.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Are you happy in your bubble of delusions then? Fearful of contradiction? The measures you mention are pretty purely cosmetic and do not alter the basic premise: America needs Russia as an enemy - and NATO, with its increased membership, exists primarily as an increasing threat to Russian autonomy. Russia tried both informally and informally to join NATO under both Yeltsin and Gorbachev but was rejected, and Putin's approach was equally scorned. The days of The Great Satan are thankfully numbered, but the ineptitude and greed of American foreign policy will continue to blight the world for some years yet, I'm afraid.
    2
  6230. will crow Plenty of time then.
    2
  6231. It will. But smaller.
    2
  6232. @ I've heard of glib irrelevance too.
    2
  6233. This is all lies.
    2
  6234. Fox River, Wisconsin. Look it up.
    2
  6235.  @pinkaap_  You are a buffoon.
    2
  6236. ​ @bryankaminski8289  In a ditch draining into the Fox River. Look it up. On the south side, about a half mile down next to a gopher tree.
    2
  6237.  @juliecrane9647  Not personal 1st hand, but I have been there when patients given this drug for pain relief begin to realise that the happy world they have been occupying is not the real one.
    2
  6238. Say it like it is!
    2
  6239. It's good timing. Russia has already achieved most its military objectives and is in a roll to reach the Donbass border. Putin will want to stop there and dig in. A ceasefire will allow him to start rebuilding the territories he has taken and returning them to commercial viability, as is happening already in Mariupol
    2
  6240. A recent study has claimed that lockdowns in Europe have caused more deaths than they have saved. It also suggests that low death rates in Asia are due not to prompt lockdown measures but to resistance built up to an earlier much milder version of the virus. Australia is not mentioned, however. Insurance companies are believed to be considering offering indemnity policies against becoming ill from covid, or passing in on to others, based on such information.
    2
  6241. If you can't learn to think, at least learn to spell.
    2
  6242. Which is which?
    2
  6243.  @kushprince8001  With the means of contraception available becoming pregnant is a failure - either a personal one or simply fate. So an abortion is something which should exercise the mind greatly, and not just be a casual act. To decide these things are just a matter of course is, to my mind, a primitive and savage act and to pretend that this act is somehow moral and praiseworthy is hypocritical to the highest degree.
    2
  6244.  @GavinGas  And so do people who have the common decency to realise that an abortion is something which has to be carefully considered - and not just employed as form of contraception.
    2
  6245.  @GavinGas  Doesn't seem very civilised to me, chopping up babies in the womb.
    2
  6246.  @chinelooliver3936  I wouldn't go quite so far but, like war or even the death penalty, abortion is sometimes a grim necessity. It is not, however, a cause for celebration.
    2
  6247.  @GavinGas  No-one really knows for certain at which stage of development a foetus becomes self-aware and thus entitled to proper consideration as a human being. Obviously mensuration is not murder since it is simply nature's way of getting rid of unfertilised ova. Pregnancy is another matter. It means that there now exists the possibility of a human being, and to deny that possibility is, in my view, a step which should be considered very seriously and not taken lightly, much less celebrated as an act of moral virtue.
    2
  6248.  @jhingoorpatima237  But they don't have the right to try to destroy their neighbour. And where actually IS Palestine anyway?
    2
  6249. I do so love Professor Clarke's fantasies . So reassuring!
    2
  6250.  @SuperLittleTyke  NATO did.
    2
  6251.  @patrickquinlan3056  A biro is not a sharpie. They are different things. You appear to be Irish, so that might explain your confusion.
    2
  6252.  @bedandbreakfastman11  I think the old "left wing/right wing" thing has had its day, quite frankly. What the working class needs is something that combines Thatcherite economics with a healthy disregard for cultural changes. The working class just want to be given the opportunity to either become middleclass, or to be at least given enough money to enjoy itself if not.
    2
  6253.  @johnkitching2248  I was being kind to you - and see where that got me! In fact "disenfranchised" has a secondary meaning, appropriate to this case. From Collins Dictionary: 1 "Not having the right to vote, or a similar right, or having had that right taken away" 2 "Having no power to make people listen to your opinion or to affect the society you live in." I think no 2 exactly matches the opinion of many working class people in this country.
    2
  6254.  @Michael-yy3fr  Let's hope he does so now - though I doubt it. It could be political suicide. Look at poor, magnificent Andrew Bridgen.
    2
  6255. Russia is not expansionist. Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt.
    2
  6256.  @emm_arr  Russia isn't trying to conquer another state. Putin has made it clear that it would be impossible and undesirable to rule Ukraine. The only problem is defining what Ukraine actually IS. The big mistake was setting the new country of Ukraine on the same geographical footprint as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. This wasn't a country as such, it was an administrative unit of the Soviet Union. Crimea and much and Eastern Ukraine had been stuck on to it for purely administrative reasons. They both have very substantial Russian populations and -perhaps more to the point - are vastly wealthy in terms of mineral resources, invested in and worked by Russia and by Russians for centuries. By joining the EU and allying with the west these resources (and we're talking trillions an trillions of dollarsworth) Ukraine would be removing these assets from Russian control - a control which largely existed even after Ukraine's independence. Putin's solution - for Donbass to become regionally independent and for Crimea to be recognised as Russian - has been rejected and he felt he had no choice but to go to war to keep hold of these areas which he regards as being essentially Russian.
    2
  6257.  @emm_arr  No. For reasons I have explained. He merely wants to take back Crimea and Donbass, which is a different thing. If you were to read the essay Putin wrote on Ukraine/Russian relations immediately before the invasion it would make his position entirely clear.
    2
  6258.  @justinmillette9110  It's not a question of "right." Who decides what's "right" anyway? And where do you get this thing about "being deferential"? And the UN is a waste of space anyway. Russia invaded Ukraine for sound economic reasons. As I explained, the vastly profitable mining industry in Donbass has been developed by Russia for centuries. First salt, then coal and iron and now shale gas and lithium. In fact, it was probably the discovered of large lithium deposits around Mariupol a few years ago which brought matters to a head. We are talking literally trillions of dollars here. These resources are a Russian heritage and the idea of them being sold off to America is intolerable to Russia, as is the idea of Ukraine becoming its ally by joining NATO. If Ukraine had agreed to grant autonomy to Donbass the difficulty would have been overcome. Donbass's resources could continue to be channelled through Russia, with enough kickbacks to Ukrainian officialdom to keep them happy. But this doesn't suit America and its allies and so they have financed a bloody and needless and ultimately unsuccessful war in order to get their hands on these resources. That's just the way it is. Morals and "legality" and being for or against Russia don't enter into it.
    2
  6259.  @Metoo3232-pu2wc  Russia doesn't want Ukraine. It just wants Donbass because it is some of the most mineral-rich land in the world, which has been developed by Russia for centuries. It now very nearly has it all and when it has it all, its military objectives will have been achieved. It is heavily defended because of its wealth. Kursk is swamps, forests and fields with a bit of iron ore. It was virtually undefended, which is why Ukraine was able to simply walk into it. Nothing to crow about.
    2
  6260.  @Watcher4111  Perhaps that was what the Russians WANTED the enemy to think - so they would concentrate their forces there. Ever heard of Operation Mincemeat?
    2
  6261. The planned re-organisation will obviously be designed to de-democratise local authorities and hand even more power to unelected officials. This has been a Labour strategy since the days of Blair and many career bureaucrats at local level are members of various clubs and organisations dedicated to this purpose. To them, elected councillors are just a nuisance and they feel can do the job much better without them.
    2
  6262.  @martynanstis1620  Initially -but turned into money
    2
  6263. Why?
    2
  6264. @ The spurious similarities are vastly outweighed by the enormous differences.
    2
  6265.  @tsunemi4869  Russia insists that these areas are, in fact, Russian. It is a claim with a certain historical and political validity.
    2
  6266. Seigmorag I'm British so I can't vote in your wonderful country. I have to say though that like many over here I wondered what you Yanks were doing electing a semi-illiterate old conman as President. Since then though I have warmed to him bigly. His elegant pisstake of the Ghastly Greta was especially fine, I thought.
    2
  6267.  @samudroprem6936  Very interesting. But is internal dissent and ethnic nationalism in these areas really strong enough to start a rebellion? I expect, of course, that certain foreign agencies are already hard at work inside these areas encouraging the discontents with rhetoric and hard cash, so that might swing it, I suppose.
    2
  6268.  @stephenweir9871  Verily I believe. It's a disease. They are beyond shame.
    2
  6269.  @Geffo555  There are currently some 115 cases before the US courts detailing specific allegations of voter fraud, with the sworn affidavits of eye-witnesses who face imprisonment for perjury if they are proved to have lied. The number is increasing daily.
    2
  6270.  @Geffo555  I said minor, not major. This decision is allowing the Trump camp to request earlier votes to be discounted, or at least rechecked, since the counting procedure did not comply with state law. As I said - early days, but the Dems must get their act together since there is a possibility that any votes in any state which have not been counted in the prescribed manner and which are still in legal dispute at such time as the result must be declared cannot be included. When and if the post 4am votes in several states are required to be checked this will undoubtedly reveal a host of anomalies and illegalities. The Georgia recount should be very interesting. If properly monitored it might give some idea of the scale of fraud, but not much. It's in big cities like Pittsburgh and Philly and Vegas where most of the deceits will have been practiced.
    2
  6271. Jack Daniel You've got it. When are the daft buggers going to latch on?
    2
  6272. Blood groups also seem important. It's really essential that we do not allow political racism to confuse this issue. There are clear genetic components in the way in which this virus behaves.
    2
  6273. The jailing of people for saying out loud what thousands of people believe in their hearts is an insult to freedom and justice. Make no mistake, totalitarianism and a fascist police state are just around the corner and - quite hilariously, but not without precedent - the great and glorious cause of Socialism is what will create it.
    2
  6274. Their suggestions are far from lunatic, Destroying the economy and adding to world-wide poverty with measures that save politicians' skins but have no effect on deaths IS a bit silly though.
    2
  6275.  @pauls3204  Are no people reaching retirement age to take over from those who have died? That is really amazing.
    2
  6276. We still seem stuck on the idea that the Russian strategy has been to take and hold territory. More likely is that it been to take every opportunity to destroy the forces of the enemy, and to retreat as this is being done. At the end of the day if Russia holds Crimea and Donbass, Putin's aims will have been achieved. Ukraine's apparent victories will have been entirely Pyrrhic.
    2
  6277.  @ShadowMan66  Might be worth risking a punt on the rouble.
    2
  6278.  @Mark-c9w1z  Add 70! (Are you deaf to irony?)
    2
  6279. Trying to blacken the names of political figures you dislike is disgusting. Neither Trump nor Musk are paedophiles.
    2
  6280. They both know the answer. But Trump will have trouble selling it to the brainwashed Western public.
    2
  6281. It's the only way out of this mess. The only hope for the survival of the human race.
    2
  6282. Pretty much spot on. One major factor not mentioned though is that as long as the Tory right have Johnson by the balls they can force him to put their policies into place and rescind those of which they disapprove. Yes. Blackmail. Zero net carbon is the big target. Also we mustn't forget that the Tories have a habit of electing leaders who are relatively unknown to the general public. Sunak and Truss are unlikely successors. A right-wing populist who can emulate Trump and get the working class on side is probably waiting in the shadows.
    2
  6283.  @_TonyaBlack_  He still is THE leader!
    2
  6284.  @capncol  There is some considerable doubt as to the authenicity of this video. Some claim it depicts an earlier incident There are so many fake videos pumped out for propaganda purposes it is difficult to give any of them any credibility.
    2
  6285. He has also announced new peace proposals. And he is asking for more than he asked before the invasion. This Christmas break might well be an opportunity for Ukraine and Western warmongers to reconsider their actions.
    2
  6286. Who knows what the real casualty rate is? Col Douglas Macgregor reckons the Ukrainians are losing between ten to fifteen men for every Russian. In a swiftly redacted statement from EU leader Ursula von der Leyen 100,000 Ukrainian deaths were mentioned. The only certainty we have is that continued military support for Ukraine will result in more and more casualties on both sides.
    2
  6287. If Hamas didn't use aid convoys as a cover for military activity this would never have happened.
    2
  6288. So did Brezhnev, Yeltsin and Putin.
    2
  6289. teddy boef Everyone should have one. It should be compulsory. The chips should feature an app allocating your individual carbon footprint and if you exceed it at any time you will be punished with a severe jolt of pain. A desperate measure, and probably pointless, but these are desperate times.
    2
  6290. teddy boef Everyone will have the option to buy extra carbon credits on the open market. If you've got the money you are safe. If you've got LOTS of money you can buy up credits when they are cheap and trade them when the market rises. If you've got LOTS and LOTS of money you can force the price up by inviting Greta Thuberg over or getting a TV company to make a film about the antarctic melting.
    2
  6291. It is Biden's incompetence and failure to stand up to Washington's warmongers and expansionists which has led to this. The more Putin is boxed into a corner, the more likely he is to exercise the nuclear option. And he will if necessary
    2
  6292. I think tinfoil helmets should be made mandatory in order to prevent harmful cosmic rays entering the brain. 98% of all scientists say these rays can interfere with normal mental processes, leading victims to believe baseless claims that American presidential election was rigged, the covid epidemic is a massive fraud and man- made global warming is a con-trick designed to allow hedge funds to make billions trading in carbon futures.
    2
  6293.  @charlesrobinson5245  It is absolutely true. The only question is whether or not these very old people (who are dead, you realise) actually cashed their social security checks or actually cast their votes - and if so who got the money and who did they vote for?
    2
  6294.  @tomsenft7434  So why is the US media full of it then?
    2
  6295. The answer is simple: you have tens of thousands of people behaving as though they are immune because they have been vaccinated when, in fact, they are asymptomatic and spreading covid like wildfire.
    2
  6296.  @heatheraldazabal358  More like 70/30 I would have thought.
    2
  6297.  @heatheraldazabal358  From Wikipedia: Corruption is widespread in Ukrainian society.[1][2] In 2012 Ernst & Young put Ukraine among the three most-corrupt nations of the world—alongside Colombia and Brazil.[3] In 2015 The Guardian called Ukraine "the most corrupt nation in Europe".[4] According to a poll conducted by Ernst & Young in 2017, experts considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation in the world.[5] According to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (a scale of least to most corrupt nations), Ukraine ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in 2021, the second most corrupt in Europe, ahead of Russia.[6]
    2
  6298.  @heatheraldazabal358  Quite right. They both hop up and down these indices along with the likes of Columbia - but always in the top few.
    2
  6299.  @AS-bn9qv  This paranoia about dissenting voices (such as mine) being a "bots" or "trolls" rather makes my point. There are some people (such as yourself) who simply cannot seem to cope with the idea that their views may be mistaken. It disturbs that blissful, warm fluffy feeling of contentment upon which your peace and happiness seems to depend. I am a free speech extremist. Anything and everything is allowed except material which is likely to incite violent crime, or indicates that violent crime has been committed. I include child pornography in this category.
    2
  6300. Check the UN report on Ukraine torture and execution of civilians in Donbass in 2014-16.
    2
  6301. If he wins the left will do the same. Civil conflict is very much on the cards. The army, or at least the National Guard, will decide the outcome. The Democrats have tried -and failed - to turn the armed forces against Trump. If it's National Guard V armed Antifa and BLM it will be over in days. National Guard V armed patriots is another matter. An overwhelming and unanswerable landslide vote for either side is the only real alternative to gunfire.. And that seems unlikely right now.
    2
  6302. We're talking reduction, not total. Currently the number of deaths possibly related to Covid are the lowest percentage of the total for three months. The number of deaths from all causes is also below the five year average indicating that people who were reaching the end of their life anyway have simply died a few weeks earlier. You realise of course that the 45,961 figure you quote are deaths in which Covid MAY have played a role. It is impossible to say how many people have actually been killed by the virus, but it is obviously lower than that figure,
    2
  6303. Deaths down though, aren't they?? And from all causes too. Makes you think.
    2
  6304. It was a herstorical decision.
    2
  6305. All Putin needs to meet his objectives in to reach the Donbass border - and that is now very much in sight.
    2
  6306.  @emm_arr  What's white got to do with it? In any case this repetitive mantra betrays such a blinkered attitude that is needs to be called out.
    2
  6307.  @christopherjones9826  Saved many children from the horror of a lukewarm third of a pint of milk every morning. I know. I was one.
    2
  6308.  @superhumantrueman  There's a difference between trust and support. I support Trump because he is better than the alternative. Doesn't mean I trust him. And if you really want to know, I have quite serious reservations about Farage.
    2
  6309. And near-broke Britain is committed to spending £12billion on this farce.
    2
  6310. .. but it makes you feel all warm and cuddly inside. And that's what counts.
    2
  6311. Bit previous, aren't they? I thought Ukrainian Christmas was on our January 6. Still, they might not still be there by then.
    2
  6312. Propaganda posing as news.
    2
  6313. A great idea -but nothing new. People were living in sewage pipes like this when I was in India fifty years ago. They seemed to have been abandoned by the roadside and homeless people just moved in.
    2
  6314. Natural justice!
    2
  6315. Unequivocal? No. Yet another accident of war seized upon by Ukraine for PR purposes.
    2
  6316.  @timjackson8516  We'll find out. It seems the guy was probably a lone wolf type. He'd been identified as becoming radicalised while a student, but no further action was taken. He used to live in the area and my guess is that he's two sorts of crazy. His father was once a senior politician in Somalia who came to this country to live some 30 years ago.
    2
  6317.  @timjackson8516  It's a difficult definition, and not all that relevant other than to accept the fact that terrorism is a tactic of radical Islam, and that radical Islam seems quite likely to be part of this guy's motivation. Jo Cox's murderer was basically a nutcase. He was apparently motivated by some confused ideas about British nationalism, but British nationalism does not condone domestic terrorism as a tactic as a general rule. So I think the answer to your question is "No."
    2
  6318.  @southafrica73  A large Jack Daniels. Thanks very much.
    2
  6319. Most on the 1922 would be as happy as you to see the back of Boris.
    2
  6320.  @classicalaid1  I could fill a book with the differences between Hitler v Great Britain in the 1940s and Putin v Ukraine right now. Hitler was the newly elected leader of a country suffering from the effects of punishments inflicted following its defeat in war. Putin is the long-standing leader of a country which was the centre of an empire which collapsed from within. Hitler tried to expand his country's influence and to seek redress for its earlier defeat. Putin has merely tried to keep his country stable in the face of increasing pressure from a US-led cabal. His invasion of Ukraine is the consequence of a series of moves by this cabal to weaken Russia and to destroy it. There's plenty more, but that will do for now.
    2
  6321. Last night was bizarre. Whatever happened it marks a new stage in demo tactics.
    2
  6322.  @permagamerog5332  These Ukrainians from Mariupol ARE on the Russian side. The vans they get their food delivered in are from the Russian side. The snipers shooting them are the Ukrainian Azov Battalion Nazis holed up in the big steelworks, Just listen to what THEY say, not Lancaster -who doesn't actually say much himself.
    2
  6323. America is doomed. Trump, however, will probably ease the decline rather than allow the violent catastrophe which otherwise seems inevitable.
    2
  6324. An endless source of amusement!
    2
  6325. So it is.
    2
  6326. And how about Ilham Omar's campaign team buying postal ballots from other Muslims and even taking them for nothing from older ones? You won't see anything about that on the BBC.
    2
  6327.  @tzrgazza  That's war. But the "minimal land grab" is worth trillions in mineral wealth.
    2
  6328.  @tzrgazza  I really can't see where the resources or the will are to come from to regain this territory for Ukraine. It will be throwing good money after bad.
    2
  6329.  @wgblues9887  I am neither a bot nor a troll. My opinion is entirely reasonable. The fact is we in the West have been subjected to a rather distorted picture of the background to this war, and to its progress. You owe it to yourself to investigate matters more fully.
    2
  6330.  @garyspence2128  I think most reasonable European national leaders must realise that Putin has no territorial aims other than to regain Crimea and Eastern Ukraine - and that even if he did, he does not have the military strength to achieve them. Once the drums have stopped beating it will make sense to agree that Russia has escaped Western subjugation, and to treat it accordingly.
    2
  6331.  Bryan Ouellet  Aw c'mon! I said that about you ages ago. I think I've changed my mind though. I think you're about 11 years old, aren't you? No sane adult could come out with the stuff you do. Admit you're eleven and I'll apologise and we can have a laugh and forget it.
    2
  6332.  @mballer  The major common factor has been extreme old age.
    2
  6333.  @shaneb315  The "Ukrainian lands" in question are Russian in all but name. A huge mistake was made when the new country of Ukraine was given the same footprint as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which had parts of Russia included in it for largely administrative purposes. In 2014 separatist rebels took back much of this land and by 2021 the Ukrainians, with a new army paid for with billions of dollars from the US and its allies, was geared to invade to recapture it. The Russian invasion pre-empted this. The war was inevitable since Ukraine refused to implement the Mink Agreements. All that happened is that the Russians fixed it so that it happened in Ukrainian territory instead of in rebel-held Donbass.
    2
  6334. @ You misunderstand me. I was referring solely to the area of Eastern Ukraine, currently in dispute, which has never been part of anything called Ukraine, apart from the SSR thereof, which was a Russian Soviet construct. The entire area of present-day Ukraine was devastated by the Mongol invasions of the 14th and 15th centuries and all the original inhabitants were either killed or fled. After the Mongol collapse people gradually moved back in from Russia and Poland and it is the people of the Polish Lithuanian empire who form the basis of modern Ukraine in terms of language and culture. The land to the east, being steppe as opposed to the richer more fertile soils west of the Dnieper, was not of much interest and was inhabited by various tribes of wandering herdsmen until the coming of the industrial revolution when huge deposits of coal and iron ore were discovered there. This was by now Russian territory and Russians arrived in large numbers to develop these resources. Their descendants are still there. Such Ukrainians who are there are largely descendants of farmers who arrived after new fertilisation techniques improved the quality of the soil.
    2
  6335. The essential point is of course that unless masks are N95 standard or above, tight fitting and worn semi-permanently they are next to useless. In any case right now the more healthy people who catch covid and recover the better. Things have moved on. The magic mask is a thing of the past. Why are you continuing to beat this tired old drum?
    2
  6336. We mustn't forget that this is purely procedural. The horrible truth is that the Dems will probably get away with their foul deceits in the short term. But Biden and Harris will be forever tainted with the stigma of fraud and corruption. Their regime will be a rotten fruit, condemned to swift decay..
    2
  6337.  @mogs23  Stopping him is easy. Just give him what he wants.
    2
  6338.  @truthseeker6116  Depends who writes it.
    2
  6339.  @boozolini4465  It's a question of likelihood, really.
    2
  6340.  @olivergarcia2304  I wouldn't put Bush and Trump in the same bracket (or even the same universe really), and nor would I fall into the typical Democrat trap of calling their opponents uneducated and gullible. America doesn't have an education system worth speaking of and those who manage to evade it show every sign of great intelligence. As for gullibility, it seems to be something very much taught in the aforesaid "education" system, considering some of the nonsense those who have passed through it apparently believe to be true..
    2
  6341. Coming across CNN gives me the same reaction. Oh - and the BBC and Sky News quite often.
    2
  6342.  @katdoe192  The comment section of YouTube is a playground overseen by a teenage girl with pink hair and nose-rings.
    2
  6343.  @terrancemitchell3420  Sorry. I forgot to mention the tattoos.
    2
  6344. It's not a question of if, but when. One top of the usual greed and incompetence, there is now a concerted effort being made by China, Russia and their allies to undermine the dollar - which will have seismic consequences if it succeeds, as well it might.
    2
  6345. NATO is pointless. Russia has no designs on Europe - and even if it had it clearly does not have the power to do anything about them.
    2
  6346. If Corbyn does get in the gigantic shitstorm of chaos and depravity that will result should ensure the end of Socialism. It's a price we might just have to pay.
    2
  6347. Why don't we just decide the election on a flip of a coin and save a lot of trouble, expense and ill-feeling?
    2
  6348. NATO is already at war with Russia.
    2
  6349. Russia is already rebuilding those former parts of Ukraine it has now brought back into the fold. As for the rest - that's the West's responsibility.
    2
  6350.  @Pretty_Fly_on_a_White_Guy  I dunno about that one so much! MTG is weird woman in many ways, but that doesn't mean that she is wrong about Fauci and the way the pandemic was manipulated.
    2
  6351. Whatever his successes or failures, Vance represents the upwardly mobile working class committed to capitalism and resentful of state control - a constituency much neglected both in the USA and even more so here in Britain.
    2
  6352.  @lesleylamy  They are not potty trained, I'm afraid.
    2
  6353.  @kyorin6526  Tangible benefits are the currency of the bourgeoisie. Freedom is the battle cry of a noble soul.
    2
  6354. The idea that Kamala is being helped by a bunch of commies from Britain can only help Trump!
    2
  6355. Keep calm and carry on. It's only a flood not nuclear holocaust.
    2
  6356. No, that's Hamas.
    2
  6357. Sometimes being a "conspiracy theorist" can be quite rewarding. I await with pleasure the discovery that the "horse medicine" Ivermectin is more effectual than the vaccines.
    2
  6358. My children are just the same when I make them wear a tinfoil hat to protect their brains from harmful cosmic rays.
    2
  6359. It's very hard for the claims to be anything other than "unproven" when no court can be found to adjudge the mountain of evidence which back them.
    2
  6360.  @michaelrowsell1160  And nor for venal greed and hypocrisy either.
    2
  6361. They understand. You don't.
    2
  6362.  @nobbynobbs8182  They don't show the same handful of blocks at all. There is extensive drone coverage of much of the city. showing extensive rebuilding. And Ukraine was responsible for much of the damage - and for many civilian deaths.
    2
  6363. For someone as cynical and mistrustful of authority as I am it has been a very comforting experience to watch this excellent man gradually coming to realise we are governed by fools, crooks and charlatans.
    2
  6364.  @busterofcoviddeniers  Haven't I already answered you?
    2
  6365. That's because they haven't.
    2
  6366. Sick Bucket? Actually the video is a fake, if that's any comfort to you.
    2
  6367. It's been a hard struggle, but there's no doubt that Russia has won the war. Trump now has the chance to secure a lasting peace by distributing America's favours between Putin and whoever ends up in charge of Ukraine. If Obama and Biden had done this, there would, indeed, have been no war in the first place.
    2
  6368.  @M3PH11  Much like child allowance then.
    2
  6369.  @jayman8464  I must confess that I was on a hydroxychloroquine trail when I hit upon this. Having said that it is perfectly possible that resistance has become inbuilt I suppose. I don't think hiv can be a big factor though. Having said that homeless areas in big cities seem to be remarkably free of infection from what I can gather.
    2
  6370. SuperBullaMan And the only one whose impeachment degrades the entire process.This is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. They even warned against it.
    2
  6371. Some conspiracy theories do turn out to be actual conspiracies, though. Quite a number in fact. Others are deliberately injected into public discourse in order to lessen the credibility of those which are true.
    2
  6372. It's odd, isn't it, how every cheap trick used to bring Trump down just backfires?
    2
  6373.  @alapone9996  Please try to express a true opinion and see if it gets censored. Mine after are, but you don't know unless you try.
    2
  6374.  @addoublez  It certainly is in the pipeline. The finance company which runs Greta Thunburg is already on to it. It's called wedont havetime.
    2
  6375. Trying to turn these irritating fleabites into some sort of magnificent long-term strategy really is quite laughable.
    2
  6376. Suddenly it's a good time to be alive. Deals instead of warfare. Dancing instead of destruction. Common decency instead of insane religious nonsense. Donald Trump Was Right About Everything. Must get me a hat.
    2
  6377. Nothing else for it. They're going to have to cheat again.
    2
  6378.  @crimson8867  It's ending soon. I pray to live long enough to see the start of the next ice age.
    2
  6379.  @Nels921  Does.
    2
  6380.  @CMI2017  Well at least actual events will settle this question. I remain optimistic on the whole. I am particularly encouraged by the ever-widening gap between cases and severe outcomes. As to mutation: if Covid 19 follows the example of common cold covids evolution will select milder forms to be the more successful. And as for the winter it is certainly the case that SARS 1 flourished in spring and early summer, thriving in temperatures of 18c upwards.
    2
  6381.  @gio-oz8gf  Experts have their axes to grind too, and the medicos have a sworn duty to follow what appears to be the safest course, and one must respect that. My optimism is historical and statistical. As for long-term effects - obviously people react differently and a percentage of patients will suffer these, but there is no reason to suppose that Covid will be any worse in this regard. One simply cannot run a society based on fear and pessimism. We are still acting as the Covid 19 is the 21st century version of the Black Death. And it just isn't.
    2
  6382.  @Nirv_99  Because not to do so would invite further trouble. The land which Russia wants is essentially Russian land anyway. It is a fallacy to think that Donbas and other areas of Eastern \Ukraine have been Ukrainian from time immemorial. They have not - only for the last thirty years of so when they were mistakenly handed over following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
    2
  6383. One aspect which might merit investigation is the proportion of deportees who are Muslim, compared with the proportion of Muslims who are illegal immigrants.
    2
  6384. Ukraine addicts suffering withdrawal symptoms. They'll soon come out of it when the fighting stops and the background to the conflict is allowed to become public.
    2
  6385.  @JeroenvanHaren  I see you are wearing glasses. Perhaps you should change your prescription.
    2
  6386. What right does America or anyone else have to get rid of Putin? He has behaved entirely reasonably in the face of NATO expansion but cannot be expected to surrender the mineral wealth of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine without a fight. His peaceful solutions have been crudely rejected and this absurd and dreadful war is a direct result.
    2
  6387. @ But accepting money and/or influence from Musk does not impinge on "sovereignty" anything like as much as being constrained by EU regulation does. What Musk wants to get of any this remains unclear, but if it means surrendering autonomy to any great extent then obviously his offer need not be accepted.
    2
  6388.  @TheKrazysinner  It makes us realise we're on the right side though, doesn't it?
    2
  6389.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  What's your point? Invading Crimea is a fantasy. Ukraine suffering severe setbacks on the southern front is a fact.
    2
  6390.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  No they don't. They are propagandists, pure and simple.
    2
  6391.  @pabloagusti5104  And I have heard more or less the reverse. Conventional military wisdom has it that it takes at least four times as many attackers as defenders to take a well-defended target.
    2
  6392. @Razvan Razvan What of? The war has been going on for eight months you don't think the Ukrainian army has escaped unscathed, do you?
    2
  6393.  @harveybrown37  Lavrov is the best. He just happens to be Russian.
    2
  6394.  @gerylsteve3079  Wot?
    2
  6395. Are you looking for a job?
    2
  6396.  @jamesmorrow1646  A somewhat childish view of the situation, if I may say so.
    2
  6397. Just like the US in the '60s really. And Russia has more justification for its actions in Ukraine than America ever did for its Vietnam invasion.
    2
  6398. The FBI has been a rogue force ever since the days of J Edgar Hoover. It has far too much power and should be dismantled and replaced.
    2
  6399. Frank King I agree. There will be maggots in my orange juice. It's hard to think of anything worse.
    2
  6400. Thousands of decent, hard-working Muslims are in thrall to their certifiably insane religious leaders. They need protection too - and a healthy dose of de-programming.
    2
  6401. Yet another reason to withdraw support for Ukraine. This was only ever a border dispute between two gangster-led countries, and would have been settled by now if the West hadn't stuck its oar in.
    2
  6402. His army isn't in Ukraine. Donbass isn't in Ukraine.
    2
  6403.  @richardvale214  The Russia that agreed to that was not the Russia of today. Putin is not Yeltsin.
    2
  6404.  @olencone4005  You have just contradicted yourself. Russia sold Alaska. Ukraine was stolen from Russia.
    2
  6405. This was like watching a noisy bullfrog making excuses for a snake.
    2
  6406. Interesting fact: a new peer-reviewed clinical study from Belgium has proved that hydroxychloroquine, if taken at the right dosage and at the right time, can reduce Covid 19 deaths by almost a third. He was right about that too.
    2
  6407.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  But, but, but I am right! The YouTube algorithm wouldn't let me make these points if they weren't true.
    2
  6408.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  War is a dreadful thing. But it takes two to tango and the Russian Federation has tried to find peaceful solutions to the anomalies involved almost ever since its inception. The blame for this war lies really at the feet of Western greed for Russian resources.
    2
  6409.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  I have told no lies whatsoever. I have merely tried to broaden your outlook. I know this can be frustrating but you simply have to consider the possibility that the version of events you have been fed is a somewhat slanted one.
    2
  6410.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  I am. Why can't you believe this? I am a quite old Englishman though and I was brought up to question things more than people seem to be today. Younger generations seem very credulous to me.
    2
  6411.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  It was a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, ultimately ruled by Moscow. The mistake has been for the new country of Ukraine to occupy the same geographical footprint as something which was essentially just an administrative unit and which was always divided between Ukrainians in the West and Russians in the East.
    2
  6412.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  It's been interesting. You've stuck to your guns and I admire that. Have a Happy Christmas.
    2
  6413. We could take a leaf from Russia's book and conscript them. This would necessitate invading some other country to ensure they are killed or maimed, however. France might be a suitable contender.
    2
  6414. The Russians pushed towards Kiev in order to draw the Ukrainians into battle on its own territory, instead of in Donbass or Crimea. The object of the exercise was to reduce the Ukrainian army by attrition and sacrifice. This has been largely successful and the much-depleted Ukrainians are now being slowly forced back to the Donbass border. I fully endorse the comment by @pjblackham8554.
    2
  6415. Instant karma is often amusing.
    2
  6416. ...to distort their words, as this channel would undoubtedly have done if it had access.
    2
  6417. You were doing quite well until you got to the bit about giving Putin an ultimatum. They will, in fact, discuss like gentlemen how to divide Ukraine's mineral wealth between them with the minimum of fuss and bother.
    2
  6418.  @briankerrison8504  No. That globalism you're thinking of.
    2
  6419.  @jona826  The rest of his guff was pretty much to the same standard.
    2
  6420. Bla bla blah blah blah
    2
  6421. It's unfortunate for everybody that the obvious fact of skin colour enables these false distinctions to be made.
    2
  6422. allrawpaul You have been driven mad by propaganda. Wake up.
    2
  6423. Daniel All scientists accept that C02 levels were much higher in the prehistoric past. At the time of the dinosaurs, between about 213 to 144 million years ago ten times present levels would probably be about right. Far from being uninhabitable it was very lengthy period of lush growth in both flora and fauna. It is facts like these which make the C02 scare stories you have been told so very unlikely.
    2
  6424.  @Katoshi_Takagumi  Personally I have no time for organised religion, but Orthodox Christianity has become very important to Russians since the collapse of the USSR. This ceasefire acknowledges that, and I can see no ulterior motive for it.
    2
  6425.  @candidbowyer4625  He may be insincere -who knows? The important point is that he recognises and utilises Russian's reborn Christianity.
    2
  6426.  @candidbowyer4625  Of course countries have religions. Some have brutal dictators too, but in Russia's case Orthodoxy, while recognised as being important to a sense of national identity, is only one of several religions and belief systems which exist there.
    2
  6427.  @andrew30m  Simple solutions very much do exist for complex problems, as demonstrated by the story of the Gordian Knot. And tariffs are a simple enough solution to some of the more thorny problems of trade inbalance. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and often causes people to feel themselves to be superior to others, with very little justification. I'm sure you understand what I mean.
    2
  6428. This might be an appropriate time to remember another charismatic leader who led his nation into a bloody and destructive war, and who was revered by all right up until the very end. This first one ended up committing suicide on his bunker as Russian shells rained down all around him. Zelensky will not share this fate, I am sure. He will retire to Florida or somewhere with his billions ,and will be able to flatter his ego with frequent appearances on TV chat shows.
    2
  6429. By what measure is Russian information likely to be less accurate than that provided by America - or anywhere else for that matter?
    2
  6430. And Ukraine of course has absolutely everything it needs.😊
    2
  6431.  @MrNoClueAtAll  It makes perfect sense. The idea that Russia intended to acquire territory in the first stage of its special operation is a false one. The strategy was merely to use the territory as a battleground on which to deplete the Ukrainian army as much as possible. To this end, the territory was swiftly acquired by more experienced and better equipped forces before sending in large numbers of raw troops armed with ancient equipment to soak up the Ukrainian response. This has resulted in the Ukrainian army being decimated while the Russians still have their best troops and their experienced mercenaries in reserve. They also have around half a million more cannon fodder on hand, ready to repeat the exercise.
    2
  6432.  @MrNoClueAtAll  The goals are to retain Donbass and Crimea. The remainder of Ukraine is of little interest to Russia, other than as a battleground. Having said that, an utter defeat of Ukraine might well result in Russia keeping all the annexed territories and even possibly taking Odessa, but Putin realises that taking Western Ukraine would involve an expensive, never-ending civil war. So, however regretfully, he will shake his head in sorrow and kiss these former Russian lands goodbye. As to Russia and China - the scene seems set for these two countries and the other BRICS countries, plus twenty or so others seemingly keen to join, to ally in an effort to destroy American hegemony and thoroughly undermine the dollar. Ethnic questions will doubtless be put aside under such circumstances.
    2
  6433. Is anyone aware of the video put out on Saturday featuring a group of US frontline doctors rubbishing the lockdown and claiming to have achieved major death reductions with the use of hydroxychloreqine? It was both moving and convincing. No wonder ALL the social media channels have taken it down. Twitter has even pulled it out of Trump's feed. Know who your enemies are my friends.
    2
  6434.  @stephanguitar9778  Sorry. Not getting your context here.
    2
  6435. Rava Gador NASA is up to its eyes in this con, altering data all the time to fit the narrative. They and the rest of the climate mafia are also trying to mop up traces of old records. Some survive. This is far from being conclusive but I've just a quick check in the city where I live Oxford, England and I find that top temperatures are pretty consistent from 1853 onwards (21c) 1858 (25.1c) 1933 (24.6c) down to 2017 (22.3c) The giant leap comes last year (27.4c) which does not accord with my recollection at all and makes me wonder the mafia have made the Met Office an offer they can't refuse,
    2
  6436. Vaeringar Did you notice they were saying 37c?! Bloody journalists. I agree this is only a small sample but the picture is pretty much the same all over the UK - and in the US too where practically all "highest recorded" are in the 1920s or 30s. I don't see how we can draw any conclusions about the whole world since there were so few records made outside N America and Europe. I was a journalist once myself - and I smell a rat.
    2
  6437. Vaeingjar The official records have been extensively tampered with - which those doing the tampering freely admit. They call it "adjusting" or "homogenisation" I believe. It just strikes me as odd that all this adjusting invariably leads to a position where previously accepted "hot" periods have been cooled down and recent cool periods warmed up. This leads to a bendy stick being hammered out into the hockey stick which Michael Mann and his fellow climate fascists want to wave in our faces. I call it demanding money with menaces, a criminal offence in the UK.
    2
  6438.  @sharon_shaw  I doubt the arms are going to arrive any time soon, and even if they do there will not be enough able-bodied troops to utilise them.
    2
  6439. To pay for luxury lifestyles for illegal immigrants and million-pound missiles to prolong the war in Ukraine?
    2
  6440.  @stephenconway2468  Not at all. Boris and his crew are guilty of the most horrible offences against decent, moral behaviour - having jollies while people are forbidden to attend the funerals of loved ones, visit them in hospital etc. Clearly the people who made up the rules had no faith in them. Why should anyone else?
    2
  6441.  @gordonstrong5232  All a bit hypothetical. I think by diplomatic convention he would have to be invited. Unlikely to happen under the present administration - but after 2024, who knows?
    2
  6442.  @r0bz372  As is the case in all viral infections. Antibodies are replaced by T cells which are far fewer in number and harder to detect; but which reproduce in vast quantities should the infection re-appear.
    2
  6443. More hysteria from people who should really, really stay calm. Whatever the first one was, the other three were clearly two stray weather balloons and a weather kite. Why are so many military types quite mad?
    2
  6444. Or common sense.
    2
  6445. Trump has truth and justice on his side and has emerged with great dignity. Lying and cheating is such second nature to the Democrats that they don't even seem to know when they're doing it.
    2
  6446. These warnings should be heeded. America has taken a step too far in pursuing this conflict, and indeed in provoking it. This is one bandwagon every country with any sense should jump off pretty damned quick.
    2
  6447.  johnslavin2270  All of them.
    2
  6448. This all seems like a storm in a teacup now that America is virtually finished as a significant world power.
    2
  6449.  @joshuabetts2484  The information on this site is available on a number of others and is broadly similar. I suppose its just possible that they have concocted court and police documents and local newspaper headlines from five years ago, but I think it unlikely. Whatever the case the fact that the guy was clearly refusing to co-operate and was clearly also reaching DOWN into the well of the vehicle is sufficient justification for shooting him.
    2
  6450.  @joshuabetts2484  The domestic dispute could have plenty to do with him (The two women are believed to be closely associated with him and involved with him in the bar/gun incident and the domestic abuse charges). In any case the cops could have simply checked his car number to come up with all details. The guy hated cops, that's for sure. His Facebook page has cops with pigs' heads on it. I think he just went crazy. Like George Floyd, he just wasn't behaving rationally. He was a loose cannon and thus very, very dangerous. .
    2
  6451. If you're gonna do war you might as well be good at it.
    2
  6452. Say what?The Dems are going to cheat. He's suggesting a perfectly legal we to try to stop them.
    2
  6453.  @mariogmajner6549  He's just trying to make money.
    2
  6454. Reym Yaaaay!!!
    2
  6455. You just can't deal with the concept of people rejecting the mass brainwashing can you?
    2
  6456.  @petermartell568  Which no longer exists as a feature of government in Russia.
    2
  6457.  @emsleywyatt3400  Absolute rubbish.
    2
  6458. There's nothing new in nations scrabbling for resources. At least Trump is upfront about it - unlike his predecessors who hid greed behind false philanthropy, as typified by USAID.
    2
  6459. This is wonderful stuff!
    2
  6460.  @bakamaka5479  There is no evidence that current levels of Co2 influence the temperature, other than to act as a thermostat. I agree it's a gamble. But there it is.
    2
  6461.  @bakamaka5479  The very fact that little animations are needed makes me suspicious from the start. In my view there are so many incredible and unknown influences on the earth's climate that singling out man-made carbon emissions as a major influence simply smacks of egotism. It was was warmer a thousand years ago than it is today - as far as can be judged from contemporary accounts and proxy data. The same applies to about a thousand years before that. I would be happy to consider the claims of AGW objectively if I could not immediately see how supporting these claims is a fast route to making a quick buck.
    2
  6462.  @a5cent  It has utterly failed FOR Russia because the US has overstepped the mark by exercising its own imperialist mindset.
    2
  6463. Odd how these Russian "atrocities" always seem to happen when arms supplies to Ukraine look like drying up.
    2
  6464. @ It already has.
    2
  6465. woolyimage We should begin to breed large numbers of horses immediately. Fortunately there are stlll plenty around and you can buy horse sperm on the Internet. Carriages and carts can be made in defunct automobile factories. We could start immediately in Detroit and bring life back to that sad city. Crossing the Atlantic by catamaran will mean a lot of catamarans, but if we ban all other than essential travel the idea might work. A bridge would be a good idea but I guess that's kinda impossible.
    2
  6466.  @richardsmith1161  Well there were those 6,000 in Antrim County, Michigan of course.
    2
  6467. Ukraine will regret not heeding these offers once it lies in ruins
    2
  6468.  @mazzerattimike8695  Recognition of Crimea as Russian (which it is), autonomy for Donbass and a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO. The way things are going Putin is likely to get all of this and more - and around half a million people will have died to.no.purpose.
    2
  6469.  @teddypicker6969  No. I just think that we should form alliances with Russia instead of being stuck in this needless cold war paranoia.
    2
  6470.  @donohirst  You left out confirmation bias and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Naughty. Go back to school.
    2
  6471.  @fintonmainz7845  Why should I? Everyone else seems to be doing it.
    2
  6472.  @kal-elofkrypton252  Enough people are aware of the truth but there is still an immense number of sheep who believe that the Biden administration is legitimate and -what is even funnier - actually working for their benefit!
    2
  6473.  @RightTurnClyde  I think your assessment is totally wrong. Trump believed and still believes (as do I) that the election was stolen. There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence, not least of which are the final figures themselves. It was done very professionally and it will it be incredibly difficult to discover all the methods used - but events have overtaken us and a full investigation will be something for the future. Unless similar methods are used next year the Republicans ought to take the house and senate and 2024 should hopefully see Trump or his nominee in the White House.
    2
  6474. Someone should explain to Biden and the Democrats that this is what a real insurrection looks like.
    2
  6475.  @AuntyEsther  Actually Hitler was a socialist in the sense that he too provided state-run health and education services and even roads. He made wealthy industrialists direct their attentions to state interest before personal profits. He had a bit of a downside too, but I expect you already know that.
    2
  6476. Trump's actions, like Putin's, are perfectly normal in the context of history as a whole, as I am sure the Prof must be aware. America is an imperialist power and Trump is simply being honest about this instead of pretending, like his predecessors, that extending its influence is somehow an act of altruism. As for Putin, his view that Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine are Russian, and have been for very many years, is perfectly justifiable.
    2
  6477. Both our main political parties are tainted with this sin.
    2
  6478.  @Justwantahover  Depends what he likes doing, don't it?
    2
  6479.  @blazzz13  No. Everyone lost.
    2
  6480.  @octavianpopescu4776  I don't have a team.
    2
  6481.  @davidmcculloch8490  Democracy hasn't got much going for it when we end up with a shower like this lot.
    2
  6482.  @peter_thiel_sexy_monkey  Of course it's everybody else's fault if I'm ostracised!
    2
  6483.  @tonymcfeisty2478  I do not regard the Conservative party as being a great deal better than the present government, if you want the truth. But it is probably less dangerous. (PS. Give up the comedy. It's not your thing.)
    2
  6484.  @stephenelkington4971  Recognition that the Labour Party no longer represents socialism, and that in any case the socialist ideal no longer has any traction in the modern world.
    2
  6485.  @TonyLinden51  The price of fish in Hamburg.
    2
  6486.  @boota1979  What? The YouTube algorithm's weird new behaviour or secularism in Israel? Both are entirely true, I assure you.
    2
  6487. Astrid Maclean Britain's educational institutions, especially teacher training colleges and universities, are hotbeds of socialist propaganda. Apart from London the majority of Labour supporting areas were university towns. I only hope that some time over the next ten years this Conservative government will be able to restore the balance.
    2
  6488. BigHenFor Where did you learn all that bollocks? Not in the real world I bet.
    2
  6489. James D Robertson Oxford and Cambridge both bucked the national trend at the General Election and returned their sitting Labour MPs. I did say "socialist propaganda" not "socialist thought", by the way. I was going to shout "Oxymoron!" at this point, but that would be a little unkind.
    2
  6490. James D Robertson You obviously graduated from the University of Call Everything I Don't Like Fascist, A relentlessly easy trope if there ever was one.
    2
  6491. James D Robertson All the best for the coming New Era, Jim Seasons Gloatings from all at Number Ten
    2
  6492. James D Robertson Eat my shorts.
    2
  6493.  @unfamiliarenvironments  So you're telling us just how the figures are fixed then? That really is very kind of you.
    2
  6494.  @beeragainsthumanity1420  It is perfectly possible to be both -despite recent attempts at re-definition designed to demonise the latter term. Trump, however, is purely patriotic. How can he be a nationalist when his platform is largely based on a rejection of the way his country is run?
    2
  6495.  @StephenKershaw1  I both respect him and take him seriously. More to the point, so too do millions of Americans who will hopefully be able to bring about his re-election in 2024.
    2
  6496. There is absolutely no need for a war with Russia. Russia has no territorial ambitions other than to maintain control over territories which it historically dominates.
    2
  6497. As a consequence of ill-judged support for Ukraine the economies of most Western countries will be going into freefall. The benefits/disadvantages of Brexit will simply disappear in the chaos.
    2
  6498. I think the massive support from millions of ordinary Americans was enough to prevent the other side from cheating. Millions of Democrat votes didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere as in 2020. Too big to rig!
    2
  6499.  @grief1  No. A reasonable assessment, I think. (I have tried to reply in more detail but YT's new fascist algorithm deleted my response.)
    2
  6500.  @dag3014  His own social media profiles. He is an actor looking for work. He describes himself as being well-spoken, but capable of a convincing rough gangster-type voice. He uses such a voice in the film. He also says he is available for undercover work.
    2
  6501. Yup. Lock up OAP's for mean Tweets while allowing Muslim child rapists to roam the streets. At least someone has their priorities right.
    2
  6502. It really is all .America's fault. It needs to keep Russia as a permanent enemy. Putin has been pushed too far.
    2
  6503. Actually it is just DIED in custody. Otherwise great post!
    2
  6504.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Actually it wouldn't surprise me at all if the festival was allowed to be used as bait to allow the Islamic fundamentalists to show their true colours and bring matters to a head.
    2
  6505.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Because Israel initially made every effort to pursue a policy of peaceful co-existence with the Arab peoples who had drifted into the territory over the years. As I said before, Islamic fundamentalism has prevented this. This is where the madness lies. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
    2
  6506.  @SadaK-tr6dm  My answer has been deleted by YouTube censorship. They are on your side.
    2
  6507. I think Russia very much wants to destroy the buildings, but would prefer to do so when they didn.t have people inside them.
    2
  6508.  @cube6687  Here's hoping.
    2
  6509.  @stasguivan4680  Absolutely.
    2
  6510.  @stasguivan4680  There are memorials to the dead in front line towns and villages in Donbass. At least 14 thousand people have died. People are living in cellars. Industry is crippled. What world are you living in?
    2
  6511.  @linusa2996  The civilian deaths are incidental, as the low numbers show. Different missiles with different targets would be used if the prime objective was killing large numbers of civilians. Shooting the drones down might not be such a good idea either.
    2
  6512.  @Aussie-Mocha  Totally credible.
    2
  6513. @Myname Isunavailable Do you believe Russia would waste a $1million dollar missile on an apartment block in Dnipro?
    2
  6514.  @michaeldunham3385  The parts of the present country of Ukraine which Putin wants back are Russian, and have been for hundreds of years, apart from times when they were occupied by the Ottoman Turks. The Russian Bolsheviks, and later Nikita Krushchev, stuck them on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine (which was controlled by Russia) partly for administrative reasons and partly to outweigh Ukrainian nationalist votes in the governing body of the SSR. But they remained Russian, with very substantial Russian populations.. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the foolish decision was taken to make the new country of Ukraine, independent of Russia, contain these Russian areas. This was asking for trouble, and trouble we have got. Putin's original demands were for Crimea( which welcomed a return to Russia) to be acknowledged as being Russian, while the two republics in Donbass became independent, and thus not be included if Ukraine joined the EU. This is particularly important since these areas are immensely rich in mineral wealth, which has been exploited by Russia, using Russian labour, for centuries. If Ukraine joined the EU these resources would be removed from Russian control. So all Putin is doing is trying to protect his country's interests and his countrymen's well-being - which I regard as being very reasonable.
    2
  6515. I wonder if Joe Biden would consider giving Hunter the job?
    2
  6516. She is now poised for office in the new-look Tory party. Sunak must go.
    2
  6517. A voice of sanity
    2
  6518.  @stevo091  Planet Reality.
    2
  6519. It might be boring, but at least he knows what he's talking about. This was jaw-droppingly silly.
    2
  6520. Absolutely. They are missing a political opportunity too.
    2
  6521. We'd all be dead of cold and starvation instead.
    2
  6522. Far, far away on the island of dreams....
    2
  6523. @Captain-l-12p I'm more worried about them re-appearing here before we know it!
    2
  6524. It it possible for Time Radio and the TDS sufferers who follow it to get even more pathetic than they actually are?
    2
  6525. Why stop there? Smartphones should only be issued to those who can demonstrate their loyalty to the state.
    2
  6526.  @gabrielleslodowski3150  I think he actually wrote them when he was a journalist; a job he would have been better to stick at.
    2
  6527.  @Interglacial_optimist  Kentucky Fried Dog?
    2
  6528. You're getting obsessed! I defy you to link any of my opinions with Russian agiprop (whatever that is)
    2
  6529.  @nathanadler6991  Better than abusing the law for political purposes.
    2
  6530. What if the damage was simply caused by unexpended rocket fuel catching fire?
    2
  6531. New restrictions are inevitable. The disease is now set to go away all by itself, but the government needs to find a way to take the credit.
    2
  6532. The effects of Omicron are uncertain. The effects of lockdowns and an insane, unattainable vaccine programme are clear, however. More chaos. More ruin.
    2
  6533. Biden is an unscrupulous warmonger.
    2
  6534. This just shows the problems Russia faces. Islamic terrorists on one side, and NATO warmongers on the other.
    2
  6535.  @rocketassistedgoat1079  Have you not noticed how conspiracy theories are increasingly becoming conspiracy facts?
    2
  6536.  @boink800  Their families will be so pleased to have them back from the dead.
    2
  6537.  @Angela1957  There are those who would suggest that it wasn't their property and that Palestine is not a country and never has been.
    2
  6538.  @sakha2349  I disagree with your view of history here. However you will be comforted to learn that YouTube's new fascist algorithm seems to side with you, since my detailed response has been deleted.
    2
  6539.  @sakha2349 "Palestine" was a name invented by British mapmakers wards the end of World War I, based on their understanding of what the Romans might have called one part of the much larger area than the one they were naming.
    2
  6540.  @sakha2349  Until the arrival of the Zionists towards the end of the 19th century the whole area was in a state of semi-decay. It consisted of series of provinces of the decaying Ottoman Empire.
    2
  6541.  @sakha2349  I think probably we have. I firmly believe that taking too much notice of religious dogma brings nothing but harm in delicate political situations. The war in Gaza is essentially a religious war. Without doctrinaire Islamism colouring the issues there is no reason why Arabs and Jews should not rub along just fine.
    2
  6542.  @sakha2349  However much this may be true, what is preventing peace is Islamic intransigence. Without it, arrangements suitable to Jews and Arabs alike would be perfectly possible. After all, there are plenty of moderate Muslims living quite happily in Israel.
    2
  6543. @ The losses are open to dispute. The gains are not. Russia is now well on the way to retaining control of territories sitting on many trillions of dollarsworth of mineral riches. Writing on a piece of paper that an area of land is a "sovereign territory" doesn't make it so. The country of Ukraine created in the early 1990s is not a true, united country. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, on on the footprint of which it is based, was entirely a creation of the Bolsheviks and much of its eastern part is essentially Russian, with a large Russian population and the considerable resources of which are still largely owned by Russian companies. Russia has been forced into the grim necessity of war by the prospect of these resources being transferred to the control of Western agencies, and by Ukraine's continued attempts to repress Russian language and culture in these areas.
    2
  6544. @ What, other than Ukraine staying out of NATO?
    2
  6545. Isn't it about time the G7 got its collective tongue out of America's ass?
    2
  6546.  @putinspuppet  What hole? His actions appear to be carefully considered and he now seems within reach of achieving his declared war aims.
    2
  6547.  @aerial558  Not in this instance. I copypasted an originally accepted comment in the thread and reposted it again. I typed in utterly innocuous comments and test comments. All were rejected. I am far from being an expert in these matters, but I am told it might be because the silly old YouTube bot suspects me of "spamming." (Whatever that is!)
    2
  6548.  @aerial558  I think it must be. I do it myself sometimes. I sometimes get my bot to rewrite my stuff in bot language to get it past the YouTube bot and then copy and paste it. Funny old world, ain't it?
    2
  6549. Joe Biden is little more than a Deep State puppet who uses the word "democracy" to justify a career of personal advancement. How anyone can fall for this blatant hypocrisy defeats me.
    2
  6550. Didn't work though, did it?
    2
  6551. I don't think this present government knows the difference between Tuesday and Thursday, to be quite frank.
    2
  6552. You didn't ought to talk about that nice Mrs Nuland in that way
    2
  6553. And Karkiv isn't sitting on a recently discovered and quite enormous deposit of high grade lithium either.
    2
  6554. The cases will be in their millions with a week and masks and vaccines are probably useless. It might even be an evolutionary response to vaccines - meaning vaccinated people will be more likely to get it.
    2
  6555. I don't think it has been deleted, merely re-uploaded.
    2
  6556. I think people are confused as to exactly what Trump wants. He's not interested in getting concessions for "poor little Ukraine." . That was the schtick of previous administrations. What Trump wants is a deal in which the US and Russia can divvy up the immense mineral wealth of Ukraine to their mutual advantage.
    2
  6557. This is so conceited! As far as I can make out US intelligence and the slave MSM are saying that because Putin isn't doing what they thought he was going to do it must mean he isn't being told what's really going on. This is exactly the mentality which led to the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
    2
  6558. My parrot has just died. I'm sure this due to climate change.
    2
  6559.  @andrew6978  Nothing But to unquestioningly assume that Russia did this -- and to believe that Ukraine doesn't lie too - just isn't very intelligent
    2
  6560.  @SergiiBoiko  Crimea was Russia before the Soviet Union was created, having been taken from the Turks in the late 18th century. It was passed over to the semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 as a matter of administration and logistics. Note "semi-autonomous". Ukraine, like all the other Soviet Socialist Republics was ultimately subservient to Moscow. When the Russian Federation was created Crimea was mistakenly and foolishly made a part of the new country of Ukraine. Russia recovered it in 2014 in a virtually bloodless coup. All in all this gives Russia a far greater claim than Ukraine, I think.
    2
  6561. He won't pay. Simple.
    2
  6562. It seems to me that BLM supporters might include many black people who subconsciously wish they were white - and vice versa. It's a sickness, not a charity or a political movement in that case.
    2
  6563.  @DavidMoxham957  The product won't be more expensive to the consumer because nobody will buy it. That's the idea. Starting a price war in this way should, in theory, result in lower prices as various suppliers compete with one another.
    2
  6564.  @DavidMoxham957  It can work both ways, certainly. But in this instance there is no sole producer of oil - there are many, and the fact that the US is theoretically self sufficient in oil in any case means it would be near-impossible for a cartel of other suppliers to obtain sufficient leverage to "name the price" as you put it. As for pharmaceuticals - don't get me started! The pharmaceutical industry is disgrace. Cheap alternatives are available for a great many of the hideously over-priced medicines currently available, but these are deliberately ignored thanks to various forms of collusion with the health authorities and the insurance industry. A true cartel indeed. In fact there are far worse names for it. Criminal conspiracy wouldn't be going too far.
    2
  6565.    The Viking Union?
    2
  6566.  Carl Stone  Can you be more specific? I only have A level biology from many years ago and an understanding of evolution, I think. But it seems to me (and to several specialists also ) that when competition increases (ie in a lockdown) then any small advantage a variant may have comes immediately into play enabling that variant to become dominant. Statistical evidence backs this up. There is a steady upward climb in influenza variants as time proceeds but the number of covid variants has shot up steeply consequent upon lockdowns.
    2
  6567. Or those who follow the herd and those who think for themselves.
    2
  6568. @somedeveloperblokey Masks other than fully fitted masks with respirators are utterly useless. All intelligent politicians must realise that the Magic Mask imposition was only trotted out to keep the sheep on the pasture, and that it is now pointless to keep up the pretence.
    2
  6569.  @Shauninay  They just happened to be here. It could have happened anywhere in the world.
    2
  6570.  @lauchlanguddy1004  They were not Ukrainian nukes, they were Russian (Soviet) nukes stationed there. The Budapest treaty, to which you refer, has been superseded by subsequent treaties, most recently the Minsk treaties of 2014/16 which Ukraine broke by failing to take measures to protect the interests of the Russian population of Donbass, and to allow regional autonomy there. Russia presents no threat to the UK. We are, like Ukraine, merely being used by America to advance its commercial interests.
    2
  6571.  @vinm300  Nobody's got Covid 19 right, and the handling of it has been largely a matter for individual states. The economy is far safer in Trump's hands than anyone else's. Race relations have been deliberately worsened by BLM for political purposes and the Dems have been payed around a billion dollars to go along with it. International relations have never been better for the US. America is sick of footing the bill for everything and now that's not happening quite so much. This is more than a stunt. It's a genuine achievement - and if I know Trump he's got a few more "stunts" up his sleeve between now and November.
    2
  6572.  @vinm300  I think you're just a little minx, actually! I usually charge for arguments, but you can have one for free. You start.
    2
  6573.  @vinm300  He's an acquired taste, sure; but his great advantage is that he's a businessman not a politician and comes to the job owing nobody. I don't think that's ever happened before, and it's the reason the political establishment are so afraid of him and why they make up lurid stories about him.. He's enormously cunning and thinks many moves ahead. Biden and Harris have zilch and there's the possibility of all sorts of dirt coming on them over the next few weeks whereas Trump's bones have been picked clean. I think people underestimate the affinity he has with the ordinary American too. They trust him and many would behave exactly as he's behaved if they were in his position. He's been wrongfooted by Covid, sure - but who hasn't?
    2
  6574. I don't think they had to -they just did. I commented on yesterday's upload and it is still there.
    2
  6575. I'm sure they'd do the same for you. (Not)
    2
  6576. He had a record of domestic violence and was apparently on bail for a serious sexual assault on a 14-year old. An even less likely martyr than George Floyd.
    2
  6577. Stand by for a wave of terrorist attacks in US and European cities.
    2
  6578. Flu deaths and hospitalisations dropped to near zero during the covid years. Odd that.
    2
  6579. This retweet is just a slightly more offensive version of the generally disgusting left-wing reaction to Badenoch's appointment. From Starmer downwards the congratulations have concentrated on her colour and gender, rather than her abilities. True racism now lies at the heart of socialism. Conservatives and other right-wingers are now almost entirely colour-blind.
    2
  6580. Net Zero is a recipe for suicide. The human race has far, far longer to deal with the problems of climate change than the fearmongers claim. The hysterical impulse to cut carbon emissions as soon as possible will result in utter disaster. It's just like the covid hysteria - though on a much larger scale.
    2
  6581.  @markhackett2302  Climate change is a very gradual process. By taking hasty and foolish short-term decisions we can only make things worse without having anything other than a detrimental effect on the long-term position
    2
  6582. An interesting fact is that the ICC prosecutor who is taking Putin to court, Karim Ahmad Khan, is the brother of Imran Ahmad Khan, a convicted paedophile and former UK Conservative MP - recently released less than halfway through his sentence thanks, it is believed, to efforts by his brother. This is probably irrelevant, but it gives a certain grotesque symmetry to the allegations against Putin, who has done nothing than remove children from war zones, and from the internationally notorious hell-holes which are Ukraine's orphanages and "care homes."
    2
  6583. A bit late, isn't it? The only civilians left in Mariupol who don't want to be there are those locked in cellars by the Azov Battalion. Is anyone really fooled by this latest clumsy PR exercise by the Ukrainians?
    2
  6584. No chance.
    2
  6585. Navies will go the way of horse cavalry unless someone can think up effective ways of preventing drone attacks.
    2
  6586.  @weswheel4834  He's just the latest - and one of the most gruesome and inept.
    2
  6587.  @weswheel4834  Almost anyone has got to be better than Starmer. He's just a globalist shill, working for the elite while spouting a load of socialist nonsense he doesn't even believe in.
    2
  6588. We know they're not the Tories - which for some is all that matters.
    2
  6589. At last a voice of sanity.
    2
  6590. Some hope.
    2
  6591. This is the third offer the Russians have made. Zelensky will stop it happening . He'd rather see people die than allow anything that will make the Russians look good.
    2
  6592. Why do murderous religious lunatics have a propensity for wearing frocks and funny hats? One can see this phenomenon throughout the course of human history. It is surely something worthy of academic investigation.
    2
  6593. wolf pup SOOOH much of Sky's reporting is exactly like that fine old show! C4's and the BBC's too, for that matter. I guess the twats who run these pretend news channels are too young to remember it.
    2
  6594. It's just as bad in the US, Fauci and the CDC have convinced the public that only the unvaccinated end up in hospital and die. Tell the poor sods otherwise and they become hysterical.
    2
  6595. But they aren't. If they were they would be hunted down. It's only because the grooming gangs are mostly brown and Muslim that the authorities won't act for fear of a backlash.
    2
  6596.  @chrisstones1249  Ukraine is fighting to make the world safe for hypocrisy.
    2
  6597.  @Behindstage  Absolutely.
    2
  6598. Why though?
    2
  6599. The RINO at least has a chain round his neck.
    2
  6600. Why are we having to support one side in what is basically a turf war between two gangs of crooks?
    2
  6601.  @dudermcdudeface3674  You are obviously a philosopher, even though jumping and gravity aren't ideas, as such.
    2
  6602. Ukraine and Germany are Poles apart.
    2
  6603. America is a disgrace to Western civilisation. Trump gets stitched up for mis-filing documents while Biden gets away with a lifetime of bribery and corruption.
    2
  6604.  @BGS_123  Well, acknowledging race could very well be counted as racism - and paying undue attention to it certainly is.
    2
  6605. The UN is a sick joke.
    2
  6606. Not as unlikely as it may sound.
    2
  6607.  @DissociatedWomenIncorporated  Do you have Internet? Can you read newspapers?
    2
  6608.  @DissociatedWomenIncorporated  I think I like you.
    2
  6609.  @mrb.5610  A common mistake. It's mutating all the time, so the less people around to catch it the strain which moves fastest and infects more rapidly and efficiently is the one which wins through and knocks out the competition. Survival of the most adaptable.
    2
  6610.  @georgerobertson-smith7435  Ah, but what's going to happen when you DO go outside and a more efficient and infectious strain is there ready and waiting? Lockdowns are a losing game and this is only one aspect of that.
    2
  6611. America's collapse is inevitable. It's only a question of time before the inexorable march of history and the rules of entropy bring this shabby empire to its knees.
    2
  6612. The only thing preventing peace in the Middle East is Islamic fundamentalism. End of.
    2
  6613. She probably had the same lingering infection, in all fairness. In England only 50 or so people thought to have actually caught covid twice.
    2
  6614. We've now got 2 in the UK - one in Chelmsford and 1 in Nottingham.
    2
  6615.  @Redquattrolv  What's so mad about protecting your borders and established interests from foreign pirates?
    2
  6616. What it means is that Russia will respond with a huge attack on a Ukrainian city, as happened last night when multiple weapons, including an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile were used to wreak devastation on Dnipro.
    2
  6617.  @Xenophon1  Why did they do that?
    2
  6618.  @celebrim1 Are you suggesting that the booster rocket carries on flying after its nose cone has exploded? And turns about tail in mid-air? In any case, the Russians have no form on this kind of deliberately targeted atrocity, and the Ukrainians have. They've been doing it in Donbass for eight years and the Mariupol theatre blast has their fingerprints all over it. They've fired on refugees trying to flee besieged cities before and have good reasons for doing so. The Russians have none.
    2
  6619.  @celebrim1  It is a paradox for exactly that reason. What we have to do is try our best to separate the likely from the unlikely. I see no false flags, as such, in either of these incidents though. If the Russians fired upon their DPR allies in an attempt to pin the blame on the Ukrainians they were doomed to fail. It is unlikely they would not have realised this and therefore, logically, it is likely the Ukrainians were responsible for both attacks. And of course we have eight years of precedent to give weight to this conclusion.
    2
  6620.  @MarshaBonForte  It might get to keep its bases without having to deploy troops, which can be transferred to the Donbass front.
    2
  6621.  @roycropper698  But this ancient! I have just revisited the ONS site and the figure is 51,264. That is all deaths in all locations where Covid 19 was mentioned on the death certificate. I ask again, where does this 70,000 number come from?
    2
  6622.  @Paul-eb2cl  And the source of this? It is just a completely made up figure, isn't it? The official figures include all such eventualities.
    2
  6623.    How dare you include maggot Macron in such exalted company?
    2
  6624. Odd how those politicians who go against Israel often seem to have financial connections with the Arab oil industry.
    2
  6625. And what is Santa bringing you for Christmas, sonny?
    2
  6626.  @ezioauditore3128  He didn't know the consequences. If he'd had been anyone else he'd have got a suspended sentence or a shorter sentence in an open prison.
    2
  6627.  @davefave4351  No. The first rule of journalism is never allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.
    2
  6628. That's odd. He voted for Biden. I don't think they'd have him.
    2
  6629.  @DiRtYLaWs2007  Another brilliant idea scuppered. Ah well.
    2
  6630.  @jonhoge153  You really are silly. Just Google Covid Florida and look at the graphs verified by the World Health Organisation. Daily numbers do vary, because the day is the day they were reported which is why you take an average. You have been dumb enough to fall for a story put out by the Democrats which spins this apparent anomaly. In Florida deaths have fallen from a peak of 353 a day in mid-September to the current level of nine a day
    2
  6631. You are entirely correct -but it is foolish to believe the Russians don't also behave badly.
    2
  6632.  @callumjohnston858  Nonetheless stirring up trouble in Georgia is clearly in US interests at the moment - as it was once before and as it was in Ukraine in 2014.
    2
  6633. He'd make a good used car salesman in that respect.
    2
  6634. No point throwing good money after bad. Looks as though Russia gets to keep the gas and oil after all.
    2
  6635. By the time this money is translated into actual weaponry Ukraine will be on its knees.
    2
  6636. So this is what we get for letting these ghastly people breed.
    2
  6637.  @DevonMcFarlane  Disparity yes - but for all sorts of sociological reasons. None of this presents evidence of deliberate systemic racism. Indeed, every effort seems to be being made to redress these inbalances by positive discrimination.
    2
  6638. The war will end when Russia wins, and not before.
    2
  6639.  @ChuckyRed06  But Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, where it counts. The missile fired at Dnipro was a warning of what Russia COULD do is further provoked - and the value of the rouble against the dollar is totally irrelevant. The shops in Russia are full of easily affordable groceries and gas is cheap. Unless you're a currency trader how many roubles you can get to the dollar is of no consequence whatsoever.
    2
  6640.  @marktrotter8971  I realise you need to have your spirits propped up if you have been supporting Ukraine all this while, but this is all just optimistic guesswork, isn't it?
    2
  6641. But what he said was true, wasn't it?
    2
  6642.  @brianfreeman8290  And I ask the same question again. "If Russia can get North Korea to help then why can't the British do the same?" The same as Russia. Which is getting North Korea to help. So I ask how (or indeed why) North Korea is going to help the British?
    2
  6643.  @brianfreeman8290  You are taking me too seriously. I was merely being picky about the poster's English.
    2
  6644. He is entirely right, of course. The ridiculous, whipped up support for Ukraine in this distant quarrel has backfired and brought us to the brink of nuclear war.
    2
  6645.  John Hoyle  They are not. The facts speak for themselves. They are targeting power stations, railways and fuel depots, as well as incoming arms supplies from the west. If civilians get killed that's unfortunate, but they were just as likely victims of anti missile rockets gone astray.
    2
  6646.  @fred4687  I saw it. They also showed the Russian military spokesman explaining the military objectives of the raids. I thought I was hallucinating.
    2
  6647.  @fred4687  No against Ukraine.
    2
  6648.  @fred4687  Absolutely. In this case though the Western MSM propaganda tries to completely ignore the military objectives of air assaults of this kind. Civilian deaths and civilian terror are incidental - and the cliche that they actually strengthen resolve is often true.
    2
  6649.  @fred4687  Visit India! Hindustan Times and Firstpost are both good, although clearly supportive of Russia. Amit Sengupta is excellent: more detailed and slightly more objective. I'm sure I don't have to tell you about Professor John J Mearsheimer, Col Douglas Macarthur and Patrick Lancaster. IEarl Grey is interesting, although an obvious Putin groupie. Not only are UK news media biased, but they seem pathetic and juvenile too by comparison with these sources.
    2
  6650.  @santamanone  Exactly. TDS suffers are just blinded to reality I'm afraid.
    2
  6651.  @bonnie7898  I daresay you're right. Tragically though, these "bots" often seem more intelligent than those who set out to contradict them.
    2
  6652. I'm sure the silly woman feels all warm and fluffy inside right now. Aaah, diddums!
    2
  6653. The end of the world is nigh. Or at least the end of the dollar as world currency is.
    2
  6654.  @anthonyferris8912  Well if you are, perhaps you could explain it to me?
    2
  6655.  @jeffholt9437  Absolutely. The case was a travesty. All the establishment is doing here is saying "the referee's decision is final" - even when it is clearly wrong.
    2
  6656. Sorry. It's you who doesn't understand. Fascism is a state of mind.
    2
  6657. Is that what he told you last time you met?
    2
  6658. This was great. About time Zelensky was knocked off his pedestal.
    2
  6659. Democracy isn't a competition, though it might sometimes seem so.
    2
  6660.  @compassroses  OK. Stalinist then.
    2
  6661.  @mclovin6039  The only affidavits thrown out are from inexperienced individuals and have nothing to do with the Trump campaign as such. The next would-be dictator and enemy of democracy is called Joe Biden. Or Kamala Harris. Or more likely those pulling their strings.
    2
  6662.  @flyfisher4449  You don't get doxxed or have you and your children's lives threatened for saying you have seen aliens. And some of those 340 pages have been seen - and very convincing reading they make too.
    2
  6663. Any idea how far back these records go?
    2
  6664. BBC bullshit on top of BLM bullshit. Will the defence show the WHOLE video?
    2
  6665. We are now all safe!!!Praise be!!!
    2
  6666.  @qp9vp  You're the one lost in a sea of propaganda. My views are my own.
    2
  6667. He will go and be replaced by a proper Tory. Johnson is a wet.
    2
  6668. Covid cases in Florida have dropped from an average of around 24,000 a day in mid-August to around 1,000 a day at present. The number of deaths have dropped from an average of 353 a day at their peak in mid-September to an average of nine a day at present. Time to go take off your silly mask and hit the beach.
    2
  6669.  @carlossaraiva8213  As you can see elsewhere in this thread, one reviewer said Moggy's last book was so badly-written no ghost writer could have done it!
    2
  6670. You can hire them to open fetes and things.
    2
  6671. A spontaneous outburst of Islamic violence? Or perhaps they were encouraged by the Seeieh?
    2
  6672. Russia built it in the first place.
    2
  6673.  @tomfinney3416  Not at all. If people were afraid to go to work in case they caught of cold from someone civilisation would collapse.
    2
  6674.  @angrygromit93  Indeed not. Of course we cannot discount demographic differences. S Africa has fewer elderly people and fewer people made obese through over-eating. On the other hand they have many AIDS victims. Whether these differences in immuno-compromised populations balance each other out is something we will just have to wait and see.
    2
  6675. American Presidents - apart from Donald Trump - do not run the country. They are merely figureheads.
    2
  6676. If government scientific advisors were laid head to toe from here to the North Pole they would still be pointing in different directions. This latest nonsense show what happens when people play with computers instead of looking out of the window.
    2
  6677. This is faked evidence, planted by the FBI. Is there no limit to their wickedness and your gullibility?
    2
  6678. Very poor quality propaganda. More like wishful thinking. But it's a good laugh!
    2
  6679. War with its terrible cost will soon settle which could very easily have been settled peacefully more than two years ago.
    2
  6680. People are at last starting to think for themselves instead of believing the crap churned out by channels like this one.
    2
  6681.  @gettingannoyedquick  A total stitch-up over nothing. Any fool can see that.
    2
  6682.  @denzilwashington2299  The Russians already have them.
    2
  6683.  Justin Rolland  No need to wait that long! Anyway it won't crash necessarily. It's obvious though that there will be severe fluctuations under an administration which combines political and fiscal ineptitude with an apparent ignorance of reflexivity. The hyenas are gathering to bring down the sick and the lame and I predict the demise of some very big names over the next few months.
    2
  6684. There could be times when Kamala might be grateful for interruptions of any sort. I daresay the "impartial host" will be on hand to help out though.
    2
  6685. And he will - or rather those who want a glove puppet for President will do so on his behalf.
    2
  6686. Around 78% of the people who die "with covid" are very, very old and are due to die shortly anyway Why cannot we accept the reality of death? It is, after all, the ultimate reality.
    2
  6687. True. This war was triggered by the US in the hope of showing a return on their investment in Ukraine. They have miscalculated badly, as they often seem to do when it comes to foreign policy.
    2
  6688. ...and that's the last you're getting!
    2
  6689.  @jakexgold3879  From what I've seen, very few people have any idea what the war is about.
    2
  6690.  @arnovriends5873  No it isn't.
    2
  6691. @rory kinahan So Crimea and the four former Ukrainian oblasts are now part of Russia.
    2
  6692.  @roboparks  They don't. They want Crimea and Donbass where many Russians live, and whose mineral resources they feel entitled to continue to exploit.
    2
  6693. @ There were infringements of the Minsk ceasefire on both sides, but the main thrust was surely that Ukraine should seek ways of creating regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics. This it patently did not do and instead colluded with the US and NATO and accepted billions of dollars with which to increase its army. A re-creation of Minsk was apparently within grasp at Istanbul, but Boris Johnson was sent as an envoy to prevent Ukraine accepting its terms. Once again we see how the greed of Western agencies to lay hands on the mineral wealth of Donbass lies behind this needless and tragic conflict. I cannot see how this situation bears any real comparison with attempts by BRICS to remove the dollar as reserve currency. It will be up to the various nations of the world which currency they trade in, and if they reject the dollar then even at its most bellicose the US cannot go to war with all of them, although it will probably try to sow dissent among them in order that they go to war with one another. America is good at that kind of thing.
    2
  6694. Geffo Me You've been sold a gold brick my friend. Climate scientists aren't real scientists. If they were the raw data they use and the computer programs and models they employ would be available for independent verification. But they're not. If they were real scientists they wouldn't have to remove and alter data to fit the AGW narrative. But they do. If they were real scientists they would get out of the lab more often. They could try to get to the north pole on an icebreaker say. But they can't because the ice is so thick this winter that even the biggest toughest icebreakers can hardly move, The Odin, Sweden's largest icebreaker is currently making less that three knots. They might take a trip to the Marshall Islands which are supposed to have gone under the waves for the past twenty years but are still miraculously there. The list goes on and on. You may or not be nuts, but you are certainly very gullible and very, very stupid.
    2
  6695. Geffo Me Hullo! Hullo! Anyone home? What windmills? You mean those fucking great monstrosities that despoil the countryside, kill birds, are made of plastic in foreign countries and have steel and concrete foundations the size of city blocks? The ones that come into operation with a carbon bill then can never hope to repay? Or was it the windmills of you mind you were referring to? LOL Man you are STUPID!
    2
  6696.  @martynblackburn9632  At the moment it seems to be killing more people than were saved.
    2
  6697.  @martynblackburn9632  It very much is. All the statistics are pointing that way, but one must be cautious. It is impossible to judge how many lives were saved by the procedure, since that is imponderable. It is, however, possible to look at figures for the frightening increase in the number of sudden deaths among young people, and the falling birth rate and the increase in stillbirths, and match these with the staggering increase in the number of reported other ill-effects from this procedure, compared with those of a similar nature. It SEEMS that something may have gone very, very wrong.
    2
  6698. How can anyone in their right mind not see this is a stitch up by the utterly corrupt US "justice" system?
    2
  6699. But what if Brexit turns out to be not so bad after all? Or at least can be made to appear not to be, which is certainly happening at the moment. Under such circumstance a rejoin policy could be the final nail in Labour's coffin.
    2
  6700. I think he believes it works by each individual adult having a vote which he/she can cast without being observed or bullied in any way
    2
  6701.  @Swish-x7b  I know I shouldn't ask, but what does beef flap mean?
    2
  6702.  @Swish-x7b  I thought it might be that. How disgusting - and what is the context or relevance? (I have three children and five grandchildren, by the way.)
    2
  6703.  @charly4912  Who says what these "rights" are though?
    2
  6704.  @Somerandomdude-ev2uh  I think that as well as being so unlikely as to be beyond the bounds of possibility both these eventualities are very different from trying to maintain a traditional and well-established morality. The situation is of course complicated by the fact that the whole issue of homosexual "rights" has nothing to do with homosexual rights at all, but is simply part of a Marxist strategy to create new categories of oppressed proletariat, the actual proletariat being no longer oppressed and not at all interested in Marxism, thank you very much. Having endured many decades of exposure to chicanery such as this, the Hungarians see through the scam. I'm sure Mr Orban couldn't care less who fucks whom and how or where as long as it doesn't cause any upset. He and his compatriots, however, quite rightly recognise that "gay pride" is nothing more than an excuse for very immature and disagreeable people to flaunt themselves while at the same time undermining the authority and dignity of the state.
    2
  6705.  @availanila  The UN is an abomination. Until such time as it is abolished its decrees may be justifiably ignored.
    2
  6706.  @robertshiell887  It did - which is why it's winning.
    2
  6707. They've got their own now.
    2
  6708. Islam is a serious threat to the traditional British way of life. With all due respect to Muslims, that is a fact which cannot be ignored.
    2
  6709. It is highly probable that Russia will now meet all its military objectives before tanks and other equipment arrive. Ukraine will find itself having to attack highly fortified positions in Donbass and south of the Dnieper with a much depleted army. Russia will have gained by force everything which it sought to achieve by diplomacy, and upwards of a quarter of a million people with have died to no purpose. It is time to call a halt to this madness. A negotiated peace is possible, and always has been.
    2
  6710. Russian aggression in Europe is a myth designed to boost the West's defence industry.
    2
  6711. Let's face it - the Ukraine experiment has failed. Time for them to face the consequences.
    2
  6712. The would-be assassin is a fanatical supporter of Ukraine, and has fought there and been instrumental in trying to recruit mercenaries on Zelensky's behalf. Just so you know.
    2
  6713. I think you're seeing what you want to see, He has never been terribly coherent and has a limited vocabulary. But he's very much all there.
    2
  6714.  @davefave4351  That's the result of decades of excessive immigration - which I agree the Tories did not do enough to control.
    2
  6715. You are just so easy to wind up! I think we're going to be getting a lot of this now, just to enjoy watching you silly lefties foam at the mouth.
    2
  6716.  @timbowman6398  Oh YES!
    2
  6717. I've got a good idea. Why don't we start talking to Russia instead of being American lapdogs and constantly antagonising them?
    2
  6718. Russia is in the business of destroying Ukraine's army by any means available. At this stage, territory means nothing to them.
    2
  6719. Clearly' Boris is not the only one with a Winston Churchill complex.
    2
  6720.  @gribbler1695  It's got more to offer than watching covid rip through Australia, killing the frail elderly and other vulnerable people. Come to that, everyone over 60 could have been given a free hazmat suit for a fraction of what lockdowns have cost!
    2
  6721. This will of course release quite large numbers of battle-hardened troops to help ensure victory in Ukraine before Trump takes office and hopefully puts an end to this madness.
    2
  6722. ​ @DoubleDragon539  Such as? I think we're treading on very dangerous ground to suggest that the honest expression of political or journalistic opinion should be made criminal.
    2
  6723.  @DoubleDragon539  Indeed not. But examining the causes might be more profitable than seeking to find people to blame. I find it quite patronising and offensive that many people think that these angry people can't come to their own conclusions without being tutored by political figures.
    2
  6724.  @Bowdon  I think he got out too quickly to have his name registered!
    2
  6725.  @Bowdon  Perhaps technically he was never a member then - but I'm sure you see my point.
    2
  6726.  @kevonslims7269  The two are in entirely different categories.
    2
  6727.  @mikeboydus  Putin too has a law degree!
    2
  6728. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of political or journalistic impartiality in the newsrooms of the BBC, despite their many claims to the contrary.
    2
  6729. Those two did it for gratification. Cummings did it so his child could be looked after if he and his wife both fell gravely ill. Bit of a difference?
    2
  6730. ​ @chrisso871  They re rules to which exceptions may be made in certain circumstances. That makes them guidelines in my book, but no matter. If you have time you could look up Jeff Taylor's Youtube channel for detailed wording etc. I think it would take a court case to decide completely, but I don't know what provisions for such an event have been made in this swiftly chucked-together legislation -if indeed it is legislation at all.
    2
  6731.  @Joker-yw9hl  Thank you.
    2
  6732. Why wouldn't Trump want to see this video? Asking for a friend.
    2
  6733. Ronald Davison You are obviously up to speed. Have you yet heard about the research carried out by father and son team Michael and Ronan Connolly? They have used billions of items of data from weather balloons to discover a picture of the atmosphere very different to that propounded by climate alarmists. The research strongly suggests that it is actually composed of ideal gasses and is thermodynamically stable, as was proposed by Einstein in 1916 or thereabouts. The system adjusts to increased carbon input quite readily. The molecules retain heat for about one third of a second before re-emitting it in various directions. Like you I am a layman and have no way of understanding the technical details but the scientific papers are available on https:/oprj.net/ . What their findings boil down to basically is that there is absolutely no such thing in the real world as the greenhouse effect. If you have anyone on side with a good science degree it would be helpful for them to run over these papers and help translate them into lay terms. The Connollys, based in Dublin, Ireland, run a private institution outside the grant-dependent, publish-or-die academic ghetto and have had these papers on display as drafts on the site for a number of years.I gather that in association with Willie Soon they will shortly be publishing the full findings incorporating suggestions and criticisms acquired through this procedure. Should be interesting. Do forgive me if I'm telling you things you know already, but I was a bit shocked to learn that the "model" of the atmosphere that so-called climate science is based on, and upon which subsequent models continue to be based, was actually proposed by a Serbian scientist as long ago as 1942. The Connolly research apparently shows this model is wrong in several important respects and that matters have not been improved by enthusiastic technophiles trying shove it into the crap computers of the seventies and early eighties.
    2
  6734. That was stop an insane war that killed thousands. This is about the price of cornflakes.
    2
  6735. Of course they're not traitors. Russia has a very good case. Just because so many people have allowed themselves to get all worked up about poor little Ukraine and its fight for "democracy," boo-hoo, that doesn't alter the facts. AND WE ARE NOT AT WAR WITH RUSSIA!!!
    2
  6736. Unsubstantiated maybe. Unfounded not so much.
    2
  6737.  @TimboTbagz  Rumours of Russian collapse have been greatly exaggerated. Believing in fairies doesn't make them real.
    2
  6738.  @TimboTbagz  I am duly chastised. Throughout this absurd and needless war I have supported any course of action which I thought might bring it to an end as swiftly as possible. That is, and always has been, a speedy Russian victory. Continued military support for Ukraine is a travesty. Disguising it as some sort of moral crusade is an appalling hypocrisy. If the greedy West had kept it's nose out from the start these territorial differences could have been settled without the loss of a single life.
    2
  6739. Only the utter defeat of the current administration in America can stop it. Military support for Ukraine must be stopped immediately.
    2
  6740. These restrictions have nothing to do with covid, despite the impression the fake news BBC wants to give. Florida has listened to proper advice and lifted mask mandates and lockdowns - now just too many people want to go there!
    2
  6741.  @tw25rw  I don't think even his most fervent supporters are blind to his faults. He's not at all clinically insane, but has acquired some of the eccentricities of privilege. I do not believe him to be a bad person either, but his particular brand of animal cunning combined, with a certain lack of intellectual rigour, has led him into making errors of judgement. I'm not an American, but if I was he would get my vote not because of what he is, but because of what he is not: namely a corrupt career politician in debt to the unsavoury elements which rule the US from behind the scenes.
    2
  6742. It's what you get for picking a fight with Russia. Asian and Middle Eastern nations, as well as those in South America and Africa, are tired of America's continuous interference. The US will end up isolated and broken before you know it.
    2
  6743. That well-know typing error on the south coast.
    2
  6744. You seem to forget that the "Palestine" of the Balfour Declaration comprises a far greater area than the modern state of Israel which, in fact, had and has a far higher percentage of Jewish residents. It can also be argued that a great number of the Arab residents are the descendant of immigrants who arrived as a consequence of Zionist development of an area which, under the decaying Ottoman Empire, was semi-derelict and considerably under-populated. The Balfour Declaration - like the partition of India - did indeed result in many deaths, but this was the result of the collapse of the British Empire in the aftermath of a terrible war. All over the world, not just in Palestine and India, vast numbers died as populations re-adjusted to the consequences of that war. The fact remains that Israel is a modern, democratic and prosperous nation whereas most of its neighbours are not. They are theocracies whose decision-taking procedures are corrupted by a Medieval mindset. Instead of constantly looking to the past they should look to the future and accept the fact that Israel isn't going to surrender to their demands under any circumstances.
    2
  6745.  @usenan  Can I refer you simply to the last sentence of my original post? (I more or less agree with your final paragraph, by the way.)
    2
  6746.  @usenan  It takes two to tango. Violence breeds violence.
    2
  6747. Does this guy believe in Father Christmas too?
    2
  6748. 2016 Zelensky and Hunter Biden both get jobs with billionaire Ukrainian oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky. Take it from there.
    2
  6749.  @adamparker4585  Heading the campaign is Professor Angus Dalgleish MD FRCP FRACP FRCPath Fmed Sci of St George's Hospital, London, a leading cancer expert.,
    2
  6750.  @adamparker4585  Not just me. Why YouTube won't allow me to give you names I can't imagine.
    2
  6751. Name one lie.
    2
  6752. The Labour party has 370,500 members.
    2
  6753. Only the Russian bits.
    2
  6754.  @Vaushgg  Eat my shorts.
    2
  6755.  @Vaushgg  Pathetic.
    2
  6756. NATO is on its last legs. This is sound and fury, signifying nothing.
    2
  6757.  @rachel.mcgowan  And we are. Which is just fine. The fact that our efforts are pointless endeavours to confront a problem which does not exist is purely by the by. Financiers and industrialists are quite happy to have a new currency in the shape of carbon bonds and environmentalists can have their attentions diverted from the real problems of everyday industrial pollution, which are expensive and unprofitable to solve. If wind turbines weren't so very ugly and kill birds I would personally be quite happy to turn a blind eye to this imaginative confidence trick. I don't know where you get the idea that it is ideological, by the way. It is purely financial, although idealists provide useful conduits for its practical administration, socialists being so much better at controlling populations than conservatives are.
    2
  6758.  hognoxious  Well, as things stand, even if at some time in the distant future Labour gets elected to office under the present system it could well be that introducing PR will favour the Conservatives - or at least the right-wing parties which currently represent a broad swathe of public opinion. Might PR strengthen Labour's hold on power? That's doubtful.
    2
  6759.  @richiecooke69  I take your point.
    2
  6760. ​ @sososoprano1  "Long covid" seems pretty ill-defined. What is emerging as a near certainty is that the younger and fitter you are the less covid affects you - and that includes long-term problems. What is even more certain is that the only way out of this thing is via natural immunity achieved through infection. Older people can now be protected from severe symptoms through vaccines and young people don't get severe symptoms anyway. There may perhaps be a very few exceptions to these rules but they are so very, very few that it would be extremely foolish to sacrifice a viable exit strategy on their account.
    2
  6761.  @reallymakesyouthink  A law brought into play in order to punish someone for things other than the law which was broken.
    2
  6762.  @reallymakesyouthink  We agree on one thing: he should have read Essential Law for Journalists before deciding to become one! But this doesn't alter the essential fact that he is being persecuted by the establishment and that this only reinforces the sense of grievance which so many working-class people in Britain feel today.
    2
  6763. @ Well he's got something to cry about, hasn't he? Actually he strikes me as being brave to the point of folly.
    2
  6764. @There are going to be plenty of tears shed before long.
    2
  6765.  @frankkobold  I'm no fan of Boris Johnson, but the Tory ethos that things will find their natural level could well apply here. Money could be the simple answer. Rather than go bust or face vastly reduced profits employers will just have to up the ante enough to bring drivers back. £70,000 a year ought to do it - and the government could help by offering one-off cash inducements.
    2
  6766.  @rtjames  Whatever they're doing, it can't be as important as trucking in the present circumstances. And of course they are widely dispersed, so no one industry will suffer.
    2
  6767. Ukraine is not a democracy and Crimea and the Donbass are parts of Ukraine in name only. (In fact they are now back to being parts of Russia.)
    2
  6768.  @Joshpox  They are home. Donbass is Russian.
    2
  6769. Have you seen a doctor lately?
    2
  6770. Does he actually WANT a war with China? If he does, this kind of talk is a sure way of getting it.
    2
  6771.  @UlricStormborn  The analogy between the situation today and the situation in Europe in the late 1930's is false, misleading and dangerous.
    2
  6772.  @andrewadams6905  It's not the same story at all. The characters are different. the motives are different. The plot is different. The outcome is different. These analogies between Putin and Hitler, and Poland and Ukraine, are fodder for simpletons. As with all historical analogies, the differences far outweigh any spurious similarities. Furthermore, giving them credence is extremely dangerous.
    2
  6773.  @andrewadams6905  You need to find a more effective way of analysing complex political solutions than constantly coming up with lame and inaccurate comparisons. It will get you no-where.
    2
  6774. They should get to Armenia and from there by bus and rubber dinghy across the English Channel to where nice hotel room and free food await them.
    2
  6775.  @ANH-1977  Entirely different situation.
    2
  6776. Sad to see Israel at the forefront of a losing battle against reality.
    2
  6777. @ Never been tried.
    2
  6778. @ When was that then?
    2
  6779.  @aurelijus1  I get so sick of these pointless analogies with the situation in the 1930s and the situation today. Learn some history for Chrissake! There's a few thousand years of it, not just ten or twenty.
    2
  6780. Annexation is not synonymous with invasion.
    2
  6781. More than ten times as many migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats this year than British people under 45 have died while infected by the coronavirus. Just think of that!
    2
  6782. Fortunately the truth will be revealed soon enough. All available evidence points to Omicron being far less virulent than previous strains. The gap between infection and serious outcome is about nine days and it tends to reproduce more readily in the bronchial tubes than in lung tissue, thus considerably reducing the chance of death or hospitalisation. Soaring infection rates with this relatively harmless version of the virus should see herd immunity reached within a matter of weeks. You paranoia junkies will have to find something else to worry yourselves silly about.
    2
  6783. You could say get rid of your masks because the more people who get covid now the quicker herd immunity will be reached. On the other hand since they don't work anyway there would be little point.
    2
  6784.  janetlamb6812  Ukraine has a well-established habit of setting up command posts and storing military hardware in all sorts of locations - car parks underneath shopping centres being a favourite. The thing which makes these allegations of indiscriminate attacks on civilians so foolish is that they would simply have no point, and be an utter waste of valuable resources. Spending millions of roubles just to kill a handful of housewives makes no sense at all.
    2
  6785.  Tomandtob  You are living in a world of utter fantasy. Can you not see that all these ridiculous claims are just attempts by the deep state to control a President over whom it has no control? You have no evidence for YOUR claims. The Democrats and the deep state have used all the resources of US intelligence agencies for over five years in a bid to topple him from office. The very fact that they have failed time and time again should surely tell you something.
    2
  6786. Stephen Paul We are playing fantasy here, but a referendum would have almost certainly been called and with the same result. The UKIP MPs would have seen Brexit through The German position is entirely different. The EU is their construct and other nations are their vassals. Does the AfD demand an end to the EU or Germany's withdrawal by the way? I only ask because I simply do not know.
    2
  6787.  @nozhki-busha  And a great many dissimilarities. More than otherwise.
    2
  6788.  @roberttaylor3594  There is plenty of evidence if you look for it. You can check everything I have said. Feel free to come back to me for anything in particular.
    2
  6789.  @electricink3908  Parallels have to be exact. In this case they are not. There are mere superficial similarities, vastly outweighed by very great differences.
    2
  6790.  @angela1984a  You'd be wrong. I am just someone who bitterly dislikes wars.
    2
  6791. The simple fact of the matter is that in this country the right-wing message resonates more strongly with the mass of people than the left-wing one . Britain is a conservative country, inhabited largely by conservative people.
    2
  6792. Russia could well settle for less than unconditional surrender, which makes the West pushing Ukraine to make even greater sacrifices all the more disgustingly immoral.
    2
  6793.  @DeathToZioWarPigs  What deception?
    2
  6794. It's nowhere near destroyed.
    2
  6795. A cynical manipulation of statistics will not convince the British public that the coronavirus epidemic is being used for anything other than an exercise in social control.
    2
  6796. Where does Times Radio FIND these weird people?? By what stretch of the imagination and on what evidence does this geezer conclude that Putin has any interest at all in conquering Eastern Europe or anywhere else for that matter? Even if he did, he's left it a bit late, hasn't he? Putting his country back on its feet and putting food in his people's mouths has taken up all his time so far. Is he going to reward himself by creating an all-conquering army out of thin air and spending the last years of his life dragging Russia back into the nightmare he has so efficiently led it from? God give me strength.
    2
  6797. Time for round two. Russia is now ready to defend instead of attack.
    2
  6798.  @FreshGreenMoss  Is fat so hard to come by? Animals are packed with it. Especially if we've stuffed them with carbohydrates! As I said: weight loss has been a secondary benefit for me. Knocking diabetes on the head was the main objective.
    2
  6799.  @ADifferentBias  And pharmaceutical companies don't pay money to people to push their dubious wares?
    2
  6800. he police are being pretty stupid by not releasing more specific information.
    2
  6801.  @howareyou857  Is the EDL still going?
    2
  6802.  @krit5 RIGHT! In a ditch draining into the Fox River, in Fox Valley Outegamie County, Wisconsin.
    2
  6803. He's suing them for a million bucks. Seems he could have known what he was doing!
    2
  6804. The UN is a waste of space.
    2
  6805. Voters have become so brainwashed into hero-worship of the globalist warmonger Zelensky that political leaders have no choice but to pay lip service to his cause. There has been seismic shift in the US approach to him, however, and this will gradually filter down to the masses both there and in Europe. There will be tears before bedtime, and much gnashing of teeth, but whoever succeeds him in Ukraine will have to accept the terms offered by Trump and Putin. And the killing will stop - which is the main thing.
    2
  6806.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  But Russia doesn't want to reach Kiev.
    2
  6807.  @rmdomainer9042  The very fact that you constantly resort to insult without providing facts or answers proves the weakness of your position and your intellect.
    2
  6808.  @ramadankadriu5336  Where's the lie? It's how the situation is.
    2
  6809. Ukraine returning to pre-Soviet borders and their international acceptance might well persuade Putin to accept this rump state joining NATO. It would be a very good deal all round.
    2
  6810.  @MrRishik123  You seem to be missing the essential point. The huge amount of money spent by the British government was not intended as compensation to the slaves for their suffering, but simply as a purchase price given to their owners. We literally bought their freedom. And yes, it took this wonderful country of ours up until 2015 to pay off the money spent. What you must sit back and ask yourself what we got for it.
    2
  6811. Steele is way off beam as usual. It was mindworms from the planet Urg which caused the riots by insinuating themselves into packets of cheese and onion crisps.
    2
  6812. Any attempts at detailed analysis of just how sick and twisted and downright full of lies and misinformation this video is are immediately removed. I know. Three of mine have been. Insults, however, seem to be allowed. So here goes: Fuck the BBC!
    2
  6813.  @MazzaEliLi7406  I think there is a cheap and ready solution already to hand. Local authorities means-test for housing benefit and council tax relief. Their findings are readily available, surely?
    2
  6814. Project 2025 is actually a very clever piece of electioneering, and far superior to the nasty anti-Trump smear tactics the Democrats have been relying on all these years.
    2
  6815. Of course they are being shot down. They are decoy missiles, designed to use up Ukrainian defence systems and to expose their location to attack.
    2
  6816. @ What's stupid about welcoming a revolution which will root out corruption and save trillions of dollars?
    2
  6817.  @easymoney8535  Get back to playing fantasy games you moron. You have no place in the real world.
    2
  6818. Russia is defying globalism. This cannot be tolerated.
    2
  6819. Sounds fair enough to me.
    2
  6820.  @David_Jones8112  A Kherson you!
    2
  6821.  @lal2300  Can I pull the emergency cord please?
    2
  6822.  @GentlemanJack705  Just not rigged enough, that's all. Let's hope the same will happen this year.
    2
  6823. Time to DEI.
    2
  6824. Absolutely correct in many respects. The fake picture of a walrus falling off a cliff to illustrate the evils of climate change was a particularly good example of spectacle elbowing reality to one side.
    2
  6825.  @justonecornetto80  This is entirely true. If one assumes that Putin wins quickly and negotiates a modest peace, leaving Ukraine to is own devices on condition that it grants Donbass autonomy and agrees not to join NATO, then things should slip back into sync quite rapidly. Phil has a wonderful knack of manipulating every situation into an anti-Johnson, anti-Brexit format. I really do think he has an excellent political career ahead of him, if he so chooses.
    2
  6826.  @boink800  I was thinking more of Russia's foremost position in the production of nuclear energy.
    2
  6827.  @christophermurphy4511  Such as? And signatures of bits of paper don't push the Russians back, do they?
    2
  6828.  @keithwilliams744  Here he is (and the car) Go to the end and check the hand gesture. He is clearly a white supremacist. MathBoi Fly - HALF A TIKKET (prod. by DeeMarc) - YouTube
    2
  6829. It's the pingdemic and passports which are doing him in. These are Conservatives who are dissatisfied, don't forget. They want freedom and an end to fear - unlike you Labour lot who seem to delight in paranoia and persecution.
    2
  6830. Obviously he is following Putin's instructions. If the plane had been piloted by a lesbian of colour this certainly wouldn't have happened either.
    2
  6831.  @nicolasolton  It was the USA which provoked the Russian response. The legality or the illegality of the action does not enter into it.
    2
  6832.  @natalieturko4808  I am, in fact, a patriotic Briton who does not wish to see his country dragged into a needless war in order to advance American economic imperialism.
    2
  6833.  @tvdinner325  One of the fairy tales told to children in the West. They use their old stuff like blotting paper, but have a very wide range of ultra modern tanks, rockets, self-propelled guns etc etc - much of it unused so far.
    2
  6834.  @tvdinner325  It isn't my army, I'm English. But I also take the trouble to investigate all sides of the story, rather than just swallow unquestioningly what the politicos and the media hand out. So far things seem to be going to plan for the Russians. They threw a load of old equipment and relatively untrained troops into the fray, and used them to soak up as much of the Ukrainian army as they could. Their reserve army, consisting of the Wagner Group, elite parachute brigades , veterans of Syria plus the two Donbass armies and the Chechen mercenaries, have remained in Donbass, along with more modern equipment. A second army is already stationed in Belarus. This will move in some time soon and threaten Kiev, causing the Ukrainians to divide their depleted forces. This will probably happen as soon as the ground freezes hard down south, and the Russian elite forces stationed there will try to take the entire Donbass and land to the West on the left bank of the Dneiper. It could all go horribly wrong, of course, but it's a mistake to think this war is anything like over.
    2
  6835. And don't let's forget that Del Boy Johnson has got a billion quidsworth of dodgy vaccines to knock out a bit sharpish.
    2
  6836. And the $60 billion is really only $13.9 billion after deductions. It won't go far
    2
  6837. There's resilience and there's bone-headed stupidity. Ukrainians could avoid a whole world of pain by agreeing to Russia's entirely reasonable demands with regard to Crimea and Donbass.
    2
  6838. A worthy objective.
    2
  6839.  @williampatrickfagan7590  What are all these immigrants doing then? They can't all be internet entrepreneurs and drug dealers. Or can they?
    2
  6840.  @dragonfly6908  Just the tip of the iceberg.
    2
  6841.  @bob-g3e3x  The King or Queen of England is immune from prosecution because it is The Crown which prosecutes, and he/she obviously can't prosecute theirself.
    2
  6842. @Dmon ! Anyone following latest developments via the Internet knows more than the media are saying. Unlike the media such people are not in the pay of drug companies and unlike politicians don't have to lie about the situation to ensure votes.
    2
  6843. @Dmon ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc
    2
  6844. The only sensible course is to give Russia back Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine and hope they don't want more.
    2
  6845. The only way for this war to end is through a regime change in Ukraine. Zelensky must go.
    2
  6846. Sillier and sillier. Putin doesn't need nukes to crush Ukraine from the air. And he doesn't need arms inspectors trampling around either. The standard of anti-Russian propaganda really is going downhill. Try to do better.
    2
  6847. Have viewers heard about the astonishing way a computer has been used to digitally unroll and read a scroll burned in the destruction of Pompeii? A 19-year old did it. He's now working for Musk.
    2
  6848. How on earth do you work that out? And in any case Smith's Law says that the mutations get less and less virulent. Which they do.
    2
  6849.  @rchas1023  What's wrong with mutations? Smith's Law says that those which allow victims mobility will predominate over those which make them immobile, This is already proving to be the case. Covid is now little more than a component of the common cold - which sensible virologists predicted from the start.
    2
  6850.  @rchas1023  Mutations can be beneficial if, according to Smith's law, each one becomes less virulent.
    2
  6851.  @srp01983  I think he's always spoken like that! And it's only nonsense if you don't understand his often somewhat circuitous approach to language, especially when confronting a potentially hostile audience.
    2
  6852.  @robertscott961  Of course it is. It travels at ten times the speed of sound.
    2
  6853.  @Deathadder90  I'm no techie but I do gather that Mach10 is pretty swift.
    2
  6854. Labour has simply lost touch with its voter base and and sold its soul to woke narcissism. Nobody with a living to earn in the cruel, hard world wants anything to do with socialism any more. This might seem ungrateful, but there it is. Meanwhile capitalism is being radically restructured under our very noses by the likes of the World Economic Forum and other Soros aficionados. The fight now to protect the interests of working people lies in resistance to this trend. The WEF and other elitist groups have successfully commandeered socialism in pursuit of their aims. The working class must now commandeer conservatism in order to prevent a return to slavery.
    2
  6855. You mean you speak for all BRAINWASHED Americans.
    2
  6856.  @RussCR5187  A couple of things: There is considerable literature disputing the efficacy of any safety measures in preventing the spread of Covid 19 which is, as I said, is following the established pattern for viral infections as I described. I can provide you with such information if you wish. Mathematical models indicate that if the R number reaches and stays at 1.4 a 30% infection level will be arrived at quite rapidly in the UK at which point herd immunity will be achieved. Once again I can provide you with the necessary technical information. You are woefully behind with information about hydroxychloroquine. The article you cite was of course published in May at a time when the drug was under attack by pharmaceutical companies as it provides an incredibly cheap alternative to their profitable products. President Trump's endorsement also led to fierce political opposition. Tests were carried out using absurdly huge doses given to patients in the last stages of the disease which led to the widely publicised disinformation you are still sadly not yet disabused of. The tests were shown to be fake and articles about them were withdrawn. The Lancet was especially hard hit and its reputation may never recover from the scandal. Proper studies have clearly shown that small doses administered in the early stages of the disease can reduce death rates by at least one third. In this instance I will provide you with some information which may help you catch up with the present position. Dr Campbell does daily updates on the pandemic. He believed the vilification campaign too but here fully admits that hydroxychloroquine is effective, based on his detailed analysis of a recent study involving some 8,000 patients in Belgium. There are links to that and other studies in the description below the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBn4e69tGlg This is a rather excitable news video from Australia but it sums up the story neatly and accurately https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXmwt_8tdNY This is list of the100 or so recently published studies, most peer-reviewed, which indicate the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine when properly administered. https://c19study.com/
    2
  6857. Have you heard of Mandy Rice-Davies in America?
    2
  6858.  @RaRa-eu9mw  By utilising it for purely political purposes.
    2
  6859.  @guidedmeditation2396  Where do you get $20 a dose from? The patent ran out years ago and companies all over the world are producing the stuff for peanuts. Sanofi is actually giving away 100million doses for free. You can get it in the US for less that $40 per 100, top whack. And you only have to take two A WEEK! Are you lying or have you just been lied to?
    2
  6860. When will people understand that Putin never attempted to conquer Ukraine, and never will? The SMO in 2022 was a calculated attempt to draw the NATO-financed Ukrainian army into battle on is own territory, and thus prevent it from attempting to retake those areas of Donbass occupied by separatists. As for Storm Shadow, an interesting aspect of the conflict has been the continued attempts by Western armaments salesmen to peddle their wares. Without exception they have failed to be the "game-changers" advertised and have proved that over-engineered and over-expensive toys are no match for human resilience and determination.
    2
  6861. Lockdowns didn't work. Death rates in these countries are horrendous. In Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, there have been just 883 deaths. In Uganda, with a population of 43 million there have been just FOUR. Both these countries use hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against malaria. People take it small doses a couple of times a week in order to mitigate the worst effects of the illness. Other countries where malaria is dealt with in this way have experienced similarly low death rates from Covid 10. There is no mystery in this. The treatment works in the same way by preventing infection from spreading.
    2
  6862. Trump supports the use of vaccines and does not drink.
    2
  6863. But it's obviously so. US aid extends the war and this obviously leads to more casualties.
    2
  6864.  @L3L3L3  Dr Fauci ain't so great - unless of course you have shares in pharmaceutical companies
    2
  6865. NATO is dead - and good riddance.
    2
  6866.  @dritemolawzbks8574  All 60 million of them.
    2
  6867. Masks are undignified and of extremely dubious value. That's why I suppose. Also rather a sign of cowardice in some people's eyes. And they also hide your stiff upper lip.
    2
  6868.  Corvus Glaive  It does SEEM to be more of black thing. Regardless of race though it's surely a wise move to do as you're told when a gun is pointing at you. You can argue the rights and wrongs afterwards.
    2
  6869. Until I put my glasses on I thought the first shot was of coronaviruses passing through the weave of a medical facemask.
    2
  6870. For the millions of people who have been conned into believing that Zelesnsky is some kind of demi-god this may have been a bit of a shock. But more shocks are on the way.
    2
  6871.  @petern9743  The history of Ukraine is indeed complex. For a start, no-one can be sure at any given time where it is or who is in charge of it. Its borders have altered considerably and it has been ruled by everyone from the Vikings through the Poles and the Lithuanians to the Russians. It was, of course, completely destroyed by the Mongols at various times in the 15th century and their descendants, the Tatars, occupied much of the land we now call Donbass and Crimea. Ukrainian nationalism is a comparatively modern idea. Until the late 18th century The Ukraine was just a general term used by Russia to describe the various areas or land "on the borders". Ukrainian nationalism only real came to the fore after Peter the Great and Catherine the Great of Russia conquered and ruled these territories after defeating the Poles, Lithuanians and Ottomans and seeing off a rival bid from Sweden. So the idea of "independence" is rooted in various times in the past when a country ruled from Kiev did exist. It's borders altered as time went on but the present country of Ukraine has little to do with these previous incarnations. It is merely the territory of the former Soviet Socialist republic of Ukraine, and was created as such by the Russian Bolsheviks after World War I.
    2
  6872.  @bobbear4437  To be charged with so many, you mean?
    2
  6873.  @TheBigStink9268  Far from it. I woke up around 2018 when I became suspicious of the barrage of abuse directed at this man and realised that those orchestrating the campaign were themselves utterly evil and corrupt. It can be quite hard to like Trump - but I've managed it.
    2
  6874. Bit early for Christmas, isn't it?
    2
  6875. Boredom or sheer disbelief were the only possible responses to the adolescent drivel voiced by this dotard.
    2
  6876. Or even masks for that matter.
    2
  6877. I bet you're a government employee, cruising the net when you should be working.
    2
  6878. That's what nuclear weapons are for -blackmail. Trouble is we feel in our waters that Putin might use them but Biden, being a senile incompetent surrounded by slightly younger incompetents -won't.
    2
  6879. He's one of the few commentators talking any sense.
    2
  6880. Not when the official narrative on Ukraine is finally crumbling -as it undoubtedly is.
    2
  6881.  @alanrobertson9790  I suppose there as many different cases as there are individual people. Personally I wasn't planning on voting at all, but Farage's honesty on the Ukraine war issue might well lead to me voting Reform.
    2
  6882. Why?
    2
  6883.  @dpelpal  It won't, for the reasons stated above. The only calamity will come to other oil-producing countries who will have to undergo the challenges Russia has already faced and overcome.
    2
  6884. Sachs is right and the Prof is wrong. The war in Ukraine is a direct result of US imperialism, backed by interference by the EU and financed by BlackRock and other profit-orientated interested parties. It has no moral dimension whatsoever.
    2
  6885.  @vandibox  It's not tariffs which is making eggs expensive - it's the fact that millions of chickens have been killed in order to prevent the spread of bird flu. Practically every country in the world has the capacity to produce eggs, so unless the domestic population is restored quite rapidly you can be sure that new suppliers will be found.
    2
  6886.  @s0ycapitan  Exactly - or as is already the case with Columbia, Mexico and Panama - bend the knee and do what Trump wants.
    2
  6887. Are you acquainted with every Haitian in America then?
    2
  6888. Compared to the forces which back Beijing Biden, Donald Trump is a pauper.
    2
  6889. Zelensky is an incompetent and a narcissist who has allowed himself to be manipulated by America into leading his country into needless war.
    2
  6890. It might be dangerous to compare this bunch of pussies with the Proud Boys, whose fighting skills are well-documented.
    2
  6891.  @harveybrown37  They sacked not experts but trainees and later discovered that because they were not fully employed they could not actually sack them.
    2
  6892.  @mrharry448  It is historically German. But it has a Russian population. What is your point? Crimea is historically Russian (mostly) and has a mostly Russian population. Oranges and apples.
    2
  6893.  @Perekipchenko  Saying something is so doesn't make it so.
    2
  6894. This famous 98 per cent thing (seems to have gone up from 97) is based on a study carried out in, I think, 2003 which sent simple yes/no questionnaires to several thousand scientists worldwide. 150 replied. Of these 79 claimed to be climate scientists and of these 97 per cent said yes, man-made global warming was a thing. It's certainly true that 98 per cent of papers published by present-day climate scientists support the recently rechristened climate change thing, but then if they didn't the scientists who wrote them would pretty soon be out of a job. You're being suckered RC.
    2
  6895. Is there some sort of agency where you can hire these crackpot old generals? Do they open fetes and supermarkets and things?
    2
  6896.  @alana8863  Pragmatic, caring and quite witty sometimes.
    2
  6897. Ukraine addiction withdrawal symptoms can be quite severe at first. Truth is both a substitute and a cure.
    2
  6898.  @AB-jz6hd  No I don't. He did nothing wrong. He did not break his contract of employment. He took entirely legal steps to ensure the well-being of his child . The campaign against him is ENTIRELY motivated by the fact that he is at the forefront of the resistance to pro-European civil servants who are plotting to scupper Brexit.
    2
  6899. So people oozing empathy are going to stop them, are they?
    2
  6900.  @rbailey6949  What is empathy anyway?
    2
  6901. Robinson and the marchers bring into sharp focus the utter failure of socialism to protect the interests of the native working class of Britain.
    2
  6902.  @anonymous-xy5ue  A recent study in S Africa has given strong indications that Omicron provides robust immunity against Delta and thus is likely to provide immunity against other highly-transmissible variants which, even if they should arrive, ought according to Smith's Law of Declining Virulence, be even milder in their effects than Omicron.
    2
  6903. Yup.
    2
  6904.  @garethhanby  And one which will very sensibly be putting those days behind it soon.
    2
  6905. Is it just not a tiny, tiny, tiny bit possible that stuff like this has more effect of the climate than farting cows and smoking chimneys?
    2
  6906.  Ban Andrew’s  It's swings and roundabouts. Australia and NZ's escape from the pandemic is truly remarkable but I have a feeling in my water that there's more to it than lockdowns and masks.
    2
  6907.  @oldbloke204  There is actually a chance that lockdowns work if instigated before the virus arrives in quantity. Once it's in though - it's in - and lockdowns are the equivalent of barring the door with the thieves already inside.
    2
  6908. We can blame the sinister warmongers who fixed Joe's election for all this. They have pushed Putin too far.
    2
  6909. He doesn't consider it to be a lie, that's why.
    2
  6910. This is Marxist strategy. An oppressed proletariat has to be created (black people) and "useful idiots" (white liberals) recruited to go on the front lines. Incidents have to be magnified into causes (Floyds's death) and then all you have to do is light the blue touchpaper and stand well back. In your luxury home in the Hollywood Hills probably.
    2
  6911.  @KiraNt4  No. Why ask?
    2
  6912. Starmer is a globalist plant and if his true beliefs were known any sane and decent person would react with dumbfounded horror.
    2
  6913. According to senior S African medical sources it's "a storm in a teacup" with only very mild symptoms and no apparent fatalities. Mind you, there are not so many old people in Africa so it could be a different story here.
    2
  6914. It has undoubtedly become a source of dissatisfaction and conflict out of all proportion to whatever benefits may accrue from membership.
    2
  6915. But he's wearing a Magic Mask!
    2
  6916. Or Ilhyan Omar buying up postal votes from Somalis in Minnesota.
    2
  6917.  @BaneTrogdor  I don't think this is true. Russian rule is well established in the component territories of the Russian Federation and has been for generations in most cases. These territories may find themselves being persuaded to exchange Russian rule for a Western one because the West has its eyes on their resources but it is a temptation they should generally resist.
    2
  6918. Anyone with any sense knew this anyway.
    2
  6919.  @unworthy42  Keep trying. You might develop a sense of humour one day.
    2
  6920. You wouldn't be talking about ISIS, Hamas and the Mullahs, would you?
    2
  6921.  @Fload.Ritlhe  But Zionism is secular.
    2
  6922. If the Ukrainians are hoping to force Russia to slow down its advances in Donetsk by this, then it won't work. Going for a soft target like this reeks of desperation.
    2
  6923.  @christophercharles3169  Ukraine took it off Russia in the first place. They only want it back before Ukraine gives it to America.
    2
  6924.  @christophercharles3169  History.
    2
  6925.  @christophercharles3169  But Russia HAS decided that it wants it back, and for very sound reasons. The Budapest Accords were a huge mistake, and Yeltsin should never have agreed to them. One can only suppose that he was so starry-eyed that he thought the West was ready to form decent close relationships with the new Russia. This has proved to be far from the case and Putin's Russia is not Yeltsin's Russia. There are many, many precedents for a treaty being overturned by a new government and the inadequacies of Budapest being recognised, Minsk was designed as a replacement. Both Crimea and Donbass suffered under the Kiev regime. The desire of the Russian populations of these areas to return to Moscow's stewardship is real and genuine. Minsk provided a sensible and peaceful path forward, but was abused by the West, whose ambition throughout has been to wrest control of the vast mineral resources of these disputed territories from Russia, which still held on to them in all but name post Budapest. Sickeningly, America and its NATO stooges don't care how many tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians die in order for this ambition to be fulfilled.
    2
  6926. It would have been a big deal if it had been destroyed. But it wasn't. The chief outcome is that now Russia has an excuse to bomb the hell out of Ukraine - which is exactly what it is now doing.
    2
  6927. The man's a disgrace to the bench.
    2
  6928. There only problem would have been not allowed through the border by Ukrainian racists.
    2
  6929.  @yohannsebekele6714  You will find that people in Ukraine vote in accord with the wishes of those who are in charge at the time.
    2
  6930.  @Apollonos  Ancient history doesn't really enter into the issue. Those people were wiped out by the Mongols or fled to Russia to escape them. The trouble is that the modern country of Ukraine is an anomaly. Its borders are based on those of the former SSR of Ukraine, basically controlled from Moscow. The Ukrainians - broadly occupying the land to the West of the Dnieper -are of course fully entitled to their language and culture. Putin has said as much. But Crimea and the industrial areas on the Donbass speak Russian and have a Russian culture.
    2
  6931.  @keyboarddancers7751  And got off -which has upset some people, even though it was clearly self-defence. Charlottesville probably wasn't even intentional. The kid was driving quite slowly and had just been threatened by a gun-toting Antifa guy.
    2
  6932. Julia does have a bit of a sentimental streak. I suppose it's because she's a woman.
    2
  6933. Why can't people wear what they like, fascist?
    2
  6934.  @scottmorley7738  Settlements sitting on trillions of dollars in rare earth minerals, and heavily defended thereby, as opposed to undefended farming villages of no value.
    2
  6935. Stewart Jennings A truly spontaneous expression of the justifiable anger of the proletariat! Support the movement! Go to Say No to Racism for details of future events and locations where you can pick up your placard and expenses form.
    2
  6936. Stewart Jennings It seems Koch brothers algorithm pirates are deliberately misdirecting traffic to the SNTR site. The comrades at Momentum will direct you to your nearest pick-up point. momentumgim.co.uk/en
    2
  6937. Stewart Jennings It is indeed. Who knows where might all be in five years time?
    2
  6938.  Trump is now Tramp  You are incorrect. There is considerable evidence of fraud, but unfortunately no tribunal where the evidence can be contested. The evidence can be found in the proceedings of several state senate hearings, over 70 hours of which are available on the Internet. There are a couple of examples below. In the first part of the Georgia hearing a retired Army colonel and cyber security expert explains exactly how Dominion voting systems are designed for fraud, and how it is achieved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    2
  6939.  @superhumantrueman  I didn't personally, but it was quite a good name. I looked it up and the search engine said it was probably Iraqi, with a chance of it being Saudi and possibly Syrian. We still don't yet know the truth though, do we?
    2
  6940. NATO is a greater threat to Britain than Russia is. Russian expansionism is a myth.
    2
  6941. He was driving to see if that made his eyesight go wonky. It didn't and so he felt confident he could manage the long drive the next day. What's so difficult to understand about that? As to his parents they were in a different house and they talked to each other in the open air and from a distance. The filthy corrupt mainstream media are just propagandising in order to undermine the government. Don't fall for it.
    2
  6942.  @sideshowkazstuff3867  But it didn't! Can you spot the difference? This is how decisions are taken. If his eyesight HAD gone wonky then I'm sure he had a back-up plan. His wife taking the wheel for example. Easier on a country road than on a motorway. Geddit?
    2
  6943. How?
    2
  6944.  @lesvampyres5429  So the plan is to constantly bombard areas occupied by the Russians, is it? So what do you do when you run out of ammo and the Russians come back?
    2
  6945.  @mt09menace  If it goes completely wrong then you will be able to say that. If it works out it will entirely change the world.
    2
  6946. What seems the more likely to you?
    2
  6947.  @vforwombat9915  Worse than original Omicron of course.
    2
  6948. There is little doubt that Putin will exercise the nuclear option if sufficiently provoked. He is, I'm sure, prepared to gamble on the fact that NATO will chicken out of full-scale nuclear war if he simply uses a tactical nuke on the battlefield.
    2
  6949.  @maninthestreet01  On the contrary, he is eminently pragmatic.
    2
  6950. As someone with fingers crossed that Trump will get back in and thus save the world from Armageddon, his potential attitude towards Starmer very much takes a back seat. Nonetheless there is no reason why a pragmatic New York businessman should not be willing to do deals with a shifty British lawyer.
    2
  6951.  @Ian-mj4pt  Since we are currently living under the dictatorship of an invisible elite, having a quasi dictator we can actually identify and call to account would be a considerable improvement.
    2
  6952. Hosni Mubarak I deny this absolutely and without question. 1878, 1932,1936 all much hotter and for much longer periods. Climate alarmists have tried, Soviet-style, to expunge these and other records but they can still be found. Newspaper articles confirm these facts.
    2
  6953. Hosni Mubarak It is you who have been duped. Peter M Eggers' reply to you expresses the position with total accuracy. You should listen to what he says and join the growing number of people who are rebelling against the shameful misuse of science for financial gain and political control.
    2
  6954. Peter M Eggars Many congratulations on your replies to Hosni Mubarak.You clearly have a great grasp of the current position. Are you aware of the work of Drs Michael and Ronan Connolly from Dublin, Ireland? There site at www.ceres-science.com is well worth a visit. Their paper "A New Look at the Physics of Earth's Atmosphere" can be found at ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com - it is truly revolutionary.
    2
  6955. Hosni Mubarak Well, yes. Since the study was carried out using very extensive data obtained from weather balloons, rather than being yet another serving of Arrenhuis soup, it must be worthy of serious consideration. It is really the only empirical study of the atmosphere there is to my knowledge. The experiments are repeatable and the conclusions fit very neatly with the current situation: i.e. that global warming is nothing like as severe or chronic as it should be if the carbon increase theory is correct, and that proponents of the theory are fiddling data and lying through their teeth to make it appear that it is.
    2
  6956. Peter M Eggers Yes, the Milankovich Cycles provide a solid framework for solar forcing, but I am becoming more and more interested in the impact of 11-year solar cycles which are still far from properly understood. For one thing it appears that they throw a blanket of extreme ultra violet around the upper atmosphere, something which probably has more affect on climate than cows farting in Argentina. A lady call Joanna Haigh provides a more restrained and intelligible view than Prof Zharkova. Go to http.//serious-science.org/solar-variation Something very interesting is that the two Voyager missions are now reaching the outer limits of the solar system after a journey of 42 years and it appears that we are surrounded by a skin of extreme heat. This layer appears to be undulated and the undulations appear to coincide with the 11 year cycles. It looks more and more as though the solar system is more than a collection of objects. It is a single organism-like structure with the sun as its nucleus.
    2
  6957.  @stoneruler  It never wanted either of these locations. According to some strategists Russia only wants Crimea and Donbass and the invasion of Ukraine was designed purely to create the opportunity of destroying Ukrainian forces.
    2
  6958.  @stoneruler  Think about it. Since 2014 the Ukrainian military has been vastly increased and trained by NATO. Russian intelligence led them to believe that the Zelensky puppet regime was preparing to unleash this new army in bids to retake Crimea and Donbass. They could have merely reinforced these areas and awaited the attacks. Instead they invaded. If they had wanted to conquer Ukraine, they would have blitzed it first, as they are doing now. All the signs are that the "special military operation" was designed merely to severely deplete the Ukrainian armed forces, so limiting the capacity for attacks on Crimea and Donbass. And that is where we are now. Makes sense to me, man.
    2
  6959. Why?
    2
  6960.  @rogerphelps9939  Then I ask it again. Why should we be involved in a war between two sets of oligarchs? Just because certain Western interests want to get their hands on mineral resources which have been invested in and worked by Russia and Russians for generations, why are we supposed to take the side of these would-be interlopers?
    2
  6961.  @michaeldunham3385  Russia still number one in nuclear reactors - and space travel is a waste of time and money. (Why are we having this conversation, anyway? What weird psychological impulse is it that has made so many people in the West fear and despise Russia and provoke them into this constant denigration?)
    2
  6962.  @sandrosfregola5896  What's a CPU?
    2
  6963. There are strong suggestions that this war will hasten economic disaster for America and Europe. Perhaps Russia is waiting on that too.
    2
  6964.  @karenshaub8273  I merely cite the affidavits of many Republican election observers who were denied legal access to the counting procedures, or who had severe doubts that procedures regarding signature verification and security of vote transportation etc etc. That these may have been later withdrawn I can well imagine. The cheats and liars who rule the USA are as good at intimidating witnesses as they are at covering up for their crimes.
    2
  6965.  @CantHandleThisCanYa  He was constrained - and even then he faces financial ruin for saying what he did say. The American judicial system is as fucked up as its political system. You are not living in the Land of the Free. Far from it.
    2
  6966.  @mustang6599  Obviously he lost - but did he lose fairly, or through a variety of manipulations and deceits? More to the point though is whether the US electoral system is fit for purpose, or so ramshackle and capable of being defrauded that it ought to be overhauled?
    2
  6967. Watch this space.
    2
  6968. In fact it's so insignificant NATO might as well be disbanded!
    2
  6969. Charles is just about dim enough to do it.
    2
  6970.  @davidwright5094  The West broke the last treaty, the Minsk Accords, and Russia has a very good record of trying to keep within the boundaries of treaties, even when it becomes clear that they have been expertly tailored to serve Western interests.
    2
  6971.  @borisjohnson2606  You haven't had Covid have you? You sound entirely deranged. (You're not THAT John Sweeney are you? The Panorama piss-artist so delightfully scuppered by He Who Must Not Be Named?)
    2
  6972.  P-J Proudhon  The sun is not the simple light bulb you seem to imagine it to be. It is a vastly complex entity at the heart of a vastly complex almost organic structure of which the Earth is but a part. This structure is in a state of constant rhythmic change, flooded from without and from within by pulses of various energies we can barely understand, and kept in balance by the gravitational fields of the planets and moons circulating within it. What insufferable conceit it is to claim the last seven years have been the hottest recorded. When were the previous recordings made? Those that did exist in the few corners of the Earth prior to this period have been egregiously expunged, since they did not fit your creed. It was hotter a hundred years ago than it is at present, and far hotter a thousand years ago. Climate changes in pre-ordained waves and cycles. There is no correlation between temperature and atmospheric carbon levels. This is a simple conjuring trick created by the mendacious and believed by fools.
    2
  6973.  @danielwalker5682  Putin is a committed Christian and has never once attempted to recreate the Soviet Union, the collapse of which led to his achieving power. Go back to sleep.
    2
  6974. America NEEDS a constitutional crisis. The whole political and judicial system has been commandeered by crooks and charlatans.
    2
  6975. Promises, promises.
    2
  6976.  @ulfberht4431  Yes! The more people who get infected the quicker it is defeated. Unless you are very old or very ill it won't kill you. The chances of a bad outcome are very slim and everyone should be prepared to take that chance for the good of the country as a whole.
    2
  6977.  @MrBillRizer  They're not. We know this illness kills the elderly more than any other category. The largest single number of deaths is in men over 90! With a fraction of the money spent of the nonsense of lockdowns etc we could ensure the vulnerable are protected while everyone else gets on with life. (I'm in my seventies by the way and I take my chances. I would willingly give up what years I may have left to ensure my grandchildren have a decent future instead of the quagmire of repression and poverty this government is dragging them into.)
    2
  6978.  @SteveVJones  Or Ukraine leaves Russia.
    2
  6979.  @erikvinnes  Because it will acknowledge historical, ethnic and economic reality.
    2
  6980.  @RogerMellie-yk3gw  And YouTube won't even let me try to do so!
    2
  6981. A dozen ancient, heavy, hard to maintain and hard to operate tanks which might just about arrive as Russia's winter blitz reaches its successful conclusion. Yup. A real game-changer.
    2
  6982. It sort of depends on the type of inmate you're releasing.
    2
  6983.  KamiEuKiTo  In this any different to the way CNN and MSNBC operate though? Same techniques, different product.
    2
  6984. But he isn't a criminal.
    2
  6985. Lie after lie. Hyydroxychloroquine (if that's what you're referring to) reduces the chance of death by a third if administered in the right dose at the right time. It only has adverse effects when administered in high doses too late. Red states have lower death rates. Caseload rates mean nothing, especially when based on false data.
    2
  6986. This makes so much sense. No point dragging the war on with more and more people getting killed. The US already bears a huge responsibility in this tragedy.
    2
  6987.  @InterviewsWithTheAncients  It's an investment. The West wants to get its hands on the billions of dollars of wealth tied up in Ukraine's gas, oil, coal and steel industries etc.
    2
  6988. @deutschermichel5807 Go to the back of the class.
    2
  6989. Where, in your mind?
    2
  6990. Has anyone tried?
    2
  6991. I would be interested to know your source for this information. There are currently 928 covid patients occupying ventilator beds in the UK, and as far as I am aware none is under the age of 18. I am fully prepared to be corrected, however.
    2
  6992. All's fair in love and war.
    2
  6993.  @SubjectiveFunny  It's OK .Even if I did have it (which is very unlikely) and I gave it to someone young and healthy they might not even notice and they would also build up immunity. If I gave it to someone old I would assume that, like me, they were aware of the risks (such as they are) and would accept the consequences phlegmatically.
    2
  6994.  @karlgunterwunsch1950  That would be too much in character!
    2
  6995. Pink He's not removed from office, nor will he be. Half the reason the Dems have gone on with this charade is because they know ignorant clowns like you believe impeachment =/= removed from office.
    2
  6996. This is great news! If Ukraine gets to join the EU Ukrainian refugees will get to visit all the war graves without needing a visa.
    2
  6997. Times Radio just gets dafter and dafter. You say what you think Putin was doing, and when he doesn't do it you say he has failed! What egotism. What conceit! The Special Military Operation was Phase One. It was designed NOT to acquire territory but to draw the Ukrainian armed forces into debilitating conflict. This it has certainly done. The real war starts now, as soon as the ground hardens in the south. What forces each side has available we simply do not know. I strongly suspect that Russia has a sizeable army, with at least some units very well equipped. Ukraine is running out of ammo and its army has been decimated. In any event it is clear that Russia has plenty of planes and missiles - despite claims to the contrary - and that whatever happens in the field it is capable of reducing this poor, deluded, ill-led country into dust and rubble should this be necessary for ultimate victory.
    2
  6998. Isn't that just a teeny, teeny bit fascist?
    2
  6999. The study from the University of Edinburgh published in the British Medical Journal this week adds weight to the Great Barrington case. It shows that school closures and lockdowns cause far more deaths than they save. As to the background details of the Great Barrington case, this is easily found by checking out the work published by these hard-working scientists. Professor Gomes' application of heterogenous and homogenous sampling to the pandemic, for example, posits quite convincingly that herd immunity in the UK is imminent, and can be reached with a mere 26% infection rate as opposed to the 80% generally thought. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588
    2
  7000.  @StarsManny  Which makes them Russian. They choose, not you.
    2
  7001.  @TheVampyrical  Fair point!
    2
  7002.  @awf6554  A process which America very much encouraged, since it would allow American companies to get their hands on the resources of these oligarchs.
    2
  7003.  @awf6554  But the Russians living in Eastern Ukraine -where all the mineral wealth is - generally did not. The trouble is that Ukraine is not a united country. Very many people in the East wish to maintain a connection with Russia.
    2
  7004.  @awf6554  Obviously they were in the minority in thee country as a whole - but not in the area where they live. But, as you say, that's democracy for you. In order to succeed, democracy must be applied to a single community of interests, otherwise there will be a constantly oppressed minority, as in this instance.
    2
  7005.  @awf6554  And yet both oblasts voted overwhelming in favour of independence in the 2014 referendum. I think some doubt must hang over the actual percentage of Russians in Donbass, as doubt must hang over the results of any election or referendum held in this still rather corrupt country. My original point, though, is that without Western (largely US) interference and military support there is every probability that the Ukrainians would have sorted these problems out without going to war.
    2
  7006. It sems you might not get away with it this time. Good! (Did these people actually stop the guy posting his vote (votes)? Or did he back off because he WAS a mule?
    2
  7007. There is every reason to suppose this attack was carried out by Ukrainians. The Russians have clearly shown they want civilians to evacuate, while Ukrainian nationalist forces have clearly shown they want them to stay.
    2
  7008. I'm puzzled. Every objective account of the war seems to conclude that the Ukrainians are crumbling in the face of a continued Russian onslaught.
    2
  7009. Hitler and Mussolini were hardly conservative and not was Fidel Castro or Stalin. In fact its hard to think of a single dictator who was.
    2
  7010. The advantage of voting Conservative is that one has such low expectations of those one votes for. This avoids disappointment.
    2
  7011. "The New York Times has a long record of being very accurate".. I stopped at that point. It may have been true once but it is now just a propaganda outlet for the woke left. Very much like the BBC in fact.
    2
  7012.  @kevinmackfurniture  Exactly right. Fit and healthy and under 60 you get over it and provide another brick in the wall of herd immunity.
    2
  7013.  @James-sh4zf  I'm six feet tall and not in the slightest bitter. The Great Barrington declaration was supported by hundreds of doctors, including specialists the field. Trump's policies are a good deal clearer that the Democrats' - which seem to consist merely of "don't vote Trump, he's nasty."
    2
  7014. Optimism can be welcomed. Sadly, however, experience tells us that Medieval fanaticism, ingrained since birth, will overcome decency and common sense.
    2
  7015. I bet he sometimes wishes he'd stuck to playing the piano with his penis.
    2
  7016.  @jimmyclark9595  A somewhat simplistic and ill-informed view. Putin is protecting Russia's borders and economy from Western aggression. Not everyone rolls over for America.
    2
  7017.  @philipmain5701  I don't think he has lost face at all. He has increased his respect in the eyes of the many nations who are resentful of US hegemony and Russia's business dealings have merely gone under the counter. And if he does keep control of Donbass that mean an income of billions.
    2
  7018. Or warmongering with a fellow cokehead.
    2
  7019.  @thomasmoore1499  I have to admit feisty chicks are few and far between in this day and age!
    2
  7020. ... and peace will be with us. So what's wrong with that?
    2
  7021. It's all that curry in the sewage that does it.
    2
  7022.  Michael o'donnell  Oh dear. Name-calling simply undermines your case. Not that you actually have one.
    2
  7023. The previous enquiry was fraudulent. It lumped in every offence against children and of course with a population 80% white that was reflected in the final figure. The grooming gangs are a separate phenomenon, and entirely different to the usual run of sad kiddy-fiddlers. The damage they do to the young girls who fall into their clutches is only part of the issue. There are political and religious ramifications to this problem which MUST be addressed.
    2
  7024.  @steelnightmare2888  No. Sky Aus presents a balanced view. Unlike CNN etc they give the other side a hearing.
    2
  7025. What's really crazy is supporting policies which destroy the economy, cause babies to die of malnutrition, increase mental illness and alcohol deaths plus suicides and deaths from untreated cancers and other conditions while having no effect whatsoever upon this disease which in itself has less impact than many influenzas.
    2
  7026. The absences are unjustified and the threat is not real. The NHS is collapsing into a fantasy world from which it will never emerge.
    2
  7027.  @pastyman001  Obvious to an ill-informed idiot. What do you mean "acceptance ceremony" that's not until the 20th. And the idea that Trump asked for weapons can only be the fantasy of a deluded child.
    2
  7028.  @perkinscrane  They were Soviet weapons. Ukraine did not possess them - they were simply stationed there. They could only be fired on instructions from Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union lengthy discussions took place over the distribution of Soviet materiel, and the nuclear weapons were sent to Russia. Ukraine had already gained independence before this finally happened.
    2
  7029.  @perkinscrane  It was not an "equal union". The Ukraine was a "semi-autonomous" SSR as were all others apart from Russia which was "Federative" and had overall control. Ukraine in fact kept some Soviet military equipment but gave up the nuclear arsenal, largely because the launch codes were kept in Moscow and Ukraine could only have fired them after a complex and potentially dangerous engineering process.
    2
  7030. @ You should read "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians". It was published on July 12, 2021, and it presents Putin's views on the historical ties between the two nations. It clearly shows that, however regretfully, he concedes that is it neither practical, nor even desirable, to attempt to re-create the Russian Empire, Soviet or otherwise.
    2
  7031. Oil companies are by far the largest investors in green energy.
    2
  7032. Yup. The battlelines are drawn.
    2
  7033. Bakunin lives!
    2
  7034. Why?The Russian Orthodox Church is one of the largest in the world and is the official religion of the state.
    2
  7035. They want us to die. Everything points to it.
    2
  7036. Clear proof of man made global warming. All that new hot air has to go somewhere and the cold air it displaces has to go somewhere too. Polar bears are sunbathing while America freezes, Mexico is next. Slava Ukraine!
    2
  7037. There us every doubt. The situation is entirely obscured by propaganda and there is every chance that Ukraine is as guilty of war crimes as Russia.
    2
  7038.  @toddmorningstar4206  We need to find someone as big as George to make the experiment at all accurate. I don't see it myself. From what one can make out Chauvin had his knee across the back and shoulder sometimes and then went for the neck when Floyd started to struggle. Don't get me wrong. Chauvin behaved very badly. He got pissed and went beyond what he ought to have done. Proving intent to kill is pretty impossible though and the idea that he deliberately murdered Floyd in front of a crowd is fairly untenable. Even manslaughter is a stretch.
    2
  7039.  @musicfanIV  You make a very sound point. However it is important not to forget that Chauvin's contribution to the death occurred while he was performing his duties. I would imagine this legalises his use of force in a way which would not apply to two civilians involved in a fracas. The question is whether or not he exceeded his powers of exemption.
    2
  7040.  @shamanahaboolist  I bow to your superior knowledge. There can be no doubt, however, that his drug intake contributed to his death. Even prosecution medical witnesses have agreed that if they had examined Floyd without knowledge of the circumstances they would have recorded COD as cardiac pulmonary failure, exacerbated by drug use. This man's death was the result of a series of misadventures largely of his own making. To ascribe it solely to racially-motivated police brutality is a mistaken course of action. Not that it matters much. The scene is set for America to go up in flames whatever the result of this trial.
    2
  7041. Sweden's economic recovery is higher than the European average, It's death rate is comparative with other countries with low flu deaths in preceding years. It really is a success story. People are moving freely and deaths have ceased. They have herd immunity and money to invest in the future.
    2
  7042.  @AngryGnome87  Nobody would.
    2
  7043.  @AngryGnome87  The Russian army is pretty crap which is where Wagner comes in. They shoot their own troops sometimes if they think they're retreating needlessly. A hard bunch.
    2
  7044. I am truly shocked. Was there a common factor? Personal losses on this scale are unusual except in groups of the elderly, or families with a genetic disorder.
    2
  7045. More bilge from this pathetic excuse for a news channel. These appointments merely indicate a substantial widening of Russia's war effort.
    2
  7046. @ Strictly speaking, in purely linguistic terms you are right. But Israel's interests and America's interests coincide to a considerable degree.
    2
  7047.  VINLAND_777  Yeah, but who stole what and when?
    2
  7048.  @socat9311  https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
    2
  7049. No child without a pre-existing medical condition being present is thought to have died. Up until the peak of the infection in April there was no evidence of a single child passing the illness onto an adult, and those claimed since are suspect. There is a far, far greater chance of catching Covid 19 from a colleague at work or a stranger on public transport.
    2
  7050.  @davidhooper1767  I don't think the Crusades were a fantasy.
    2
  7051.  @hulldanfan  Some of that is entirely true. Some of it is a bit biased though and none of it alters the fact that his views on the Islamification of Britain are entirely correct.
    2
  7052.  @adifor  Not dissimilar, but Christianity appears to have grown up a bit, unlike Islam.
    2
  7053. It could have been either side - or even saboteurs acting on behalf of NATO.
    2
  7054.  @badenburns9765  They might even be human.
    2
  7055.  @barrywood7322  Whoops. Eight of course. And I don't think he tried seriously to take Kiev and elsewhere. The objective has been to draw the Ukrainian forces into battle and to destroy them as much as possible. He probably wants Kherson on the Russian side of the Dneiper too though, to help safeguard Crimea.
    2
  7056.  @colinnicholas5482  Just a bit dim and easily frightened, I think.
    2
  7057. The reverse is true. If Ukraine should by some mischance raise sufficient Western support to push Russia back then Putin will go nuclear. This needless war is merely a squabble over mineral rights which Western warmongers have attempted to turn into a righteous cause.
    2
  7058. It's only the first few that count.
    2
  7059. Pretty much nail on the head.
    2
  7060.  @hgbnkbggj2915  In fact evidence that it has existed in S Africa for a considerable time has been found in sewage samples. It's just that people have had it without noticing.
    2
  7061. Russia created Ukraine and owned it for 300 years. Now it just wants the bits back where Russians still live. Seems reasonable.
    2
  7062. Because we are not blinded by MSM lies.
    2
  7063. You can't blame Trump for bird flu, try as you may.
    2
  7064.  @keza41  It was so alleged at the recent Georgia state senate hearings. I'm not aware of any official denial as yet.
    2
  7065.  @keza41 I deny it. There you are. Now has the Georgia state legislature denied these figures with equal alacrity? They were provided by experienced election data analysts and not just plucked out of the air after all.
    2
  7066.  @keza41  But not for long, I suspect. Not much point in recounting votes if half of them aren't legal in the first place, is it?
    2
  7067.  @doccarter5283  Half is obviously hyperbolic, but the evidence presented to the Georgia state senate committee clearly showed that legal and constitutional procedures were not followed, making many votes illegal, on top of which there was considerable evidence of actual fraud in terms of votes cast by dead people, forged ballots etc but most of all by the manipulation of Dominion voting machines. As far as I am aware these allegations have not been fully answered or adequately investigated.
    2
  7068.  @keza41  Forget the court cases. They were irrelevant and pointless and simply procedural necessities. The meat of the matter lies in the evidence presented at the state senate hearings much of which is very, very convincing. Even if you aren't personally convinced it shouldn't take you long to realise why so many people ARE convinced. There are 70 hours or so of the various hearing available on the Internet. Go look.
    2
  7069.  @keza41  The point is no court can be found to hear the evidence. Saying it isn't there is not enough. Millions of Americans have seen or heard about the evidence presented at the senate hearings and are convinced there was fraud. So am I. I'm a cynical old bastard and a general rule of life is that if it is possible for a crime to be committed, then it will be. We have motive and opportunity here a-plenty. We have evidence of the theft and sworn statements from people who saw it happening and others who can say how it was done. Trump was hoping SCOTUS would come through, sure. Or even Mike Pence, but he's a wise enough old bird to know that in situations like this people tend to look towards where they think their bread and butter's coming from. So that leave nearly half the country confirmed in their view that politicians are all crooks and that they have crookedly done Donald Trump down. This is not a healthy situation by any means. Gold toilet or not the Presidency has put Donald seriously out of pocket and many of his supporters would gladly give him all they could to see him or his son or other appointee rescue America before it's too late. What you think or I think doesn't come into it.
    2
  7070. Dawn raids?
    2
  7071. It really is just a gesture, you know. Only tight fitting masks of N95 standard and above are any use, and even they are far from 100% effective. New variants seem to emerge as the result of time, rather than of increased case numbers. The chances are high that all viable variants have already existed, perhaps several times over. They need time and opportunity to emerge as dominant, and mitigation measures provide just that.
    2
  7072. tiermacgirl Lovely quote! But the pirate crew get their share too don't forget.
    2
  7073. It's interesting to note that one of the main drivers of the French revolution was the huge consequences of the debts France had accrued in supporting the Americans in the War of Independence. Being nice and noble often has dire results.
    2
  7074. Cairo Burnside I like these figures. I'll quote you, if I may.
    2
  7075.  @bassbuffricky  These dangers are much exaggerated to make us feel better. Russia is winning on the ground, where it counts. When peace - or a truce - is reached hopefully very early in Trump's tenure, Russia should be able to overcome relatively easily most of its current economic difficulties.
    2
  7076.  @bassbuffricky  The way things are going most - if not all - of Russia's military objectives will be achieved some time early in the New Year. It is in no-one's interests for Russia to suffer a major economic collapse and it just won't happen. We can hope for peace before long. This war was totally unneccessary.
    2
  7077.  @bassbuffricky  I don't really think so. All throughout this war we have been bombarded with propaganda about Russia's inadequacies, none of which have held much water. The economic situation in Russia is far from ideal - but then again it's far from ideal anywhere much. A speedy settlement of the Ukraine question should enable Russia to overcome its present difficulties. Everyone loves a winner.
    2
  7078.  @jonathanbowen3640  But where is Ukraine? Your comments only really apply to the Western part of the present-day country.
    2
  7079.  @jonathanbowen3640  These borders are only "internationally recognised" because America has ordered it so. You don't create borders by getting a bunch of people to sign a bit of paper. Borders are arrived at through a complex process of history. It isn't simple at all.
    2
  7080. I'm sure it will as soon as cops stop getting shot the moment they drop their guard for a second.
    2
  7081. Becoming a multi-millionaire is going downhill???
    2
  7082. PR is not fair. It results in city dwellers dictating what happens in rural areas for one thing. Constituency interests have to be protected in a democracy.
    2
  7083.  @hoover573  Both sides stage sham elections and referendums. The difficulty is that Crimea and Eastern Ukraine genuinely have substantial Russian populations which have been deliberately targeted since Ukrainian independence. There is a strong case to be made that these areas are not in any real sense, part of the new country of Ukraine.
    2
  7084.  @tomjones7184  It's a pretty subjective term, but signalling the end of the British Empire and revealing Britain to be a third rate power, subject to America, might be regarded as being somewhat disastrous.
    2
  7085. The only way to stop South Americans burning down the rainforest to create agricultural land is to pay them not to. If we stopped wasting billions of dollars pursuing the myth of man-made climate change it could be easily afforded.
    2
  7086. These boasts were never made, as far as I can tell.
    2
  7087. It was never said.
    2
  7088. There are currently an estimated quarter of a million HGV licence holders in the UK who are working in other areas. The way to get them back behind the wheel and to encourage others to become qualified is to improve pay and conditions. This reluctance is a strike in all but name. Good socialists should stand firmly against bringing in cheap competition from abroad.
    2
  7089. @Daniel Wood They have certainly forgotten how to take advantage of the fact.
    2
  7090. He did, Clearly on video.
    2
  7091. They have nothing in common. Trump is a libertarian free-market capitalist. Johnson is a globalist shill with the green madness now upon him.
    2
  7092.  @harukrentz435  It didn't help much when the Delta wave hit in the summer, did it? Masks didn't stop that - nor in India or Singapore or Vietnam. Something did though - any ideas?
    2
  7093. There can be no peace in Ukraine until the West stops providing weapons.
    2
  7094. The offensive is already under way. It just needs the ground to harden in the north for the Russians to come pouring in from their own border and that of Belarus. It is hard to see how the Ukrainians can avoid losing at least Donbass, and even possibly suffer total military defeat. They have fought like lions, but the time is surely near when they must surrender.
    2
  7095. He's the only sane person in the room.
    2
  7096. That would be a great day!
    2
  7097. @ Russia winning in Ukraine has certainly concentrated Western attention. I do hope that our leaders start seeing sense and realise that trade deals are preferable to military stand-offs.
    2
  7098.  @ns7353  Drones, on the other hand, are individually guided by radio. The V2 merely arrived on target after calculations affecting its performance and trajectory. They were pretty good at what they were supposed to do though.
    2
  7099.  @BlondieHappyGuy  They only whip up sentimental hysteria when it suits them, that's why. America has invaded far more countries than Putin and even those that Putin has invaded - Chechen and Georgia for example -have scarcely been covered.
    2
  7100.  @lucasceleste4743  But he did. And put out a video asking people not to mask up.
    2
  7101.  @frostflower5555  This comment was supposed to go with my previous one. It is sarcasm. It was done as an experiment. I originally put it immediately below the other comment but YouTube rejected the whole thing. This surprised me, since until now I didn't think the algorithm could recognise satire.
    2
  7102.  @lukeamato423  I think you'll find that they did, and there have been Russian troops in Syria long before there were any in Ukraine.
    2
  7103.  @lukeamato423  But what are they going to charge, and how are they going to get it there? Grain from Russia will be cheap or even free in exchange for continued use of the bases. Having said that, it's good point and the West will doubtless do all it can to ensure Ukraine gets the job.
    2
  7104. Well, we have been asking for it.
    2
  7105. What sort of brainwashing do you think you have fallen for, if any?
    2
  7106. On at least four occasions. All four were rebuffed before formal negotiations could get under way.
    2
  7107.  @biopsiesbeanieboos55  Malaria has a cunning habit of changing the form in which it arrives. Incidentally the WHO points out that many, many more people are going to die from it now because of resources directed to the pandemic. Same for TB and a host of other diseases which kill children - not just mainly the elderly.
    2
  7108. Ha it ever crossed your mind that having much closer relations with Russia could be a very good thing for America?
    2
  7109. @John Hoyle Go to a site called Here Is The Evidence. Almost 2,000 examples of electoral fraud and misbehaviour.
    2
  7110. Narcasism is a very fine word. Congratulations for inventing it. I imagine it to be a combination of sarcasm and narcolepsy ie. a condition whereby a person falls suddenly asleep in the middle of trying to take the piss out of someone.
    2
  7111. Simple enough. Zelensky was the puppet of previous US administrations. Now he has to go.
    2
  7112. Trump and Putin will now be putting on the best double act since Morcambe and Wise.
    2
  7113. Unlike our highly successful vaccines you mean? The ones that have a slight effect for a couple of months, and the more you have the more chance you have of getting ill? Those ones?
    2
  7114. Stop using big words when you don't know what they mean. The far left can be fascist - and is, .Hitler and Mussolini were both socialists don't forget. Far left fascism is not an oxymoron.
    2
  7115.  @franktracey6891  International socialists. The Nazi were national socialists. Those sent to concentration camps were being punished for their loyalty to international (ie USSR) Marxism, not for their socialism per se.
    2
  7116. No. He just hasn't been conned rotten in the way you have.
    2
  7117.  @jtf2dan  I think when push comes to shove Putin will ignore these considerations, such as they are.
    2
  7118.  @mikehart8281  So you are relying solely on Russian incompetence and Western efficiency then? Seems a bit over optimistic to me.
    2
  7119. I thought comparing Putin with Hitler was something done by ignorant teenagers.
    2
  7120. Orange Man Bad just doesn't cut it any more. Trump is America's only hope of avoiding total societal and economic collapse within the next ten years.
    2
  7121.  @adamdin6243  The difficulty is that many people believe that AGW is either a complete con trick- or vastly exaggerated - with the same certainty as those who are convinced it means the end of the world.
    2
  7122.  @adamdin6243  Similar doubts should be addressed to some of the precepts of AGW in my view. The initial conclusions based on proxy data drawn from ice core samples have now been overthrown and the 19th century experiments which indicate increased surface temperatures occurring in proportion to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere bear considerable re-examination. They have stood up to many years of verification in the laboratory, but it is entirely possible that factors at play in the real atmosphere alter their conclusions.
    2
  7123.  @davidhoyle6626  The only real point in having a doctorate in philosophy is that it gives you something to boast about.
    2
  7124.  @mrs.taylor9666  Actually I just had a Marmite sandwich and a mug of Horlicks. (PS Vladimir Vladimirovich is a terribly nice chap once you get to know him. Rather shy and retiring in private, but he does a mean chain stitch.)
    2
  7125.  @chibuo4733  Yes you are a brainwashed fool. How do you account for the numerous successful black businessmen, lawyers doctor and senior police officers if "white supremacy" exists? It may very well be true that there are a number of police officers who target black people. But they are invariably of low rank and their activities cannot be seen as representing an official view. Gang members with badges. They are being weeded out, but not fast enough. Probably the greatest cause of delinquency in the black community is fatherless families - a condition much encouraged by Democrats through their welfare payments system. Communism is pretty big on destroying the family unit you know - as well as being rather keen on lots of policemen and tanks rumbling through the streets. You are being played for a sucker. Marxism needs an oppressed proletariat in order to succeed. The proletariat proper has declined the role and now BLM is being used to cause racial discord and thus create a pretend proletariat. Fight your cause through democratic means -which doesn't mean being a Democrat! They want you poor and angry so you'll keep voting for them. White supremacy died decades ago. BLM is digging up the corpse to scare you with.
    2
  7126.  @pg5537  No. Shan't. It's far more fun taking the piss out of deluded morons - with the faint hope of course that I may save one or two from their folly.
    2
  7127.  Ron Hunter  You are hysterical. Have you forgotten to take your medication?
    2
  7128.  @goodlucktryingtoguessmynam9720  What's your point? How many Asians are there? What's the full breakdown? Are you actually suggesting that black people fail to climb the promotion ladder because of racial prejudice? Could there perhaps be other reasons? How many white CEOs are there in companies based in South Africa or Nigeria? How many white people are on international basketball teams? How many black conjourers are there? Incidentally, how many of those 3-5 CEOs are women? In point of fact, teasing aside, the figure probably does reveal a latent prejudice against black people. But it's fading fast as people get more and more used to each other. Personally I think that miscegenation is going to be the only real solution to this issue.
    2
  7129. An interesting fact is that the ICC prosecutor who is taking Putin to court, Karim Ahmad Khan, is the brother of Imran Ahmad Khan, a convicted paedophile and former Conservative MP. This is probably irrelevant, but it gives a certain grotesque symmetry to the allegations against Putin, who has done nothing other than remove children from war zones, and from the internationally notorious hell-holes which are Ukraine's orphanages and "care homes."
    2
  7130. Gonzalo Lira is an American living in Kharkiv. He broadcasts on YouTube from there most days.
    2
  7131. I think we should have just one national news broadcaster, with all other outlets banned, just like the good old days in the Soviet Union.
    2
  7132. @ Because whole countries and giant corporations would worry it could happen to them too. They would withdraw their money causing major panic and ultimate collapse. One of the places they might well transfer their fund to would be Russia.
    2
  7133. I think Trump has now stepped out of the disinformation space created by his predecessors and propaganda channels like CNN.
    2
  7134. Apart from Donald Trump do US Presidents actually run the country - or are they just figureheads for the Deep State?
    2
  7135. All the decades since 2014 you mean?
    2
  7136.  @chrisnamaste3572  What makes you think the sanctions are working?
    2
  7137. I wonder if this simple observation will get pass the BBC censors. Or is it Youtube? Whatever the case both institutions deserve to be wiped from the face of the earth, and will be soon.
    2
  7138.  @mobsiesixsixsix9785  How are things in the Mobsiesixsisixsix family? Old Polish name, isn't it?
    2
  7139.  @raspberryleaf3741  Most of them, it appears.
    2
  7140. @ Not at all. Ukraine is losing hand over fist. Right now, Putin might settle for more or less what Russia has gained already. If Ukraine looks like carrying on in an even weaker state Putin might demand more - Odessa and Kherson, for example.
    2
  7141. That's what you get for arming civilians.
    2
  7142. And not one word about climate change, sexism or racism. Well done BBC! (Just for once)
    2
  7143. Baa Baaa!
    2
  7144. This is so clearly an orchestrated plot that I'm amazed so many people are taken in by it. Many people from all walks of life -including several Labour politicians - have disregarded lockdown far more than Cummings did - if he did at all. What's going on here?
    2
  7145. A pointless judgement from a pointless court.
    2
  7146. From what? Putin? What makes you think he could care less how free you are or how democratic?
    2
  7147.  @Competitive_Antagonist  We can be cautiously optimistic. We have Smith's Law of Declining Virulence. We have studies of Omicron which find it shares several of its new characteristics with common cold viruses. We have a study which indicates it reproduces in the bronchial tubes, rather than in lung tissue where the most severe damage is done. Above all we have time on our side. We will know in a matter of a couple of weeks whether optimism is justified or not. There will be other strains on the way, sure; but Omicron resistance should diminish their effects which, according to Smith's Law, ought to be less virulent anyway.
    2
  7148. Trump's enemies spent a decade and many, many millions of dollars in trying to find criminal acts with which to defame him. All they ended up with was some potentially dubious accountancy and a load of nonsense from some sad old dear who claimed he groped her some time in the distant past.
    2
  7149. @Rick Doran All the time! The "white power " sign is pretty good but not as good as the one which persuaded hundreds of silly women to shave their heads to show their support for George Floyd.
    2
  7150.  @TheHarshestTruth  Not for a while. My information comes from scientific sources. Here's just one of many examples. https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/masks-dont-work-denis-rancourt-april-2020.pdf
    2
  7151.  @emm_arr  When have you ever tried reasoning?
    2
  7152. Russia has tried several times to join NATO. This obviously would never do since America needs a nasty enemy to justify the cash cow which NATO has become.
    2
  7153. I personally think he is very truthful and honest.
    2
  7154.  @rocketscience4516  Bother no more. "English judges do not claim or exercise any power to repeal a Statute, whilst Acts of Parliament may override and constantly do override the law of the judges.” Back in 1610, Chief Justice Coke asserted a judicial power to “control Acts of parliament and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void”. This principle has been inherent in the British constitution ever since. In any dispute between Parliament and the judiciary, Parliament wins
    2
  7155.  @korayven9255  It is a common misconception that the three branches of British governance hold separate and equal powers and do not trespass upon each other's authority. Parliament has sovereign power over both the executive and the judiciary and has done so at least since the early part of the 17th century. You are becoming confused with the constitutions of other countries, such as the USA, which do indeed contain such provisions in order to prevent the rise of dictators. Britain has no need for such provisions since we have a "dictator" already built into the system in the shape of a hereditary Head of State. Quite a clever move, really.
    2
  7156.  @verystripeyzebra  Parliament has the right to over-ride interpretations of its laws by the judiciary if it chooses to do so, however. The principle has been enshrined in the British constitution at least since 1610. The judiciary, by contrast, has no powers to alter laws, and any judgements which Parliament decides contravenes this principle may be overturned.
    2
  7157.  @gottagowork  They why did they claim Russian descent in the 2009 census? There have never been many Ukrainians in Crimea. It was occupied almost exclusively by Greeks and Turks before the Russians took over.
    2
  7158. They are both patriotic leaders brought to the grim necessity of war by the machinations of others.
    2
  7159. A lie. These children are of Russian parentage who were sent to relations in Russia for safety - their parents had to claim they were "kidnapped" in order to escape possible reprisals as collaborators.
    2
  7160.  @alanwhiplington5504  No. The other explanation is far more feasible. Russians living in Ukraine are under constant threat now, and sending their children to relatives or friends in Russia makes sense. Russian soldiers going to the trouble of kidnapping children does not. There are far more direct ways of intimidating civilians.
    2
  7161.  @harrymansfield4578  I'm telling what I believe to be to be the probable truth, and for reasons which I have clearly stated.
    2
  7162.  @alanwhiplington5504  Thankyou for your input. I am prepared to be convinced. But do you not feel it possible that your views may have been coloured by personal contact with a very, very small sample of the population of Eastern Ukraine which, supporting Kiev rather than Moscow, have fled West rather than East? As to 17.5% ,even the most conservative estimates tend to put the Russian population of Donbass at above 30% and there are those who would put it considerably higher, since the area was largely occupied by Tatar herdsmen until the discovery of coal and it was Russians from the East who arrived there to take advantage, rather than Ukrainians from the West, who have a more agricultural bent.
    2
  7163.  @jimsmithcivils8459  And Mohammed pinched some of the worst bits for the Koran.
    2
  7164. More fool them then.
    2
  7165. @nigelsynnott7344 Let us just say that it's performance so far doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
    2
  7166. @Arfur Fuxxakes Hi Arfur! Once again we find ourselves in disagreement. There is no doubt that doctors have been instructed to enter Covid on death certificates for the slightest possible reason. You could be run over by a bus and if you have Covid (which a great many people have) it would be included on your death certificate as one of the three contributing factors on the forms. The government and left-wing agitators such as yourself both seem to have a vested interest in keeping the numbers as high as possible - which is very curious. There are a number of possible reasons, but life being what it is I expect the REAL reason the powers-that-be like the number to be high is one very few people know as yet. One reason which might be in accord with your low opinion of the government is that if there IS a second wave as a result of their mismanagement they will more readily be able to conceal it. It is even possible they will one day make it clear that "coronavirus-related" does not mean "coronavirus-caused" and produce a new set of figures like a rabbit out of a hat and what jolly fine fellows they will be then!
    2
  7167. @Arfur Fuxxakes Arfur! I expected more of you. How am I calling doctors liars? They have been told to put Covid down on the list of (usually three) contributing causes of death whenever Covid-like symptoms are apparent. This they do. Unless an inquest in required one never knows if they actually had Covid or not. They are doing nothing wrong, just following accepted medical procedures. They are not lying and I am not saying that they are. I do hope you can manage to grasp this, If harm comes from a search for truth then I am sorry.But I don't think it does.
    2
  7168. This is a farrago of nonsense cooked up by a kangaroo court of shysters. America is doomed.
    2
  7169.  @erikwillemcoenen7473  It's the way he's been treated which is sick.
    2
  7170. The self-righteous puritanism of the grim-faced Calvinist is never far from the sad soul of the SNP.
    2
  7171.  @ChrisPage68  No it isn't.
    2
  7172. Don't you understand? None of this is in breach of lockdown regulations. If Cummings and his wife had been hospitalised what would have happened to their child? They took sensible precautions. Nothing more.
    2
  7173.  @howareyou857  Yes, but even if so, what are his religion and his ethnicity? (Asking for a friend)
    2
  7174.  @rodmarker2071  It takes two to argue. Have you thought of that?
    2
  7175.  @SM-cz5od  It is very sad to see how easily people are manipulated. I simply don't understand why we are expected to take sides in what is basically a turf war between two sets of gangsters.
    2
  7176. It's really sickening how Democrat weasels weaponised the judicial system for their grubby political ends.
    2
  7177. If the human race still exists by election time next year Donald Trump is the only hope we have of it continuing to do so. Another Biden administration will result in Armageddon. It already nearly has.
    2
  7178.  @DV80s  They were Russian before, now they are Russian again.
    2
  7179.  @DV80s  They were Russian before, now they are Russian again.
    2
  7180. Trump will lose because that's how the Deep State will fix it.
    2
  7181. Such a shame we can't hear Ashli Babbit's testimony.
    2
  7182. Saying Crimea is Ukrainian is an utter pretence. In the remote possibility of Ukraine recapturing it it will be as an army of occupation.
    2
  7183. ​ @Chiungalla79 For 'International law' read American interest.
    2
  7184. It's worth remembering that slavery still exists in very real forms in many countries of the world. Co-incidentally these countries generally forbid the erection of statues.
    2
  7185. Almagin Mai. Prior to 1910 temperatures in Australia were frequently a great deal hotter than they are today. When do your "official" government records begin? 1910 Nothing is more conducive to profit than the manipulation of the carbon futures market. This requires the illusion of C02 based global warming to be maintained at all costs.
    2
  7186.  @brianfergus839  Or more precisely" people with intellectual disabilities" who have been recruited by the FAA in preference to people who can actually think straight.
    2
  7187.  @rockbutcher  I don't have a channel any more!. But in any case I don't actually think the number of ATC's on duty DID have anything to do with the buyout. It is far too soon for that. They have time to consider the offer and also a notice period is required. Insofar as reduced staff numbers in the control tower are concerned it seems at this stage that a possible contributing factor could have been the helicopter controller being allowed to leave work early.
    2
  7188. The response to covid has been one of the most gigantic and disgraceful scandals in recent human history. As obsessed with Brexit as you may be, it just doesn't enter into it. People - including children - are dying in their hundreds as a result of what politicians did and they are dying as much in EU countries as they are here.
    2
  7189. Where are you?
    2
  7190. Many Americans have grown rich and built careers simply by spouting hate against Russia. Their day is done, and not before time. Russia and America will make great trading partners.
    2
  7191.  @ЄвгенІванченко-т3т  No need to throw away European markets. Russia has a lot to offer Europe too - and Europe has a lot to offer Russia.
    2
  7192.  @kisfekete  Ukraine was doing just fine until it decided to join the EU.
    2
  7193.  @alantheinquirer7658  Phil is fighting Tommy, it seems. I doubt Tommy even knows who Phil is.
    2
  7194.  @cheech7900  The fact that instead of condemning these people as fascist thugs he is rather lamely accusing them of urinating in the street.
    2
  7195.  @cheech7900  My reply will have gone forever, I'm afraid. The YouTube algorithm is a jealous god.
    2
  7196.  @mattnhormann  I have to concur. There appear to be only two small-scale clinical trials of anti-viral properties regarding these diseases. Having said that, there have been numerous clinical trials of Ivermectin's efficacy in reducing symptoms in one particular viral infection, and around 40 are continuing. Results at this stage look promising, although final judgement is likely to be disproportionately influenced by political and financial considerations.
    2
  7197. You can choose whether to drive or not and you can choose whether to live or not - but the number of people who drive is far greater than the number of people who commit suicide, Swayne's point referenced risk-taking and decision-taking, not the actual numbers of negative outcomes consequences to such decisions.
    2
  7198.  @minniemouse6011  Until such moves were of proven efficacy, they probably would. Your logic , on the other hand, would lead to men with red flags walking in front of every vehicle and 12ft high concrete barriers being built down the centre lines of all roads and compulsory breathalyser stations at ten-mile intervals. The measures would, of course, be recommended by a committee of government advisers with strong connections to the horse-breeding industry and boot manufacture.
    2
  7199. He is carrying it in the video. In the section the BBC won't show you because they are evil, race-baiting commie trash.
    2
  7200. Totally agree!
    2
  7201. Name a lie.
    2
  7202. The ICC is a talking-shop for overpaid lawyers. It has no relevance the real world.
    2
  7203. Wagner is Putin's baby - as are the Chechens - the Russian military is trapped in traditions of incompetence and stupidity which even Putin cannot overcome.
    2
  7204. No comparison.
    2
  7205.  @vasilimacharadze139  I submit that these are not expansions, but merely steps taken to ensure Russia's security and commercial interests. They were generally a response to NATO expansionism, which has constantly sought to undermine Russia's neighbours in order to turn them in US client states.
    2
  7206.  @vasilimacharadze139  I think that's about the size of it! And with good reason.
    2
  7207. I don't think the Dems are bothered. They know the CIA and the FBI will fix the election for them, no matter which puppet they have on a string.
    2
  7208. And realistic. The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. Only an addiction to confrontation and armaments manufacture has made the West treat it as though it was.
    2
  7209. He just got exactly what he wanted.
    2
  7210. I don't know exactly who he's working for, but it isn't the people of Britain.
    2
  7211.  @veryanonymous3630  They are enemies of the state if they collude with corrupt politicians to try to remove a democratically-elected President with false accusations. It's called treason and if, God willing, Trump gets a second term charges along such lines should certainly be brought.
    2
  7212. Then why have they not been charged?
    2
  7213. Do immigrants not need hospitals or care homes? Do overseas students not need money spent on them in order to be educated? Do businesses not need people from overseas as customers? How many immigrants will these new houses be for? The fact is that immigration brings far more problems than it solves.
    2
  7214.  @donincognito189  You are missing one very important point: this country has very limited resources and infrastructure. There simply isn't either enough room for the increase in population this policy is already creating, or the facilities available to service them. If this was a large country with extensive resources which could be exploited in order to finance the water, sewage, transport, health services etc then your very noble and altruistic policy would be acceptable. But this is a small country which cannot afford to expand these facilities. As a result there are backlogs in every area. Sewage is spilling into rivers, roads are crumbling, trains are invariably late, you cannot get a doctors appointment and people are forced to live in ramshackle outbuilding in back gardens of terraced houses. This is entirely the consequence of over-population and has nothing whatsoever to do with the rich getting richer, much less with invasions from foreigners in distant times.
    2
  7215.  @somebodyinapaperbag6865  And only a small proportion of the 66 thousand can have died as a direct result of covid. Official figures estimate deaths so far this year from all causes at just over 568,000. Last year the figure was 530,841 and in 2018 it was 541,589. Do the sums!
    2
  7216. What a strange world this man lives in.
    2
  7217.  @nelsonmendes7551  You are completely misinformed by Big Pharma propaganda. Infection provides long-lasting and robust immunity to the variant contracted. You may contract another variant and possibly suffer mild symptoms as your immune system adjusts, but even these cases are rare. Omicron can certainly evade previous acquired immunity, but symptoms, as with the vaccinated, are generally so mild as to be entirely manageable. Initial studies show that the reverse is unlikely. Omicron protects against Delta - and hopefully any new variant which may emerge.
    2
  7218. Succinctly put.
    2
  7219. BBC fascist scum.
    2
  7220. Shoot the bastards! Lenin 1919.
    2
  7221. This is just the usual cliche-speak. The Russians have offered safe routes away from target areas while they did the groundwork for the big attacks. Instead of taking advantage of this the delays have been ascribed to Russia military ineptitude.
    2
  7222.  @markmorris1105  Some say it's much the same thing. I don't suppose you know until your country comes under threat.
    2
  7223.  @DwayneHicksCpl  For some, maybe. But patriotism is inculcated into Russians from a very early age, as it no longer is in the West so much.
    2
  7224.  @rocketsurgeon2135  Good idea. But I do think some of the more gloomy souls who haunt this channel might suffer withdrawal symptoms. I suppose global warming is always there as a back-up though.
    2
  7225. USAID is a cover for the CIA. End of.
    2
  7226. Of course the rules were pointless, as anyone with half a brain can see. But just imagine the shitstorm from the paranoia junkies if Boris had broken ranks and said so!
    2
  7227. All empires fall and America is on the brink. The only question is whether its collapse will be sudden or gradual. This coming election could well decide that since the current regime seems determined to plunge the country into endless war, burgeoning debt and drug-fuelled decadence.
    2
  7228.  @paulveenings6861  This was my third go! The YouTube algorithm is incomprehensible.
    2
  7229.  @Aaronwhatnow  Bit like you then, from the sound of it.
    2
  7230.  @ricardoabh3242  All Omicron victims so far seem fully vaccinated. We don't know yet how unvaccinated people will get on, because there do not seem to be any cases as yet. People recovered from Delta can get Omicron apparently, but again symptoms are mild.
    2
  7231. Being woke goes with rigidity of thought and a totally inability to project yourself into any situation that does not cast you in a morally superior role. The imagination is stunted to such a degree that only the worse case scenarios can be envisaged. Miserable fucking bastards.
    2
  7232. It is worth mentioning that the Russians are shipping in tons of food and medical supplies to the areas they have taken - and are suspicious of aid from the West.
    2
  7233. The trust cannot be rebuilt. Things have gone too far. There are large numbers of ordinary, working class people in this country who feel they are being dragged into a condition of life for which they have no respect or liking. Islamism, wokery and the fanatical promulgation of sexual deviancy, along with the more insidious effects of globalism, have undermined all hope of reconciliation.
    2
  7234. It really is more likely that this was Ukrainian attack.
    2
  7235. Not for long.
    2
  7236.  @RoboticPope  Far less impactful. The metaphorical quotation marks were only removed after the final denouement when the sad, silly truth was revealed.
    2
  7237.  @neilgodwin6531  I wasn't talking about privatisation. I was talking about Blair's policy on immigration, continued to this day, and which by forcing an already antiquated sewage system to deal with a population several times the size it was designed for had created the basis for this nightmare. I believe myself that public utilities should be in the public domain, and that privatisation of them is wrong, but over-population has led to a situation which will cost many billions to put right.
    2
  7238.  @BiggusDiggusable  No he didn't. He gave a one word answer to a question at a news conference. That's not a threat. (I believe there are now therapy sessions available for TDS sufferers, by the way.)
    2
  7239.  @richardm4825  I'm 76 years of age.as it happens and I've been round the block a few times. It's you who should grow up.
    2
  7240.  @martynblackburn9632  So far inadmissible. But there.
    2
  7241.  @martynblackburn9632  There is. Ever heard of Midazolam?
    2
  7242. But Tommy Robinson is not his name. It existed before Steve took it on. It is just a football fans' version of Robin Hood, say.
    2
  7243. Yeah, planting evidence and playing footsie with the law gets your case dismissed.
    2
  7244. The European dream has predictably turned into a nightmare thanks to the EU's clumsy interventionism in the Russia/Ukraine relationship. Do you really want to make matters worse?
    2
  7245.  @rambojambo588  She's on her way out, surely!?
    2
  7246. Brilliant!
    2
  7247.  @1966bluemax  Welcome to World War III
    2
  7248.  @Vzzdak  Oh yes, Tremendous sense. The "tripwire" has now set off a disastrous war in which thousands are dying and a country lies in ruins.
    2
  7249. It'll probably be the last he's getting.
    2
  7250. It was liberated in 2014
    2
  7251. He's already worse. America might not even survive.
    2
  7252.  @rameshtyagi161  But the damage seems minimal.
    2
  7253.  @VeteranfromOz Because it might provide an excuse for further bombardment of Ukrainian non-military targets - notably Odessa.
    2
  7254. Yes A new world order - and a very welcome one - in which past idiocies are cast aside and people come to realise that they have been effectively lied to for decades.
    2
  7255. In fact the Russian military is generally considered to be more powerful now than at the start of the war - and the economy, although far from ideal, is a long, long way from anything like collapse.
    2
  7256.  @ImmuneToTrollHate It is an informed view. NATO military chiefs certainly hold it as well as many economists. You have to realise that we are constantly fed these negative stories in order to keep our spirits up. It's always like that in wars.
    2
  7257.  @ScottishAtheist  These are just silly propaganda stories, as I said. Inflation is certainly rising - but that seems pretty widespread, Other economic factors put Russia among the top half dozen or so world economies. And - despite the donkeys - Russia is winning on the battlefield, where it really counts. Has it really not crossed your mind to wonder why you need to believe these things? Or why politicians and the media want you to?
    2
  7258.  @richardm4825  This simply doesn't appear to be the case. The Russian casualties are grossly exaggerated, although huge enough ,and much of the the armour they have lost was meant to be lost, being very old stuff kept in storage for decades for this very purpose. It's not me that's saying this. NATO chiefs acknowledge that Russian war production and recruitment is meeting needs - and this is, of course, being strongly indicated on the battlefield, where the Russians are currently over-running Ukrainian positions almost daily.
    2
  7259.  @richardm4825  Up to you. But these is merely a conversation between British commentator Piers Morgan and American political scientist and international relations expert John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who makes the points I have made in my posts.
    2
  7260. @TheBritishCousin Actually my source here is Prof John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago. Not everyone gets their information from CNN or Jake Broe.
    2
  7261.  @richiecooke69  I agree that the Russian military is very old fashioned and that, indeed, their leaders regard their troops as far more expendable than their Western equivalents are trained to do. But I still think that the Russian advance is now pretty much in full momentum. The three main lines of defence, installed post-Minsk and rebuilt several times since then, were a formidable obstacle, which has almost completely been overcome. Hopefully the Russians will now relatively quickly be able to take the less defended 30% of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands. And I say "hopefully" because at this point there is at least some chance that Russia will be willing to call a halt, and some sort of peace can arrive.
    2
  7262. They love being patted on their sweet little heads. Teacher's pets!
    2
  7263.  @Just_another_Euro_dude  Yep, NATO didn't do too well in Afghanistan did it? And Ukraine is certainly reaping the rich rewards of trying to join NATO and the EU.
    2
  7264.  @peterspowage5752  What's the difference?
    2
  7265.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  This distinction is purely subjective. You are merely imposing a personal view of right and wrong, aggressor and aggrieved, upon complex political and historical situations. Ukrainian, Ugandan or Scottish nationalism are no more or less virtuous than Russian or British nationalism.
    2
  7266. The Tories got away with it by pretending they were going to do something about it. Labour has made the mistake of expecting people to believe that mass immigration is a jolly good thing all round.
    2
  7267. Omicron has come forth to save the world! He will infect us all and spare us all and thus we will be free!
    2
  7268.  @russellspeed1693  Sounds about right.
    2
  7269. Hi there!
    2
  7270. A hooligan with very sound political sense.
    2
  7271.  @alexsidney4796  ...but with a rationale for his hooliganism ( which he has largely grown out of, by the way.)
    2
  7272. But dead pensioners get replaced by new pensioners as people get older. Hardly much of a saving, is it?
    2
  7273. I cannot decide if this government is just extremely stupid and naive or, in fact, deliberately working to destroy the country at the behest of the WEF and asset management billionaires.
    2
  7274. Seems likely that a jet donated to Ukraine got shot down by a missile donated to Ukraine.
    2
  7275. He's probably just got a new boyfriend.
    2
  7276. Felichia Ritter Do people who believe in the climate crisis have some sort of filter in their noses so that air pollution doesn't affect them? How does that work?
    2
  7277.  @vercoda9997  It tells me that the British, on the surface at least, still have some respect for the judicial process. It is not proper to comment upon court cases that are still in progress. If the case was happening in the UK it would actually be illegal- or at least extremely dangerous - to do so.
    2
  7278. The idea of Russian aggression is a myth. All Putin wants is the mineral rich and largely Russian areas of Donbass and Crimea He now has them and will fight to the death to keep them. Zelensky has learnt from the Americans: wave the threat of Russian invasion under the noses of Joe Public and you're in clover. .
    2
  7279. He has murdered no-one. And the OK sign is just a joke played on dimwit lefties by 4Chan. Kyle will make millions from defamation suits.
    2
  7280. Support for Ukraine is madness.
    2
  7281.  @chewieqtpie  The Houthis share an extremist anti Israel, anti US ideology with ISIS. The relationship between the two is fairly impenetrable but America's support for the Saudis has had more to do with suppressing extremist terrorist regimes than anything else. That was the point I was trying to make. Escalation in Syria , on the other hand, is concerned with taking sides in an infrastructure war involving gas supplies and prices. Allowing the re-emergence of extremist terrorist forces will provide excuses for retaliation.
    2
  7282.  @Hirome_Satou  That isn't QUITE an accurate picture, you know. Crimea is Russian, and was only appended to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative reasons. Donbass is around 50% Russian, the Russians having developed its mineral resources and having imported large numbers of Russians to do so. A considerable number of their descendants feel they were doing better before Kiev took over in 1992. If you examine the treaty proposals of December they concentrate quite heavily on preventing NATO expansion into Ukraine, with the possibility of this allowing NATO nuclear missiles to be stationed with seven minutes flying time of Moscow being a major bone of contention. Donbass was envisaged as becoming two independent republics, rather than being part of Russia, as it has now become.
    2
  7283. It depend how you define herd immunity, surely? It doesn't mean that the disease will be wiped out, merely that sufficient people will be immune to ensures viruses will find their pathways to new hosts difficult to find and that therefore the number of people infected will be manageable.
    2
  7284.  johnslavin2270  Not at all. But they were probably better than they are likely to be when we become a minor adjunct of the Caliphate.
    2
  7285.  johnslavin2270  Ah, those were the days!
    2
  7286.  johnslavin2270  Yes.
    2
  7287.  @Grandfinal43  I actually think Boris might be Jeremy Corbyn in a fat suit.
    2
  7288. I admire his spirit in standing up to this biased judge and his kangaroo court. This case is bringing Donald more votes every day.
    2
  7289.  @rtorres4132  Very good point.
    2
  7290.  @Hugh839  I think she has probably done the FBI a great favour by choosing this way out. The photographic evidence they are relying on seems somewhat suspect to say the least.
    2
  7291. Moloch
    2
  7292. This is odd since the number of people who have even had covid twice is miniscule and your friend's death has not yet appeared in government statistics for some reason.
    2
  7293.  @Tom_YouTube_stole_my_handle  It's a bit of a grey area. Officially 16,000 people have been recorded as being twice infected within a 90 day period, but it is thought that in many cases this is probably due to the same infection persisting, or because of one or both of the tests being false positives. The actual number of highly probable double infections is just over 50, since the second infection was a different variety to the first.
    2
  7294. @Mark B It only reveals carelessness. The 50 figure is the important one. It's not an agenda, it's the truth. Covid infection provides virtually total immunity. Surely it is important for people to realise this?
    2
  7295.  @user-mg3xr9tz7m  SAGE has said many things, most of them wrong. Herd immunity is acknowledged to be the only way by which an epidemic is halted. Before vaccination the cost would have been high. Now it can be achieved by healthy people becoming immune at very small inconvenience to themselves and so setting up barriers through which the virus cannot pass.
    2
  7296. @Mark B When have I repeated the mistake? In England only 50 or so people are known to have been infected twice. Symptoms were mild and none of them died. People like you, with your weird compulsion to make this pandemic to seem worse than it actually is, are the ones who are being dangerous and irresponsible.
    2
  7297. @Mark B It's 500 probable and 50 confirmed. No deaths. Absolutely tiny numbers. No amount of anecdotal evidence, especially when of dubious veracity, can alter facts.
    2
  7298. @Mark B Are you sure your name isn't Karen?
    2
  7299. Hmm. It seems to be working though. Protests against the Rittenhouse verdict seem remarkably subdued. I can't imagine why.
    2
  7300.  @ashkebora7262  So you lost then?
    2
  7301. The new YouTube algorithm is insane. It must have been programmed by woke teenagers on drugs.
    2
  7302. Durham police have surely put this whole sick, sad sorry saga to bed. "Alright then Sir. You can be on your way now. Have a nice day."
    2
  7303. And you know this how?
    2
  7304.  @mowgli2071  Yup.
    2
  7305. Noble words - but how many more billions can NATO and America actually afford to pour into Ukraine?
    2
  7306. This would be a great chance for Zelensky to leave with honour. His day is done.
    2
  7307.  @stream2watch  Please help me out by telling me what's going on then. I bow to your superior knowledge and intellect.
    2
  7308.  @stream2watch  Good as your word. Thanks.
    2
  7309. Ukrainian is teetering on the brink of defeat. America and the West, despite all the propaganda, have underestimated how much it will cost to keep their proxy going. It is yet another blunder by their extremely unintelligent military intelligence services, making the shambles of the Kabul retreat look positively insignificant. Economies in the US and Europe will be crippled for decades if this goes on much longer, to say nothing of the fact that Western armouries will be dangerously depleted. Time to call a halt to this mad experiment.
    2
  7310. Time to face the fact that the West's adventure in Ukraine was a serious mistake and it is now time to fall back and lick our wounds.
    2
  7311. @@FlowerPower441 By the West I mean America and its subservient allies, I suppose. And I am not Russian but English. The West is responsible for the current tragedy in Ukraine because it has interfered in what is basically a quarrel over mineral rights and cultural appropriation. Without this interference Ukraine and Russia could have sorted out their differences easily enough. Instead, Washington warmongers saw what they thought was an opportunity to humiliate Russia and make a huge financial profit in doing so. They miscalculated badly - or simply didn't care - and as a result more than half a million people have died to no real purpose.
    2
  7312.  @brad96375  The rouble is doing just fine and there were no human rights or democracy in Russia when he took over for him to dismantle. Buddy.
    2
  7313.  @boink800  A country in ruins and a creed outlawed forever. Some legacy.
    2
  7314. Take comfort. First signs are that while highly transmissible the symptoms are very mild indeed.
    2
  7315. Already showing a loss. Time to pull out.
    2
  7316. I really think our dear Professor should stick to this kind of thing and steer clear of serious politics.
    2
  7317.  @theporkiestpie8416  There is a great difference between expansionism and keeping your borders secure. It seems this is too difficult a concept for your simple mind to grasp.
    2
  7318. Russia will be able to undercut most other suppliers of oil and gas in terms of volume, price and availability.
    2
  7319. @ This is pure cope and fantasy, you realise.
    2
  7320. Hooray! Someone's got it right at last!
    2
  7321. Oh dear. Will these propagandists never get tired of blaming Putin for failing to do things he was never going to do in the first place?
    2
  7322. I address this question to Phil himself: someone who I disagree with on about every level but whom I respect for his honesty and intelligence: What does it feel like to have so many brainless idiots agreeing with you?"
    2
  7323. This is so predictable. Having spent two years grinding the Ukrainians down, Russia is now attempting to establish a firm hold on the territories it actually wants to control in the long term.
    2
  7324. But it wasn't a Nazi salute. Not every raised arm is a Nazi salute. Don't you get that?
    2
  7325.  @russellharrell2747  It wasn't a salute of any kind. It was just a gesture among a whole array of gestures. To believe it to be anything else says more about you than it does about Elon Musk.
    2
  7326.  @tastytechaddictsmtb  Quite right. Immunity through infection is the only answer. Vaccination reduces symptoms but at the same time slows up the route to herd immunity. Really effective palliative drugs would be by far the best solution.
    2
  7327. Give peas a chance.
    2
  7328. Reformed, not abolished. A return to the hereditary peerage would be a good start.
    2
  7329. I have a vision of the future - a Britain as a dormitory for low paid workers kept in check by the fear of hell by a state religion (Islam), while the elite live in vast estates protected by laws punishing all incursions. 2066? More like 1066.
    2
  7330.  @harveybrown37  The Budapest Memorandum was not a treaty. It was a Memorandum, as the name suggests. It was merely an agreed record of a summary of what had occurred at a series of meetings. Trying to pretend it was a treaty which Russia broke is just one of the many tricks these warmongers use to fool the huddled masses into thinking they have right on their side. It works a treat until you start to use your brain and do a bit of research into the actuality of events.
    2
  7331.  @mark-ish  He didn't break the rules.Provision is made for obtaining childcare. Which Cummings did.
    2
  7332.  @xXxXmjmXxXx  He didn't. Provision is made for taking steps to obtain childcare. Which is what he did.
    2
  7333. Too big to rig! I was expecting a few million votes to appear from underneath a table somewhere, but no!
    2
  7334.  @WHS_reviews  Who's Ivan? Who's putler? Who are you?|
    2
  7335. But that isn't his actual name.
    2
  7336.  @JesusHChrist-q9d  That might work!
    2
  7337. Naughty Sky Aus! You know very well what he meant! (Hand recounts of district elections in New Hampshire originally counted by machines have just shown a consistent 5% increase in the Republican vote. If that ratio was the same in the key swing states Trump would win by a landslide.) That's news , that is. In case you've forgotten what it looks like.
    2
  7338.  @dmythica  Then this looks like little more than the final deranged act of a lifelong warmonger.
    2
  7339. What's going on here? The government's own figures, released just today, clearly show there is NO second wave; that death rates are now entirely normal and only a tiny fraction of people who have died since July tested positive for Covid 19. It's as though there's a parallel universe occupied by Johnson and Hancock and their mad advisers that has somehow infringed on reality.
    2
  7340. @ I tend to watch war mapping channels such as DPA War and Weeb Union, which objectively assess claims from both sides and generally present a well balanced picture. For an equally balanced view of the political and economic developments I usually find myself in broad agreement with John Mearsheimer of Chicago University, an internally-recognised political scientist of considerable repute. I reject the assessments of most news channels as utterly laughable.
    2
  7341. The death knell is sounding for NATO. It has lost its usefulness and is now little more than a glorified protection racket.
    2
  7342.  @Jurgir09  There are several videos on the Internet. And why wouldn't they? They are the same people with a shared history.
    2
  7343. @Corey Leander Unusually for Ukrainians you mean? Actually as a general rule both sides treat prisoners well - but in the heat of battle and its aftermath individual incidents such as this one are inevitable.
    2
  7344.  @AvatarOfBhaal  The kid might face gun charges, but that has no effect on any plea of self defence he may make. Equally well the very fact that Blake was clearly leaning into his car to pick something up and that he had been behaving so irrationally made him an immediate threat. A knife was apparently found there, but it could well have been a gun. If the officer had not acted quickly there was a real possibility that he, his fellow officers and even the children could have been harmed. He took the right decision. The Bible has many lessons, some of them quite contradictory. I don't recall it saying anywhere that racial minorities should be whipped up into a frenzy to be used as cannon fodder by Marxist agitators.
    2
  7345. The big question is whether or not Biden's fumbling incompetence was just that - or if he is a mere fall guy in a strategy to spark another never-ending, highly profitable war.
    2
  7346. Ah, the triumph of hope over experience!
    2
  7347.  @Scroteydada  Wouldn't work. The virus will still be there unless there is herd immunity.
    2
  7348. Kursk has never been part of the Ukraine SSR. Crimea , on the other hand, was only added on to it from Russia in 1954. Prior to the Russian Revolution all of present-day Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire.
    2
  7349. US warmongers have created this crisis. The only comfort is that by provoking Putin they have hastened their own demise.
    2
  7350. I know what critical race theory is. It's racism.
    2
  7351. Britain has become a teeny bit more crowded since then of course.
    2
  7352. These people are making a great deal of sense. Putin is reacting to years of provocation not only from Ukraine but from NATO and even the European Union.
    2
  7353.  @Neutralino  They are very good points, in my view. Georgians certainly are not Russians, but Georgia was a partner with Russia in the Soviet Union and both countries have close economic ties which Russians (and many Georgians) are still keen to maintain. I consider it unfortunate that Western agencies have spent so much money and energy in recent years in undermining this relationship.
    2
  7354.  @littlefluffybushbaby7256  No. The EU just wants Russia's sweeties.
    2
  7355.  @Think666_  The justification is a commercial one. Errors were made in drawing up post-Soviet boundaries and as long as these new "countries" continued to form close ties with Russia then things could jog along reasonably peaceably. Pressures from Western agencies, however, have affected this uneasy status quo and are probably the main, if not sole, cause of dissent leading to war. In Ukraine these agencies have persuaded Kiev (guess how) to allow the possibility of considerable resources being transferred out of Russian hands, leading to a substantial reduction in Russia's income. This Russia will simply not put up with, and understandably so. Lines drawn on maps and treaties signed by drunkards amid the collapse of an empire do not counterbalance centuries of history and investment. Respecting these boundaries is easy enough if doing so brings you benefit - not so much if it takes the bread out of your mouth. As to the opinions of the residents of these areas these are well-nigh impossible to ascertain. All one can say is that they are deeply divided, but in what proportion corruption and fear of reprisal make any accurate assessment extremely difficult to obtain. I think one can say with some confidence, however, that almost anything would be better for these people than the agonies they are suffering over what is, as I say, a quarrel over the ownership of resources.
    2
  7356.  @Think666_  Sovereignty is much misused word. It often seems to me to mean little more than accepting America's notion of what a country is, rather than what it actually might be. Eastern Ukraine was not taken from the Ukrainians. There were next to no Ukrainians there where Russia took it from the Ottomans. Just because the Soviets decided to stick it on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine doesn't make it Ukrainian. Russia's compromise, as outlined in the Minsk Accords, was a workable solution and could have been achieved without the grim necessity of war. Russia has been forced to annexe and invade because peaceful solutions have been rejected. As to empowering the people - that is easier said than done. Both Ukraine and Russia are still far from being able to exercise democracy effectively.
    2
  7357.  @DavidMoxham957  All of them.
    2
  7358.  @DavidMoxham957  No. Every member. About 150,000 of them.
    2
  7359.  @beecee2205  They can, in theory, vote him out though - perhaps even more easily than Labour could rid itself of Starmer.
    2
  7360.  @Lewroy69  Oh dear! Does this mean we are now going to have to type it out in full?
    2
  7361.  @gordon5915  Which hasn't taken place. NATO is just a glorified protection racket.
    2
  7362. @ Which is a paper tiger. In fact now that Russia has got through military action even more than it asked for through diplomatic negotiation should be assurance enough. All we have to worry about it is some future Ukraine trying to take it back.
    2
  7363. Snow Owl Nice one! I've seen the 1922 story written down, but not on video. It's a real knockout. Trouble is, once you start using he Heartland Institute (or Tony Heller) the brainwashed alarmists just cry "fake!" "debunked!" "fossil fuel schill!" etc etc I wish someone could build up a library of material from direct official sources. It would be great ammunition for us in the pretty blue writing wars.
    2
  7364. Snow Owl The parallels are there. They have an impressive holy writ in the form of all the scientific documentation they have accumulated though. They can "prove" a great deal by using old school science based on long-established models of the atmosphere and how it works. Convincing them that these models are inadequate is an uphill task. Scientific education these days seems to be a matter of indoctrination as much as anything. They have a religious symbol too. If I was more entrepreneurial than I am I would set up a business selling little golden hockey sticks they can hang around their necks.
    2
  7365. Hand Solo Well, there have been periods of warming followed by periods of cooling. This was accepted as fact until recently and only corrupt climate science has altered the evidence to try to make it appear this is not so. Solar and ocean cycles, combined with solar and cosmic ray inter-relation and a number of other factors, create cyclic weather patterns largely confirmed by proxy data. Dr Luning's work on the MWP is a case in point. Climate science is based on questionable data, notably models of atmospheric composition derived from late 19th century assessments and very little altered since. Having subjected myself to the experience of watching apologist videos from the likes of Potholer54 and Just Have a Think I do assure you I have listened to your side of the question. I remain unconvinced -largely because of the reasons outlined above, but also because I know what a rat smells like.
    2
  7366.  @ikke12345  And they only waited thirty years.
    2
  7367.  @Weelonmusk  You miss the point. That figure is solely because of the large Covid death rate in Spring. Currently Covid deaths are well below flu and pneumonia in the UK and have been ever since the pandemic halted in July/August. Go to the Office of National Statistics for full details. The last release was on October 20 and covers all deaths up until October 9. At that date deaths from all causes were about the five year average with deaths where Covid 19 had been present only a very small percentage of the total.
    2
  7368. Why are socialists angry about reduction in cheap labour from abroad? Just asking.
    2
  7369. @Main Switch I hear what you are saying. Another reason why Eastern European craftsmen are so evident in the UK is the undoubted fact that they work harder and longer hours. Small building contractors and the like however will certainly offer their services far more cheaply than their British counterparts. Polish and Romanian lorry drivers have certainly undercut British wages, but this is only one factor in the current shortage. My initial point was merely to tease the supporters of this channel who for the most part seem to have lost sight of the fact that socialist policies and working class interests really ought to coincide.
    2
  7370. Or Gordon.
    2
  7371. Jon 66 Their study, like present studies, was based on laboratory experiments which take no account of complex cosmic influences.
    2
  7372. Boris is a clown - but not as dangerous as that clown who thinks he's running Ukraine.
    2
  7373. The pandemic has been deliberately structured to maximise Big Pharma profits. And by supporting ludicrous mitigation policies and mass, repetitive vaccination we are doing just that
    2
  7374.  @Jay...777  It's a weird world when comedians make more sense than many $cientists.
    2
  7375. ​ @corvus1238  Why should I feel sorry for people who can afford to pay gangsters thousands of pounds to smuggle them half-way around the world and still have enough left over for a smartphone and a pair of £200 trainers? There are very many worthier objects of compassion in the world. Very many indeed.
    2
  7376.  @mattgreek1066  I don't think you get this. These poor refugees pay money to people-traffickers. And they still have enough money for phones and quality clothing.Where's the joke?
    2
  7377.  @mattgreek1066  Thank you for your considered analysis of the situation and detailed point-by-point response.
    2
  7378.  @Tracey777  It was actually his jacket. They spelled his name wrong then, but he said he didn't care!
    2
  7379.  @Biochemechanic  It wasn't them, apparently. It was the guy's actual jacket and the fire service spelled his name wrong on it - but he said he didn't care and wore it anyway.
    2
  7380. @ People who cannot think beyond an absurd historical analogy are the ones who are naive.
    2
  7381. No wonder big tech want's to sweep hydroxychloroquine under the carpet.
    2
  7382. @ That's funny. I thought I was a Russian bot.
    2
  7383. We've pushed Russia too far over the years. Make no mistake, they will do this unless we back off now.
    2
  7384. Phil has stopped being just plain wrong about everything and stepped into the world of paranoid delusion.
    2
  7385.  @turnerfamilyinozi  Er, the war in Ukraine?
    2
  7386. Why can't we ever seem to get a government which repeals laws instead of inventing new ones?
    2
  7387. Do you really thing the West would accept Russia into NATO? They've been turned down every time they've tried. NATO needs Russia as a permanent enemy in order to justify its very existence.
    2
  7388.  @stephenthomas3085  It's an excuse obviously, but there's nothing sick about Putin. He's a very pragmatic man, and a man of his time and place. All the same the "poor innocent little Ukraine" trope is such an insult to our intelligence that it needs to be quashed. These two countries are as bad as one another and regularly swap places as the most corrupt nations in Europe.
    2
  7389.  @riveness  The inquiry found no such thing. And even if it had done it would not alter the fact that there is a political and religious motive behind the activities of the Pakistani Muslim gangs which places them in an entirely different category.
    2
  7390.  @riveness  The category is not smaller, and it wouldn't matter if it was. Anyway, the report does not seek to turn the issue into a competition, as you seem to want to. The Muslim grooming gangs are in a different category to priests who abuse children, or institutions where abuse is tolerated and commonplace. It is a no better or worse category (how could it be?) but it is one which, by its very nature, needs to be treated separately. The reports chief conclusion, of course, is that the nature of these offences makes it relatively easy for them to be shoved under the carpet. The reasons for this are various, but in the case of the Muslim gangs they are transparently due to the fact that the perpetrators are, indeed, Muslim. These men are not high-profile figures. The institution which protects them has, as yet, no particular high status in the establishment. They are Muslims and the reason that more of them are not in jail is that the authorities are afraid of being accused of racism, or of losing Muslim votes in elections.
    2
  7391. Not doing well? The Ukrainians who are left are surrounded in a comparatively small area of pretty worthless territory. And even that doesn't look like lasting long.
    2
  7392.  @johnjames6593  Where does communism enter into it?
    2
  7393. Overprivileged, Guardian-reading ignorant actor v. politically astute black woman. No contest.
    2
  7394. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    2
  7395. A total spoof but rather fun. The real conspiracies are more subtle.
    2
  7396. Big mistake. These were just a few hundred of the fifty million or so who believe Biden cheated and were with the protestors in spirit. They all have guns.
    2
  7397.  Gail McLean  Yup. Get hold of some hydroxychloroquine quick. I hope with all my heart this doesn't happen, but if it does it will at least show how mad lockdowns and facemasks are.
    2
  7398. But unsurprising.
    2
  7399.  @primalconvoy  The trials your article is based on were faked and have since been proved to be so. Big Pharma set up trials using vast doses of hydroxychloroquine administered to patients in the last stages of the illness. Hydroxychloroquine only works when administered in small doses very early on. Basically it has to make cells resistant before the virus reaches them. Once they are there it can do nothing. The WHO has now restarted trials and a number of recent studies have shown that if used properly hydroxychloroquine reduces deaths by at least a third. You really should try to keep up you know.
    2
  7400. It's hard to see how he can actually lose.
    2
  7401.  @petertsucalas2931  Hard to see how.
    2
  7402.  @ricmcmix5203  Perhaps you should tell him.
    2
  7403.  @Zabfo  Where can I find Russian propaganda? It seems to be banned in the West, so I am forced to draw my own conclusions.
    2
  7404. This is a myth created by Western warmongers in order to justify vast military spending and the acquisition of mineral resources, such as the estimated 14trillion$sworth lying beneath the disputed territories of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Putin is on record several times in saying that while the re-creation of the Russian Empire (Soviet or otherwise) might be a fine, romantic notion it is totally impractical and not even desirable in real world terms. We must just as well say we'll send expeditions to India and Africa to try to recreate the British Empire.
    2
  7405.  @nickryder9669  I have. He is neither a racist nor a Nazi, and racists and Nazis were expelled from the EDL. There is a video of TR and other EDL leaders burning a swastika flag.
    2
  7406. My bet is that whatever Putin does the West will chicken out and rush to the conference table.
    2
  7407. It's very much on the cards.
    2
  7408. Good idea. Compared to America's career politicians Trump is Little Lord Fauntleroy
    2
  7409.  @occamraiser  No. You are if you think anything different.
    2
  7410.  @a5cent  What's obtuse about investigating the background to this conflict and coming to a rational conclusion? Just swallowing idiotic propaganda is worse than obtuse - it's demeaning.
    2
  7411.  @a5cent  I have investigated the situation fairly thoroughly, especially with regard to history of Ukraine and its relationship with Russia, both before and after Communism. I have also read Putin's lengthy essay on the issues involved published shortly before the invasion which makes several points which, to my knowledge, have never been adequately answered by Western media and politicians. This war is being fought under false pretences and we are being told a great many untruths and half truths in order to persuade us to support our involvement in it.
    2
  7412.  @a5cent  There are plenty of history books about Ukraine, and Putin's version of events seems to be in no way "warped or rewritten" although perhaps understandably tendentious in places. I recommend The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy. Like Putin he clearly shows how Ukraine, as a country has been fought over for centuries, and how its borders and its possession have changed radically. The current situation is that much of the territory now being fought over is historically Russian and Ottoman, but predominantly Russian in more recent times, and that Crimea and large sections of Eastern Ukraine have only become parts of "Ukraine" because they were added to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine during a period when it was ultimately administered by Moscow, and for purely administrative and logistical reasons. Even after Ukraine's independence in 1991 the situation was just about acceptable to Russia, but the new Ukraine joining NAT0 and the EU would severely affect Russian interests, and is thus being resisted.
    2
  7413. I'm sorry to say Caroline Johnson doesn't appear to have much of a political future. This technique she has of allowing her opponents to express their views in a coherent and and sympathetic fashion and then following up with an ill-considered and poorly-presented counter argument of her own does not work too well. Perhaps she is Republican plant of some sort?
    2
  7414.  @beecee2205  It isn't necessarily about what the grievers want. Their tragic, tragic loss does not automatically give them the right to control the narrative, In any case, you do not know any more than I do how the families of the dead children feel - I daresay there is quite a wide spread of feeling, in fact.
    2
  7415.  @beecee2205  Not my bag. But I can fully sympathise.
    2
  7416.  @carysparkes  Another glib and essentially meaningless phrase.
    2
  7417.  @EWAScotland  I am actually a target of a certain quasi-religious fanatical cult which I have deeply offended in the past. That is the only reason I prefer a degree of anonymity. I'm sure the police can contact me if they feel I have committed any offence. Actually though, I don't care if I have.
    2
  7418. Who owns them now? When did you last have dealings with either?
    2
  7419.  @Lee_303  Not so. I'm only 71, but I stand by what I said. Your attitude towards death changes the closer it approaches, it seems.
    2
  7420.  @downonthestour  With all due respect to your grandmother the economy is more important than she is. Furthermore, the chances of her dying as a direct result of Covid 19 are extremely slim. How slim we cannot know since the figures are being fudged so extensively. I guess my attitude isn't bad at all - it seems rather public-spirited actually.
    2
  7421. Just an observation - but none of those guys look as though they're starving, do they? Big, big fellowsl. Does the obesity affect the healthcare package at all, one wonders?
    2
  7422. No. He was found Not Guilty. Did you watch the video?
    2
  7423.  @californiadreamin8423  There are other choices. The Labour Party (which I very much supported many years ago) has completely abandoned the ordinary British working class and is now simply a vehicle for increasingly absurd and dangerous ideologies. The vast mass of people are now disenfranchised but there is hope that a coalition of common sense approaches, untrammelled by ideology, and hopefully able to avoid the abuses of power you refer to, will evolve before it is too late.
    2
  7424. I do so admire wishful thinking.
    2
  7425. Temperatures were hotter and bushfires far, far more extensive in the 19th and early 20th centuries than at present. How so?
    2
  7426. Rubbish. Russian supermarkets are better stocked than ours, as anyone travelling there will tell you. And the war is widely supported, except by Westernised students and would-be intellectuals.
    2
  7427. There are no such things as human rights. There are only privileges which have to be earned. The ECHR is an abomination which has been instrumental in destabilising Britain. The sooner we are out of it the better.
    2
  7428.  @philipmain5701  I see no signs of any such collapse. The supermarket shelves are full, petrol is cheap and homes are heated. Unlike here in the UK, for example. The Brotherhood of Nations???!!! Don't make me laugh.
    2
  7429.  @biggusdickus5986  I have a very good friend in Rome called Biggus Dickus. What do you find so wisible?
    2
  7430. A great many rioters were armed.
    2
  7431. Sounds like a TV series. But then so much of the propaganda coming out of Ukraine does. "The Despicable Ten" "The Butcher of Bucha." "The Ghost of Kiev".... One can't help wishing that the Servant of the People had stuck to TV instead of turning his country into a real-life horror story.
    2
  7432. Most of the comments one makes supporting Kari Lake's view are immediately deleted.
    2
  7433.  @alastairbarkley6572  Three previous attempts have been deleted, I assure you. Getting past the Gestapo algorithm is something of a fine art.
    2
  7434. Alan Hill Sounds like an obituary. I would have taken my hat off if I was wearing one.
    2
  7435. Bolton is a demented warmonger. Trump is America's only hope of survival in a rapidly-changing world.
    2
  7436.  @inconvenientfacts8896  Here is a lost of some of the reasons: 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    2
  7437.  @peterebel7899  What you are suggesting just opens the door to government thought-control. People should be allowed to choose which views to accept.
    2
  7438. If men can grow a cervix then David Lammy can grow a brain.
    2
  7439. Quite right. This is not a hill to die on.
    2
  7440.  @gazzisright7362  They seem a stage further ahead up there!
    2
  7441. What shouldn't Musk support these people? I do.
    2
  7442. No nus is good nus, I suppose.
    2
  7443. Russia was on our side, as I remember. You seem to be mixing your metaphors, as well as your wars. Germany's expansionist ambitions bear no relation whatsoever to Russia's modest requests for its borders to be kept secure, and for its long established commercial interests to be maintained. The aggressor here is America, which has been scheming for decades to syphon off Ukraine's mineral wealth.
    2
  7444.  @epicon6  That's true enough and, unlike Ukraine, Sweden and Finland are too far away from Moscow to act as bases for a pre-emptive nuclear strike. All the same they've been left alone for more than 30 years. Seems silly to risk provoking Russia now.
    2
  7445.  @David_Lloyd-Jones  How do you know there's no evidence? There is no evidence that there is no evidence. No court would hear the evidence that there was.
    2
  7446.  @Captain-l-12p  He doesn't get a clothing allowance from Lord Ali though.
    2
  7447. Trying to divert Russian forces from Ukraine.
    2
  7448. Data on deaths from all causes is very alarming.
    2
  7449.  @borabayindir4510  First of all, I'm not trying to manipulate anyone. All I'm saying is that people who claim such things as "the unvaccinated are taking up the hospital beds" are clearly wrong. For the reasons that you clearly state, it would be impossible for it to be otherwise. Having said that, the assertions in the preamble to the actual statistics are not beyond question. They rely on imponderables such as actual population demographics (which are not known in anything like precise detail) and a guess as to what death and hospitalisation rates would be like if people were not vaccinated to the degree that they are. The only unarguable items of data which we have available are the numbers of people who die from all causes, and the number of people who are vaccinated. And juxtaposing these two is where anomalies and puzzles occur. Deaths from all causes are increasing, regardless of covid and regardless of the number of people vaccinated. Furthermore peaks in anomalous deaths are occurring shortly after vaccines rollouts. This, on the face it, does call into question the whole effectiveness of the vaccine programme as an instrument to reduce mortality. I do urge you to check Professor Fenton's videos on this subject. He has only recently issued a shorter version of the work he and his colleagues have carried out but even the longer one is quite intelligible to the layman. All I can say is that their conclusions have given me considerable food for thought.
    2
  7450. It's entirely possible they are right. If not Zelensky directly, then some of the more extreme members of his rapidly disintegrating administration could very well have dreamed up such a scheme.
    2
  7451. Yes. Several million times yes.
    2
  7452. One good thing which could come out of all this might be a long-needed study of the whys and wherefores of long-term ill effects from respiratory infections in a minority of cases. As far as long covid is concerned this, like the death rate, seems very much geared to age. Current studies indicate that around 1.2% of covid patients in their 20s will become victims, rising to possibly 5% for people in middle age. This only refers to debilitating symptoms lasting more than three months. After a bad infection some people can take years to get properly better. An unlucky few never do.
    2
  7453.  @T5Zplayer  Done it. I'm 74.
    2
  7454. America has already shoved at least $50 billion into the Ukraine pokie with no sign of a jackpot. Time to go home for dinner, I think.
    2
  7455. Hee hee!
    2
  7456. A hologram will be projected to us from the year 2073 telling us that climate change was a hoax. Trump will be re-elected and legal errors in the impeachment proceedings will mean that his first term was cancelled, and thus he will be eligible for a third term. John Iadarola will leave Damage Report and pursue a successful career as a stand-up comedian. Michael Moore will fade slowly into nothingness leaving behind only a baseball cap,an enigmatic smile and a pool of grease on the floor. Joe Biden will be declared insane and try to flee to the Ukraine, but will end up in the Yukon instead. Greta Thunberg will be revealed as a 47 year old man with a rare genetic condition that requires him to be given daily injections extracted from the pituitary glands of puppy dogs. It will snow a lot. The Kentucky Derby will be won by a Ford Mustang which self-identifies as a racehorse. Its pronouns are Brmm Brmm. The year will end on a cheerful note with the announcement that Vladimir Putin and President Trump have formed a trade alliance to allow them to buy Europe off the Germans.
    2
  7457.  @stoobydootoo4098  You could take a course in trying to understand irony.
    2
  7458. Cases, Cases, Cases!!!?? How relevant is the number of cases when the number of deaths has been on a plateau for weeks now?
    2
  7459. Quan V The earth is getting warmer, The myth is that humans are causing it.
    2
  7460. Cocking a snook at absurd covid lockdown rules is one thing Being instrumental in sparking the war in Ukraine is another. Time we saw the very last of this rabid egomaniac.
    2
  7461. You're very close. There was a large population we think, and seasonal farming left big gaps in the schedule. Bored kids cause trouble so they were sent from all over the country to build a giant sundial. We could learn from this.
    2
  7462.  @lukefreeman828  Which they are.
    2
  7463. And Donbass.
    2
  7464. The government's ridiculous on/off and regionalised lockdown strategies have undoubtedly created conditions which have allowed new strains to flourish. They are the direct result of lockdowns, which studies have shown have no effect on death rates and only slow down the spread of the disease without reducing its actual impact.
    2
  7465. What makes you think Russia wants to do all that? Is it something you've heard?
    2
  7466. I doubt many of them have voted in their lives.
    2
  7467. Has the underbrush been cut away, as once it always used to be? Have the firebreaks been allowed to become overgrown so they look prettier?
    2
  7468. These rush hour attacks must be designed to further cripple Ukraine by making people think twice about going to work in the morning. One kind of wonders why if Putin REALLY wanted to take over Ukraine he didn't start blasting away like this before sending the troops in. That would have been the conventional thing to do. It rather adds to the theory that all he ever wanted was to weaken the country while securing his position in Donbass and Crimea.
    2
  7469. Zelensky was once a pro-American stooge - so what's the odds? He's out of a job now , of course. And supporting Ukraine's historical partner and neighbour doesn't make you a stooge.
    2
  7470. He's shopping for Italian suits and ties. Best in the world.
    2
  7471. This is just a smokescreen to divert attention from their many sins. Either that or they are mad.
    2
  7472.  BS HUNTER  STILL suffering from TDS?
    2
  7473.  @CollectiveDefence  It's how a threat is perceived rather than the actuality of the threat which counts. Ukraine is 450km and seven minutes flight from Moscow. It's enough of a threat and a challenge to Russia's territorial integrity to warrant defensive action. The nuclear issue aside, Ukraine, under America's direction, was planning to escalate the war in Donbass and attempt to retake Crimea. All adding up to give Putin plenty of reasons for taking the decisive action he has.
    2
  7474.  @toddthreess9624  I think you're wrong. Anything which alters the balance of options in a potential nuclear conflict has to be taken into consideration. Apart from that though, the psychological effects of a US missile base in Ukraine is of no little importance.. Russia took the Soviet nukes out, and to see them replaced by American ones a few years later is an affront to Russia's pride. There are several reasons for Putin taking the action he has, but I don't think those you mention are among them. What internal issues did you have in mind that might require a war to distract from them?
    2
  7475. You mean the patriotic defender of his country from US aggression, don't you?
    2
  7476. That's going to be hard since Russia is now sitting on most of them.
    2
  7477. @ Your figures are wrong, but Russia is already mining them and has been for centuries. Russian companies own most of the mines in Eastern Ukraine - and Russians are down there digging it up - not Ukrainians.
    2
  7478. How many of the families in these leafy suburbs have younger members who have been on BLM marches one wonders?
    2
  7479. Counted them yourself, have you?
    2
  7480. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    2
  7481.  @TTTzzzz  And hope for the best, of course.
    2
  7482. This travesty is a blindingly obvious stitch up and a disgrace even by the shoddy standards of the US judicial system.
    2
  7483. I find this story entirely credible, despite denials by the local authorities (Well they would do, wouldn't they?) To people used to starving a plump cat is not a pet, it's protein.
    2
  7484. Naah. Phil believes everything he's told by anyone who isn't a Tory.
    2
  7485.  @d.russellmoros7841  Herd immunity is the only way. Masks and other measures do not seem particularly effective, and nor do vaccines. A recent study has shown that US counties with highest vaccination rates have the highest rates of transmission. Now look at Florida: castigated for refusing to introduce mandates and where now case numbers are plummeting. Covid is with us forever. Immunity via infection is the only way to contain it.
    2
  7486. I don't think they were his lies. He was conned by a teenage girl. Can happen to the best of us.
    2
  7487. What evidence is there for the planet "heating up"? Records prior to the past few years have been largely discounted by the climate crisis propagandists because they do not fit the narrative. Show me PROOF for God's sake!
    2
  7488. And he doesn't suit a suit anyway.
    2
  7489. Of course none of this would happen if Ukraine did the sensible thing and surrendered.
    2
  7490. The greedy bastids, to be fair, are calling upon employers and agencies to raise wages as a matter of urgency.
    2
  7491. It's not just about Trump winning though, is it? It's about the American people winning against the forces of corruption and evil. The democratic process is a fragile defence, but this election has seen it shattered.
    2
  7492. Some sort of alliance between Reform and true Tories is the only real answer to Britain's horrifying descent into globalist serfdom.
    2
  7493. It's not the Supreme Court that's doing the hunting, it's the Democrats. The very fact that the Supreme Court has taken this decision means that no-one will be able to say Trump had the judges in his pocket.
    2
  7494.  @Joshua-mu6px  With shame, confusion, total incompetence, the bombing of innocent children, the loss of billions of dollars of equipment and with nothing whatsoever achieved.
    2
  7495. James Watson They are both very old and might die soon. My parrot has just died, but I.m going to get a new one soon. I'm going to call it Greta.
    2
  7496. The indictment is a load of fluff. Even there were a few bits of classified info mixed up in the papers Trump took with him no harm was done and no laws were broken. The Espionage Act is all they can come up with - and carelessness isn't espionage.
    2
  7497. It's only the fears and uncertainties over the tariff blitz which have undermined the MAGA message. DOGE and de-wokery and the death of DEI continue to resonate with a great many ordinary voters.
    2
  7498. As a tactic it worked extremely well. The large NATO-funded Ukrainian army is near enough destroyed dealing with the target it was presented with, and Ukraine is no longer in a position to retake Crimea and Donbass - which is what its new army was created to do.
    2
  7499.  @trevorroberts9584  Putin has far more sense than you credit him with. He know exactly what to expect. He has written detailed histories of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples for one thing. Some of the troops were told to expect to be welcomed, but like the old trope about "Kiev in three days" this was just to encourage them along.
    2
  7500. Gavin Williamson attended a comprehensive school. Public schoolboys have other people to look after their tarantulas.
    2
  7501. His weapon was not illegal. Neither is crossing state lines.
    2
  7502. The proposed new local government shake-up is in itself a threat to democracy.
    2
  7503. Meanwhile in Sweden....
    2
  7504. Later today (Oct 5) Putin is expected to announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by Ukraine can be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could be dire and involve the wholesale bombing of Ukraine as a retaliatory measure.
    2
  7505. At last the US judiciary has someone on the bench prepared to stand up against the abuse of law for political purposes. All praise to Judge Cannon!
    2
  7506. There is no need for any of this. Official government figures just released show there is no "second wave" nor any sign of one. Since the pandemic ended in July (and it did end) death rates have been totally normal. The same number of people in the same age groups are dying at the same rate as they have done for the past five years at least, and the percentage of them who have tested positive is minimal. This madness must stop.
    2
  7507.  @terjeoseberg990  What on earth makes you think Ukraine is winning? The attacks on oil facilities are fleabites compared with Russia's steady advance on the front.
    2
  7508. @ I respect your point of view, but I think you are wrong. The Russians only use artillery in defended war zones and I don't think the Ukrainians have the capability to take out high level bombers - which could be replaced anyway. As someone else said in this thread: Russia isn't treating this as a war. God help Ukraine if they did.
    2
  7509. @ Ukraine certainly did ask for this fight - or rather they were told to ask for it by the US and its allies. The figures trotted out for Russian casualties are plainly ridiculous - they always are in wars. All we are getting in the West are stories about Russia running out of men and weapons while the situation on the ground clearly shows that it is Ukraine which is in this unfortunate position.
    2
  7510. @ Except for money.
    2
  7511.  @carlossaraiva8213  It isn't. There are some aspects of Islam which scare people shitless. And it is a mistake to confuse patriotism with xenophobia, as so many do,
    2
  7512.  @operationgoldfish8331  Don't be so patronising. The working class fear of competition for resources from foreigners is a genuine one and it an insult to them to describe this as racism or xenophobia. The cloud-cuckoo land of multiculturalism is one that many of them see as one which will keep them permanently downtrodden - and they could well be right. You need a university education and a high-payed job doing something virtually useless to really take that on board. There are many reason for supporting Brexit and the economic pros and cons are only part of the picture. Trying to form a European super-power out of a trading bloc is madness. It can only lead to trouble - and trouble has come. The EU's flirtation with Ukraine is a significant factor in making Putin take the decisions he has. Tinpot sabre-rattling will only provoke him further. Getting your groceries a bit cheaper and going on holiday without showing your passport is too high a price to pay for getting involved in a European war. I only hope Brexit has been enough to keep us out of it.
    2
  7513. Crimea and most of Donbass are already liberated. Only a few more miles to go.
    2
  7514. When a law is created for a particular purpose and is then abused for another purpose, then that law may justifiably be amended. That is all that is happening here.
    2
  7515. And didn't he share his victims with his friends and neighbours and then farm them out for profit with the tacit approval of the local vicar?
    2
  7516. What has 1933 got to do with 2025?
    2
  7517. A common myth.
    2
  7518. Bedlam83 The corporate elite just LOVE climate change paranoia. Ever heard of hedge funds? Ever hear of the carbon futures market? Do you know who George Soros is and what he does?
    2
  7519. It's already brought an end to the dairy industry in Spain. Plus I have to ride my bike to work since I can't afford petrol any more. The price of hemorrhoid cream has shot up something shocking too.
    2
  7520. This is hardly surprising since fossil fuel industries are major investors in so- called "green energy.. Get-togethers like COP are just price-fixing exercises designed to help determine the value of the New World Order's replacement standard currency - carbon certificates. Forget gold, the dollar or the yuan; reconstructed capitalism will relate all currencies to the daily value of permissions sold to exceed carbon emissions limits. For this to work you suckers have to believe in a theory invented by a Swede in 1893 and which has never been proven in practice.
    2
  7521. And on Trump's inauguration day too. That should keep any embarrassing facts off the front page.
    2
  7522. Could this be Trump's Cunning Plan - to have JD take all the knocks while he sails blithely on?
    2
  7523. Of course he's going to accept a ceasefire deal - on condition that Ukraine gets out of Kursk and concedes the 30% or so of Donetsk they still control.
    2
  7524.  @ashleylittle6776  Afraid not.
    2
  7525. Thirty years of it too!
    2
  7526. I've just been checking on the Hong Kong flue epidemic of 1968/69. A mere 30,000 Britons died - but more than half were children. In terms of numbers of years of life lost the Hong Kong flu eclipses Covid 19 by a factor of hundreds. No lockdowns. No masks. No panic It was just the way it was. What's gone wrong with us?
    2
  7527.  @PandaLuv301  Rate, percentage or actual numbers? What source do you have for this assertion?
    2
  7528. Net Zero and mass immigration - two absolutely luvverly ideas which are crippling our county and destroying its health.
    2
  7529. For decades the Dems have relied upon the votes of oppressed minorities to keep them in power,. Now those oppressed minorities are coming to realise that the Democrats have kept them oppressed in order to continue harvesting their votes.
    2
  7530. Are you "far" left, though?
    2
  7531.  @jamonit7169  They aren't bad guys I guess and Rocket has something resembling a sense of humour, which is rare among paranoid lefties. Our paths have crossed several times and we've had some relatively interesting chats, but they've both run out of steam now and have descended to childish and repetitive insult. Ah well....
    2
  7532. You are living in la-la land. These people are. if anything, understating the tremendous popular support that exists for Trump in the USA among people of all ages and ethnicities.
    2
  7533. Say what you like, it seems to be working.
    2
  7534. The ill-concealed delight in the President's misfortune revealed in this report is just one more example of the utter moral degeneracy of the BBC.
    2
  7535. I'm surprised even 27 applied. Mind you, there could be more now that drivers' wages are soaring - by more than 30% on average! Some firms are now paying £56,000 a year while another has upped its hourly rate from £11.40 to £15. Increased wages for workers under the Tories! And because of Brexit! Who'd have thought?
    2
  7536. I find myself in complete agreement with everything Trump and Vance were saying. Zelensky should never have been President of Ukraine. He is a child. Unfortunately he has been presented as some great hero and now people are outraged that their hero has been told a few harsh facts in public. Trump has got to win this argument and see it through to the end. Peace can only come through diplomacy, and not through continued war fare and mistrust.
    2
  7537. Land is mainly important to Russians not for its own sake, but in terms of how many Ukrainians die on it.
    2
  7538.  @johnnybrown689  War is no laughing matter. What will you be doing when Russia wins? Weeping?
    2
  7539.  @lemdixon01  Interesting. I fancy a steak right now as it happens.
    2
  7540. @Louvre360 It wasn''t a grave and he wasn't pissing on it.
    2
  7541.  @fromscotland2380  Facts don't care about feelings, as they say. Neither do feelings much matter when you are beaten, as there is every chance Ukraine will be.
    2
  7542.  @fromscotland2380  I agree the final outcome is uncertain, although the odds are probably in Russia's favour. If Russia wins it will not occupy Ukraine, only those regions in the Southeast with already existing substantial Russian populations. Whatever resistance occurs will be small, and fiercely suppressed. Ukraine is not, and never has been, a united sovereign nation as the West is so keen to suggest.
    2
  7543.  @fromscotland2380  We are in broad agreement. The Russian/separatist revenge campaign against those they regard as Kiev collaborators has certainly outstripped the bestialities of the original Ukrainian attempts to regain the territories. Whatever happens Donetsk and Luhansk cannot help but to be deeply divided communities for a long while to come. This always happens is such situations ie N Ireland, former Yugoslavia etc etc. In this instance though, I think there can be little doubt that NATO has used the intervening post 2014 years to equip and train a substantial army with the probable objective of trying to quash the separatists, and even to retake Crimea. Russia's invasion can therefore be regarded as a pre-emptive measure. The only way casualties could have been avoided would have been for Ukraine to have accepted Russia's treaty proposals put forward last December which would have meant a firm commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, to recognise Crimea as Russian and to allow the creation of ostensibly independent but Russian-leaning republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. A big ask, perhaps but in my view infinitely preferable to the present tragedy. Sad thing is, it could well be something like this that we end up with anyway.
    2
  7544.  @Anthropodelic  Which makes xenophobia an entirely natural defence mechanism , I suppose.
    2
  7545.  @Anthropodelic  I think it's probably very much needed. The thing is not to allow it to continue once you realise the alien intruders will do you no harm - and might indeed bring benefits. It is, however, equally foolish to suppress it when you realise that the alien invaders do, in fact, want to overwhelm and rule you.
    2
  7546.  @drummingtildeath  A somewhat naive view. It is true that many immigrants are harmless and even beneficial to our society. Others are not. As for the NHS being overwhelmed this is largely because there are just too many immigrants taking advantage of it. And when "guests" begin to behave badly it is time to get them to leave - and certainly time not to make the mistake of inviting more of them.
    2
  7547. It's a lie, that's why. Children have been removed from war zones by the Russians for their own safety, that's all.
    2
  7548.  @buschtaxi75driver55  What else can you do?! Laugh and despair.
    2
  7549.  @maywalker997  You realise of course that almost half of the 33,000 or so daily cases in the UK are occurring in people who have received at least one vaccine? And the percentage is increasing? Only immunity through infection can provide full herd immunity. The only way of preventing the virus "running amok" is to build up as large a cordon sanitaire of fully immune people as swiftly as possible. And you are entirely wrong about the significance of antibodies. They disappear but are replaced by a small number of memory cells which set the immune system into action as soon as the virus is detected again. Immunity to Covid 19 seems to be semi-permanent, and will certainly last for several years.
    2
  7550.  @Tricia_K  I was exaggerating for comic purposes. Please forgive! Anyway, depending on your disability you should be ok.
    2
  7551.  @aeriumfour6096  I thought I had. It does, however, sadly remain a fact that the majority of people who die with Covid 19 are either elderly, clinically obese or already suffering from some other life-threatening condition such as heart disease or severe diabetes. The guy I was responding to was hoping that people who don't wear masks would die. My response was moderate by comparison I think.
    2
  7552. It was only ever said to inexperienced troops by some commanders to boost their morale. Some of them took it seriously - as indeed, apparently, do some contributors to YouTube comments threads.
    2
  7553. They'll lie anyway.
    2
  7554.  @ljt3084  She cut through contemporary misconceptions with the cutting edge of reason is the simplest answer, I suppose. Communities and society are just buzzwords to aid the practice of sociology. They really don't exist in any real sense, unless artificially generated for some political purpose. The family and the nation are the only real and unalienable divisions into which people may be placed. All divisions in between are artificial, fragile and usually meaningless.
    2
  7555. These figures cannot be true. In the UK over 65% of patients in intensive care are vaccinated as are over 85% of those who die. The figures are even higher in some European countries. It stands to reason that the more people who are vaccinated the higher proportion of them will be represented in hospitals. Vaccines are very useful, but they are not foolproof and they wear off quickly.
    2
  7556. What a stunningly brave young woman! To play a clip of Donald Trump talking complete sense, followed by a dose of repetitive, almost unintelligible nonsense of her own, takes a great deal of courage.
    2
  7557. purple layne 11.8% poverty rate. Still much too high but the lowest since 2001 121 consecutive months of trade expansion Red tape slashed across the board Corporation tax slashed from 35% to 21% Income tax reduced at almost all levels Black unemployment at 5.5% -the lowest on record (16% under Obama) Hispanic unemployment 3.9% (12.5% under Obama) Overall unemployment 3.5% - the lowest in 50 years GSOH takes the mickey out of people so subtly they don't know he's doing it, Causes feeble-minded Liberals to froth at the mouth in impotent rage. Tremendous entertainment value all round. I'm British, so I have no axe to grind. Like many of us over here I wondered what you Yanks were up to electing this very brash, bizarre old guy and decided to take a look at US politics for the first time. It soon became clear that Trump Derangement Syndrome was (and is) a genuine psychological condition. I said to myself; "If this Russiagate thing turns out to be a pile of crap, and these economic policies seem to work, then I'm going to have to give this guy some respect." It did. They did. And I do.
    2
  7558.  @anthonywhite7032  There seems remarkably little verifiable footage, The British MoD says their intelligence indicates teams if commandos going forward to mark out targets by various means for subsequent air attack. It really is very low key compared with what could be happening. There are no artillery barrages. There is very little street fighting by all accounts The skies are not full of bombers. It's practically a police action.
    2
  7559. Israel is not committing genocide. It is merely attempting to prevent Islamic extremists committing genocide against Jews.
    2
  7560. Immigration at present levels brings no benefits whatsoever to the economy. The ratio of increased resources to increased demand, to say nothing of the immense pressures placed upon services as a result of unplanned population increase, means that not only should immigration be stopped immediately, but steps taken to find ways and means of deporting immigrants who are a drain on the economy.
    2
  7561.  @timmcardle5764  You might need to think things through a little more intelligently. The Russian army marched in convoy towards Kiev simply to draw the Ukrainians into battle on their own territory. The Ukrainians were actually massing their new super-dooper billion dollar army on the southern border preparatory, it seemed, to attempting to retake Donbass from the Russian-backed separatists who held it, and maybe move on to Crimea also. This would have meant the fighting taking place on Russian territory. As it is the fighting took place on Ukrainian territory and the super-dooper army was considerably reduced - which was the objective of the first stage of the war - NOT taking Kiev. I hope this has been of some help to you.
    2
  7562. Once again the Independent is batting for Trump. Well done!
    2
  7563. Richard is just so GORGEOUS when he pretends to be angry, doncha think? I mean, so BUTCH!!!
    2
  7564. What's reckless about keeping some documents as bargaining chips? Trump would only have used them to expose his enemies in the political establishment.
    2
  7565.  @relaxedhigherself  Since I know I'm not a racist why should I care if you or anyone else thinks I'm one? And of course the race card is being played. Do you think this obscure and unverified quote was dragged up for reasons of genuine moral indignation?
    2
  7566. There is no Ukrainian peace plan. There is a "let's screw the West for more money plan."
    2
  7567. Praise and thanks must go to President Zelensky for arming civilians and so making them targets for glorious martyrdom!
    2
  7568. The polls mean nothing. The electoral process in the US is an utter sham. The Deep State, or the Swamp - call them what you will - have the machinery in place to ensure their preferred candidate gains the Presidency - whoever that may be.
    2
  7569.  @d199104  The side of peace and a swift end to this US generated proxy war. If Zelensky won't do the decent thing then at least a stand-off along a long frontier should keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
    2
  7570.  @Gypsum179  The Russians currently occupy a good chunk of so-called Ukraine, including vast stretches of coastline and its most highly-developed industrial and coal and steel producing areas. Unlike in Afghanistan, the population generally welcome them, being largely Russian themselves.
    2
  7571.  @alexboston343  The day you convict a man for nuance is the day that liberty dies.
    2
  7572.  @alexboston343  It is you who is naive I'm afraid. Donald Trump came in from the outside to try to put a stop to the ingrained corruption of American politics - and just because, being a narcissist, he rather fancied being President. The establishment, after choking on him for four years, have finally spat him out. But they had to cheat to do it. Now - or so they think - it's business as usual They've sussed that the Chinese are the new kids on the block and that the World Economic Forum is pulling the strings and that, in fact, socialism is a fine way of keeping people in order. They've had to spout a load of stuff about climate change and black lives mattering and suchlike to the useful idiots like you to keep you on side, but that's the sort of thing they always do. The court cases you keep religiously referring to are totally irrelevant. No-one was interested. They are a distraction. The meat is in the evidence presented at the state senate hearings. There will be no "domestic terrorism" on inauguration day. Word is out on conservative sites that the calls for action are a trap and that the bombs were sent by Antifa or BLM. Any incidents which do occur will either be the work of a demented fringe or more likely of Antifa agents provocateur , as many believe was the case at the Capitol break-in. I append for your attention a few hours of fairy tales from the seventy or so hours of fairy tales told by paid actors disguised as little old ladies and military cyber fraud experts in order to convince fascist hillbillies to descend from their hideouts in the hills to destroy democracy - or what's left of it, which isn't much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    2
  7573. What's the point in vaccinating young people when they so rarely die or suffer serious consequences? There are already concerns about long term effects -some even voiced by one of the developers of the new technique. The build up of chemicals in the ovaries and bone marrow really ought to be something to worry about.
    2
  7574. @ More than that. And they have always been under Russian control. Russia and Russians have mined in Eastern Ukraine ever since salt was discovered there in the 17th century. That didn't stop after Ukrainian independence either.
    2
  7575. Islamism meets Socialism and breeds anarchy and chaos.
    2
  7576. By these definitions there is no political figure more reviled by the media and the establishment than President Donald Trump. Why should that be, one wonders?
    2
  7577. This is going to save Russia a fortune in concrete. With a demilitarised zone they won't need to build fortifications to protect liberated Donbass from potential future Ukrainian/NATO aggression.
    2
  7578. Only a question of time. I have a wonderful vision of a new two-party system with Farage heading one group and Tommy Robinson the other.
    2
  7579. Does Russia care about Kherson? Its forces are advancing steadily towards the Donbass border, which has always been the main military objective.
    2
  7580.  @Moscow_Will_Burn  Try looking at a map
    2
  7581.  @TrumpOrder66  It doesn't justify it, but it provides an excuse. It will set Western minds thinking whether it is really worth continuing to supply arms.
    2
  7582. Wake up people! This is another face-saver, same as America's pathetic package. Ukraine has been written off as a bad investment. It's all over.
    2
  7583. Russia has no expansionist ambitions. NATO is a criminal enterprise designed to divert taxpayers' money into the pockets of the arms industry.
    2
  7584.  @richardsanders.4624  This is just silly. For a start you are assuming these figures to be accurate, when they are clearly inflated Ukrainian propaganda. You are also assuming that invasions advance at a regular rate when clearly they do not. There has been a stand-off on the southern front for months, which now appears to be over as the Russians are advancing steadily. This does not mean that the advance will continue at the same pace. It may go more quickly, or even more slowly, since gaining territory is not and never has been Russia's prime objective. They are more concerned with destroying Ukrainian capability.
    2
  7585. Which is what Russia put forward as a peace plan ten years ago.
    2
  7586. Russia's losses are greatly exaggerated. It wouldn't be a proper war otherwise.
    2
  7587.  @edwardstephenson3097  You are a brainwashed parrot.
    2
  7588. Like other sheep, they don't know they've got their owner's mark daubed on their backs.
    2
  7589. It can and will if President Harris is elected.
    2
  7590. Putin has no imperialist ambitions. Those died with the USSR. All the Russian Federation wants is to be left alone from constant Western interference.
    2
  7591.  @tobiasrietveld3819  You should look at the value of this territory, rather than its size. It's worth trillions of dollars in various minerals.
    2
  7592. Why inject children when they only get covid mildly?
    2
  7593.  @alanbutterfield8057  Why not? Children's immune systems deal with covid very efficiently, catching it generally in the nose and throat before it reaches the lungs where the damage occurs. Why give them a drug the long-term effects of which cannot be known?
    2
  7594. It´ll take more than a girl in a mask to hide the deceit and foolishness of of this corruptly elected administration.
    2
  7595.  @nataliehladun744  of course not.
    2
  7596.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  Russia doesn't want any UK territories. As far as Ukraine is concerned it only wants territories which have large Russian populations and which have always contributed to the Russian economy.
    2
  7597.  @davefave4351  I can't puzzle this out. Will it be worth my while?
    2
  7598.  @HNH421  I never said they were! But we are helping to prevent Russia from regaining them.
    2
  7599.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  I am not giving Ukraine territories to Russia - merely saying that the UK has no right to interfere in this territorial dispute. As far as the Falklands are concerned, Britain has a say in the matter because Britain owns them.
    2
  7600.  @thomasmoore1499  He's working hard to protect his country's interests. You can't ask more of a leader.
    2
  7601.  @HNH421  Which they had and have no wish to occupy. The "invasion" of the mass of Ukraine was a feint merely designed to draw the Ukrainian army into the open and attempt to destroy it on its own ground, instead of in separatist occupied Donbass. The Russian-origin population is concentrated in Crimea and the industrial areas of Eastern Ukraine.
    2
  7602.  @HNH421  I can't see any parallels. Russia's relationship with Chechnya is entirely different to its relationship with Ukraine.
    2
  7603.  @jonm7272  I live in England - but in any case Russia is pretty self-sufficient when it comes to food supply.
    2
  7604. Compassion is certainly something criminals are prepared to exploit in order to make a profit.
    2
  7605. You must be tired of waiting.
    2
  7606. Democracy isn't about numbers. It's about ideas.
    2
  7607. If it helps get rid of Starmer it will be money well spent.
    2
  7608. You have obviously suffered greatly in life. You have my every sympathy.
    2
  7609. Perhaps they should put a statue of George Floyd in its place. That would be nice..
    2
  7610. Just for once they could be right, Omicron seems so mild that if jabbed you might well not even notice you've got it. And all the many, many people you pass it on to will be the same. Still a bit worried about Granny though. Not that many old people in Africa.
    2
  7611. This counter-offensive is unlikely to achieve a great deal - other than considerable losses for Ukraine which it can ill afford.
    2
  7612.  @gretschmesaboogie  He did not break lockdown "rules." There is clear provision for exceptions to be made in the interests of child welfare. There is only one child involved I believe and at 3? years old it was not the infection he was being protected from as much as the traumas visited upon him by the possibility of both his parents being hospitalised and his being taken into care or somesuch. As we understand it his parents kept their distance from his grandparents although -as a grandparent myself - I should not be at all surprised if they were entirely willing to give the child a cuddle and risk the consequences.
    2
  7613.  @TheFrewah  The nations, such as Belarus, were once part of the Russia empire and Russia still has a hold over them, despite their "sovereignty", whatever that means.
    2
  7614. Who'd have though Elon would do you lot a favour? You'll have to say nice things about him now, I suppose.
    2
  7615. We would have more room for genuine refugees if we hadn't allowed in so many economic migrants.
    2
  7616.  @andybrice2711  Hmmm. It's a shame we don't have his exact words and the context in which they were spoken. If, as I understand it, he was saying that he disliked Abbot so much that she put him in danger of disliking all black women then this implies he is NOT racist - but is in danger of becoming so due to her behaviour. That, to me, is a sort of joke. It acknowledges the fact that racism is inherent, being an evolutionary response to alien tribes which might appear over the hill, but that it is one which civilised people have generally learned to suppress. I haven't the faintest idea who this man is, but I'm inclined to let him off the charge of racism. If he wasn't a major donor to the Tory party we would have heard nothing of this. It's just politics.
    2
  7617. Just shows how dumb Americans are to be influenced by performance rather than content. I doubt one in ten thousand of them have the brains to understand Putin's excellent analysis given earlier in the day. They would rather marvel that their ghastly old fart of a president can still stand on its hind legs. And there was no security risk. Russia was informed of Biden's visit just in case they killed him accidentally in an air raid. They certainly wouldn't want to do so on purpose the way things stand at the moment.
    2
  7618. The simple fact of the matter is that this situation is entirely the result of increased population; which is to say an increase in population far over and above that envisaged when Britain's sewage system was last seriously analysed back in the early 1990's. That unexpected and unplanned for increase in population has come about as a direct result of immigration. There is nothing racist in saying this. It is just the way it is. A state of the art Victorian sewage system, a masterpiece of engineering in its own way, cannot cope with the demands placed upon it by around 17,000 times the number of bottoms on bogs it was originally designed to accommodate.
    2
  7619. The Tory Party is semi-immortal.
    2
  7620.  @pasaniucdaniel4112  Why not?
    2
  7621.  @boink800  It was given little choice.
    2
  7622.  @petegreenway8953  What's a sovereign country? Is Ukraine even one? Even if it is, why should we all be involved in stopping its invasion? Why bring in false analogies? And we did provide military support - even before day 1 - one of the main reasons for the invasion was to attempt to crush Ukraine's newly created army, which had been trained and largely paid for by NATO.
    2
  7623. @ Allegedly and probably. As far as I can make out, you can express contrary opinions in speech or on paper but as soon as it seems likely that you may cause any real disruption, you are eliminated in some fashion. As I say, this is how it appears, but we are fed so much disinformation about conditions in Russia it is hard to say how much truth there is in these allegations.
    2
  7624.  @thomas3012  Here's a bit more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKiyAy9vjrk
    2
  7625. More lies and propaganda. There have always been droughts in Southern Madagascar. The land is so dry that French colonialists introduced water-bearing cactuses to enable the animals to survive.
    2
  7626. Especially since the dollar seems set for a major collapse. A replacement reserve currency could well be needed - but what will it be?
    2
  7627.    America can't go on printing money at the rate they are - and anyway the strength of a currency depends very much upon a perception of the economic, political and military strength of the country concerned.
    2
  7628.  @saltysoldier2289  They both have considerable vaulted reserves - and Russia has positively vast quantities of recoverable gold, as well as platinum. If these sanctions do create a worldwide economic recession as some predict, and the dollar is weakened, Russia might paradoxically benefit from the measures designed to weaken it.
    2
  7629.  @ADifferentBias  You must surely accept the difference between individual cases of child abuse and the industrial scale abuse engineered by the Pakistanis who also farm their victims out for profit?
    2
  7630. This rather assumes that people don't grow older to replace the elderly who have died.
    2
  7631. You are living in a world of paranoid fantasy which cannot accommodate the idea that other people are capable of rejecting the propaganda shoved down our throats by the corrupt media.
    2
  7632. Keep on coping. It's fun to watch.
    2
  7633. Lockdowns kill babies. Remember that. The economic effects of these insane and selfish measures are beginning to devastate the poorest people in the world. Is the very slight chance of giving your 87 year-old-grannie a few more months of life worth the deaths of children?
    2
  7634.  @user-ei3dq2dw6i  Like America?
    2
  7635. At last the monolithic, repressive structure of US politics has a REAL opposition. Isn't that a good thing?
    2
  7636. I think people should realise the COP has little or nothing to do with "tackling" climate change, but simply to find ways and means of making money out of it. These conferences are price-fixing exercises to determine the likely progress of the cap and trade market over the forthcoming year. The poorer nations, who supply the market with its raw materials in the form of unused carbon emission certificates, are seeking to increase the value of their product in much the same way as in the 19th century they might have sought to increase the price of ivory or slaves to an earlier generation of colonialist entrepreneurs.
    2
  7637. Don't worry, they never will.
    2
  7638.  @benghiskahn3673  No they haven't. They have never used before in warfare. You must be thinking of some other weapon.
    2
  7639. You do realise this means World War III and nuclear annihilation?
    2
  7640. I have just seen him arriving at Trump's door. He looked as scared a mouse coming up against a big ole cat..
    2
  7641.  @lordvader2169  I don't think there can be any doubt of it. The US and NATO didn't spend billions on giving Ukraine an army just to have it hanging around.
    2
  7642. Deport all foreign inmates to country of origin. Release all those imprisoned on drug charges. Job done.
    2
  7643.  @doncarlodivargas5497  Russia stops when it gets what it feels it's entitled to. Which is Donbass.
    2
  7644.  @a.k.1902  The Russian Federation - as opposed to the USSR - has merely sought to retain its influence in neighbouring countries.
    2
  7645.  @Boghopper9999  Russia created modern Ukraine. Crimea and the industrialised sections of the country to the East of the Dnieper have large Russian populations and the mining and steelmaking industries were created by Russia, and continue to be largely managed by ethnic Russians. They were only transferred to the administration of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for logistical reasons. They are, to all extents and purposes, still Russian.
    2
  7646. Brian Diehl But you can. The experiments were carried out under laboratory conditions in which carbon appears to behave in a rather different way to the way it behaves in the real atmosphere. In lab experiments carbon appears to be part of a process whereby heat is reflected back to the earth's surface. In the real world the process disseminates heat in varying directions as part of system designed to maintain the atmosphere in a state of thermodynamic stability. It's time for a rethink -and alarmist videos like this aren't helping.
    2
  7647. A direct result of the hysterical over-reaction to covid. We will kill far, far more people than were saved.
    2
  7648. We are civilised. We should leave the primitive Slavs to sort out their differences by themselves. The only reason we have intervened is because some ghastly crooks in the West have seen ways to profit from the conflict. Eternal shame upon them.
    2
  7649. He has also announced new peace terms. He's asking for more now than he was asking before the invasion. Might well get it too.
    2
  7650. Recent attacks by Ukraine on Donetsk are killing this many civilians almost daily. The Sun has reported it and France 24 buy not Sky Aus as yet, I believe.
    2
  7651.  @user-yf1ml8jt3i  Ukraine has taken undefended and comparatively valueless swamp, forest and farmland. Russia has taken very heavily defended and very rich land containing trillions of dollars in mineral wealth.
    2
  7652. Russia has drawn a line in the sand. It's a very deep, carefully constructed line and the Ukrainians are far away from reaching it. And at their current rate of losses they never will - despite all the encouraging noises from Western propaganda channels like the BBC.
    2
  7653. I believe the moon is made of green cheese. Anyone care to prove me wrong?
    2
  7654.  @Yeknodathon  Have you seen the figures for the decline in cases in the US yet? Or the study which shows that countries and US counties with the highest vaccination rates have the highest rates of transmission? The trouble with you and your ilk is that you confuse medical opinion with Big Pharma propaganda.
    2
  7655.  @zam1007  You are confusing Big Pharma propaganda with medical fact. The number of re-infections is minimal. In England, for instance, there were just 53 proven cases up until the end of June. What the current numbers are I don't know but they can scarcely be that dramatic. Infection creates immunity and the more people who are infected the quicker the herd immunity threshold is passed. To pretend otherwise is merely to play Big Pharma's profit game. While reducing symptoms, vaccinations hold up this process. This is clearly shown in a recent study of 68 countries and some 2,000 US counties which reveals that those with the highest vaccination rates are frequently those with the highest levels of transmission.
    2
  7656.  @simonoleary9264  Actual majority rule would lead to a state of ungovernable chaos. No democratic procedure can ever drive the engine of government. All we can expect is that various adaptations of the principle can be utilised to get it into gear, and put the brakes on when necessary.
    2
  7657.  @jaxonl7810  Yup. I am old. And the ignorance and stupidity of mankind does make me pretty sad!
    2
  7658.  @mormacil  I dislike historical analogies but it was obvious that Hitler was after much, much more than Austria whereas it is pretty clear that all Putin wants is Crimea and the heavily Russian parts of Eastern Ukraine. Russia's contribution to peace will be to stop fighting once it's got what wants - which it very nearly has.
    2
  7659.  @mormacil  Why don't we get out of this silly tangle and get down to brass tacks? I dislike the use of the word "appeasement" because it seeks to draw comparisons between Putin's actions in the present and Hitler's actions in the past. This comparison, with all its ramifications, serves no purpose other than to attempt to demonise Putin. In conflating appeasement with compromise I was merely using a rhetorical trick (hyperbole) in order to try to draw attention to this gross discrepancy. Granting Putin a measure of his quite reasonable demands will bring this dreadful conflict to an end and hopefully much reduce the chances of entering a worldwide conflict which will benefit no-one.
    2
  7660.  @ospehu1  Of the 60 billion, 13.4 billion stays in the US to replace munitions already sent to Ukraine, 7.3 billion is earmarked for the use of current US operations in Ukraine,13.9billion is to be spent on procuring new advanced armaments (will take months if not years) and 13.7 billion will consist partly of cash and partly of existing weaponry to be shipped over. I imagine this is the 13 billion being referred to here.
    2
  7661. A great TV show.
    2
  7662. Even if the bridge goes, Russia stopped relying on it long ago. There are now well-established road and rail supply routes along Russian-held territory south of the Dnieper. This is just more wishful thinking from the Zelensky groupies. Believing in fairies doesn't make them real.
    2
  7663. You can't jail the WHO and the entire pharmaceutical industry.
    2
  7664. Scientists have proved a direct link between joining Insulate Britain and drinking herbal tea. There is also evidence that they and Extinction Rebellion are part of a plot by the British upper middle class to destroy the rest of us, except for a few members of ethnic minority groups, whom they will keep as pets.
    2
  7665. Anyone who has troubled themselves to look into the background of this dreadful war knows that Farage is completely right. The reaction from Sunak and Starmer simply proves how much our two main political parties are in the pockets of Washington warmongers. Trump might be able to save America. With this statement Farage has shown he might be able to save Britain.
    2
  7666. More bodged statistics from the ES. 27 deaths! That's worrying, I thought. No. There were 9 announced today. I suppose it's only clickbait - but just the same..
    2
  7667.  @courgette3401  Elections are organised on a state by state basis. Democrat states have already been sending out unsolicited ballots in local elections, but this only one of several routes towards election-rigging The Democrats appear to have lost all moral compass; their hysterical reaction to Trump has left many of them without sense or reason. They have also been infiltrated by Marxists who despise democracy and regard it as their duty to obtain power at any cost. Make no mistake: Trump is right. This will be a crooked election and the result will be disputed whatever happens.
    2
  7668.  @ltho5616  Where's the treachery? We are not at war with Russia.
    2
  7669.  @philthompson8574  These two ladies understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peaRgEOF7zY Professor Gupta audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZqTs_YNJk Prof Gomez audio
    2
  7670. This is all because of Biden. Washington warmongers pulling his strings are taking us to the very brink by using Ukraine to box Putin into a corner. Biden and Zelensky must go, and this border dispute can then be settled around the conference table,
    2
  7671. Farage is voicing what very many people already suspect -that the war in Ukraine is the direct result of Western greed and that Putin, whatever his faults, is merely defending his country's integrity.
    2
  7672.  @RaRa-eu9mw  The war started when America overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014, leading to the revolt in Donbass. The Russian invasion is a development of that, and can be seen as a preventative measure designed to prevent a NATO equipped and trained Ukrainian military stepping up the civil war which has been going on ever since. As with a great many wars over the past several decades, the responsibility is America's.
    2
  7673.  @RaRa-eu9mw  Of course it isn't! It's history. Any objective study of the region recognises these facts. Ukraine was a province of Imperial Russia, then a Soviet Socialistic Republic. It only became a "country" when Stalin wanted an extra vote in the UN and Crimea was only tacked on in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. For at least ten years America and the EU have been trying to colonise Ukraine - and the Russians have had enough.
    2
  7674.  @RaRa-eu9mw  Not at all. American interference is by far the likeliest explanation. The Maidan riots were a manifestation of the conflict of interests between oligarchs, some of whom looked to Russia for support as opposed to others who looked to America and the EU. Violence escalated after people began being killed by sniper fire. The result was the overthrow of the pro-Russian Premier and his eventual replacement by a pro-American one, Poroshenko. The very fact that the pro-American party won is a strong indication that the American's were responsible. The who sequence of events has CIA written all over it.
    2
  7675. The other 46% is largely due to supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
    2
  7676.  @aliensinmyass7867  The 6% rise is an exaggeration. And I don't love Putin, I just hate wars.
    2
  7677. Jack Richardson Don't be so silly. Why don't you do as I suggest and check with the agencies? Data has been extensively altered to fit the narrative. If you think this is OK then it's up to you. AGW is the result of bad science combined with historical ignorance. It has been gleefully seized upon by hedge fund managers who are making vast profits from the cap and trade market they have persuaded governments to introduce. Governments love AGW because of opportunities for taxation. The Globalist Left love it because they can use it to bully people. The bigger the lie the more you can get people to believe it -especially in this case if there is an ostensibly credible scientific theory to back it up. Human activity has increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. True. The Earth is getting warmer. True. Increased carbon causes warming. Not true. Correlation is not causation. Temperature is solar forced. The so-called greenhouse effect is a thermostat, not a source of increased heat. While in the laboratory carbon retains and reflects heat in the atmosphere, on the edge of space, it disseminates it in directions suitable for maintaining the atmosphere in a state of thermodynamic stability. AGW supporting scientists believe they are right and want to continue to do so. This is understandable -and they need all the support they can get too. Truth is - only time will tell; but the manipulation of data to support the theory is a strong indicator that it's wrong.
    2
  7678. @White-iu5vh No. The Russians have advanced 12 km or so in the past week and taken several towns and villages.
    2
  7679. Is it only 35%?
    2
  7680.  @shiroamakusa8075  No. It's censorship. What you would call slanderous liars I might well call champions of truth, and what you call a hostile foreign government I might well call a welcome ally. It is utterly fascist to deny people the opportunity to choose for themselves.
    2
  7681. ​ aljanat5  Silly child
    2
  7682. Does the FBI actually run America, and thus much of the world?
    2
  7683. How are they accountable?
    2
  7684.  @telebubba5527  The mines are , in fact, largely owned by Russian companies and the workers are descendants of Russians who arrived there over a long period, and who still have families in Russia and who keep to Russian traditions and for whom Russian is the prime language. While initially agreeing to "become Ukrainian" the actual experience didn't work out too well with wages and profits plummeting and attempts to "de-Russify" them causing a great deal of bitterness. The sad and somewhat tired comparisons between what is happening now and the situation in Germany in the 1930's and 40s do not hold water, and never have.
    2
  7685. These people all seem young and healthy. Unless suffering from an underlying condition in the unlikely event of contracting the virus they should endure two or three days of severe discomfort at the very most. In the meantime they are going to work and setting about the business of restoring the economy. An encouraging sight.
    2
  7686.  @t.n.3819  Which medical journal? Medical opinion is deeply divided. The Swedish response was based on sound expert medical advice and seems to be doing well. Our response was based on the work of computer modellers and made even dafter by the rabble-rousing press and hysterical politicians. It's a fuck-up. Look at the numbers. Even if the figures are accurate (and there is good reason to believe they have been grossly exaggerated) then the total number of deaths is such a small percentage of the population as to be statistically negligible. It's the equivalent of a bad couple of days on the Somme. The difference is that then the dead were all healthy young men with much to contribute to society. The vast majority of coronavirus deaths are among the elderly whose useful lives are over and who would have died soon anyway. The only other categories are people with existing medical conditions or those - such as health-care workers - who are subject to repeated infections to such a degree that their antibodies can't cope. The only way to come to terms with this thing is to let it run its course while ensuring that those who are most at risk are properly protected. In a short period of time the coronavirus will become like its close relative the common cold - a regular nuisance but nothing to panic about. You're right in that deaths are inevitable, but death is like that.
    2
  7687.  @ianstrange5674  Who said their lives mean nothing? They seem to mean little to the Government who instead of ensuring they were especially protected issued an insane blanket shutdown order.
    2
  7688.  @L_Martin  The number is still tiny. Find out the population of the UK and work out the percentage of people who have died. As to the situation in hospitals, can you explain why the new facilities, such as the Nightingale Hospital, are closing due to lack of patients? There is no surgical procedure to treat covid-19 as far as I am aware and so pressure on theatre time must be due to cancer patients and those with other illnesses whose condition has been made suddenly worse by contracting the illness. Sweden and South Korea are getting this right. We are not. The knee-jerk reaction leading to lock-down can only do more harm than good in the long run. I'm in my seventies and not much good with a mop and bucket; even so I mould be reluctant to work on a covid ward since under the present system I would be subject to the danger of multiple re-infection which, apart from taking advantage of existing frailties, is seemingly the only way the virus can overcome our antibody responses sufficiently to kill us.
    2
  7689.  @t.n.3819  For a start I wouldn't believe the BBC if it told me what day of the week it was. But leaving the whole question of how the figures have been manipulated to one side, your analogy is a false one. If you have unprotected sex you might get HIV if you are unlucky, if you share needles you almost certainly will. If you get on a crowded bus the chances that you will get covid-19 are not that high and the chances that you will get it badly enough to kill you are practically nil - unless you are elderly or have a pre-existing condition. The thousands of deaths that could have been prevented are not those caused by travelling on a crowded bus. They are those caused by the Government failing to isolate vulnerable people - the frail and the elderly - and by not realising that prolonged and repeated exposure - such as that experienced by health care workers - may overcome the immune systems of even the most healthy. By the way, if you spend your life listening to "experts" trotted out by the Government and the lamestream media you are going to get seriously fucked.
    2
  7690. By way of perspective, back in the 'twenties and 'thirties around 50 million ares of forest were burned a year in the US. As was the case in Australia this year silly environmentalists have added to the damage by restricting containment strategies and allowing undergrowth to build up. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
    2
  7691. I think this is a great idea. No-one will feel safe with the banking system, and other countries and large corporations will withdraw their money, thus hastening the inevitable collapse of the world economy. Nice one, Bill.
    2
  7692. I think, just possibly, that people in this comments section might be getting a little over-exited.
    2
  7693. The word "because" is used very loosely here. Many people have died not "because" of Covid 19 but because of the inefficient and politically corrupt ways in which the pandemic has been dealt with. The media, particularly leftists media such as the BBC, has much to answer for BECAUSE of the way it has persistently chosen to cynically manipulate this tragedy for political ends.
    2
  7694. Two years watching Trump being crudely and unfairly denigrated on US channels was enough for me to question the motives behind it and to examine the reasons for his undoubted popularity. I now admire him bigly. He is an unlikely hero, but he and his supporters are all that stand between sanity and the orchestrated destruction of America by Marxist-fuelled globalism. He has practically nothing in common with Boris Johnson who has turned out to be a low-grade chancer and globalist lackey.
    2
  7695.  @andylane247  Do you realise how utterly silly people like you sound when you compare any modern state with Germany in the 1930s? All it does is reveal the utter poverty of your arguments.
    2
  7696.  @timothyharris4708  Once again a reply has been deleted. It's hard to have a reasoned debate under such circumstances! I'm glad to be on the side of truth and justice though - and I feel rather sorry for those such yourself who are being kept in the dark by a gang of super criminals. You don't have to wade in HITE. Just dip a toe in here and there. You might also check the World Economic Forum site and Mr Soros' Open Society Foundations, especially the list of donations made. Then check the political affiliations of recipients. I doubt you'll bother though. Tyranny relies on compliance.
    2
  7697. All that is happening is that Russia has won and everyone knows it. Trump just has to make it look like a defeat in order to keep the brainwashed millions from soiling themselves.
    2
  7698.  @christopherlyons9367  Do you really think it matters who you vote for? As Joe Stalin famously said; "It isn't who votes who matter. It's who counts the votes who matter."
    2
  7699. Dream scenario: Braverman to win and Badenoch to join Farage at Reform.
    2
  7700.  @rtqii  They are carrying out some quite splendid manouevres in a section of forest, field and bog while being surrounded by the Russians
    2
  7701. and its not ever 60 billion when you come down to it. It's more like $14 billion in immediate real terms.
    2
  7702. Many if not most Arab Palestinians are direct descendants of Arabs from other countries who arrived in the area from the late 19th century onwards. They moved there simply to take advantage of the increase in prosperity created by Zionists. If it wasn't for the Jews they wouldn't be there.
    2
  7703. Anyone notice that if you post on CNN or MSNBC it gets obliterated if it's in any way critical of the narrative?
    2
  7704. One Punch I'm sure Mike Bolin can stick up for himself, but in answer to your question Greta didn't just knock on someone's door and say "here I am" did she? Her parents are left-wing, fame-obsessed actors and singers and she is being used as a poster child for climate change hysteria - which is politically-based and uses lies and manipulation of data to push its agenda.
    2
  7705.  @tyomies6168  I believe there are also quite substantial financial packages for dependents if a soldier is killed, as well as a pension if they are disabled.
    2
  7706. There is no evidence that masks reduce the effects of coronavirus. Until May of last year their use by the general public actively discouraged. They are little more than symbols of repression and conformity - which is why the left approve of them so much.
    2
  7707. Islam is an excellent religion for controlling people, utilising the fear of hell and eternal punishment to do so. Our new breed of globalist politicians will welcome it I am sure, Christianity now having failed in this role.
    2
  7708.  @superhumantrueman  Well its's actually peace through the threat of war. Different thing.
    2
  7709.  @GoldilocksZone-665  Not ignore - but don't take him literally.
    2
  7710.  @tuga9999  I am deeply honoured. What's the prize?
    2
  7711.  @elss8717  I suppose that's true enough. People do tend to take him literally.
    2
  7712. Are you sure it isn't 97%?
    2
  7713. Not altogether a bad thing.
    2
  7714. Not altogether a bad thing.
    2
  7715.  @Kyle-sr6jm  Russia in its present form has existed for just over 30 years. It has invaded three countries - in order to protect its borders and commercial interests. Over that same period NATO has invaded nearly ten times as many.
    2
  7716. I keep wondering what the long-term plan is for your decisive government. Covid 19 isn't going away ever. So do you have lockdowns for ever?
    2
  7717. I am neither American nor a Republican, but I think that there is a very good chance that the election was "stolen." It is clear that the present system of governance in the US is rotten to the core and that, sadly, only Trump can save the US and its allies from ruin and degradation.
    2
  7718.  @scottjohnson9912  Ukrainians have hated Russians for centuries - and Russians -when they haven't despised them - have hated them right back. This war will end when one side or the other runs out of ammo.
    2
  7719. "And why should a man be in love with his fetters, though they be of gold?" Francis Bacon, obviously referring to the EU.
    2
  7720. What is this weird guilt trip the Brainwash Bollocks Commune want us the share in? The taking of slaves has been an essential feature of human activity ever since the first tribe crossed the mountains and found some funny folk living on the other side. Only in post-Enlightenment Europe have we decided its not a good thing. If anything that sticks in my craw more than black people whingeing about their raw deal it's fluffy white liberals whingeing on their behalf. My ancestors were probably up in the rigging of the slaveships and dying at much the same rate as the cargo. Denigrating Britain for its imperial past is a fruitless and facile exercise which can only be designed to weaken the nation . The left-wing credo is a tissue of lies and obfuscations created by intellectual conceit and supported by envy and , as in this case, the cynical manipulation of history.
    2
  7721. Best prejudice confirmation, I think you mean.
    2
  7722.  @darrylsimpson4744  He meant fight.
    2
  7723.  @bigkdog5091  He had more sense than to get caught up that particular colonial war - and with luck he will get America out of the current one.
    2
  7724.  @bigkdog5091  I've had my doubts, but on balance I genuinely think this happened exactly as it seems to have happened. OK it has given Trump a big, big boost and shown him to be a man of strength and character - but that's just the way the dice fall sometimes.
    2
  7725.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Nothing wrong with Trump's record. He just got bullied into listening to Fauci.
    2
  7726. It's been on its knees kissing ass for long enough.
    2
  7727. andrew30 Got a reference? Not being picky, I just need to be able to cite a source.
    2
  7728.  Jebus Hypocristos  Hitler and Mussolini were both socialists who restructured capitalism.
    2
  7729. Well if the lives are pointless it doesn't much matter, does it?
    2
  7730. Can I post videos on here about the war from Russian journalists who support their country? No? I didn't think so.
    2
  7731. This is weird. Why have the Ukrainians only released this on X?
    2
  7732. So America has a judge who isn't suffering from TDS? Who's have thought it?
    2
  7733. Ukraine is far from guiltless in this regard. The absurd "war crime" allegation against Russia claiming it is kidnapping children can be traced back to Russian heritage parents in Donbass sending their children to Russia, but being forced to claim that they were kidnapped for fear of reprisals as collaborators. The BBC does the people of Britain no favours by demonising Russia while hailing Ukraine as some kind of democratic liberal paradise. It is not.
    2
  7734. That's because not everyone has sucked up the brainwashing like you obviously have.
    2
  7735.  @harrisonkew92  Why? It was Floyd's death that caused Colston's statue to be torn down. We owe it to future generations to explain what happened. A statue of Floyd with an appropriate plaque outlining the sequence of events that led to a statue of an 18th century slave trader being replaced by one of an American criminal and drug addict would be a suitable memorial to this seminal moment in our nation's history.
    2
  7736. One of the reasons for the blood on the streets is the EU's attempt to seduce Ukraine into its arms. Putin didn't like it.
    2
  7737. @ People do you know.
    2
  7738.  @peterflohr7827  There is no such thing as the "international community."
    2
  7739.  @priyajoseph7108  When Ukraine is in charge of the referendum Crimeans want to be Ukrainian. When Russia is in charge, they want to be Russian. Funny that.
    2
  7740. It has never really mattered what the jury decides. It matters even less now.
    2
  7741.  @tonypredergast5782  I think you're wrong. There's business, big business and mega-business. Donald is way down the league. The people who run America are people who arrange wars, undermine foreign currencies and demolish entire industries in the pursuit of profits so huge they are unimaginable. They are currently building up tensions in Ukraine and their pharmaceutical arm has just made billions by artificially managing the response to the covid 19 pandemic to suit their ends. They may even have deliberately started it. Who knows? They are using the very probably totally false threat of man-made global warming to demolish the fossil fuel industry while making even more billions through subsidised and very inefficient "green" alternatives. They are also creating a new world currency in the form of carbon bonds, which will eventually replace gold and the dollar as the standard against which other currencies are set. In the meantime they are making plans to totally control human behaviour through smartphone apps which will decide our entitlement to goods and services according to our degree of compliance with social regulations. Covid vaccination passports and mask mandates have just been a rehearsal of what is to come. We are to be ants, allowed to survive only if we perform our allotted tasks to the satisfaction of our masters. Donald Trump just likes building skyscrapers and having fun.
    2
  7742.  @icestationzebra8636  Exactly!
    2
  7743.  @hugo8500  Then don't do it. Simple.
    2
  7744. Regina Johnson You're in for a long wait.
    2
  7745. Mike Harrington Visceral dislike of the anti-semetic Commies wasn't a factor then?And ordinary Brits couldn't give a toss about climate/environment. It's just stuff posh people talk about at dinner parties.
    2
  7746.  @Pikaling3408  Justify!
    2
  7747.  @emm_arr  You do seem extraordinarily conceited. How can you be so sure that you are "right" ? I think it probable that you are not in this instance. The parochial, village pump politics which Phil adheres to have a very limited relevance in the world of international affairs. The people who rule the world really couldn't give a fuck if Britain has a Tory government or a Labour one. Either way they will retain control.
    2
  7748. These people all look so SERIOUS! Trump is laughing I expect. What a farce this is!!!
    2
  7749. There is no danger to the power station. Just another Ukrainian propaganda scare story. When are we going to realise we're being constantly conned?
    2
  7750. Not exactly Watergate, is it?
    2
  7751. The final deranged act of a lifelong warmonger. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    2
  7752.  @stephfoxwell4620  Pounds. A billion less than what it cost to provide heat subsidies to OAPs last year. So something left over to help feed and house illegal immigrants.
    2
  7753. Jack Richardson Jack oh Jack! You do keep popping up. don't you? Palaeoclimatology has provided Aximand the Cursed with a reasonable picture of the past, as far as we can know it. Your version of climatology attempts to predict the future. If any cognitive dissonance exists it is simply because these two uncertainties are of a very differing order. The past has happened. The future has not. Can you work out the difference?
    2
  7754.  @MikeSpike117  I strongly dispute that humans have caused it. Climate changes according to forces over which we have absolutely no control. We are now emerging from a cold period into a warmer one, as has happened countless times before. Clever people have seized upon this phenomenon to make vast sums of money, that's all there is to it.
    2
  7755. And all because of insane environmentalist policies that went against bushfire prevention strategies developed over literally thousands of years.
    2
  7756. The Cold War ended in 1991 remember? Conservative defence ministers can now sleep with anyone they like.
    2
  7757. But Zelensky has done everything he's been told so far. Bit late to change now.
    2
  7758. @jugy And you're 100% wrong. Hydroxychloroquine has been out of patent for decades and is made by many companies all over the world. There's just no money in it. One of the biggest suppliers is donating 100milion doses for free and you can buy it in the US for $37.50 per 100. Since you only have to take two a week that's a year's supply more or less. You misjudge Trump on this. This kind of business nobody wants. Watch out for the $2,000 a dose magic solution coming to your pharmacy soon, and wonder who has shares in that.
    2
  7759.  @mloftus8618  Sorry to interrupt, but I can, I hope. As I expect you know all traffic concerning this medication is being swooped on by Google thought police. I sent stuff to Gustav hours ago, but he has not acknowledged. This is a comprehensive report on all aspects of use and the video presentation is a truly excellent summary of the situation as it stands at present. I will send it immediately on a separate post to be on the safe side. Please, please tell me if you get it or not. This is most important.
    2
  7760.  @BTOBperrinemelody  It's hard to know who to trust, so many lies are being told. Truth and justice will prevail. So many people want to destroy hydrocloroquine that I believe their motives must be sinister, not good. It is so incredibly cheap that if it is used widely and works (which I believe it does) then drug companies will lose trillions. This what is behind the hatred, I am sure. I gather that doctor you mentioned is now being re-instated and the accusations against him are revealed as lies, by the way,
    2
  7761. An interesting view. Probably wrong in almost every aspect, but interesting.
    2
  7762. The difference, of course, is that Putin probably has the bottle to do it and America probably doesn't have the bottle to respond.
    2
  7763. What if he had stolen these things himself, and they were simply being taken back by their rightful owners? How does your silly analogy cope with that?
    2
  7764. Odd to think that the Sahara was once a green and pleasant land until people started building campfires and filling the atmosphere with carbon.
    2
  7765. No need to apologise for sense, intelligence, pragmatism and moral honesty.
    2
  7766.  @isaachinds3736  Putin doesn't want Ukraine. He only wants it not to join to join NATO and to recognises the independence of the Eastern provinces. Occupation of the whole country would only mean a long and pointless civil war.
    2
  7767.  Denise Michelle Mosse  You're the one whose been sucking on propaganda.
    2
  7768.  @EmmaDee  PLanet REality.
    2
  7769.  @prachayaputtapanasub1113  I don't know that I do. She is merely the puppet of sinister forces, I think.
    2
  7770. Fake news, now outdated and overthrown. Did you not watch the video?
    2
  7771.  @AGDinCA  Don't play silly semantic games. The issue is too important for that. And your image is apt in any case. Studies like this and many others have been churned out to DICTATE policy while hiding behind a cloak of scientific objectivity.
    2
  7772.  @Nick7901962  In the fit and healthy -very little chance at all and therapeutic drugs - including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin plus the newer expensive concoctions - reduce the chances of severe outcomes very considerably. At the end of the day it is more than probable that such severe outcomes will be fewer if a swift response is applied.
    2
  7773.  @Nick7901962  So can people who are vaccinated. A recent study has shown that in 68 countries and 2,947 US counties rates of transmission are actually higher where rates of vaccination are higher.
    2
  7774.  @timtowers7997  Are you citing this as another positive? What's the matter with you?
    2
  7775.  @stephenwalsh1332triumph  That isn't what Russia said.
    2
  7776.  @joycebaron672  Do you even know what Putin's proposals were?
    2
  7777. Climate change made little or no contribution. The fires have gained control due entirely to human incompetence. Forests have been left untended in a mad response to green idiocy and water supplies have been neglected because the money has been spent on various ludicrous schemes dear to the hearts of the demented people who run the State of California.
    2
  7778. Julian Assange?
    2
  7779. @@vintagecostumegems7741 Tommy Robinson then?
    2
  7780. I can almost see Putin sniggering behind his hand at this ridiculousness.
    2
  7781.  @superhumantrueman  All reputable analysts have reported it. Go to DPA War or Weeb Union. Both are entirely impartial and have geo-located videos shown Wagner troops in these positions.
    2
  7782.  @superhumantrueman  No-one can say for certain what the kill ratio is. And Bakhmut is hardly a village. It is a highly-fortified city and an essential component of Ukraine's defences against the Donbass separatists.
    2
  7783.  @popnorbert8465  It's taking a long time, certainly - but it's clear that the process is continuing slowly but surely. The steelworks - a mini version of the one in Mariupol - has been taken and Wagner are now in the middle of the city. There are videos showing this. Ukraine has to come up with the goods pretty quickly if it is to prevent the eventual capture of the city.
    2
  7784.  @popnorbert8465  Ah, but in Bakhmut the mines converted by Stalin into nuclear shelters, have been refurbished by the Ukrainians as part of their intensive fortifications of the front line left behind by the false treaties of Minsk. The housing in the city is, of course, mostly Soviet era and the apartment blocks each have shelters beneath them. The city is, in many ways, a smaller version of Mariupol and the Russians are using similar step-by-step tactics to take it.
    2
  7785.  @sardo.numspa  There are more fascists per head of population in Ukraine than in Russia.
    2
  7786. Ban this, ban that, ban everything! Why not try thinking rather than banning for a change?
    2
  7787.  @Anastasia11101  This is not the case - and how could it be? The disease has not been around long enough to have "long-term health issues" has it? Don't get me wrong: some people will be permanently damaged but they will be very, very few. This is the case with all viral infections. We simply cannot construct our lives around statistically negligible events. Why risk it? Because the more people who get it the closer to her immunity we get, and herd immunity is the only real answer.
    2
  7788. How's he supposed to react? How would anyone react when they see the odds being stacked up against them in this mockery of justice?
    2
  7789. Personally I think Trump displays a rather un-American sense of irony. And he's right about hyroxycloroquine too.
    2
  7790. How about a debate on X with Musk as the "moderator"? No ear pieces. No advance notice of questions.
    2
  7791. Putin doesn't care in the slightest what we in the West think of him- and he's not much bothered about the opinions if a few Russian intellectuals either. This has nothing to do with propaganda. It's all about winning.
    2
  7792. I want him to get it and then throw it back in their faces.
    2
  7793.  @samtruddy  I doubt the war will last that long.
    2
  7794.  @antekovac5644  So two nuclear powers going head to head over oil and gas is a better option than trade? What disaster, by the way? Russia sitting on $12 trillion of resources in former Ukraine and Ukraine isn't getting them back.
    2
  7795.  @jamesmorrow1646  You've lost me there, but thanks for the correction. It's such a good quote it is hard to resist amending it to fit.
    2
  7796.  @lauriebarns9901  It looks to me more like manipulating the law for a political purpose.
    2
  7797. If there ever was one.
    2
  7798.  @davidgardiner4720  Far right of what?
    2
  7799.  @welcometobrainfreeze I heard they arrived in flying saucers.
    2
  7800. All they have to do is tell us the truth.
    2
  7801. Like that one in France?
    2
  7802. So much of this is puzzling. What about the concerns over false positives and negatives in the tests? And these increased hospital admissions: does anyone know if these patients are in FOR Covid 19 treatment, or are they in for something else and have happened to test positive?
    2
  7803.  @ronburgandy1475  I define a fanatic as one who uses the threat of eternal hellfire and the promise of eternal paradise to encourage people to commit acts of violence. I'll let you figure out which one is which.
    2
  7804. This is utter tosh.
    2
  7805. In the history of climate thirty years is nothing. Zilch. Zero. No conclusions whatsoever can possibly be drawn from any of these observations.
    2
  7806.  @stevehorn4680  Who'd want us?
    2
  7807.  @rhea7756  You can be a crook and still be a brave, patriotic person. As for him fleeing with the money- that could well be what happens in the end.
    2
  7808.  @bonnie7898  I am not a Russian troll, I am a British troll - or rather just an ordinary British citizen very concerned that people in the west have been conned into believing Zelensky to be some sort of warrior for democracy when he is just another crook on the make.
    2
  7809.  @callumwillis8557  Reboxetine: This antidepressant was marketed based on positive results from selective studies. However, when all the data was analyzed, it became clear that the drug was not effective for most patients and had significant side effects. Rosiglitazone (Avandia): This medication was used to treat type 2 diabetes but was later found to significantly increase the risk of heart attacks. The full extent of its dangers was not disclosed in the initial trials funded by the drug manufacturer.
    2
  7810. He's just a crook who thought he'd get a better pay-off by siding with America rather than Russia. How wrong he was.
    2
  7811. This insane libertarianism is the reason we're in the mess we're in. You should be ashamed, The only way for restrictions to work is if they are PERMANENT and rigorously enforced by trained snatch squads.
    2
  7812. Stop press: Schoolteachers have a statistically significant lesser chance of dying from Covid than almost every other occupation, it was announced today. Back to school soon?
    2
  7813. ponyboyuk01 Way off beam. Trump is highly intelligent and only pretends idiocy to confuse and sidetrack his opponents. Works every time.
    2
  7814.  @DennisMoore664  That was my like by the way.
    2
  7815.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Very much provoked. There are two sides to this. Plus the suggestion that the hospital was evacuated and being used as an HQ for Ukrainian militia is far from unlikely.
    2
  7816.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union 13 countries have joined NATO, many with missiles pointing at Russia. Ukraine wanting to be number 14 was a big mistake. Ukraine is a cobbled together country with large concentrations of native Russians, shipped in by the Soviets to replace natives who were shipped out. If you are referring to the Crimea it is one of these areas and was only added to Ukraine in 1954. The inhabitants voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia in 2014, mainly due to incompetent and racist government by Ukraine. Since then it has been under severe sanction, with the main water supply cut off among other things. The Donbass region to the East also wants to leave Ukraine -not to join Russia but to become two separate republics. There has been a bloody civil war since then with many dead and around a million people fleeing to Russia. Not from RT but plain simple facts. Putin feels threatened by NATO and dislikes intensely the way Russian people in both Crimea and Ukraine have been treated. You might not consider these things to be sufficient provocation, but he does.
    2
  7817.  @Andrew-ob5ij  You're largely just repeating yourself, but I will certainly concur that the Crimean referendum was less than ideal - but you can't have fair referendums in Russia or Ukraine since they are both so utterly corrupt. What one can say is that the Crimeans were not dragged kicking and screaming into the Russian fold and most still seem happy with the transition, despite the Ukrainian sanctions. This idea that Putin, now nearly 70, has waited 22 years before trying to recreate the Russian empire is utterly absurd. He hasn't got the resources to do it, even if he wanted to. He might regret Russia's decline, but he knows he can do nothing about it. This just a scare story designed to whip up fear and public support for what is likely an American plot to further diminish Russia's status. All Putin has done is to protect his borders. There are no indications of any attempts at expansion. You are right, the history of Russia and Ukraine are inextricably entwined. But Ukraine was brought together as a unit only following conquests by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and only became a country when Stalin decided he wanted an extra seat in the UN. The modern Ukraine is a Russian creation, and you can quite see why they are a little possessive about it.
    2
  7818.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Just an add. The two questions in the referendum were not as you say. They clearly give respondents the choice between sticking with Ukraine or going over to Russia.
    2
  7819.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Oh dear! The terms of the referendum speak for themselves. You could have has two boxes, one with Ukraine and one with Russia and it would have been no clearer. Nazism exists in Ukraine as much as it does in Russia. More so probably. I assume you have heard of the Azov Battalion? And who were these authoritarian communists who crushed independence movements in Ukraine even before the Soviet Union was established? Granted there have been independence movements in various bits of Ukraine since time immemorial. The current one in Donbass is exactly that. The people want independence - but independence from Ukraine. NATO has long stopped being a peace-keeping force. Its members have been involved in wars, coups and infiltrations of countries all over the world. Ukraine may well be an independent nation. But where are its borders? Who decides them?
    2
  7820.  @Andrew-ob5ij  I'm not saying Putin is the nicest guy in the world and he certainly supports any group which might be of use to him, but he is not a Nazi in the same way that some people and parties in Ukraine are. But that's not the point. Your contention is that he wants to create some sort of fascist empire. I think he's got enough on his plate and simply doesn't want to used and abused by the West -predominantly America. On that we will clearly have to differ. As to the Bolsheviks, as you are clearly aware they created the Russian Revolution and the slightly later revolution in Ukraine, all starting about 1917. I suppose you are referring to the Ukrainians' attempts to separate the two revolutions? That's a fair enough point actually. So too is your reference to the Wagner Group. There are plenty of these tough-guy private armies in the world -but I would contend that Azov is in a bit of a class of its own. In any case my point is not that Putin is the good guy and the Ukrainians are the baddies. They're pretty much all as bad as one other -which is why we shouldn't feel obliged and take sides and get dragged into this quarrel. I don't quite understand your point about no troops in Eastern NATO countries before 2014. Are you suggesting that Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia didn't have armies before then or simply that more troops were moved in from other countries after the Crimea annexation? What is your reference to the Budapest Treaty? I would have though the apparent discovery of US chemical warfare labs in Ukraine once again puts that country in the frame as much as Russia has ever been. Are you talking about the removal of nuclear weapons from Ukraine? Can you please explain? It's not the MInsk Agreements you are thinking of is it?
    2
  7821.  @wendyowen969  He's right you know. You can have no idea how utterly absurd channels like this appear in the eyes of people from other countries. As for most of the comments...well, words fail me. Many of them read as though they could have been written on a schoolyard wall with crayons.
    2
  7822. The idea that an economy must be forever "growing" is at the root of the dilemma. I do not understand why this must be so. In Britain we have a situation where we have an increasingly large aged population who earn little, and a younger wealth-producing population which is reproducing at a fraction of the rate of preceding generations. Contrary to accepted doctrine this is, in my view, an entirely sustainable scenario. We ought to be able to achieve kind of stasis in which young earners maintain a stable population which produces sufficient surplus to provide sustenance to the proportion of that stable population which retires and which ought, quite quickly, to reach very much the same proportion of the population as a whole as a permanent feature of society. Encouraging immigration in order to provide a taxable population is madness. So is federalisation with other countries which have entirely different productivity/ benefit ratios.
    2
  7823.  @Geffo555  I am much encouraged by the adolescent responses to my original comment.
    2
  7824. Drivers' wages have increased by up to 30% practically overnight. There was never really any need for EU drivers. The visa thing is only a gesture.
    2
  7825.  @edwardbernthal160  It didn't. A long-term shortage of tanker drivers was exacerbated by the disappearance of EU drivers, certainly. But the situation would have been entirely manageable without media-induced panic buying. The "crisis" is already over in most parts of the country and we can only hope that people will have learned from their silliness.
    2
  7826.  @mrdaveythebaby  Small haulage companies are in for a difficult time in the short term, undoubtedly. They will, of necessity, have to pass their increased costs onto their customers, ie the supermarkets. I'm afraid this will result in a situation where haulage firms with low credit availability might go bust as the supermarkets shop around for the cheapest suppliers. The same may apply to smaller supermarket chains and a certain amount of absorption will probably occur. While unwelcome in many respects I cannot see this leading to either monopolies or price rises. Retailers have to balance profits against turnover and they will never price themselves out of the market. The wealthy will continue to have Waitrose and the rest of us will have Aldi.
    2
  7827. NATO exists as a tool of the US military/industrial complex, that's all. Until now the Russian Federation has never ben a threat and has even offered to join NATO on at least four occasions. NATO in turn has broken earlier promises not to militarise former Soviet countries and, with Ukraine, is seeking to push itself right inside ancient Russia. It finally has its wish. Russia IS the enemy. And a very dangerous one.
    2
  7828.  @masterbeethoven8209  Putin's plan all along has been to annexe Eastern Ukraine and retain Crimea. This he has done and the "idea" now is to rebuild these areas and to prevent them falling to the West. In this sense he has won and it is difficult to imagine any scenario which might viably alter this state of affairs. The tragedy is that this situation is broadly similar to that proposed by Russia in 2016. Half a million people have died to little purpose and Ukraine is ruined. Other Western countries are not far behind.
    2
  7829. ​ @steveprocter6241  1)Illegal in whose book? America's? Crimea has a roughly 70% ethnic Russian population and was only stuck onto the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 as a matter of administrative convenience. Russia has now conquered more than three-quarters of Donbass and is already spending billions on redeveloping it. The rest seems very likely to fall within a few months. 2) Russia can afford it. It is a very old-fashioned country which, unlike the West, doesn't much bother about losses as long as they are inexperienced troops and ancient armour and artillery.. The cream is held back for the real action which is happening now. 3)Russian citizens do not appear to be suffering to any great extent, whatever Western economists say. I subscribe to several blog channels from both Russians and Westerners living there which clearly show lifestyles at least as good as enjoyed by us in the West. Try Anna from Russia's YouTube channel, to name but one. A significant long-term gain will probably be the emergence of the BRICS group as a viable alternative to American hegemony.
    2
  7830. Martin Gugino Sadly not a hoax but only too real. He is a hoaxer though. His reversal of the graph to imply that temperature rises follow carbon rises was a masterstroke, as was much else in his sci-fi flick. You've got to admire a guy who get's a Nobel Prize for launching one of the biggest con jobs in history. The only recent Laureate to beat this coup is Barack Obama who got his for nothing at all.
    2
  7831. Ever heard of a Gompertz curve anyone? Or death rates declining rapidly as winter passes its peak? Or politicians taking credit for natural events?
    2
  7832. STOP PRESS: The Office of National Statistics has just released provisional death figures from all causes for July. There were 38,179 deaths registered That is 1,435 LESS than in July 2019. Deaths where Covid 19 was an UNDERLYING cause amounted to 2.6% of the total.
    2
  7833.  @manufc-bd2fb  Quite right. And no DIRECT Covid 19 CODs among that 2.6% as far as I can tell.
    2
  7834.  @grahambaker9377  Why? Its UNDERLYING cause, not direct cause. The vast majority of these 976 people were elderly -very elderly in most cases - and had all sorts of other things wrong with them. There is no real way of telling whether the fact they tested positive contributed to their deaths or not. This whole thing is out of control. Legitimate concern has turned into mass hysteria.
    2
  7835. It's the Dems who have done the defiling - by cheating like hell.
    2
  7836. It's entirely feasible that an American President could end this war in a very short time if he had the will to do so.
    2
  7837.  @PaulsBees  They may well have no choice. They can't fight without ammunition.
    2
  7838.  @keith8609  That's already happened.
    2
  7839. Deaths will be down because people who were due to die this week died a few weeks ago because of Covid.
    2
  7840.  @brianharris7243  Lockdowns and jabs - plus the needless indignity of masks and the ridiculousness of social distancing
    2
  7841. What's so wrong with America and Russia becoming friends?
    2
  7842. Putin has - because he's winning.
    2
  7843.  @stoufer2000  Everyone know that. What no-one knows is how large the pool is of those who are going to shuffle off the mortal coil this winter. The statistic I'll be keeping my eye on is how much greater the death toll is this year than it was three years ago when 20,000 were lost to flu. Or lesser, which it may well be. As the learned professor himself just indicated seasonal deaths have got to be above that sort of number to show that Covid 19 is still having an impact.
    2
  7844. It does one's heart good to see these young people all united in a common cause! Perhaps though they should be provided with simple uniforms and instead of each having somewhat untidy banners they should be issued with professionally- made ones. It would also be a good idea, I think, for some form of rehearsal to take place before future demonstrations to ensure cohesion and balance, without of course detracting from the essential spontaneity of the events.
    2
  7845. The Prof and Kemi B would make a great music-hall double act.
    2
  7846.  @saxglend9439  Exactly! Hate and despise you because you're common and don't realise how wonderfully kind and understanding they are!
    2
  7847. But he's right and you're wrong - as sad and tragic as that may seem.
    2
  7848.  @alanpattinson6211  You have GOT to be kidding! Are you looking for a job there? Unless you happen to be a BAME trans-sexual brown-nosing of this sort will get you nowhere.
    2
  7849. A RUSSIAN asset? Only by default. His investment is in Ukraine.
    2
  7850. Zelensky himself says Bakhmut is of immense strategic importance. Why does this bloke ALWAYS claim it isn't?
    2
  7851. These innocent people support a violent fascist regime, as the Germans did in World War II.
    2
  7852.  @donaldgraham6414  What is decent and moral about backing one set of oligarchs against another set of oligarchs?
    2
  7853. Whatever Ukraine's losses may have been they are forces no longer available to fight for Donbass -which is Russia's true objective.
    2
  7854. Come the day! He has every justification.
    2
  7855. I can quite see why the Professor never made a go of politics. The Tories would be very foolish to get involved in a tedious argument over the technicalities of government finance.
    2
  7856.  @ragingmonk6080  No. The US and other NATO countries had spent many billions of dollars on providing Ukraine with a modern army following the Minsk Treaties post 2014. Trying to destroy this army was one of the reasons for the Russian invasion. It partially succeeded, and the begging for more started from that point on. Poor little Ukraine, armed with sticks fighting off big, bad Russia is just a myth designed to arouse our sympathy. In fact they are doing very well - or were until recently.
    2
  7857. Have a drink.
    2
  7858. Hanny Hawkins At least we will know the truth if the trials are covered properly.
    2
  7859. Unfortunately it is impossible for officers to give testimony at such trials when they have been shot dead.
    2
  7860.  @eddapultstab2078  It might want Eastern Ukraine though, since it contains 6% of the world's rare earth minerals, plus oil, coal iron ore and untapped resources of shale gas, total value: an estimated $13trillion.
    2
  7861. He has a moral right to behave as he has. Scientists continually make mistakes and are bound by political and financial pressures -as is the case with covid vaccines.
    2
  7862. Further proof that the covid panic did more damage than the disease itself.
    2
  7863. What study? Did you say and I missed it?
    2
  7864. And very wise too.
    2
  7865. The EU started this war. Now let them finish it by advising Ukraine to surrender.
    2
  7866. When are we in the West going to realise that it is our governments which are responsible for this dreadful situation? By trying to seduce Ukraine away from its closest historical partner, Russia, they have unleashed a whirlwind which may yet destroy us all.
    2
  7867.  @Ericviking2019  Certainly. All Putin ever wanted was recognition of Crimea as Russian (which it is) and independence for Donbass so the mineral resources there remained available to Russia. (Which is only fair since they were developed with Russian money and Russian labour.) The tragedy of course is that this is probably what he'll get and at least a quarter of a million people will have died to no purpose.
    2
  7868.  @ian7033-qj9wg  It didn't. It had tanks, artillery and missiles. Otherwise it couldn't have destroyed so may Russian vehicles could it? Do you believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, by the way?
    2
  7869.  @ian7033-qj9wg  The following is the Merkel quote from Die Zeit published in December 2022. The allegation was later confirmed by former French PM Francois Hollande. "... the Minsk Agreement of 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. An illustrative example was the battle for Debaltseve. At the beginning of 2015, Putin could easily have overrun them at that time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do today to help Ukraine."
    2
  7870.  @prinze5  They were equipped for the job which was planned, which was to retake Donbass from the separatists. They were also well-equipped enough to inflict considerable damage on the Russians, weren't they?
    2
  7871. The Kursk incursion is having very little effect on either Russia's strategy or Putin's status in Russia. All we seem to get is a succession of "game-changers" which fizzle out into nothing while Russia marches inexorably onwards. It really is time for Ukraine to face reality, get rid of Zelensky and find a quick, peaceful solution to this needless, wasteful mess..
    2
  7872.  @maryrose8478  How scary he was depends on what he was doing of course, Fleeing a crime scene while totally smashed might not bring out the best in him, I think. As to that, check his autopsy report.
    2
  7873.  @maryrose8478  The statistics simple don't support the myth that white police are in the habit of killing unarmed black men. That is why this incident has been so wildly and widely broadcast. It's not because it is commonplace, but because it is unusual. What is this manufactured outrage designed to create, do you suppose? Reform? A new decency? Quite the reverse - it is designed to pave the way for anarchy by bringing out the worst in people. Anger leads to foolishness and the people firing up these riots need fools to support their cause.
    2
  7874. Who cares?
    2
  7875. It is actually going more or less to plan.
    2
  7876.  @GeorgeGreene931  How so? The declared objective was to remove Donbass entirely from Ukraine, and that is close to being a fact.
    2
  7877.  @The_D_Man  I doubt it! But it is of no great consequence when compared with keeping hold of the $14 trillion of minerals in Donbass.
    2
  7878.  @Karengili565  Putin never tried to take Kiev He just drew the Ukrainian army away from Donbass by marching up the main road, then set about trying to destroy it . Regime change would have been a bonus, of course, and this ghastly war wouldn't have had to continue. But there we are.
    2
  7879.  @whoisme678  I think he probably has a clearer picture than you do.
    2
  7880. Macron's attitude towards Russia was always rather patronising. If the invasion of Ukraine shocked him it was only because it made him realise that Russia is still in the business of backing up its territorial claims in Europe with military force when necessary. I think too he must have been shocked by the groundswell of public opinion in favour of "poor little Ukraine", however irrational and misguided this has been.
    2
  7881.  @Believe-you-me-  https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/04/08/wisconsin-election-3-tubs-ballots-found-mail-processing-center/2971078001/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0
    2
  7882.  @Believe-you-me-  https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    2
  7883.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  Yeah. Just shows how great an idea it is to hire just anyone to count ballots. doesn't it? Nine in a wastebasket. How many more in a nearby ditch? What are your feelings about the tubsfull found in the back of the post office? Could have been stupidity. But Ilhan Omar's industrial scale fraud is going to take some explaining. It all adds up. Tips? Icebergs?
    2
  7884.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  If fraud can happen, it will happen. If mistakes can happen, they will. Are you trying to tell me the Project Veritas story is some kind of performance with actors? Your loyalty is touching, but in recent years the Democratic party has revealed itself to be totally lacking in moral compass. It has been invaded by extremists, and extremists will go to any extremes .
    2
  7885.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  Slightly different scenario, don't you think? I'm sure they used deceit to obtain this story, but were more successful this time. Anyway, we will see what we will see. https://nypost.com/2020/09/29/minneapolis-police-probing-alleged-ballot-harvesting-claims/
    2
  7886.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  You are moderately graceful in defeat, but you do seem remarkably incapable of following any logical sequence of thought. They faked a story to get a story. The faked story wasn't the story. Here are some stories for you: 1000 people voted twice in georgia https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/georgia-official-claims-1-000-people-illegally-voted-twice-in-primaries/ar-BB18PGvz?li=BB141NW3 Mail truck catches fire destroying thousands of ballots https://amp.dailyrecord.com/amp/3257291001 200,000 ballots sent to wrong addresses in nevada https://ktrh.iheart.com/featured/michael-berry/content/2020-08-10-more-than-200000-ballots-in-nevada-mailed-to-the-wrong-addresses/ Entire NJ election called a do over due to ballot fraud https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2020/08/11/paterson-nj-election-rivals-agree-do-over-council-election/3343160001/ New jersey man votes 3 times https://patch.com/new-hampshire/concord-nh/new-hampshire-man-arrested-vote-fraud-charge Republican + 4 others charged in ballot fraud https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/kansas-republican-charged-with-three-felonies-in-voter-fraud-investigation/2020/07/14/7d0fe8c2-c629-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html 200,000 purged from rolls in New york https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/campaigns-elections/new-york-city-purged-voters-2016-it-wasnt-mistake.html Deceased cat receives ballot https://apnews.com/fbcec393dc652a9ccdb2cc8aacb15895 NY election disaster, over a month to count ballots , ballots lost n desytoyed https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-mail-vote-disaster-11595286912 Man charged for voting in 3 elections using his dead mother https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-18/la-county-man-accused-of-voting-in-three-elections-as-his-dead-mother 10s of thousands of ballots thrown out https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tens-of-thousands-of-mail-ballots-have-been-tossed-out-in-this-years-primaries-what-will-happen-in-november/2020/07/16/fa5d7e96-c527-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html 100,000 ballots thrown out in California https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/0714/Why-California-threw-out-100-000-mail-in-primary-ballots 23,000 thrown out in Wisconsin https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/07/23/wisconsin-absentee-ballot-rejections Thousands of ballots thown out due to tardiness https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undelivered-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-rejected-for-tardiness Mail in ballot experiment fails with lost , late n damaged ballots https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vote-by-mail-ballot-counted-election/ Woman arrested forging ballots https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/plymouth-township-woman-charged-with-election-law-forgery-over-absentee-voter-ballot As the new York times claims ballots are secure in 2020, in 2012 they wrote they were extremely open to fraud https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html 28,000,000 ballots lost in last 3 elections https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html Postal worker arrested for changing party affiliation on ballots https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/506869-postal-worker-pleads-guilty-to-election-fraud-after-changing 18,000 ballots not counted in Florida's primary https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/06/29/more-than-18000-mail-ballots-not-counted-in-floridas-march-presidential-preference-primary/ Thosands of ballots left on floor of building in North jersey https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/passaic/paterson/2020/08/14/paterson-nj-election-ballots-were-left-floor-post-office-says/5582951002/ Investigation as piles of mail found dumped in parking lot in california https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/515442-investigation-underway-after-bags-of-mail-found-dumped-in-los-angeles 1.6 million more voters than are registered in 19 california counties .. L.A county has 117% voter registration https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/07/five_states_face_federal_lawsuit_over_inaccurate_voter_registrations__142089.html 500,000 legit ballots in Virginia labelled with wrong return addresses https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/verify-wrong-mail-in-ballots-fairfax-virginia/65-94c4847c-63fb-4a93-bac5-9bb45df00a8d Glitch sends duplicate ballots in pittsburg Allegheny county https://www.wesa.fm/post/glitch-sends-duplicate-ballots-voters-system-prevents-double-voting-county-says#stream/0 Detroit elections where 72% of absentee votes do not match registered voters https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/20/benson-asked-investigate-detroit-perfect-storm-voting-problems/5616629002/ 80,000 ballots dissappeared in baltimore https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-voting-snafu-update-20180625-story.html New York voting official warns people will use dead people to vote https://www.newsweek.com/mail-voting-ballots-deceased-1531481 Michigan secretary misprinted military absentee ballots . 400 already issued https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/09/president-trump-goes-after-michigan-secretary-of-state-again-over-ballot-misprint.html Mail in ballots found in road ditch in Wisconsin https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/23/mailed-in-ballots-found-tossed-in-wisconsin-ditch/ 4 officials arrested in ballot harvesting scheme https://www.kltv.com/2020/09/24/gregg-county-commissioner-others-arrested-alleged-vote-harvesting-scheme/ 9 military mail in ballots thrown in dumpster in PA https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/poconos-coal/fbi-psp-probing-9-discarded-ballots-in-luzerne-county/article_249405da-fea4-11ea-a8d7-b7faa419550f.html 134 felony voter fraud charges announced in Dem primary https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-voter-fraud New Yorkers receiving ballots with wrong names and adresses https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518682-new-yorkers-report-receiving-ballots-with-wrong-name-voter-addresses Queens voters receiving military ballots https://nypost.com/2020/09/28/nyc-voters-wrongly-getting-mail-in-ballots-marked-for-military-use/ Sun sentinel detailing Florida voting fraud https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-menge-mail-in-ballots-fraud-florida-20200416-hanmbneuendpbaftyktpactlga-story.html Ballot harvesting scam exposed in minneapolis https://nypost.com/2020/09/29/minneapolis-police-probing-alleged-ballot-harvesting-claims/ 1 in 4 election officials quit due to the new election law and chaos of mail in ballots https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/mail-ballot-law-pennsylvania-has-driven-out-nearly-quarter-state-n1240504 Texas Official arrested on felony election fraud charges https://www.newsweek.com/texas-official-arrested-felony-election-fraud-charges-could-face-99-year-sentence-1534183 Patterson city council official arrested along with 4 others in ballot fraud scheme https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/paterson-city-council-vice-president-among-4-charged-with-voting-fraud-in-may-special-election-nj-ag/2484797/ Yes America! Plenty of voter fraud https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/yes-america-there-voter-fraud-these-recent-cases-prove-it D.C voters receiving ballots for ex residents with some receiving up to 5 multiple ballots https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dc-voters-are-being-sent-mail-in-ballots-for-ex-residents
    2
  7887.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Isn't Phil a leftie? Sorry, I just thought he was, as well as most of his followers
    2
  7888.  @ECECECECEC  What attacks? Are the air-raid sirens sounding in Nuuk? Are Canadians taking to the bomb shelters? You lefties are not only utterly humourless, you're almost unbelievably credulous and paranoid.
    2
  7889.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  No. You do. Do you consider yourself to be a leftie? (You can say "no" .)
    2
  7890.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  No need. You're a leftie and that's that!
    2
  7891.  @ArtsnCrafts-i3v  Applying for the free newsletter does NOT make you a member. This is one of the myths currently exercising the minds of the unthinking masses.
    2
  7892.  @ArtsnCrafts-i3v  Applying for the free Newsletter does NOT make you a member, contrary to rumour.
    2
  7893. The Jan Sixers are innocent of anything other than allowing themselves to be caught up in a stage-managed farce, organised by the US deep state in a bid to defame Trump. The people pre-pardoned by Biden on the other hand, are almost certainly criminals of the deepest dye. I hope that they will be charged and tried anyway, even if they cannot be sentenced.
    2
  7894.  @filipe5722  It was the West ((mainly America and NATO) which wanted war. Without their interference Russia and Ukraine could have settled their little quarrel quite peaceably.
    2
  7895. One of which had held an automatic pistol less than a second before.
    2
  7896.  @issigonis975  The fact that you are entirely wrong about me shows that you are entirely wrong about everything else. Check my account to see who I am - which is to say a 75-year-old Englishman, born and bred.
    2
  7897.  @Sokrates66  They might well put up with them being there, so long as they don't take important targets. Expert opinion is divided. We will have to wait and see if this gamble pays off.
    2
  7898. It really isn't so stupid, perhaps just a little difficult for underdeveloped intellects to understand.
    2
  7899. They're not that desperate.
    2
  7900. Trump is a very cunning person. Apart from the advantages mentioned by your interviewee he is also undermining the Democrats' hard line on coronavirus precautions. He's running rings around the Democrats as he usually does. They meanwhile are blocking legislation designed to bring financial relief to Americans hard-hit by the pandemic. They want the voters to be confused, angry ,hungry and afraid because they know that confused, angry, hungry and afraid people tend to vote Democrat.
    2
  7901. Russia has a population of 33 million men of military age. Many of them will already have completed military service. A force of between 300,000 and 600,000 is believed to be poised along the border with Ukraine, ready to invade when the situation and ground conditions dictate. Its military strategy has always been to take losses and just keep coming.
    2
  7902.  @JoeyBlogs007  Unless the West keeps supplying Ukraine with more and more equipment and replacement troops can be found and trained, then the Russia tide will overwhelm all resistance. The SMO was carried out with less than 200,000 troops and has been successful in severely depleting the Ukrainian armed forces. The present size and capability of the Russian army can only be surmised, bit it it is surely greater than that first expeditionary force, whereas the Ukrainian forces are now considerably fewer in both numbers and munitions. In a war of attrition -which this is -Russia must be firm favourite to win. Which is not to say that it will, of course!
    2
  7903. Omicron could well be good news and the more people who get it the better if, as it appears at first sight, to be very mild in its effects. Immunity without vaccination at the costs of a few sniffles. The drug companies won't like it of course but that really is just too bad.
    2
  7904. jmarcu Less of a taint and more of a badge of honour in the present circumstances, I think.
    2
  7905. Sounds like a pretty big job. There were a few thousand at the Capitol but millions with them in spirit.
    2
  7906.  @EdgyNumber1  One woman shot by police, probably by accident.
    2
  7907. But Putin doesn't WANT to conquer Ukraine!! He just wants Donbass and Crimea, and has said so on numerous occasions.
    2
  7908.  @Finnishguy777  It's mainly just talk though. And nothing like enough to hold off the Russians in any case.
    2
  7909. Waiting to see how Omicron unwraps is very Chrismassy. It could actually be the present we've all been waiting for - a variant that infects everybody and makes them immune, but has very mild symptoms. On the other hand it could just be yet another pair of socks. Or even some home made jam from old Aunt Flo that'll make you sick as a dog.
    2
  7910. More fools them then.
    2
  7911.  @M.Linoge  "If people I don't like, don't like him, he's my best friend!" This seems slightly exaggerated, but surely the premise is sound. "On to something" still covers it.
    2
  7912.  @heatherthomas7545  The annexation came after the fighting started. Ukraine promised to grant regional autonomy to Donbass back in 2015. Instead it used the time to allow NATO to build it an army to invade it. Your analogy is utterly childish and does not reflect the facts in any way.
    2
  7913. A recipe for dull inaction.
    2
  7914. Top oncologists are reporting a disturbing increase in the number of new and re-activated cancers over the last couple of years. Some have called for mRNA vaccinations to be banned.
    2
  7915. The vaccines only recognise a tiny amount of the viral genome -about 1%. Recovery from an actual infection should provide far greater immunity via memory cells.
    2
  7916.  @oscarmccoy9102  They didn't say it very loud then.
    2
  7917.  @oscarmccoy9102  As far as I can find out no official statement has been issued concerning the religion or ethnicity of the suspect.
    2
  7918.  @stoufer2000  And a hanky would do just as well as a facemask - or even putting your hand over your face of you cough or sneeze. I reckon at the most generous of estimates a facemask might reduce the chances of an unknowingly infected person passing it on by around 20% at the very, very most. Most infections are the result of aerosol spread, which masks do nothing about. Tests on facemasks show that if you are in something like a yogic trance then one might stop 95%of droplets. Coughing or sneezing, or even breathing heavily and the droplets break up and smaller ones pass through the weave like shotgun pellets. And you have to be standing face to face with someone for them to get infected anyway. Meanwhile your aerosol-borne virions are floating for many yards, into the next room or along the air-conditioning ducts. Masks are pure PR. Being mandated to wear them was a sign there was ae problem. Making them voluntary is a sign that it could be all over - or it's your own damn fault if it isn't!
    2
  7919. Ukraine junkies are suffering withdrawal symptoms. They were told this was a battle between pure, democratic, Ukraine - almost like us - and evil, voracious, Russia with a Hitler clone at the helm. It wasn't. It was a battle between two sets of gangsters over minerals and money. One set was backed by America and other backed by Russia. Now America has pulled out and Ukraine is f%*cked. End of story. Cry as much as you like.
    2
  7920. Who is to do the educating though? Education these days (and perhaps forever) is mostly a matter of brainwashing, notably in the inexact sciences. The instincts of the "uneducated" often have more practical validity than the mad theorising of academics and "intellectuals."
    2
  7921. There is no evidence of Rittenhouse having any connection to white supremacy in any of his social media activity. Furthermore, the "white supremacy" gesture is a joke put out by 4chan to troll dumb lefties. Rittenhouse actually supports BLM principles. He's going to make millions - and Rebel HQ will be on the list of unwilling donors I'm sure.
    2
  7922. Adam God, you're a miserable bastard! Cheer up, it might never happen!
    2
  7923. Paul Blackburn I don't think the workers are either.
    2
  7924. It'll be more than trillion, I bet.
    2
  7925. They never have worked and never will work. As they are evaded their only effect they will have is to further weaken Western economies.
    2
  7926.  @Scott_Incognito  Votes - not that it'll make much difference.
    2
  7927. Actions have consequences. The West's utterly misguided interference in this border war has already created horrible damage out of all proportion to the issues involved.
    2
  7928.  @johnclarke1319  Rot. Russians can hold any opinion they want and express them however they wish - without causing disruption; much as in this country. The issue is whether or not America and its stooges are entitled to reap the rewards of hundreds of years of Russian investment and effort in Ukraine. Nothing else.
    2
  7929. This disease is being manipulated for financial and political purposes and we must question EVERYTHING we are being told. Information is being suppressed and false information is being given out. This woman's attitude can be seen as extreme, but there are sound reasons for believing it is a justifiable one.
    2
  7930. At least you know what you'd be getting - not like with Starmer.
    2
  7931. This is how the Deep State gets those who step out of line.
    2
  7932.  @daydays12  The main thrust of the Minsk Accords was for Ukraine to seek ways of granting regional autonomy to the two breakaway Donbass republics. The rest was just details of the ceasefire. Ukraine did nothing other than use the ceasefire to take billions of dollars from the US and other NATO countries to build up its army. The Accords, like most treaties which American lawyers have had a hand in drawing up, are full of pitfalls which mean that they are invariably broken in some minor way, thus enabling their main thrust to be ignored. It was a technique developed during the Indian Wars in the US and was used to help commit genocide. Russia's technique of handing over control to Wagner - a private army, not under official state control, might be considered somewhat dubious but it pales into insignificance beside Ukraine's cynical disregard for its obligations. You appear to be as ignorant of the military tactics employed as you are of the political background. Russia has never had any intention of taking Kiev, or indeed any of Western Ukraine. The SMO was an exercise designed purely to draw the Ukrainian army out into the open and attempt to destroy it on its own territory. Saying that Ukraine "doesn't exist" might be somewhat histrionic, but the fact remains that the new country of Ukraine is an artificial construct, based upon the boundaries of the former SSR of Ukraine, which was itself created by Moscow.
    2
  7933.  @kentl7228  If you want to take a city you don't line up old equipment manned by disposable raw troops and trundle down the main highway, nose to tail. Putin has made it quite clear that taking al of Ukraine is impractical and undesirable.
    2
  7934.  @kentl7228  Th SMO wasn't designed to take Kiev or any part of Western Ukraine. That's why it was called an SMO. Russia cynically threw tons of ancient armour and thousands of raw troops in an exercise designed purely to soak up as much of Ukraine's resources as possible. They were lined up in a row, like so many ducks in a fairground, and sent along the main highway. That's not how you conquer a city. What the Russians did in Mariupol is how you conquer a city.
    2
  7935.  @kentl7228  What would Russia want with Kiev? It would mean an endless civil war. Russia simply used disposable assets - old armour and raw troops - to soak up Ukraine's military resources. A five minute glance at their tactics proves this.
    2
  7936.  @simonharris4873  Islam is not a race, and it is Islam in its more extreme forms with which these people have a quarrel. They also have quarrels with the police and politicians, and they are not races either.
    2
  7937.  @jasperchance3382  More for people who think beyond what they are told.
    2
  7938. @ Truer than much Western propaganda.
    2
  7939.  @tomservo56954  Just call me soft-hearted.
    2
  7940.  @Rdott82  Much more difficult, I agree.
    2
  7941. Apparently SARS 1 liked the Spring and Summer - as SARS 2 appears to have done in the Northern Hemisphere. Could the current outbreaks in Australia and New Zealand -small as they are - be related to this phenomenon? "Analysis of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Taiyuan found the optimum environmental temperature associated with the SARS cases was between 16 to 28 degrees Celsius, which may encourage virus growth. A sharp rise or decrease in the environmental temperature related to the cold spell led to an increase of the SARS cases because of the possible influence of the weather on the human immune system. This study suggested a higher possibility for SARS to reoccur in spring than in autumn or winter." Centre For Evidence Based Medicine - Oxford.
    2
  7942. He's not far wrong. Trump Derangement Syndrome ought to be a notifiable mental condition..
    2
  7943.  @leftrightandcentre833  But I find some of the things people say utterly fascinating in their absurdity. Tribalism, perhaps; but there does come a point when loyalty seems to lead to something approaching insanity.
    2
  7944.  @vwilliams8275  I don't know his political leanings. He lived a twenty minute drive away and came in every day to work as a pool attendant. Many of the rioters came from far, far away, via Portland in most cases. By road and by plane.This can clearly be seen from the addresses of those so far arrested.
    2
  7945. Windfarms are an abomination unto the Lord.
    2
  7946. Why should Trump do anything at all to assist these enquiries? They are not designed to find the truth. That claim is pure hypocrisy. They are designed to do him harm, and he is therefore entirely justified in resisting these efforts to stitch him up.
    2
  7947.  @arigold7664  Even if any of this was true(which it isn't) why didn't Biden correct these errors before ordering the hasty withdrawal? He had plenty of time.
    2
  7948. @ I really don't think that a country which is a world leader in the construction and maintenance of nuclear power stations is likely to be unable to maintain nuclear weapons.
    2
  7949. A new President?
    2
  7950.  @dpelpal  Yup and a couple of hundred thousand Ukrainians have died laughing.
    2
  7951. The complete reverse is true.
    2
  7952.  @captainswing4487  You'd rather they had Mr Senile with an armed guard of BLM Marxists at his elbow, right?
    2
  7953.  @alanpattinson6211  Where is this right wing extreme media? I've been looking for it for absolute ages.
    2
  7954.  @captainswing4487  I'm British as it happens. From my point of view Trump, far from weaponising Republican policies has merely sidestepped them. He is a Republican in name only. He is not even a politician. He is a businessman who has arrived at the White House with no political debts to pay off, which is why the establishment fear him so greatly. I suffered briefly from Trump Derangement Syndrome in the early days, but I recovered quite quickly when I realised the staggering amount of lies being told about this man. He is no saint. I doubt he has read a book in his life, He is an unashamed narcissist and liar but he is genuine patriot. Deciding to become President was more or less a whim, but having got there he decided to run the country on sound business lines and it was working very well until the unexpected horrors of Covid 19 appeared. He is not a racist or a white supremacist. He is a bit of crook, but so is everyone else at the top of the American tree to some extent or another. Compared with Elizabeth Warren, say, or the Clintons and of course Joe Biden, he is a positive saint. If Biden gets in America will collapse into chaos. An estimated 84% of the estimated $1.5 billion raised by BLM in recent months has gone to help his campaign. They will want reimbursing. Proponents of the Green New Deal will also want payback for their support. Over five million guns have been bought by private citizens since the BLM riots got under way. We are looking at the most volatile situation the US has faced since the start of the Civil War. And to have a President who can scarcely remember his own name in charge......Well. lets hope Donny gets back in, that's all I can say.
    2
  7955.  @ashleybishton742  I think maybe the pipeline comes into it. Thirteen years ago a gas pipeline across Syria from the Gulf could have undercut Russian supplies to Europe. Now Russia has been forced to sell its gas and oil elsewhere that is no longer as much of a threat.
    2
  7956. Lucifer Black "Abusing" them to create the safest, healthiest most stable civilisation the world has ever known you mean? You can lie shivering in your hut dying of TB if you like. I won't be joining you.
    2
  7957.  @prout7569  Nice try. Have you started on Matt the Greek yet? I do wish you would.
    2
  7958. More fantasy from the drawing room.
    2
  7959. Australican - I quite agree! It's heartbreaking to see so much energy being diverted from the very real problems of tackling environmental pollution and species extinction. The proponents of carbon phobia have much to answer for. I'll stop now before I bloviate!
    2
  7960. Mark Ewing - Well I don't expect to overturn thirty years of prejudice and manipulation in a few paragraphs. Do check out Tony Heller and 1000frolly Phd though they'll certaintly give you food for thought. You can try checking the carbon futures market too, to see how the Nature piece has affected prospects.
    2
  7961. Australican -As I said Tony Heller and 1000frolly Phd cite numerous sources which you can follow up.
    2
  7962. Urrcreavesh -What a cocky fellow you are! I have given you facts -all you have is propaganda.
    2
  7963. Urrcreavesh Oh dear! You are showing the usual signs of Carbonophope Derangement Syndrome which occur when your bubble is prodded. You want citations, go to to 1000frolly Phd who will give you,at great length , all the details of the many scientific papers he has read during the course of his research. Google Viking bodies for yourself. Shoestring budgets! Do't make me laugh - an estimated billion dollars a day is being spent on climate crisis garbage. The fossil fuel industry is just shrugging and adapting by making money from such nonsenses as coal-powered (electric) cars and wind turbines, each one of which costs far more in terms of carbon released into the atmosphere by the manufacture of their vast foundations than will be saved by their operation. You can check this out too, but I bet you're too chicken-shit scared to try a bit of research yourself. You'd much rather go through life believing the brainwashed bullshit doled out by you virtue-signalling schoolteachers. Of course the chemistry of tropospheric refraction is sound, and has been understood for many years. What is not clear, however, is to what extent the nature of that refraction is affected by the introduction of increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The results of laboratory experiments vary. Of course ice-core proxy data shows that increased carbon dioxide emissions follow increased temperatures by 5-800 years, which is an experiment hard to replicate. Indications are, incidentally, that carbon only stays in the air from for five years or so anyway. It's not your fault you're the way you are. It's just the way you've been brought up.
    2
  7964. Dean Walker - Just go to 1000frolly Phd's latest video. There is a list of citations there nearly as long as the list of peer reviewed bullshit pumped out by the slavish devotees of ACC.
    2
  7965. Susi M - I do follow Potholer in an attempt to see other points of view. It's rather like having butter rubbed into your eyeballs while an insurance salesman talks to you in a foreign language. His puerile analogies and convoluted reasoning leave me cold. The fossil fuel industry isn't all that worried by climate hysteria. They can make money by playing the carbon market too and even more by producing coal-powered cars and wind turbines.Tobacco and asbestos aren't exactly the same as carbon emissions are they? People made money from producing them while ignorant of the health hazards and very quickly were persuaded not to produce them when shown the pile of bodies. Where's the pile of bodies resulting from C02 emissions one has to ask? After 30 years of threats and promises things seem to be going on very much as before, despite attempts to prove the contrary with smoke and mirrors and dodgy data fed into computer models and passed on to the gullible masses as facts. You want piles of bodies? Go to the 1930s when tens of thousands died in heatwaves much hotter and longer than those of today and when C02 levels were much, much lower. I agree with you 100 per cent about pollution. That's why it's such a shame to see so much effort being wasted on the carbon myth which could be better used in dealing with real threats to the well-being of the planet.
    2
  7966. Billionaire immigrants are always welcome - especially if they see the pressing need to get rid of Keir Starmer and all he stands for.
    2
  7967.  @Pikaling3408  If any government ever needed undermining it's this one.
    2
  7968. And Ukrainians kidnap and torture people who speak Russian.
    2
  7969.  @MrGrantSloan  I think you are confusing words with actions. To Uniparty war pigs, war is good for business. To Trump it just isn't.
    2
  7970. The only ethics Biden and most US politicians have is trying not to get caught.
    2
  7971. This "imperialist adventure" is a fiction created by Western warmongers as an excuse for military spending and career advancement. All Putin wants (and what he will get) is control over the vast mineral resources of Donbass and Crimea which are, anyway, Russia's by right.
    2
  7972. No it doesn't.
    2
  7973.  @lilyadam7318  No. Parliament does by usually discreet means. Unfortunately since Boris seems to have gone bananas lately he is seemingly beyond polite correction. Dawn Butler has chosen her moment well - which is surprising. Left-wingers are rarely so politically astute. It could have been pure accident though!
    2
  7974.  @indricotherium4802  Peter and Polly Punter forgive his failings because he seems so unthreatening, but he really is all over the place. The danger is some immense cock-up which will expose him for what he is: a good comedy writer but a crap politician. Apart from anything else he does seem to be cracking up. Running Carrie and the country at the same time would put a strain on anybody. Playing fantasy cabinet is a foolish task but there really are many good men and true in the Tory ranks - and women too! My preferred choices would probably horrify you. Suffice it to say that I would like to live long enough to see Britain's first black Prime Minister in the shape of Kemi Badenoch. Dawn Butler could be Leader of the Opposition if she's still around.
    2
  7975.  @michaelharper8407  No, Black Rock shares.
    2
  7976.  @pgr3290  Russia doesn't want Kiev or any of Western Ukraine. It just wants those parts in the East where there are large Russian populations and which have closer ties with Russia than they do with Kiev.
    2
  7977.  @youngsalmon5188  This is not so. Generally Russia has sent in superior troops in a first wave, then replaced them with large quantities of raw troops and ancient equipment to soak up Ukrainian forces attempting to regain the initially lost territory.
    2
  7978. First covid brutality now this. Only brainwashed fools can still have faith in the judicial system. It has become a tool of tyranny.
    2
  7979. The main significance is that America is now ruled by the mob, not by the law.
    2
  7980.  @stricknice5260  No one is suggesting you can. What you CAN do though is check online to see if your postal vote has been registered. If it hasn't, that means you haven't voted. So you can then vote in person. Two attempts to vote, with one successful attempt means you have actually voted just the once.
    2
  7981.  @devorah711  Thank you for surrendering so gracefully. You are excused further humiliation.
    2
  7982.  @DashkinBeniquet  It was never said by him. Some commanders said it to their troops to encourage them, but no-one at the top could possibly have believed such a thing. This is just pure anti-Russian propaganda.
    2
  7983.  @stevesandgroper3241  He said no such thing in that essay. He made it quite clear that although he very much regretted Ukraine's desire to separate from Russia it could not be prevented - but that it couldn't take Donbass and Crimea with it. Quotes have been taken out of context for propaganda purposes. Have you read the whole thing?
    2
  7984. Arcarsenal We all do it. Prediction is very difficult, especially when it involves the future. Sorry you were upset. Try not to be. Johnson has laid out his strategy and if it fails then a newly-constructed Labour party will be able to push the Tories to one side and try again. If he succeeds however... Lets just cross that bridge when we come to it!
    2
  7985.  @denisbainbridge4813  This is a "Well, we'll just have to see moment," isn't it? Trump had no vaccine, did he? The ultra-violet/ disinfectant myth has been grossly misrepresented and the responsibility for dealing with the pandemic is largely state-based. As for lockdowns I think history will show that Australia and New Zealand's escape (so far!) has been the result of many factors other than lockdowns. The virus responds to climate and the fact that is less prevalent in Oceania and in countries where malaria and preceding covids have held sway is going to emerge as a more significant factor, I'm sure. The war in Syria has , of course, to do with establishing a gas pipeline in which the Chinese have an especial interest and which Russia wants to stop. The Kurds are just a pawn. Since Biden seems to be much beholden to Beijing and is a long-term ally of hawks in the CIA and the arms industry we can expect to see American influence and American soldiery expended in this and other efforts designed to establish China at the head of the New World Order with the US as its policeman. It's back to old games now Trump has been ousted. Biden is just an old whore with a lifetime's experience of selling himself to the highest bidder. Economic collapse at home and humiliation abroad will be the legacy of his brief tenure.
    2
  7986.  @denisbainbridge4813  If you watch the entire news conference rather than the edited versions you will realise that Trump is merely seeking clarification from a Homeland Security guy who is possibly even more inarticulate than he is! Ultra violet CAN destroy some germs. Just not covids. Trump didn't know that and was asking about it. He got confused because the word "disinfect" is actually used as one of the two forms of immunity created by vaccination and the Homeland Security guy also employed it in a military sense ie when an army patrol "disinfects" an area of opposition forces. To interpret Trump's responses as actually promoting ultra-violet detoxification, much less injecting household bleach is just wishful thinking. It is an an acceptably malicious piece of propaganda, but not to be taken seriously. He was confused, and never one to wish to appear at a disadvantage he made a couple of verbal blunders, that's all.
    2
  7987.  @pedohunter5117  Lt-Col (retd.) RRF - "Honi soit qui mal y pense"
    2
  7988. ​ @superhumantrueman It is their land though, isn't it? Russia created Ukraine and although Putin acknowledges its nationhood in many respects this does not extend to Donbass and Crimea - and for quite sound political, ethnic and historical reasons. The fact they sit on around 13trillon dollars worth of mineral assets enters into it too, as well as old-fashioned right of conquest.
    2
  7989. ​ @davidwright5094 It isn't. And Crimea has had billions invested in it since 2014.Donbass owes its existence to Russia and Russians.
    2
  7990.  @applerunner1184  It's the $cience that's running the show though. Both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin have long proven track records for effectively treating other conditions - and are therefore safe. If their efficacy in preventing the worst symptoms of covid should have turned out to be mythical then no harm would have been done. In both cases though a wealth of unbiased anecdotal evidence and clinical trials carried out by real doctors in actual healthcare situations have pointed firmly in their favour. It's only when the get spirited away into Big Pharma labs that the evidence changes all of a sudden.
    2
  7991.  @applerunner1184  Well there couldn't be anecdotal evidence for vaccines which didn't exist, could there? When doctors on the ground begin trying things out and believe they are noticing certain results, then they start to analyse and formalise these results as best they can. The trouble is the treatments they are testing are already on the market and provide nothing like the opportunity for profit as new drugs. Their potential value is therefore discounted, by fair means or foul. The fact that Uttar Pradesh has but a tiny fraction of the covid death rate of Kerala is of far greater significance to my simple mind than the results of complex laboratory studies. I am equally intrigued by the fact that those countries where malaria is most endemic have by far the world's lowest covid death rates.
    2
  7992. Putin doesn't want Ukraine. All he wants is Donbass and Crimea, and a land bridge to the latter. Once he gets this - which he almost has - his ambitions will largely be satisfied. He probably won't even want Odessa, so long as Russia continues to have a hand in grain shipments. It really is time to stop demonising Russia. It is quite clear that this is being done in order to justify huge expenditure on defence, which is little more than a convenient way of transferring taxpayers' money into the pockets of arms manufacturers.
    2
  7993. There is no evidence whatsoever that Putin has had any designs on Europe. There is considerable evidence, however, that this myth has been perpetrated by American warmongers in order to justify THEIR designs on Europe via the expansion of NATO.
    2
  7994.  @seanie002  Oh yes it is!!!!!
    2
  7995.  @theblade9024  The rouble is now worth 58 to the dollar, stronger than it has been for four years.
    2
  7996.  @eardwulf785  You can check the exchange rate for yourself. As for talking bollocks, Russia now very rarely gets paid for its gas and oil in dollars, and only as a last resort. Almost anything else will do, but especially roubles.
    2
  7997.  @Occam31 I'm not a currency dealer, but the rouble is well worth a punt as an interim trade. If I was living in Russia of course it would be a different story. The fact that its economy is not only surviving but actually thriving in some areas - despite or even because of sanctions - simply underlines the increasing weakness of the dollar.
    2
  7998. Nice poo for Mummy.
    2
  7999.  @gregc.5684  Have you ever had an original thought in your entire life?
    2
  8000. Fingers crossed for RFK!
    2
  8001. The app is the same but positive tests are running incredibly high - so more "pings". Too many more for businesses to cope with. Ditch the app. It was never much use, and it's now a positive danger.
    2
  8002. Zelensky wanted a bike - and got a new pullover knitted by his Auntie Joe.
    2
  8003. Everyone who has managed to escape the brainwashing is sick and tired of woke, lefty nonsense and want a return to common sense and decency. Well done America!
    2
  8004.  @MrsGardiner  Inciting racial hatred is different to making people aware of the dangers involved in allowing unrestricted immigration to this country. None of these people you condemn castigate individual immigrants because of their race, simply because of their presence. Do you get it now?
    2
  8005. I am sure the pharmaceutical companies are already commissioning peer-reviewed studies proving that this treatment is not only ineffective but is likely to make you want to shoot your grandmother.
    2
  8006.  @anglonorse2943  "Misinformation" is quite often open to interpretation. Very few things are as black and white as simple minds suppose. What to you is a lie may well be simply an opinion you disagree with. Calling the cops in on discourse is a terrifying prospect, quite frankly.
    2
  8007. The name Suzuki springs to mind. Their daughter was on stage twenty years ago spouting the exact same script as Greta Thurnberg.
    2
  8008. But Russia is winning. Putin is fully prepared to sacrifice low grade and NK troops in Kursk, rather than redeploy combat veterans from the southern front, which is presumably what the Ukrainians thought he would do.
    2
  8009. Any American who has been cheated and abused by the government will now feel a warm sense of fellow-feeling for Trump. And that's at least half the population.
    2
  8010. @ I am not a bot and cannot speak for Russia, but it is quite clear from Putin's stated objectives that he has no desire to conquer all of Ukraine and be faced with the expense and difficulty of maintaining a regime there by military force. Donbass is different. It is already Russian, and always has been.
    2
  8011.  @SolVeritasLux Crimea has been part of the Russian Federation for over ten years, and Donbass is well on its way. Before that they were part of the Russian- controlled Soviet Union, and before that they were part of Imperial Russia. So there is nothing misleading or historically false in what I posted. No need for you to apologise.
    2
  8012.  @sixthsenseamelia4695  It relies more of historic and economic reality. Putin has made it quite clear that he has no interest in trying to occupy and rule a resistant Ukraine, nor the ability or resources to do so. Why would he? He saw the Soviet Union collapse because it was colonially overstretched. Why would he want the same for the Russian Federation?
    2
  8013.  @SolVeritasLux  For now, maybe. But that is not the point. These areas are historically Russian, and not Ukrainian. That they will in the future be included in the Russian Federation, and recognised as such, is entirely possible, however. The problem has arisen because the new country of Ukraine has mistakenly been given the same geographical footprint as the former SSR of Ukraine - which was not a country, but an administrative unit of the Soviet Union and which included parts of Russia for largely administrative reasons. Saying something is so doesn't make it so. Writing it down on a piece of paper and getting people to sign it doesn't make it so. The will of the people and economic and strategic reality makes a thing so. The people of Eastern Ukraine thought they were going to get a good deal when they found themselves part of the new country of Ukraine. But buyers' remorse set in pretty quickly and the idea of the Russia-owned mines and factories being taken out of Russian control as Ukraine joined the EU has sparked this dreadful war.
    2
  8014. In fantasy comics, perhaps.
    2
  8015. Do you have the faintest idea what the duties of an MP actually are?
    2
  8016. BoxerShark Just seen one on Heller's channel. Not at all impressive. A tiny proportion of Australia's massive landmass is currently on fire. Looks like less than one% or so. That's still too much, but climate crisis nutjobs are so far gone they need to believe the whole country is ablaze.
    2
  8017. RoJo19 True enough, but that doesn't match the image the great brainwashed have rattling about in their noggins. In their fantasy land Australia is one vast forest fire full of burning Koala bears.
    2
  8018. @ No they're not. This is the chatter of ignorant children who still believe in Father Christmas. There will be tears before bedtime, you mark my words.
    2
  8019.  @TheHoveHeretic  Even if you are correct you must accept the fact that the path to the self-enrichment of individuals can often bring benefits to those who support them in their endeavours. Being jealous of the rich and successful is not a good look.
    2
  8020. To slightly misquote Mandy Rice-Davies; "They would say that, wouldn't they?" The courts will decide: not the media or pressure groups representing private industry.
    2
  8021. Leigh Foulkes Let me add further to your confusion. The elites are very much in favour of making everyone worried about climate change They make vast sums of money by trading in carbon emission certificates and derive further income from carbon taxes.
    2
  8022. Iwer Sonsh I agree. This debate would prove nothing scientifically - only thorough research into the true nature of the atmosphere and the effect of solar emissions and other exterior factors such as cosmic rays will do that. At the same time because the world's mainstream media has taken the AGW credo on board to such an extent there is much misinformation out there, as I'm sure you will agree. In fact AGW is a populist notion by and large. Moderate voices need to be heard, as well as opposing views. When alarmists start screaming that skeptics and deniers should be shut down it makes me even more convinced that the alarmists are wrong.
    2
  8023.  @desj2584  So it was a question of "finders keepers" then? I think the original purpose of the weapons carries slightly more weight than the accidental fact of where they were actually positioned when the SU collapsed.
    2
  8024.  @Northman-from-the-North  The Soviet Union was not a country, it was a union of countries of which Russia was the dominant. It ruled Ukraine which was a semi-autonomous republic . To suggest that with the collapse of the SU everything left in Ukraine was Ukraine's is clearly absurd. A lot of decisions had to be taken as to the ownership of things, and it was clear that the nuclear weapons belonged to Russia. Which is why they ended up back there.
    2
  8025.  @Northman-from-the-North  Can you imagine the state of the world if Ukraine had become a nuclear power? America would not have permitted it. Russia would not have permitted it. The weapons were essentially Russian weapons, stationed in Ukraine BY RUSSIA for purely tactical reasons.
    2
  8026. And talking about breaking agreements and treaties, what about Minsk? Did Ukraine start to find ways of granting autonomy for Donbass, as required by those treaties? No, it did not. Which is why we now have this dreadful war.
    2
  8027. When the Russians finally take Pokrovsk the situation will change radically. Trump - like anyone with any sense - realises that Putin will not stop until his forces have, at the very least, taken all of Donetsk and the fall of this key city ought to make this inevitable.
    2
  8028. And with natural selection making the virus weaker and a prophylactic hydroxychloroqune regime to protect us from its worst effects, getting used to it will be easy. It will become just one of the many inconveniences we are made to suffer in life.
    2
  8029.  @geraldhewing2076  I do not understand you? Are you suggesting that immigrants do not get ill or old?
    2
  8030.  @andrewwatson5324  So immigrants don't get ill or old? That's a miracle.
    2
  8031.  @geraldhewing2076  I don't know the figures. I don't think anyone does. But it is obvious that immigrants get ill and old an need care, isn't it? It is equally obvious that the higher the percentage of population which are immigrants, then eventually the percentage of the population in need of care who are immigrants will be higher. It's a spiral. The percentage of care workers of foreign origin is roughly the same percentage as the percentage of the population as a whole - about 17% in England and Wales, for example. This just means that, proportionately, the immigrant population is serving the immigrant population and resources need to be increased and paid for to service this - with no benefit to the native population.
    2
  8032.  @andrewwatson5324  So what benefits accrue to the native population of this country? All we are doing is importing a population.
    2
  8033.  @geraldhewing2076  You don't need to know figures. You just have to use your brain. Foreigners get old and ill, probably at the same percentage as British people or perhaps slightly higher.
    2
  8034.  @scarba  But Russia is not expansionist. It merely seeks to retain existing economic boundaries.
    2
  8035. But this simply proves masks are useless. Which they are.
    2
  8036. Wonderful when globalist warmongers dole out billions on an unwinnable war while British pensioners freeze and starve.
    2
  8037. NATO is done. It ceased to have a function once it became clear that the Russian Federation was not going to repeat the expansionist mistakes of the Soviet Union. Russia has merely defended its borders and existing interests - as it is doing right now in Ukraine. European countries should be doing the exact opposite of what they seem to be doing . They should reach out to Russia and make some effort to establish friendly relations with mutually advantageous trade deals, instead of pursuing this crazed, war-based thinking.
    2
  8038. In a further desperate search for evidence of climate change the BBC has made a film about cowpats dissolving when it rains.
    2
  8039. What makes you think tariffs will bring in extra revenue?
    2
  8040.  @jodieford5738  Trump has lost a fortune by turning to politics. The idea that he is in it for the money is ridiculous. The way his opponents one minute accuse him of raking it in - and the next sneer at him for being poor - rather proves the point.
    2
  8041. Paul Pelosi has some very strange friends.
    2
  8042. He doesn't look TOO worried, does he?
    2
  8043. @ It makes me sick to my stomach when people compare these two situations. They a have little or nothing in common. Try thinking instead of grasping at foolish analogies.
    2
  8044.  @Geffo555  Depends what it boils down to in the end. I'm in favour of any deal which actually stops the fighting. I hope Trump is clever enough to force Ukraine into granting Putin's demands, which are quite reasonable under the circumstances, and should guarantee peace for at least the foreseeable future.
    2
  8045. I think he must accept the loss of Crimea and of Donetsk and Luhansk at the very least. To carry on at this stage might result in the loss of all four annexed territories and the entire coastline.
    2
  8046.  @swatilalotra3946  Hydroxy not a factor then in your opinion?
    2
  8047.  @aaronstone6183  I am so very puzzled by this. I lived in India for a couple of years and it is so crowded that I find it hard to imagine a lockdown working under such conditions. It is truly a tremendous achievement.
    2
  8048.  John Russell  Flu can have long-term effects too. My dad was hit by a bad flu bug back in the 'fifties, went back to work too early (as you did then) and was basically an invalid for the rest of his life. Many mental illnesses are thought to be caused by viruses affecting the brain in babies which leads to schizophrenia and bi-polar in later life. Looks like Covid 19 will just have to take its place in the long list of afflictions sent to try us.
    2
  8049.  @rodpanhard A great analogy. I will steal it.
    2
  8050.  @timmcardle5764  Not even there. You might say that both are patriotic and even ruthless, but that's as far as it goes.
    2
  8051. Isn't John Sweeney the old drunk who was exposed by Tommy Robinson? As for Russia -who knows? The whole ground war could just as easily be a total charade, designed to keep the Ukrainian forces busy while the Donbass is made secure and its industries rebuilt.
    2
  8052. Essentially the Democrat "hatred" is focussed on one individual - Trump. Which clearly makes him vulnerable. Republicans, on the other hand, hate the whole damn bunch of you.
    2
  8053.  @witthyhumpleton3514  Someone or something has deleted the post to which you have replied. Wasn't me.
    2
  8054.  @stevepi1  I really don't think the dear old Prof would go out of his way to censor comments. It's just the mad YouTube algorithm.
    2
  8055. He may lose some votes from the ignorant and uniformed who have swallowed the official narrative on Ukraine - but he will gain others from those of us who have bothered to investigate the background to this conflict and come to realise that it has been caused by Western greed and interference in the affairs of foreign nations.
    2
  8056. Not as much as Ukraine.
    2
  8057. I seriously doubt that - other than Donald Trump - any US President since Eisenhower has been anything other than a front man for the somewhat sinister forces which actually rule this troublesome nation. They prefer a cabbage. Any attempt to kick over the traces is immediately punished, as with Trump. And looked what happened to Kennedy.
    2
  8058. Kemi has a hard road ahead of her. At this point the best ability her team members should possess is the ability to do as they're told.
    2
  8059. Biden will "win" . The political establishment insists upon it.
    2
  8060. At a stroke the Demorats have lost the votes of any American who has felt cheated and abused by the government. And that's a lot of people, and a lot of them are black.
    2
  8061. But we are not at war with Russia.
    2
  8062. Didn't he take part in the Charge of the Light Brigade?
    2
  8063.  @dpelpal  He never said it
    2
  8064.  @dpelpal  You prove he did!
    2
  8065.  @deadly-roblox3101  But predictions based upon examples. The thesis is that children in an out of school environment stand more chance of passing on infections to vulnerable adults, rather than to other less vulnerable children. The predictions you can discount. It is the data upon which the predictions are based which are important. An infected child at school will in the company of other children. With the best will in the world an infected child at home will come into more contact with adults, especially since many working families will be under pressure to sidestep restrictions. The other side of the coin is that children often develop the disease in its milder forms, with infections in the nose and throat rather than the lungs and it is this form which they pass on.
    2
  8066.  @AlFresco3442  Well at least we're singing from the same hymn sheet! Referring solely to to secondary school teachers does alter the position -though not much. This extract from the article sums up the position for the teaching profession as a whole. When looking at the death rate overall among teaching staff – 18.4 deaths per 100,000 men and 9.8 deaths per 100,000 women – the ONS said they were “statistically significantly lower than the rate of death involving Covid-19 among those of the same age and sex”. It isn't a competition but compared to say taxi drivers or production line factory workers teachers are surviving a great deal better. 169 deaths out of 70,000 or so ?
    2
  8067.  @deadly-roblox3101  And I accept your facts - but as I say they are only of limited relevance. Lots of children getting the sniffles isn't the problem. Keeping them away from granny is. Such as when they're at school.
    2
  8068. What utter crap. Only Trump and Putin have any say in how this pans out. The only question is just how much territory Putin is going to get, and when he's going to get it.
    2
  8069.  @chrisr18  The word bleach was never mentioned. And the word "disinfectant" had been used on its broadest sense by an earlier speaker. It is merely ignorance which assumes the term only applies to household cleaners. And UV light does destroy viruses. Getting the concentration right without it destroying cellular tissue or creating cancers has proved impossible thusfar. It's you who are dumb for falling for this cheap piece of anti-Trump propaganda.
    2
  8070.  @michaelgove9349  How do you define disinfectant? The fact is that Trump was much confused by a previous speaker, a guy from Homeland Security with a military background who used the word "disinfect" in the way the military say they are going to "disinfect" an area of territory. As I recall he also used the word "inject" in a similar context. ie "injecting" troops into a situation. Trump was clearly baffled by all this and was seeking clarification. He probably wasn't being sarcastic as such, but he certainly had doubts about what he thought he had heard. And, once again, at no time and in no way could any of his remarks be interpreted as a suggestion to inject bleach into the bloodstream. Why this minor incident has been seized upon must surely be because Democrat voters are so dim they can only grasp simple words and cannot cope with subtleties of any kind.
    2
  8071.  @Pining_for_the_fjords  Unlike ours, which are.
    2
  8072.  @peterebel7899  You clowns usually cite Nazi Germany as a precedent for your childish delusions. This at least makes a refreshing change.
    2
  8073.  @ab-ym3bf  Not at all, just not paranoid and brainwashed.
    2
  8074.  @Sir_Grumpalot  You confuse democratic principles with the rules of a TV talent show contest. Where, for instance, does one draw the boundaries of a constituency? Do we ignore constituencies completely and simply allocate seats in Parliament by numbers of votes cast, and run down the list? Do we not take demographics or local needs into account? Under the sort of system you seem to support the entire country would be run by members elected according to the wishes of the populations of large conurbations. Country dwellers and the inhabitants of small towns would be totally disenfranchised. This government is no more an "elected dictatorship" than any other, it merely seeks to continue long-established traditions of allowing a fair representation of various interests to affect its deliberations. The alternative to that is indeed rule by the mob, which does invariably morph into a dictatorship, as historical precedents clearly show.
    2
  8075.  @geraldhewing2076  I am no apologist for Johnson and his government and want to see them gone as much as you do. The latter parts of your comment make it quite clear, however, that to replace them with people of your childish and paranoid mindset would really be a leap out of the frying pan into the fire. If by some miracle the Labour Party could escape the curse of wokery and get back to its proper function of representing the interests of the less-propertied classes of all races, colours and creeds, then it just MIGHT achieve the desired objective. Not much chance of that, so the task must be left to elements within the Conservative Party - which are working on it quite circumspectly, believe you me.
    2
  8076.  @JOHN-wm2on  Don't get stoned when you're around guns would be a sensible start.
    2
  8077. Silly Ukraine. It needn't have been like this.
    2
  8078. A prosecution could have been bought, but if it had been successful it would have been for purely political reasons. Trump was entirely justified in casting doubts on the result of of the 2020 election and the 2024 election could well have gone the same way were it not for the fact that the 20 million extra votes the establishment apparently has tucked away in a cupboard somewhere would not have been sufficient to overthrow the result. Too Big to Rig!
    2
  8079. Absolutely spot on!
    2
  8080. The testing system is not fit for purpose. Putting flawed data into flawed computer models is hardly likely to come up with a correct prognosis. And it hasn't.
    2
  8081. I get the feeling that the FBI actually runs America. The politicians are just for show.
    2
  8082. The millions who have blindly followed the official line are in for a shock if the truth finally does come out.
    2
  8083. Washington warmongers started this tragedy for profit. Now there is a peacemaker in the White House.
    2
  8084. Trump is right about everything.
    2
  8085.  @alanpage3973  I don't see how. He represents a very real and potent working class movement, and is prepared to suffer bankruptcy and imprisonment as a result.
    2
  8086.  @keithsquawk  He is not a racist. He has friends of all races. What he is opposed to is extreme Islamism. He has earned money in various ways - but the state keeps taking it off him! Shame he isn't mates with Lord Ali, eh?
    2
  8087. Russia is winning. Why would it want a ceasefire?
    2
  8088. The idea that a bunch of Brit commies are helping Kamala is going to mean more votes for Trump. Thanks, Labour!
    2
  8089.  @daydays12  Give him what he wants. Putin only went to war after his entirely reasonable demands were rejected. The invasion was an act of desperation more than one of aggression.
    2
  8090. ...and meanwhile in other news Ukrainians say Ukrainian soldiers rounded them up and used them as human shields.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY .
    2
  8091. Sadly though, an MP's voting record generally reflects his/her need to remain on board with party hierarchy more than genuine beliefs or feelings. This is how lying to survive begins.
    2
  8092. No other country has needed to. This is about securing borders -not acquiring territory.
    2
  8093.  @ow3wells  Including how tens of thousands fled the plantations and joined up with the British during the American War of Independence?
    2
  8094.  @GARDENER42  It simply isn't. Putin is on record saying many times that he has no interest in ruling Kiev - or any of Western Ukraine, for that matter. Just look at the facts: if you want to take a city you don't send a nose-to-tail column of troops and armour down the main road. That column consisted of mainly raw troops and ancient armour which Putin was prepared to sacrifice in order to reduce the Ukrainian army, in preparation for the REAL war which is taking place right now in Donbass - and which the Russians are winning against a much-depleted Ukrainian force.
    2
  8095.  @Lenser  Do you not realise how foolish it makes you look to believe that people who disagree with you are paid in potatoes? Incidentally, do bots get paid in potatoes? Can they eat them? And why potatoes?
    2
  8096.  @It1nt  Natural cynicism. Unless they are being used to conceal military targets there is no point in bombing things like hospitals and schools. And the numbers of civilian deaths in Ukraine point conclusively to them being collateral damage. Also, as a general point, I feel that demonising Russia merely detracts from the actual political and military issues involved here.
    2
  8097. Cogle_arts Thanks for that, I will.
    2
  8098. How do you feel about imprisoning people you disagree with?
    2
  8099. If only she could make a case for wearing one so quickly and efficiently.
    2
  8100.  @errorswillmultiply1697  How about Option C - stay and join the revolution?
    2
  8101.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I don't accept your hypothetical situation. Hence option C.
    2
  8102. I think there must be some sort of agency when you can hire superannuated military men and hard-up academics with obscure degrees.
    2
  8103. My parrot has just died. I think it was because of Climate Change When I get a new one I'm going to call it Greta. Even if it is a boy parrot.
    2
  8104. Meanwhile Antifa are continuing to tear Dem-run cities apart. But Antifa are only an idea, so it doesn't matter.
    2
  8105. Judges next for the Musk treatment, I should imagine.
    2
  8106. Trump is saying that democracy has failed. And he's right. That doesn't mean it has to be replaced, but it certainly needs a reset.
    2
  8107. May I take this opportunity to wish the Labour Party every success when forming the next government of this country? It will screw up, of course - governments always do - but it will give the Tories the chance to decide if they want to be proper Conservatives or just a gang of globalist shills, as at present.
    2
  8108. This bleaching does seem open to considerable dispute. NOAA has gained a reputation for pushing the Climate Crisis agenda to the limit and there is a strong suggestion that bleaching and consequent renewal of coral beds is part of a natural cycle, and nothing at all to do with global warming as such.
    2
  8109. But covid in children really is no big deal. Deaths and serious outcomes are statistically negligible and only seem to occur in children with pre-existing health problems.
    2
  8110. Zelensky's propaganda grows increasingly desperate. The fact is now, after several weeks of virtual stalemate, the Russians are making advances on the s. east front with Bakhmut close to being surrounded and all supply routes cut.
    2
  8111. What's going to collapse are the minds of the intellectually-challenged twits who believe nonsense like this.
    2
  8112. ​ @isolationstation5157  He can't do that because of the hate crime laws, can he?
    2
  8113. The fossil fuel "menace" is utter crap, and those who push the threat most know this more than anyone.
    2
  8114.  @Theywaswrong  What a silly idea.
    2
  8115.  @Leberteich  Absolutely not. It was much better when exclusively for the hereditaries and one or two lifers who really deserved it to replace proper peers whose lines died out.
    2
  8116. At this stage it seems very much as though Russia actually has a plan - and always has done.
    2
  8117. Disgraceful propaganda, worthy of Goebbels and Stalin. For a start the vaccinated v unvaccinated graph is way out of date. Grouping people who have genuine concerns about the side effects of the vaccine with nutjobs is enough to make you think the nutjobs might be on to something. As for the tired old hymns to the global warming cult...I despair. Only the thoroughly brainwashed will be fooled by any of this. The BBC just slithers further and further into the pits of shame.
    2
  8118. This "teacher" is obviously insane and should not be allowed anywhere near children.
    2
  8119. All politicians lie - carrying it off with panache, aplomb and a twinkle in the eye is what separates the likes of Boris and Trump from the usual drab parade of statistic-quoting nonentities.
    2
  8120. Starmer is the enemy of the people he is supposed to represent.
    2
  8121. It's all pretty much guesswork. Putin could easily have thrown a lot of expendable material at the initial offensive, simply to drain Ukraine's military, and is now getting on with his initial objective - taking and controlling Donbass.
    2
  8122. Like me, I'm sure many people will be too busy wondering how much his suit cost to take much notice of what he's actually saying.
    2
  8123. Sigmund Freud would have had something to say about this; fear linked to anal obsession, perhaps.
    2
  8124.  @wandah9468  You really have sucked up all the old propaganda haven't you!? Actual Sam was recently mobilized. Do visit his channel and he'll tell you all about it.
    2
  8125.  @Olgamyr  More nonsense. Anna from Russia blogs from an unpronounceable city in Siberia. The shopping mall there is huge. Sam has lived in the little town of Vladomir for 17 years. Country life might be a little primitive by Western standards, but even then it looks remarkably comfortable. Plumbing is a bit of a problem on account of the pipes freezing, so the old-fashioned ways are best. A roaring log fire beats a radiator any day in my book.
    2
  8126. You will hail him as a hero and promise him the earth, then cast him aside as you do all your puppets. God bless America.
    2
  8127.  @helenmcinerney1058  They still win.
    2
  8128.  @Liendoelcm  That's a matter of opinion. They have thoroughly depleted the enemy forces, established a firm hold on much of the territory they wish to gain and are now advancing in order to gain the rest of it.
    2
  8129.  @7171jay  I was referring to the current situation in Donetsk.
    2
  8130.  @AAWT  Look at a geological map. This farmland is sitting on tonnes and tonnes of lithium.
    2
  8131.  mrb.9822  By whom? These things I have found out for myself, after being puzzled by the inconsistences apparent in the versions of events we in the West are expected to believe.
    2
  8132. Looting? What looting?
    2
  8133. Good
    2
  8134. At this rate sanctions are going to hurt the West more than Russia.
    2
  8135. Andrew Brent Not so much a hoax as an error. Our Serbian's model came up with the idea that carbon molecules vibrate in such a way that the heat of the sun reflected from the earth's surface cannot pass through them. A recent study using literally billions of chunks of data from weather balloons across the world has proved him wrong. This is good news but it has a HUGE mountain of embarrassment and financial commitment to the greenhouse effect myth to overcome before it becomes widely known. You are one of the first to be told, you lucky boy!
    2
  8136.  @nuclearblackhole  Too old!
    2
  8137.  @xvi1128  ?? Too clever for me!
    2
  8138.  @QuercusQuest  I really don't think so. It would have been an unexpected bonus but the Russian's real aim has been to draw Ukraine into battle in order not to gain territory, but to destroy as much of its army as possible.
    2
  8139.  @QuercusQuest  Russia does. And the real invasion is now due. It's aim is not to conquer Ukraine but to secure Crimea and Donbass - which is all Russia has ever wanted to do. The Russians are not as well-organised and trained as the Ukrainians, but they are as stubborn as hell and prepared to take quite incredible losses.
    2
  8140.  @zhanezar  Fake news! Why the hell would Russia even see any percentage in doing that? Just the MSM and the Democrats feeding the fools.
    2
  8141.  @zhanezar  Who says? And why not? The deep state will do all it can to bring Trump down. The CIA isn't one thing. It is many things with many influences within it. They did actually pay the Taliban to kill Russians in Afghanistan back in the 'eighties, by the way. Perhaps that's where they got this idea from.
    2
  8142. These people are so brainwashed. Glad you can see through the hype.
    2
  8143.  @alexandertrekker6328  It might be an extravagant analogy, I admit - but the fact remains that while NATO is advertised as a defensive coalition it is predominantly an arm of American commercial enterprise and military expansion.
    2
  8144.  @alexandertrekker6328  Your civility is appreciated.
    2
  8145.  @vanyabourjaily7401  It depends what you mean by neo-Nazi. Ukraine has a very unfortunate relationship with German Nazism. During the German occupation, Ukrainian police and army herded Jews into the gorge at Babi Yar to be murdered by the thousand and civilians lined the streets to jeer as the Jews were marched to their deaths. The Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian military units still use Nazi badges and paraphernalia, but their fascism is now directed more towards the Russian population. It is this which Putin seizes upon with his accusations of Nazism, and it is certainly true that these extreme nationalist Ukrainians hate Russians and have shown it in the cruellest ways. It is of course more of an excuse than a reason for the invasion. The reasons are more to do with economics and national security.
    2
  8146. If animal cunning and overwhelming self-confidence amount to genius - then Trump is exactly that. All power to his elbow. America is run by warmongering crooks and liars who have left indelible stains on the world. They have to go, and if their replacement should happen to be a slightly bent New York businessman then so be it.
    2
  8147.  @boink800  Russia offered a peaceful Minsk-type peace programme which had been accepted until Boris came along. Draw your own conclusions.
    2
  8148. Are you seriously suggesting that wearing masks would have affected these figures to any great degree? If masking and lockdowns were the magic bullets they are supposed to be then Sweden ought to be above the rest, should it not? In fact, very much like the UK, Sweden had a very large elderly population, many in their nineties, protected from death by free and efficient healthcare systems. It was these who have suffered the brunt of the pandemic. The UK masked and enforced lockdowns. Sweden of course did not.
    2
  8149. Maybe Elon will buy it!
    2
  8150. NATO has had its day. It's just a glorified protection racket.
    2
  8151.  @davidmurphy563  See how you feel in about three week's time. (Not that it's MY military. I'm English.)
    2
  8152.  @davidmurphy563  Credulous, aren't you?
    2
  8153.  @ninaotan7811  She may be vague in detail, but she is sound in principle.
    2
  8154. Learn a lesson in political cunning. Johnson is now the puppet of the right of his party, who can drip-feed allegations and tighten the noose unless he pushes their policies instead of the wet, green policies his missus has talked him into. Bloody lovely!
    2
  8155. Yet another Labour attack on free speech. This is going to end very, very badly, one way or another.
    2
  8156. You might as well ask what Zelensky had on Joe Biden to make him splurge out countless billions.
    2
  8157.  @Dan-ud8hz  Muslim convert, it seems.
    2
  8158. Michael RCH Hundreds of millions will certainly die if the Green New Deal -or anything like it - is ever implemented. If it isn't then they won't - because AGW is a downright lie.
    2
  8159.  N Xarigow  That or Sky News Australia. Between them they provided as balanced world view as you're likely to get in a world where journalism has largely died.
    2
  8160.  @18890426  BBC (paid for by mandatory taxation of around $200 plus a year and massive donations from Bill Gates) ITV, Channel 4, Sky. That's about it.)
    2
  8161.  @lazurusknight2724  Wikipedia? That fountain of truth?
    2
  8162.  @stephenthomas3085  Fortunately nature ends to ignore the restrictions we try to place upon it.
    2
  8163.  @whistlingchickenleg  It's no lie. Ukraine had a chance to simply keep Donbass out of any deal with the EU and Russia would have been happy with that. Now Ukraine's going to lose the lot.
    2
  8164.  @alexsilent5603  Or were pushed by greedy outsiders!
    2
  8165. Truth will win in the end. Take comfort from this irrefutable fact.
    2
  8166.  @sardo.numspa  It is when your leaders have been blackmailed or bribed by foreign agencies into rejecting a perfectly acceptable compromise.
    2
  8167. ​ @sardo.numspa How can keeping hold of resources you already possess be described as "imperial gains." ? Russia is fighting to keep hold of what it already has, and has had for many years, not attempting to gain anything new. The problem has arisen because the new country of Ukraine, created in 1991, was set on the same footprint of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine which was a Russian creation, under Russian control. Before that the whole area was part of the Russian Empire. The idea of a country called "Ukraine" is a romantic notion created in the 19th century and, as worthy as that idea may be, it cannot include parts of what has never been Ukraine, other than parts of the Russian-controlled SSR of Ukraine. So long as the government of the new Ukraine acknowledged Russian interests then Russia could go along with this unsatisfactory state of affairs That all changed in 2014 and these "annexations" are, in fact, Russian attempts to prevent territory they consider to be theirs being handed over to US and European interests.
    2
  8168.  @sardo.numspa  These are not imperialist gains. Russia is merely trying to keep hold of long-standing commercial interests, and to protect the interests of the very many Russian people living in these areas. What you many consider as annexations, Russia considers to be liberations. Creating the new country of Ukraine on the same footprint as the former Russian-controlled Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was an error leading to many anomalies which could have been settled peacefully, had it not been for the interference of Western agencies.
    2
  8169.  @PaulusN-p3m  Do you enjoy being an ignorant child?
    2
  8170.  @andrewfrancis3591  War is over. It used to make economic sense - but not any more. Russia has no expansionist ambitions. Why should it? Imperialism destroyed the SU and the Russian Federation will not make the same mistake.
    2
  8171.  @udsmall7306  These casualty figures are absurd. And golf carts are great for getting troops about in roughish terrain. Winning means taking territory the enemy very much doesn't want you to have. And that is exactly what the Russians are doing.
    2
  8172.  @lawrenceksyahoocom  It isn't aggression. Russia's actions in Ukraine are defensive. They are protecting long-standing mineral interests from the prospect of foreign takeover. Whether or not the disputed territories of Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine can be described as their "homeland" is very much a moot point. They are more Russian, and what Ukrainians are there came later, and invariably while these areas were under Russian or Ottoman control. Russia could, of course have accepted defeat without a murmur - but why should it? Especially since peaceful solutions were on the table, only to be rejected by Ukraine's handlers in Washington.
    2
  8173.  @lawrenceksyahoocom  What homeland?
    2
  8174.  @udsmall7306  Winning looks like taking territory your enemy very much doesn't want you to have. Which is what the Russians are doing.
    2
  8175.  @vaevak418  Why do you speak like someone who has swallowed three years of Western propaganda without bothering to investigate the facts for yourself?
    2
  8176. Kemi and Tommy - a dream team to defeat Labour!
    2
  8177.  @DavidMoxham957  How about tag-team wrestling?
    2
  8178.  @db7084  IF anything reveals the utter insanity of the left it is their attitude to "gender issues." How one hankers after the days when they just blathered on about workers' rights.
    2
  8179. What free world is that then?
    2
  8180. I'm more and more coming to think there is a case to be made for Islam to become a proscribed religion, as was Roman Catholicism in Protestant England.
    2
  8181. Thankyou! It is so re-assuring to have my instincts confirmed by further information from the ground, as it were.
    2
  8182.  tin pan alley 1619 Broadway  What fantasy world are you living in? Trump is just playing the Democrats for suckers. If he was laundering money for the Russians (Which he wasn't. It would be a crazy thing to do) Do you think it would show up on his TAX RETURNS?!
    2
  8183.  @hal90001  Never watch it.
    2
  8184. The Daily Telegraph stopped being a newspaper long ago. Why are you taking any notice of anything it says?
    2
  8185. Muslims and lefties both live in fantasy worlds, where common decency is sacrificed to an all-consuming self-righteousness.
    2
  8186. They're under your bed! They're coming to get you!
    2
  8187.  @slappyfun  This is a common misapprehension. There are so many trillions upon trillions of Covid 19 viruses in the world that it is a statistical certainty that all viable strains already exist. They only come into prominence when exterior circumstances change, providing small differences with an advantage.
    2
  8188. Yet more evidence of the dangers of lockdowns.
    2
  8189. As mad for the EU as you might well be, it is time to realise that the war in Ukraine has entirely altered the world economy in general, and the European economy in particular. The effects of Brexit will be practically swallowed up in the coming chaos. Indeed, the EU may not even survive this. Which, since it was instrumental in starting this bloody war, would be a kind of poetic justice.
    2
  8190.  @dglenday8705  Very well put.
    2
  8191.  @jjefferyworboys8138  That makes sense.
    2
  8192. I think you've just been blocked.
    2
  8193. BLM is a protection racket with over 80per cent of the money it gets going straight to the Democrat Party. There's a hell of a lot hanging on the results of the November election. If Biden wins BLM will want its due reward - and that will mean anarchy.
    2
  8194.  @Cherish1056  Moscow then!
    2
  8195.  @Cherish1056  It was a union of soviet socialist republics of which Russia alone was autonomous and which, in the last analysis, reigned supreme over the other members.
    2
  8196. Otto Carnage We should bring back horses. We could use their shit to grow food in too.
    2
  8197.  @joshuabetts2484  The shoot em up statement was, as usual, a soundbite taken out of context. As to the "untested" drug it has now been proved to reduce coranavirus death rates in hospitals by up to 50 per cent. This is despite it being rubbished by hack "scientists" in the Lancet. You've been watching too much news. Or rather leftist anti-Trump propaganda disguised as news.
    2
  8198. No. That's everyone who keeps fuelling the war.
    2
  8199. As ever, the "experts" fail to grasp that Russia is not trying to simply gain territory, but to destroy the enemy. It sets its pace accordingly.
    2
  8200. @JM 9 You are probably right, but we have a duty to at least try to counteract Marxist brainwashing.
    2
  8201.  @althomas3168  Then why are so many former Ukrainian naval and army officers now listed as traitors by Ukraine for going over to the Russians? Why didn't they fight back? One thing is certain: in the unlikely event of Ukraine attempting to regain Crimea they will meet very firm resistance from the Crimean (Russian) armed forces and civilian population.
    2
  8202.  @BENDEK09  And the Middle East
    2
  8203. The only humanitarian and truly socialist/globalist answer is to arrange for a regular ferry service, using properly seaworthy craft.
    2
  8204. Ah, happy days! You're quite right of course, but the British, like the Mob, have gone legit now - more or less.
    2
  8205. @E KL Ukraine put down the separatist rebellions in Donbass with savage ferocity. During the Mariupol siege the civilians trapped in cellars and bomb shelters as human shields were shot by Ukrainian snipers if they tried to get out to seek food and water. Some of them were cemented in so they could not escape.
    2
  8206.  @superhumantrueman  The Budapest Memorandum is dead in the water. Why should Russia accept US missiles being stationed where its own missiles were stationed a little over 30 years ago? As for the rest,Ukraine is just as guilty of atrocities as Russia. The invasion was an act of desperation more than anything else. US aggression and expansionism is the cause of this war - as it has been for most conflicts in the world over the past 80 years.
    2
  8207.  @alienthed.e.i.9165  Nah. He's just average brainwashed.
    2
  8208. The Kursk adventure is merely an attempt to gain a couple of of bargaining chips in the hopefully imminent peace talks. Ukraine has lost this war.
    2
  8209. It's a myth to believe the rise of the populist right in recent years is somehow the result of sinister manipulation . It is a genuine reaction to the excesses and inanities of "woke", social engineering policies. Personally I hope Le Pen wins, am glad that Orban did so convincingly and look forward to a similar figure emerging in this country. "Far right" doesn't mean fascism. It means emphasis on individual freedoms, not collectivism.
    2
  8210.  @canuckprogressive.3435  He is shelling street markets, apartment blocks, villages and schools. The Ukrainians have been doing this for eight years. Thousands of civilians have died.
    2
  8211.  @gekkehobbykoe  Including all those little children and other innocent civilians?
    2
  8212.  @arjan2777  These are figures from the 2001 census which is readily accessible online. People identifying as Russian accounted for 17.3% of the population as a whole, but the percentage is far higher in Crimea and Donbass. There are various other minorities, each generally representing less than1%. The original inhabitants, the Tatars, still have a higher representation in Crimea which was Turkish until annexed by Russia in the late 18th century.
    2
  8213. https://c19study.com/ Any comments on this? I need to check its veracity. By the way just such a study is currently taking place involving 40,000 health care workers from all over the world. It is being done under the auspices of the WHO using money provided by Bill Gates, so I don't hold out much hope for its objectivity. You realise of course that people are dying who needn't do so while "scientists" dither over this drug? Dithering bought and paid for by Big Pharma.
    2
  8214. @ Ridiculous! Even in Siberia there are large modern cities which put European equivalents to shame!
    2
  8215. Each one of these deaths was totally unnecessary. Putin's peace proposals put forward even before he lined up his troops on the border were entirely reasonable. The tragedy is that all these deaths - both Ukrainian and Russian - were pointless. At the end of the day Russia will probably gain more than it actually asked for, and for which it would have been entirely content.
    2
  8216. "We is all pink inside, just same Queen Victoria." A quote the origins of which I forget.
    2
  8217.  @robinbanks183  Not by the MSM certainly - and nor the fact that he was out of his face on fetanyl and crystal meth when he was arrested.
    2
  8218. A somewhat simplistic view.
    2
  8219. It's no coincidence that tensions are building up worldwide following Biden's "election."
    2
  8220. Testing the BBC censorship algorithm can be fun.
    2
  8221.  @byroncharles6092  Your understanding of both physics and physiology is at fault I fear.
    2
  8222.  @byroncharles6092  The restrainer isn´t putting his full weight into the hold . Sure, you COULD kill someone if you pressed down hard for enough time but Chauvin did not do this. Floyd was still alive when the ambulance arrived. In theory such a restraint could be maintained for much longer than nine minutes.
    2
  8223. Why am I banned?
    2
  8224.  @Handles_be_dumb  America has been run by con men for 200 years.
    2
  8225.  @セ千尺丂セ  Of course Russia has a professional army. It also has a large contingent of experienced mercenaries on the payroll.
    2
  8226. This soundbites are so dangerous. Under cross-examination this woman admitted that if she had examined the body without seeing the video she would have attributed cause of death to heart failure and drug misuse.
    2
  8227.  @dpelpal  It hasn't.
    2
  8228.  @dpelpal  The maps show a steady Russian advance. Ukraine is to be commended for putting up such a strong and brave resistance, but an eventual Russian victory now seems inevitable.
    2
  8229. Biden is merely the puppet of the Washington warmongers who brought him to power. This kind of talk suits their mindset admirably.
    2
  8230.  docbogus6128  I'm pretty sure that there must by now be a strong feeling in Ukraine that this just isn't worth it - and perhaps never was. Zelensky and his cronies can't admit this of course, but there must be some people there smart enough to realise that the best way out is do what Putin asked for in the first place - and give him Donbass.
    2
  8231. This war certainly is important. If Russia wins (and it very likely will) America will lose its status as the most important country in the world.
    2
  8232.  @HectorHectorious  Fair point - even though it was pretty stupid.
    2
  8233.  @zizuette  I imagine I'd be very upset.
    2
  8234.  @HectorHectorious  Guess what? YouTube won't let me tell you!!!
    2
  8235.  @HectorHectorious  One sought world domination. The other just wants to be left alone.
    2
  8236.  @HectorHectorious  Working out what belongs to whom is what this war is about.
    2
  8237.  @HectorHectorious  I really think YouTube wants to stop all political discussions and concentrate on money-spinning channels that have millions of hits and millions of subscribers. Advertising on a channel with some kid playing Minecraft is vastly more profitable that you and I arguing on a channel which averages a couple of hundred views at the most.
    2
  8238.  @ilovecoffeev  It was quite clear that NATO was manouevering to include Ukraine in the latest stage of its expansion programme. This would be akin to having Russian bases in Canada and able to nuke Washington in a matter of minutes.
    2
  8239.  @Hyperpandas  How would America react if Russia created a new army in Mexico or Canada and made plans to station nuclear missiles there?
    2
  8240.  @vercoda9997  I hate these analogies really, but are you suggesting that the British and the French would be happy to have Russian nuclear bases and a Russian army based in the Republic?
    2
  8241.  @ilovecoffeev Nearly all treaties fall by the wayside in time, and Budapest was a non-starter, really. It was signed by a drunkard amid the chaos of the collapse of the USSR and numerous efforts have been made since to make the Russia/Ukraine relationship more realistically assessed. In any case the threat of NATO membership is only part of Russia's reasoning. They want to demolish Ukraine's large new NATO financed army and keep a hold on the vast mineral wealth of Donbass. As for breaking treaties anyone can and does. How about Minsk?
    2
  8242.  @DaleHartley  None, however, are seven minutes' flying time from Moscow as would have been the case if stationed in Ukraine. Missiles are just part of the picture though. NATO has trained and financed a large Ukrainian army, which is more immediately threatening to Russia's interests. Attempting to destroy this army is a major objective for the Russians, as well as keeping their hold on Crimea and extending their hold on mineral-rich Donbass.
    2
  8243.  Baglamaci 🇹🇷  Anything which affects the delicate balance if power in a potential nuclear conflict is dangerous. Anyway your geography is out, though only by a hundred or so km. Ukraine joining NATO would have been more of a psychological blow than anything. The real truth is that Russia is seeking excuses to protect its interests in the vast mineral wealth of Donbass.
    2
  8244. He has also supported Bernie Saunders. The most significant fact about him though is that he is a pro-Ukraine fanatic, has fought there and recruits other mercenaries too. If Zelensky wanted someone to have a pop at Trump he couldn't find a more suitable candidate.
    2
  8245. With a population of around 210 million and 87,000 deaths Brazil seems to be doing considerably better than we are. (67million and 45,000). Since the figures are all more or less made up anyway, it scarcely matters.
    2
  8246. Having rested up after taking Bahkmut and leaving the equally ferocious Chechens to take over, I think we can anticipate Wagner moving in to mop up these amateurs fairly swiftly.
    2
  8247. This is the Russian Defence Force, a neo Nazi gang with close links to Ukraine's notorious Azov Battalion. They a Slav supremacists who regard Putin as a traitor.
    2
  8248.  @timonsolus  No different to America then.
    2
  8249.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  To prevent them becoming bases for enemies and to maintain important economic ties. These countries are connected to Russia in far more real sense than those countries conquered by the Soviet Union. Their histories are intertwined with that of Russia. Russia is content for them to be ruled independently, but draws the line at them being taken over by foreign powers, ie America.
    2
  8250.  @godslovehasnobounds6376  Odd that, isn't it?
    2
  8251.  @tilley6351  While this may true to a great extent it ignores the fact that Russia is inevitably going to feel threatened by Western expansion -as indeed it has for nigh-on 500 years. The contrasts between Western consumerism and Russian poverty are not as pronounced as they were pre 1990 and many Russians living in Ukraine feel that being turned into a nation of customers for Western delights isn't necessarily for them.
    2
  8252.  @mariogmajner6549  A concise and excellent precis. I might pinch bits of it. Hope you don't mind.
    2
  8253.  @Mark-Haddow  I'm angry sure. But it isn't gibberish.
    2
  8254. @Mr Toad We know already that they are minimal. It is only the elderly and the immuno-compromised who die with previous strains.
    2
  8255.  @bigkdog5091  I don't think you have any idea what Trump is like.
    2
  8256. Such a pity all the expensive equipment the Americans sold them doesn't work. They'll have to get by with Molotov cocktails and army-surplus automatic rifles.
    2
  8257. @Will he heck as like Trump didn't manipulate the system to get in. This is what surprised and shocked the political establishment so much. They have now cheated like hell to get back to the status quo where the illusion of democracy leads poor suckers to believe they have a say in anything. Trump is a populist who won in 2016 because people are heartily sick of being conned by the creatures of the swamp. With Biden things are now back to normal. Democracy died in America around 200 years ago.
    2
  8258.  @DrumToTheBassWoop  I see your point and agree with it. I'm hoping that poor old Edward can be a sacrifice to appease the howling mob. Their unreasoning prejudices can stay at the bottom of the harbour with his statue. They think they have a victory but all they have is a concession. Throwing the statue of an early 18th century businessman into the harbour is a symbol of their obsession with past sins while ignoring the great strides forward that have been made since then. You can never hope to convert these people to a reasoned view; they have been far too brainwashed. Toss them bones though, and they might keep quiet. If they start on the books though then they should be put up against a wall and shot. And I'm only half kidding.
    2
  8259. And scarcely a hint of political bias! (I'll pretend I didn't see the split-second shot of a C02 belching chimney towards the end.) If only the BBC would stick to innocent and useful stuff like this instead of covering contemporary events so ineptly the licence fee might just be worth it.
    2
  8260.  @sydneyashworth8515  You're talking about the Soviet Union, not the Russian Federation. America has funded the IRA more than the SU anyway.
    2
  8261.  @stephengillott9435  No.
    2
  8262.  @stephengillott9435  The Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are not by any means the same thing. The Soviet Union collapsed more than thirty years ago. It is no more. It is a dead parrot. The Russian Federation is a different thing entirely. Is this now clear to you?
    2
  8263.  @stephengillott9435  He isn't.
    2
  8264.  @sydneyashworth8515  The point is that it was the Soviet Union not the Russian Federation which helped arm the IRA - and the American Irish did so too.
    2
  8265.  @edwinstubbs2118  I believe you are incorrect. From Statista: "The combined defense expenditure for members of NATO was approximately 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2022, the highest NATO members have collectively spent on defense during the provided time period. During this time period NATO's collective defense spending was lowest in 2015, at 895.68 billion dollars, but has increased every year since then, reaching over one trillion U.S. dollars for the first time in 2019." In any case NATO is obviously too scared to confront Russia head on, and so pursues American and European financial interest through proxy wars, such as in Georgia and now in Ukraine. The objective is clearly the dissolution of the Russian Federation in order to gain access primarily to the vast mineral resources available. It is part of a clear strategy of monopolar. US-centred globalism. The current target is Donbass but this ambition, pursued doggedly since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been characterised by a gradual eastward spread of NATO countries, fuelled and accompanied by covert destabilisation in some areas, and deliberate exaggeration of the threat posed by Russia in others.
    2
  8266. You don't pay your taxes to your country. You pay them to your government.
    2
  8267. America currently has a choice between two elderly con-artists. Makes you think.
    2
  8268.  alex kennedy  Soros isn't a socialist. He just pretends to be one in order to further his schemes of manipulation. He has realised that lefties aren't very clever and will do anything you want as long as you make them feel good about themselves.
    2
  8269.  @eduardocajias5626  How very kind. There is no reason why people who disagree with one another should not try to be civil.
    2
  8270. Trump is 100% right. Ukraine allowed itself to be manipulated by US warmongers trying to lay their hands on the mineral riches of Eastern Ukraine. The war started in 2014 when Ukraine sent the tanks in to blast towns and villages in separatist Donbass.
    2
  8271. And it's all due to the machinations of the Washington warmongers who shoehorned this senile moron into office.
    2
  8272.  @brianferguson7840  But does their input actually balance what they cost in terms of increased infrastructure and services?
    2
  8273. Sorry Phil, but if I ran a circus wouldn't give you a job as a fortune teller.
    2
  8274.  @justinjewell8329  Well he IS rather gorgeous in a rough and ready Northern sort of way.....
    2
  8275. This is the Mother of Parliaments not a school debating society.
    2
  8276.  @theimperialist2686  He was trying it on. What his thought processes were I can't really say. The film has had, I think, well over 50million views and is a pretty slick piece of work. But it is flawed in that some of the allegations made are hearsay. It contains apparent inaccuracies and these undermine the potential veracity of the whole. I think though that he was so pleased with it that some kind of artistic pride led him to have it shown, despite the court order.
    2
  8277.  @theimperialist2686  I don't disagree. He took on the law and the law won, as the song goes.
    2
  8278. Putin is a competent, pragmatic and highly intelligent ruler. Yes, the West is partially responsible for his rise to power because the West - or more particularly the USA - refused to take advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union by forming meaningful ties with the Russian Federation. Russia would only be allowed in the club as yet another American poodle, like the UK and other NATO countries. Putin will have none of it and in this he has the support of the majority of Russians.
    2
  8279. We must stop this NOW! The current vicious government in the US has no qualms about sacrificing tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives in pursuit of its commercial aims. British lives are equally dispensable, it seems. We owe America nothing. Yanks Go Home!
    2
  8280. The West is set to lose both the economic war with Russia and the territorial one.
    2
  8281.  @janickpauwels3792  How about you get out of the world as it was, and the world as it might be, and start trying to deal with the world as it is?
    2
  8282.  @janickpauwels3792  What needs to be done? Get ourselves all worked up about a threat that isn't there? That's the way wars start. (Do what needs to be done sounds remarkably sinister, by the way.)
    2
  8283.  @rocketscience4516  Put another record on, Rocket. You can do better than this! You'll be accusing me of being a Kremlin troll next.
    2
  8284.  @rocketscience4516  What do you mean "go to bed?" I've just got up!
    2
  8285.  @rocketscience4516  "Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man heathy, wealthy and wise".
    2
  8286.  @rocketscience4516  You seem a bit off form today, Rocket. Your insults are usually pithier than this. Perhaps you're not getting enough sleep?
    2
  8287.  @rocketscience4516  Now that's more like it!
    2
  8288.  @TyllerBoom  But this offensive seems to have very little strategic purpose.
    2
  8289. Trump is ending an era of US aggression which sought economic advantage through war.
    2
  8290. I really don't think Trump will be all that bothered. His biggest task will be trying to counteract all the pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia propaganda which has so infected the minds of Americans and other Westerners over the past three years.
    2
  8291. England will do no worse or no better. The restrictions are utterly useless and always have been.
    2
  8292.  @michaeldunham3385  I'm puzzled. Where have I made such an error? I'm not saying it's not possible, but I can't pin this one down. Please help?
    2
  8293. Vomit or weep. Maybe both. This idiotic hero worship of the Ukrainian clown shames the Mother of Parliaments.
    2
  8294.  @kwesiadjei589  He's entitled to his opinions!
    2
  8295. This is the direct result of uncontrolled and undocumented immigration which has left Britain with an unknown population far, far in excess of that which was planned for.
    2
  8296.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  In Russia they actually catch criminals and punish them. And Target and Walmart are full of the processed junk which passes as food in the US.
    2
  8297. Why are sporty types often so very thick?
    2
  8298.  @jamonit7169  If it isn't the blackout it's seatbelts. I wish they'd come up with something original.
    2
  8299. Ukrainians too?
    2
  8300. You can't blame him for walking out. It 's all just theatre after all.
    2
  8301.  @allanedwards1036  It doesn't. Anyway there are many factors affecting covid deaths other than the measures taken, such as general health, age and population density. Australia does, however, currently have an extremely high excess death rate , especially among young and lower middle-aged people. Heart attacks are the main cause and it appears likely that these are a direct result of the consequences of the excessive measures taken in the attempt to beat covid, which generally only killed the very elderly or those suffering from conditions such as diabetes, which affect the immune system.
    2
  8302. They're going to need them.
    2
  8303. I know soldiers need enemies to justify their existence, but this absurd notion that Russia wants it empire back is going to be the death of us all.
    2
  8304. Leave the kids alone. This group is typical of the far-left opportunists who have seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to undermine society through fear. Roberts, despite her fancy title, is an archaeologist who got her TV break as a pink-haired trowel-wielder on Time Team. Like the rest of them she is motivated by ideological considerations - not issues of public health.
    2
  8305. The answer is simple. Just disbelieve everything the BBC says.
    2
  8306. The next step will be making young people infertile. I wonder how they'll do that?
    2
  8307. Explain how is this is different to what the US did in Germany, Vietnam, Iraq etc and what is happening now on a far larger scale in Syria? How come the Palestinians are the darlings of the world?
    2
  8308. Absolute nonsense. It's having trouble taking Donbass - which is all it wants.
    2
  8309.  @WangAiHua  We really must stop confusing the Soviet Union with the Russian Federation. Contemporary Russia has no wish for expansion, merely in protecting existing interests.
    2
  8310.  @Blanka1100  What about the eight million Russians living in Ukraine - close on 20% of the population - are they free to decide their allegiance?
    2
  8311.  @roshnisingh3418  How can a list of historical facts be a distorted view of history? I was merely providing the information you requested.
    2
  8312.  @Blanka1100  In fact around three million Russians have left Eastern Ukraine over the past year. But they will be returning to their homes once Ukraine is defeated.
    2
  8313.  @lacosa24x  You are living in a world of brainwashed fantasy. Many Westerners move to Russia and enjoy it enormously. Some of them even have YouTube channels. Try Sam's Russian Adventures, Travelling with Russell and Real Reporter for insights into life there. You will be surprised.
    2
  8314.  @ganeshiyer9672  I get so tired of these childish analogies. If Cornwall and Dover had 70 % Russian populations and if Russia had spent the past 300 years developing their industries then your comparison might have some validity. Otherwise not.
    2
  8315.  @Michael-mt6yb  A recent poll claims that 39% of Americans believe the election was rigged, including many Democrats. Having watched some of the many hours of evidence given before recent state senate hearings, I do too.
    2
  8316.  @sta9706  If he'd got out and showed there were no weapons in the car he might have got an explanation.
    2
  8317.  @Paul-wo3qh  I entirely agree that finding out the actual truth is impossible in situations like this. All we can do is put information to the test of likelihood, and that means having the time to thoroughly research as much as we can. As for the Moskva, I don't think there can be much doubt that the Ukrainians sank it, and it was a great victory for them. The Russian denials have, in fact, been rather subdued. More controversial are, for instance, the attack on Kramatorsk station and the theatre in Mariupol, both of which I am convinced were the work of the Azov Battalion. The "massacres" in Bucha and elsewhere are open to considerable interpretation. The Russians killed some, the Ukrainians killed their share and some anti-Russian evidence is almost certainly faked.
    2
  8318. Why would they?
    2
  8319.  @raywalters243  Ukraine's army has been destroyed. Russia holds 20% of the country and 80% of its coastline. It remains in a strong position and would be willing to sue for peace. It has always been so willing, as the treaty proposals offered before the invasion clearly show.
    2
  8320.  @_wanted_outlaw3007  Who is Gerkin? And far from having "strategically lost" Russia has achieved its first military objective - the destruction of a large part of the Ukrainian army on its own territory - and is now on its way towards achieving the next objective - the occupation of the whole of Donbass.
    2
  8321. All of it is horse manure. But don't unsubscribe. It's great fun watching inefficient propagandists flounder about, and some of the comments are a variety show all in themselves!
    2
  8322. Are these guys just after Muslim votes or are they just scared of them?
    2
  8323. The UK and the EU are floundering about like goldfish in a puddle. Europe is not a political entity and nor can it ever be one. It is just a name for an ill-defined geographical area.
    2
  8324.  @maartenaalsmeer  I'm 76 years of age and know more about the world than you probably ever will.
    2
  8325. You just did exactly that.
    2
  8326. Even if Trump is guilty of these obscure technicalities, those who engineered this sinister farce are guilty of far, far greater crimes.
    2
  8327. King-Kay Gaming The only people rigging elections in the UK have been Labour-supporting members of a certain religion which bans lies and deceit - unless used for the purpose of advancing that religion. Tories don't need to rig elections. The people always return to them naturally.
    2
  8328. Another good reason for hoping Trump wins then.
    2
  8329.  @anglonorse2943  No. He's saying they are being taken advantage of. Which they are.
    2
  8330.  @anglonorse2943  No-one is abusing lifeboat crews. No-one. It is just being pointed out that they and the people who support them are being taken advantage of by crooks - and it would be as well to realise it.
    2
  8331.  @caractacus22  They were a basis for negotiation. Even if they were fully complied with it would have been a better result than what we have now.
    2
  8332.  @caractacus22  Is this the same Poroshenko who banned the export of coal from Donbass, then bought it all himself on the black market and sold it on in Kiev, pretending it had come from Mexico?
    2
  8333.  @rmdomainer9042  You have clearly misunderstood the situation. At this stage Russia has no interest in anything West of the Dnieper. It didn't need Kherson so did not waste any resources in trying to keep it. The loss of ships to drones is obviously a major setback - but Ukraine would be losing ships to drones at this point -if it had any to lose. Western aid is drying up. This much vaunted $60billion package is nothing like that in real terms and Russia is advancing all along the southern front. Once it has secured all of Donbass it will either stop or turn its attention towards Odessa. The possibility of Ukraine turning the tide at this point really is very remote.
    2
  8334. Never have. Never will.
    2
  8335. Which seems to be the Labour Party stance as far as I can gather.
    2
  8336. Russia has sound reasons for suspecting relief missions to be covers for Western espionage.
    2
  8337.  @terryhand  "Misinformation" is a purely subjective term. Okay, it is perfectly possibly for someone to tell a lie in order to advance some personal or political objective. It is equally possible to advance an untruth because you genuinely believe it to be true. It is also possible for someone to speak a truth which other people incorrectly believe to be a lie. And this is where the danger arrives, because separating these several strands is well-nigh impossible. They all impinge upon each other. Very much the safest option is to allow people to say more or less whatever they like without any attempt to restrict them via legal means.
    2
  8338. Mario Quade The climate crisis is a con trick. Rich people know about money and money makes the world go around. The urban elites are all socialists ( We right-wing extremists live in the country, and only visit London when necessary.} Latest figures show that 34% of African Americans intend to vote Republican in 2020.
    2
  8339.  @FortoFight  Hullo again! Yup, I'm as heretical about climate change as I am about covid. It comes from having an enquiring mind.
    2
  8340. Ukraine, against all reason and sense, has become a populist cause. I'm sure Trump sees the sense in playing both ends against the middle in his bid for votes.
    1
  8341. The two are largely indistinguishable.
    1
  8342. Madness. Join the scientists who are pushing governments to change course before we are ruined beyond repair. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  8343.  @mikeclifford7740  Why what?
    1
  8344.  @nickryder9669  And..?
    1
  8345.  @rocketscience4516  Hi Rocket! Have you missed me?
    1
  8346.  @julianshepherd2038  The traitors are those who have schemed and plotted the downfall of Donald Trump.
    1
  8347.  @jimallison2827  Hs the legally tested truth been arrived at then? I must have missed that.
    1
  8348.  @richardkey1678  Do you honestly imagine this demo was a coherent plan to overthrow the government? Do you believe the demonstrators would have even gone into the building were it not for rabble-rousing government agents urging them on, aided by the capitol police who opened the doors to let them in? Is it not, far, far more likely part of the continuing plot by the deep state to throw the cuckoo out of the nest? I know which scenario I think more likely.
    1
  8349.  @marthell6159  You may be getting a wake-up call when those thousands of hours of security videos are picked through. Witnesses in the trials have said their behaviour was manipulated by federal agents. The tapes will show where and when.
    1
  8350.  @marthell6159  There is, of course, a difference between observing criminal behaviour and actively encouraging and provoking it. US agents have been provoking and manipulating riots all over the world in order to achieve political objectives for many years. They have now done so on home ground.
    1
  8351.  @marthell6159  That's sewn up pretty neatly. too. These people are professionals. You could visit Here Is The Evidence for a few thousand items which can't make it to the courts for one reason or another.
    1
  8352.  @marthell6159  I really don't think anyone's that bothered any more. What's done is done. Personally I think there is enough evidence of failures in chain of custody, intimidation of observers etc to make many thousands of votes invalid, but then America is an oligarchy posing as a democracy, so these things are only to be expected.
    1
  8353.  @marthell6159  My opinions are based on observation, not imagination. The American electoral and judicial systems are rotten to the core. I am not so much appalled by the deceit and chicanery involved, as disgusted by the cant and hypocrisy which claims them to be a shining example to the world. The sheer shambles of American elections and the apparent impotence of the courts to do anything about the obvious anomalies and criminalities casually caused is an utter disgrace.
    1
  8354.  @gio-ko7kf  Not ALL protestors were plants, fool; just enough to incite the bulk of them to go too far. And Trump's efforts to get the FBI off his back by appointing a new director didn't work because the FBI is just one aspect of the forces which fear him and what he represents, and does what it does whoever is ostensibly in charge.
    1
  8355. Hamas and Ukraine both need to surrender to prevent further death and suffering.
    1
  8356.  @Abdal252  Yes. Why not?
    1
  8357.  @benniebee7830  Both. Ukrainian oligarchs backed by Russia and Ukrainian oligarchs backed by America.
    1
  8358. Is this real? This doctor is wearing a flimsy, ear-secured mask which he is constantly fiddling with. This is textbook example of why such masks are utterly useless and even dangerous due to potential transfer of viruses from the hand to the face.
    1
  8359.  @hik.horticultures Clumsy I agree. But that is the spectrum along which political differences are generally judged. You are left-wing, I imagine.
    1
  8360.  @hik.horticultures  I do too. But the left-right form of categorisation enables us to discover trends.
    1
  8361.  @hik.horticultures  Once again I broadly agree but it seems that there is little alternative. People with similar views tend to group together. They then either create a title for themselves, or have one thrust upon them. This provides a convenient if inexact way of constructing discourse.
    1
  8362. Stop supplying arms to Ukraine!
    1
  8363. Er.. the early days of the aids crisis were followed by the aids crisis. The early broadcasts of the 'global catastrophe' happened thirty years ago and -guess what? - no crisis! Nor will there be. This guy is just massaging data to enable him to keep his grant money. Although there are obvious fluctuations in ice levels at both poles, none of the present levels are in any way unusual. So called 'climate scientists' in 1922 and 1939 were bleating on in much the same way.
    1
  8364.  @Buckets1000  Cicero he ain't. But he's all there - unlike some I could mention.
    1
  8365.  @bereal6590  I am sorry you are suffering from TDS. There appears to be no treatment at present but there is hope for a cure within a few months. Take heart from this.
    1
  8366.  @bereal6590  Reality has many aspects.
    1
  8367. Why shouldn't the US and Russia become friends?
    1
  8368. Sensible people will realise there is no need for a peacekeeping force. Putin will guard his new territory with care and without US and NATO support Ukraine will be unable to attempt to retake it.
    1
  8369.  @DH-uu5ps  ... but I'm sitting in my studio in a small town in England. Can you not get the message? You are showing yourself up as a fool if you cannot accept that your pro-Ukraine viewpoint may be thoroughly misguided, and instrumental in supporting a bloody and needless war.
    1
  8370. Russia only wants Donbass and Crimea. They are Russian areas and, more to the point, are sitting on trillions of dollars in gas, coal, oil and lithium.
    1
  8371. Is Trump still President??My God!!!
    1
  8372. Then why are they trying to buy Ukraine?
    1
  8373. About a third of people getting Delta have been double-jabbed, so this is not startling news.
    1
  8374.  @martinepstein3332  Pot. Kettle. Black.
    1
  8375. acid rain Act your age.
    1
  8376. @Bernard Hawkins Which is in just over a fortnight, giving him time to come out of quarantine with guns blazing.
    1
  8377. Jack Richardson Lies and cherry-picked data.
    1
  8378.  @shaiaheyes2c41  Immediate peace?
    1
  8379. Amen to that.
    1
  8380.  @PhillipHilton  But yes. Excess deaths in England and Wales are currently running at around 3,000 a week and are growing - exactly as was predicted by those of us who opposed lockdowns, social distancing and masking.
    1
  8381.  @errorswillmultiply1697  By preventing access to normal healthcare services and by preventing the normal processes whereby immunity to infections is gained. And of course the figures speak for themselves.
    1
  8382.  @errorswillmultiply1697  But you specifically requested that I made no reference to papers proving the case. Excess deaths are currently running at well over 3,000 a week and increasing weekly. They are from a wide variety of causes, including cancers, heart disease, infections, and alcohol and drug abuse. This applies to all age groups. As I said, this was something widely predicted by those who opposed the mitigation measures, which is no co-incidence. If you wish me to be more specific I am willing to do so but I'm afraid I will have to refer you to some scientific papers and statistics which you may have difficulty in understanding.
    1
  8383.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Anyhow, the point is that this is a truly, truly dreadful situation and I take no pleasure about having been right all these months. Just check the statistics. And think on.
    1
  8384.  @errorswillmultiply1697  What was the degree of compliance? Are you suggesting that only those who ignored the measures are the ones who are dying? If this were the case they would be dying of covid, and they're not. No, those who are dying are those who could not get appointments to continue treatment for existing conditions, or who ignored troubling signs which in other circumstances would have caused them to consult a doctor. Or who didn't catch any colds or influenzas and when the new season of colds and influenzas came along they had no inbuilt resistance to mitigate their severity. Or who stayed at home drinking vodka and popping pills out of sheer fear and boredom. Exactly as predicted.
    1
  8385.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Then I simply ask the question: what do YOU think is causing this incredible excess death rate? Can you come up with an alternative theory?
    1
  8386.  @errorswillmultiply1697  But you are ignoring the facts. I am not. You cannot deny the facts, nor can you apparently come up with an alternative explanation to the one I have given. This makes my explanation the only one available to you. So you must either ignore the problem or accept my explanation as correct.
    1
  8387.  @errorswillmultiply1697  What leads you to such an absurd conclusion? You are as way offbeam about my age as you are about everything else!
    1
  8388.  @PhillipHilton  Your second post and my reply to it have been deleted. Odd huh?
    1
  8389.  @КристинаЙорданова-р8л  He's a politician. He lies.
    1
  8390.  @sgarnon  Nonsense. This was not Trump's deal. He would have ensured the withdrawal was carried out smoothly at least. It's odd that Bribeable Biden didn't realise how much he'd have to shell out to the Taliban.
    1
  8391.  @sgarnon  Examples?
    1
  8392. You do realise that these missiles cannot be fired without NATO troops taking part in the action, don't you? This means that Russia is now officially at war with NATO - with all that implies.
    1
  8393. Joe Biden has destroyed America. It will never recover from this blow to its prestige. His criminal ineptitude is inexcusable, and the world knows it. He ignored plans for a structured withdrawal under air cover, apparently simply because the Trump administration had conceived it. He was apparently unaware that the Afghan army was desperately short of ammunition or that the Taliban considered the deal was off because the May deadline had passed. And he virtually removed the air cover which would have kept the Taliban pinned down. To suggest that this is "reasoning" is mind-boggling. The Taliban are selling the Americans aviation fuel so they can ship their people out and selling the attack helicopters they left behind to the Russians. The Chinese are on the border waiting to come in and mine all the lithium. Military strategy and objectives? Are you kidding?
    1
  8394.  @indricotherium4802  The insane pursuit of crackpot ideologies such as those typified by the green movement and the likes of BLM and the alphabet people, while abandoning traditional values, are certainly contributing heavily to the nation's decline.
    1
  8395.  @indricotherium4802  My feet are firmly on the ground.
    1
  8396.  @indricotherium4802 In my parallel universe we know that the election was stolen using the very latest techniques combined with time-honoured trickeries. Antifa's involvement in the Capitol protest was in no way significant, if it existed at all. Any unpleasantness was due to some of our good ole boys getting a bit out of hand, on account of their hearts being in the right place, but their brains a bit south of normal.
    1
  8397.  @indricotherium4802  We no longer watch Fox News but we know that masks are more or less useless in the prevention of the spread of infection, but that an intelligently conducted vaccination programme will smooth the path to herd immunity, which is the only viable way of dealing with the covid pandemic.
    1
  8398.  @indricotherium4802  Only fully fitted respirator style masks are of any real use. Cloth masks and those little blue things you hang off your ears are no use at all. Try breathing through one of them onto a mirror and watch the condensation. That's aerosol. On a frosty mornings you can see plumes of the stuff pouring out of the sides and top and falling on the faces of people walking behind. They do protect against much larger pathogens which may fall from a surgeon's mouth and nose, but having said that a survey published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2015 revealed that 4% of surgeons actually don't wear masks during operations, and of those that did 20% said they only did so because they thought it was expected of them. They are just security blankets, or pacifiers to suck on to make us feel better and safe.
    1
  8399. ​ @indricotherium4802  I've thought it through and have decided that the nil to minimal protection provided by a mask isn't worth the indignity and inconvenience of doing so. Especially now that vaccines are available to reduce symptoms the more people who get covid and recover the better anyway. This was always the case of course, but now it can be done with such minimal impact there is absolutely no excuse to continue crippling economies, driving people insane and killing them with other diseases just to hold back an inevitable tide. The measures taken against covid on your planet have done immeasurably more harm than the disease itself, and will continue to do so for many years to come. The Magic Mask phenomenon is just a minor illustration of general stupidity.
    1
  8400.  @indricotherium4802  On my planet epidemiologists believe that since covid 19 is what they call a heterogonous rather than a homogenous infection, treating it as though everyone has the same chance of catching it, and the same chance of dying from it, is very foolish indeed. They look at your planet and see collapsed economies, children dying from TB and malaria, middle aged people dying from untreated cancers and heart conditions and teenagers developing eating disorders and committing suicide, and they shake their heads in despair. They see how by spinning the progress of the disease out for month after month in vain attempts to contain it you have created ideal conditions for the virus to mutate, thanks to evolution and the power of immense numbers. On my planet we spent a fraction of what you spent on nonsensical and pointless test and trace systems and compensation for the financial consequences of of lockdowns and instead provided those people vulnerable to death and severe outcomes with protective equipment in the shape of isolation tents and hazmat suits. Then all the fit young people went to parties and caught what was, to them, nothing worse than a dose of flu. They became immune and this created a wall of immunity through which the virus could find no pathway. Being deprived of hosts, it rapidly died out and we got back on with our lives. Even on your planet where vaccines, although ineffective in the long term, ensure that fit and healthy people now suffer only a cold rather the flu, you still persist in believing that a virus which numbers three times the amount of stars in the visible universe can be beaten by making people walk six feet apart with bits of cloth over their faces. It really is very sad.
    1
  8401.  @indricotherium4802  It seems that perhaps our planets aren't so different after all! Hazmat suits for everybody would be a gross imposition, I think and this is where we must part company. They should be voluntary and it should be made clear to people who are vulnerable that they might die, and to the fit and healthy that they may suffer something like the flu -perhaps badly, perhaps not, if they choose not to take up the offer. The seriously bedridden or semi mobile elderly could have isolation tents. So that was my answer to that. The disadvantage of everyone wearing a hazmat is that no-one becomes immune and if only a small pocket of virus survives, or gets in from another country, then it would spread like wildfire and people would have to keep popping in and out of their hazmats perhaps for years to come. My government would prefer the healthy working population not to wear them, and to take their chances, I might even offer a financial reward to anyone who becomes infected. My scheme would of course involve some degree of hospitalisations and possible long term damage to some, but this is the price which would have to be paid in the interests of liberty and permanent exclusion of the disease. What a shame the ignorant politicians fail to recognise the genius of the likes of you and I!
    1
  8402.  @indricotherium4802  The objections to your scheme are many, not the least of which is that people simply won't put up with it. The demonstrations against masks and lockdowns have been considerable. Do you really think people are going to put up with being expected to pad around in hazmat suits? They won't do it, and if you try to make them, they will rebel. The only route to herd immunity is through infection, not legislation. You left wingers are just too fond of throwing your weight about. It goes with your extreme risk eversion and lack of courage. On my planet we understand the idea of risking the lives and welfare of a few for the benefit of the many. Life without the freedom to take risks is no life at all. Unlike influenzas, novel coronaviruses are extremely rare and appear to be very localised and to fizzle out quite quickly.. This one was almost certainly man-made and this is the only reason it has gained ascendancy. Future engineered viruses of this kind is what we have to fear and there may well be no defence against them. We are fortunate that this one has such a low and specific fatality profile. We have to learn to adapt quickly to new threats , and not just go into shotgun panic mode. This time we have killed far, far more people than we have saved through clumsy and blinkered thinking. It must not be allowed to happen again.
    1
  8403.  @indricotherium4802  Oh dear. You've gone all silly again. Strutting doesn't come into it. The point you fail to grasp is that people who are willing to risk catching the disease should be encouraged to do so, since this builds up a cordon of protection around the rest. Those who ought not to catch it , because it might kill them, should be protected by wearing hazmats when out and about, or be contained in isolation tents at home. No bullying. No rebellion. No policemen dragging screaming protestors by the hair. All voluntary. No power trip for you lefty authoritarians, but you'll just have to put up with that. It does astonish me how people of your mindset have delighted in the opportunity to worry yourselves to death, make up tons of needless rules and justify your psychotic need for control and certainty which has been offered to you by this pandemic. I don't know if it is something in your genes or simply the result of poor potty training but it is rather disturbing. And you have the cheek to call us libertarians fascists! I thought I'd covered your point about what happens when and if small pockets of re-infection appear. With herd immunity they will fizzle out quickly. Under your scheme they will of course give you the opportunity to get into a delightful panic and go about getting your self-righteous kicks by bullying the rest of us into conformity.
    1
  8404.  @dannamiller5476  This is apparently not the case, The are decided by military action. Everything else is just fine words.
    1
  8405.  @shreckm6470  It's complicated. These rare are earth minerals aren't like coal, or even iron ore, where you just dig down and find great chunks of it. They have to be extracted from a vast mass of other stuff and often these procedures are so time consuming and expensive that it is not worth it financially in the end. In Eastern Ukraine, however, which has been extensively mined for hundreds of years, this procedure is made considerably easier. Putting it crudely, very valuable minerals can be extracted relatively readily from spoil discarded in earlier operations.
    1
  8406. According to Western propaganda Russia has been running out of missiles, tanks and manpower for months. Doesn't seem to hold them back much, does it?
    1
  8407. If he was going for herd immunity he certainly set about it the wrong way.
    1
  8408.  @commonsense9176  It hasn't happened though. All his actions have actually held up herd immunity - which would probably be here by now if nothing had been done.
    1
  8409.  @commonsense9176  Are you suggesting that people are not becoming eligible day by day to replace those who have died?
    1
  8410.  @1wordtroll Not at all. From the disposition of Russia's forces and their response it is clear that the approaches to Kiev, Kherson and other parts of Ukraine were designed merely to destroy Ukraine's forces and prevent them from attempting to retake Crimea and Donbass. There was never any intention to occupy Ukraine as a whole. Russia doesn't need any more headaches than it's got already and it looks very much as though its objectives are going to be achieved - namely retaining hold of the mineral-rich areas of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
    1
  8411.  @TgamerBio5529  He never tried to take the whole country. The incursion into Western Ukraine was merely designed to destroy the enemy on their own ground. This has largely succeeded.
    1
  8412.  @skdfdjkdfjkd  The largely Tatar population of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was deported and replaced by Russians who Stalin thought were more suited to mining and industrial work. Their descendants still live there.
    1
  8413.  @ianhollands1641  Sucker
    1
  8414.  @xcfjdyrkdtulkgfilhu  I don't know of this incident. Sounds like harmless fun to me though. Who did it, Putin or Trump?.
    1
  8415. At the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the first of the Mad Mullahs, his coffin tipped over and he nearly fell out. No danger of that in this instance though.
    1
  8416.  @abbersj2935  Pretty exclusively among those groups which tend to be most reluctant to vote. Murdoch's influence is real enough, but far from decisive.
    1
  8417.  @jonovens7974  BlackRock and Vanguard operate a mutual exchange system through a wealth of subsidiaries, largely to get out of monopoly legislation. While "investing in" doesn't mean the same as running/owning, it more or less does when a group can command a majority of voting shares, as the Vanguard/BlackRock consortium does in very many organisations, including media companies. If you are an idealist you will find it hard to understand that idealism plays little part in business decisions. Vanguard/BlackRock is obviously not intrinsically socialist or co-operative but, as with most big money corporations these days, the decision-takers have realised that a regulated economy and a compliant populace make the accumulation of wealth a great deal easier. The essence of World Economic Forum strategies lies in financing and encouraging woke/socialist/Marxist administrations at all levels. Old style venture capitalism is just too messy and unpredictable; hence this unholy alliance between hedge-fund-style investment companies and ostensibly liberal and idealistic, professionally-run administrative bodies.
    1
  8418.  @englishsteve1465  None of which can be said to exert any influence on UK voters. Sky/BSkyB is no longer owned by Murdoch, but ultimately by the Prudential Insurance Company of Canada.
    1
  8419.  @englishsteve1465  No I'm British and the UK is very much behind Canada and the US in the restructuring process. The radical left has infiltrated the US establishment quite suddenly, following a lengthy process of brainwashing in the education system. Idealists have had their egos massaged and others of a more acquisitive frame of mind have seen how financially the knowledgeable few might benefit from a new order. A government such as that of the Biden administration would have been inconceivable a decade ago. It is the personification of cynicism. The way of life you refer to so disparagingly is being destroyed, and America is being destroyed with it. I repeat; this is not idealist Marxism as you might conceive of it, but represents the machinery of Marxist thought adapted for the purposes of completely rebuilding society where centralised government control is paramount and and opposition is systematically suppressed.
    1
  8420.  @DavidMoxham957  The dirty digger is a dinosaur. He is clever enough to recognise the great changes which are taking place in the world but still wants to have his fun. I don't grudge him that. He has been a great force for pragmatic common sense in the world and has been useful in steering this country from the paths of error on a number of occasions.
    1
  8421.  @markwelch3564  Value to them, certainly. But don't think for a moment that they have any concern whatsoever for you or me, other than in the form of what we can contribute to that self-interest. Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your social credit apps.
    1
  8422.  @davidfaraday7963  You are about forty years behind the times. The two parties in the US are now the Trumpists and the rest. The Democrats have been forced to take extreme left-wing views on board in order to appease the Marxist indoctrinated college graduate class and to pay ostentatious regard to the perceived interests of the black population. Without the guaranteed votes of these two sections of the population they cannot survive. Trouble is, both these viewpoints are based on falsehoods. Despite its intellectual appeal Marxism fails all practical tests. And America's blacks are realising more and more than they have been consistently used and abused by the Democrats as mere voting fodder, which has to be kept in a condition of perpetual dissatisfaction if its support is to be guaranteed. In its turn the Democrat Party has been commandeered by the more intelligent of the Marxist/globalist intellectuals and their billionaire oligarch allies. The race is on to destroy America in order to then rebuild it on modern lines. The only obstacle to this process is Donald Trump and other like-minded conservative capitalists. No guesses as to whose side I'm on.
    1
  8423.  @davidfaraday7963  The facts are as they are and they are seen to be such by millions of Americans. A conspiracy theory stops being a theory when the conspiracy manifests itself. The bungling ineptitude of the Biden administration on every level is clear evidence that stage one of the operation is under way. The mid-terms and 2024 will reveal all.
    1
  8424.  @davidfaraday7963  No proletariat. Marxism needs an oppressed proletariat, so the black population has been shoehorned in to fill the gap, the actual working class being quite happy with their lot. Lenin and Trotsky needed "useful idiots" to push the revolution along. American universities churn them out in their tens of thousands. The new element is the involvement of the massively wealthy financial manipulators who are pulling the strings. They control the media. Using the Soros principle of reflexivity they finance disruptive organisations like Antifa and BLM and arrange for cities such as Portland to be taken over. Police forces are defunded. The scene is set for anarchy, to be followed by rescue in the shape of the New World Order. Donald Trump, "a minor inconvenience" in Soros' own words, represents the conservative reaction to this unasked-for feat of social engineering. And yes, the 2020 election was stolen. It was necessary. It was done very professionally by people who are experienced in such matters - not that US elections are anything other than fixed, one way or another. JFK only became President because Mayor Daley opened up the graveyards of Chicago. None of this matters though. The 2020 election is history. What matters is how the "rabble" - the ordinary decent people of America, at least 80 million of them -are going to react if the same tricks are pulled this year or in 2024.
    1
  8425.  @davidfaraday7963  And you know this how? Are the things that are happening in America normal in any way? Are cities flooded with immigrants sleeping in the streets normal? Is having a senile President normal? Is the sexualisation of children normal? Is the suppression of conservative views normal? Is enforced vaccination normal? We are seeing a playbook in action: one designed to cause societal collapse. One actually designed by the Soviet Union and now adapted by a new generation of Marxist intellectuals who have, rather amusingly, chosen the Democrat Party as the vehicle for abolishing democracy, which has no place in the brave new world and will be replaced by a sensible, structured system of permanent government in which you will own nothing, and have no individual rights but - as long as you behave yourself - you will be happy.
    1
  8426.  @davidfaraday7963  I've just discovered that my reply to you has been deleted. It is impossible to debate these points when information is censored. This annoys me so much that I will try to blitz you with various heresies in concealed form.
    1
  8427.  @davidfaraday7963  Yuri Bezemov, KGB defector.
    1
  8428. Georgia, Texas, Arizona state senate hearings post 2020 election. Many hours of evidence on YouTube.
    1
  8429.  @davidfaraday7963  Interviews with him are available on YouTube in which he outlines Soviet strategies for undermining the West. They bear an uncanny resemblance to things that are actually happening today.
    1
  8430.  @davidfaraday7963  There is a mountain of disturbing testimony in the state hearings. It is clearly demonstrated how easy it is for voting machines to be tampered with; how signature verification was virtually abandoned and how time after time Republican observers were prevented from carrying out their duties. This in itself is enough for many, many thousands of votes to be called into question. Do you believe the explanations offered for the boxes of votes being produced from beneath tables after observers and the press were told the count was over? Have you any idea why memory sticks were passed surreptitiously from hand to hand? Have you any idea what authority courts have for passing judgement on allegations of electoral fraud, and what weight of evidence is needed? As I say, the 2020 election is now lost to history and its discrepancies have been overtaken by events. If you are happy in your belief that 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, then so be it.
    1
  8431.  @davidfaraday7963  No, just the last one in reply to your last post. YouTube's Gestapo algorithm must have picked up on some heretical combination of words and phrases. Nothing could be more calculated to convince me that I have right on my side.
    1
  8432.  @davidfaraday7963  Here Is The Evidence?
    1
  8433.  @davidfaraday7963  It's quite easy to work out. The Soviet strategies have been in place since before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bezemov's testimony is entirely convincing in this context, and I'm sure you can see the parallels between what he was saying in the1980's and what is happening today. I'm sure you can't really believe that this old footage is some sort of fake, can you? It was in existence long before the creation of the Internet. The relationship between Soviet undercover disruption tactics and the promulgation of Marxist thinking in universities is quite clear. Equally, the ready acceptance of such thinking by the likes of George Soros and Klaus Schwab as a very useful means of regulating behaviour is equally apparent.
    1
  8434.  @davidfaraday7963  Some of my planes are getting through, but not all. Would it surprise you to know there are several sites on the Internet which give details of literally thousands of incidences of anomalies and fraud in the election in question? And that YouTube will immediately delete any references to them?
    1
  8435.  @davidfaraday7963  An interesting site is encoded thus: There (- T) Is The Evian Water But no an or water. Dense With a c not an s.
    1
  8436.  @davidfaraday7963 We are flogging a dead horse when it comes to the 2020 election. Your need to believe that it was all open and above board is as deeply ingrained as is my conviction that it was a massive fraud. As I say; it doesn't matter any more. The videos showing the transfer of memory sticks are included in the Georgia evidence, as are the videos of the "under the table" votes. Mostly the deceptions were carried out with surveillance being obscured. The Georgia team missed a few cameras. As for the voting machines; if as you claim, you have seen the state senate hearing footage, you will have seen how operators can alter results with a few simple procedures. But, as I repeat, this is all now a matter for historical investigation. What happens next is what is important. You are clearly bought into the Trump Derangement Syndrome nexus. I do not worship Donald Trump. Nor do most people who support him. We are generally fully aware of his faults, but we know that he is the only solid bastion against the utter collapse of traditional Western values currently being engineered by forces dedicated to their replacement by a new moral, financial and political ideology. Trump is not a lying, narcissistic bully. He is an everyday Joe who happens to have been born into great wealth and to be possessed of a certain amount of natural cunning. He is, perhaps, an unlikely hero put forward by destiny to defend humanity. But he's all we've got.
    1
  8437.  @davidfaraday7963  Some of my responses are still not getting through. It is very dispiriting. Anything providing links to heretical sites is immediately quashed. The forces of suppression and censorship are behind you all the way. Are you comfortable with that?
    1
  8438.  @davidfaraday7963  If only it were so. I have long given up trying to direct people toward direct links, It does seem . however, that you may have been directed towards Here Is The Evidence. Any comments?
    1
  8439. Perhaps hospitals and kindergartens would not be blown up if the Ukrainians would stop stationing troops and missile launchers in them. It would be nice if they removed the patients and children too.
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  8440. Cluster bombs have been used extensively by the Ukrainians in their eight-year war of suppression against the separatists of Donbass.
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  8441. Where does this idea come from that Tommy Robinson is in jail for actions which might undermine a court case against Moslem child rapists? My understanding is that he has been jailed for contempt of court for showing a film about a different matter which was considered to defame a particular individual, after being forbidden to do so. Grooming gangs were not involved, nor was rape. It related to a scuffle in a schoolyard which was wrongly blown up by the media and the Left to be racist. The simple fact is that the Establishment- notably the Labour establishment- is seeking to divert attention from its scandalous failure to deal with decades of rape and exploitation of very young white working-class girls by Pakistani Moslem criminals. Whatever Elon Musk's motives are he is to be commended for forcing this pathetic government to face up to this gruesome failure of duty - even though their response will be -and already is - just as pathetic and egregious as anything that has gone before.
    1
  8442.  @lolly9080  They are both, under their skins, classic British liberals. They just happen to come from different backgrounds.
    1
  8443.  @tradeladder146  Probably not!
    1
  8444.  @garylovell6017  What has that got to do with anything?
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  8445.  @johnrussell3961  There is no problem in ignoring anything the UN says. People do it every day. And why should it matter if no one else accepted our definitions? It's none of their business.
    1
  8446.  @johnrussell3961  Why not?
    1
  8447.  @trident6547  I think we worry too much about what other countries think of us. Is there an "international community", by the way? Or is that just a pretence allowing certain countries to lord it over others?
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  8448. I don't think you're too far off. The big danger though is that Putin may feel sufficiently emboldened to try to re-assert Russian influence in former Soviet satellite states. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but he might decide that swift military action is a good way of achieving it.
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  8449. You have a strange name for someone who appears to be mad.
    1
  8450.  @MrSensible2  At least you have a sense of humour. It compensates for a total lack of any common sense, I suppose.
    1
  8451.  @MrSensible2  Or you too for that matter!
    1
  8452.  @curtisalex456  I do it for love. And respect for the truth.
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  8453. ArmyofAll Are you sure it isn't 97%?
    1
  8454. litesip What a cunning plan it is to be sure. What's the left-wing plan?
    1
  8455. And the anti-Jewish rhetoric perhaps? The call to war? The black uniforms? Oh no. That's Antifa.
    1
  8456.  @daniellewis3270  It's actually 2.8. He just rounded it up!
    1
  8457. He only got busted BECAUSE he was running for Present, so it only seems fair.
    1
  8458.  @nicocrestmere9688  Less than a cent! That's true enough, but would you pick up a ten dollar bill?
    1
  8459. We don't.
    1
  8460. It was an accident. The crime of the century is how Big Pharma cashed in on it with seemingly very little regard for the long-term health of the human race.
    1
  8461.  @Leoviliti1  Who are "they"?
    1
  8462.  @danielwalton8381  One shot by a trigger happy cop and three died of heart attacks. Just an average hour in downtown DC.
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  8463.  @georgeomole14  If it was a coup it wasn't very successful. Cheating slimeball Biden is still going to be President.
    1
  8464.  @jas1049  I'm afraid that like many you have been seriously and deliberately misinformed. None of the cases were heard and nor were they expected to be. There are around seventy hours of sworn testimony presented to the various state senate committees which have sat since the election. None of this material has been before a court and until it does those who are aware of the allegations will continue to believe electoral fraud was committed. A recent poll showed that 39% of American believe this to be so including 17% of Democrats. So you are in a bit of a bubble, I'm afraid. Even if deliberate fraud was not committed there is incontrovertible evidence of many serious breaches of electoral law which would invalidate many thousands of votes. Until a proper enquiry is instigated these people will continue to believe in the likelihood of a great wrong having been committed. It's all on the Internet, although increasingly tucked away, I leave you with an 8 hour chunk of one of the Georgia hearings. It's not the most thrilling example but if you do wish to inform yourself of the true situation you can find others if you look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuD-zlhwD0M&t=8201s
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  8465. The likeliest explanation is these are military "sniffer" drones designed to detect radiation. Probably some intelligence has led to the suspicion that a nuclear device has been planted somewhere. The present confusion would be preferable to the likely mass panic if the authorities officially revealed this.
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  8466.  @letsbereasonable2910  But it considerably reduced the Ukrainian army - which was the purpose.
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  8467.  @Justintime486  Not enough - but it's a start.
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  8468.  @o1badmofo763  Yup. You're right. That's why America is doomed.
    1
  8469. If it is "moral" to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, then it is also "moral" to return Crimea and Donbass to Russia.
    1
  8470.  @octavianpopescu4776  I was merely pointing out the absurdity of attempting impose "morality" on historically complex situations.
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  8471.  @Pikaling3408  In fact the Ottomans had regained control by then.
    1
  8472.  @katrinabryce  So what? They rapidly got an attack of buyers' remorse. Anyway there are no such things as free and fair votes in Ukraine - or Russia.
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  8473. I am not a troll, merely disgusted by how people can be so easily influenced by a theatrical performance.
    1
  8474.  @bonnie7898  Putin theatrical?! He is a dull speaker, much constrained by his habit of presenting actual facts in a logical order. Zelensky is a mere showman, chosen for his charisma and his ability to deceive.
    1
  8475. In Wisconsin https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
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  8476. Ukraine is utterly corrupt, as is Russia. What we are seeing here is a usual Ukrainian trick of getting rid of waverers and potential enemies by "exposing" their corruption.
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  8477. Yet he has transformed his country. How did he manage that?
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  8478. Always good for a laugh, aren't they?
    1
  8479.  @Kian2002  But they are pure propaganda!
    1
  8480. @ Honestly, dear heart, I am utterly gobsmacked how anyone with a claim to a brain can be taken in by any of this stuff. All it does is twist reality to conform with prejudices - and I notice an increasing tone of desperation creeping in too as the propagandists involved realise they have lost the game.
    1
  8481.  @davidnorthrop2298  It's what they say - not how they say it! (In fact I owe Packman and a couple of others a debt of gratitude. When I first took an interest in US politics I had swallowed the Orange Man Bad mantra and watched such channels. It took me a couple of weeks to realise that they were just spouting baseless propaganda and that I would behove me to examine the true position most carefully. I did so, and am now as fully MAGA as it is possible for an Englishman to be.)
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  8482. @ If only!
    1
  8483. @ It's what they say - not how they say it!
    1
  8484. Is CNN finally backtracking on its fanboy support for Zelensky's Ukraine? It's a coming trend and getting on board now might just halt those tumbling ratings.
    1
  8485. Money talks. And it should be telling Reform and the Tories to stop squabbling and unite against the existential threat posed to freedom by globalist/socialist elitism.
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  8486. Trump is far too pragmatic and far too much a genuine man of peace to want to throw good money after bad in this mad venture. Starmer, on the other hand, seems to be a romantic fool still sold on the idea that Russia is a big bad bogey man, while sweet little democracy-loving Ukraine should be given loads of money and missiles. If sanity can prevail in the next few months then we ought to see the reality of the position recognised, with Russia in possession of Donbass and Crimea, with a land bridge between the two. This would be rough justice, but it is justice nonetheless. These areas are as much Russian as they are Ukrainian, if not more so. If this means that Blackrock can't get hold of all that lovely loot in Donbass and that their errand-boy Starmer is in their bad books as a result there is no need to cry any tears over that!
    1
  8487.  @anglonorse2943  This is neither propaganda nor am I paid for it. It is a realistic assessment of the situation as it stands. Such a pity that you are incapable of criticising it on its own terms, and can only respond with absurdities.
    1
  8488.  @Pikaling3408  What invasion? Invasion is not even mentioned.
    1
  8489. There is no way Ukraine can win. The efforts you outline would lead directly to World War III.
    1
  8490. And they know who's boss and they know Russia is winning and they just LOVE being crooks!
    1
  8491.  @mickelodiansurname9578  What tosh. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were both pillars of the enlightenment and figure such as Lomonosov and Shuvalov were pioneers of education. Russian inventions include space satellites, lasers and synthetic rubber. They may be a little old-fashioned in political matters, but assassination is far from being exclusively Russian. How about JFK - to say nothing of Trump's right ear!?
    1
  8492.  @mickelodiansurname9578  Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Lomonosov, Shuvalov, space satellites, lasers, synthetic Rubber, JFK and two attempts on the life of Donald Trump
    1
  8493.  @CuriousCrow-mp4cx  I have tried to read the Koran but it is so full of scary stuff I gave up. But I do agree that Islamism is not Islam - which is why ordinary, decent Muslims should make a great effort to cast out extremists - before it is too late.
    1
  8494. They were all pretty old and taking up valuable storage space.
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  8495. Only? Have you not heard of dominant seasonal respiratory infections? .
    1
  8496. The West got Ukraine into this. The least they can do is admit their gamble has failed and set up peace talks with Putin before more damage is done and more people die.
    1
  8497. Why not simply join Trump in his entirely reasonable assessment of the situation? Russia is not Nazi Germany, despite rumours to the contrary.
    1
  8498. @ Ridiculous. You are responding to Pavlovian conditioning. Have a biscuit.
    1
  8499. @ In what way, precisely? Does it want to conquer the world and exterminate the Jews? It contains at least seventeen separate racial groups - so which one does it want to reign supreme? You are a child. Grow up.
    1
  8500.  @1domcouk  Are these the ill-equipped and poorly-trained criminals who just took Soledar and are currently surrounding Bakhmut?
    1
  8501.  @andreytitov1550  Soledar is (or was) one of the heavily fortified settlements built along three lines of defence created by Ukraine after Minsk. Bakhmut is next in line. These fortifications were designed to prevent the separatist armies reaching the Donbass border. So well worth it. The former convicts who died did so for their country, thus redeeming themselves in some measure for whatever sins led to their imprisonment. The Russian army is horribly incompetent in many ways, which is why real fighting is so often left to independent forces like Wagner and the Chechens.
    1
  8502.  @Tanmay_390  Only two?
    1
  8503. And the Russians are right. America has been trying to destroy it and get hold of its vast resources ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This dreadful, dreadful war is a direct result of that greed.
    1
  8504. Nothing wacko about it. This antagonism towards Russia is a just a Cold War leftover and has to be got rid of.
    1
  8505. @UCCEpWskAGndkzbT_9FH31IA What a very pompous prick you do appear to be. Easily manipulated too. And very very proud of whatever crap degree you managed to pick up I expect.
    1
  8506.  @anonymous-xy5ue  Rarely three months though.
    1
  8507. What is so litle understood is that Russia has a case for its actions. Putin has not done this out of greed and savagery but out of patriotic duty. The Americanisation of Ukraine is a direct threat to Russia.
    1
  8508.  @boink800  That's your fantasy, dear heart! Try to think up another line, eh?
    1
  8509.  @boink800  You laugh too much as it is.
    1
  8510. I admire and respect everything you stand for. It doesn't even matter that you are wrong.
    1
  8511. There is a growing feeling in the UK that "Sir Keir Starmer" is in fact an AI generated thoughtform, sent from the year 2109 in order to help destroy human civilisation.
    1
  8512. Innocent young men taking advantage of a communist-incited riot to loot and burn. Innocent young men convicted of child abuse and wife-beating. Innocent young men intent on violence who were faced with a sudden reality check and got no more than they deserved.
    1
  8513.  @mihohobaba  There are many, many hours of evidence on the Internet, although much is hidden away. There are over 70 hours of footage of state senate hearings into election mismanagement and fraud and a site called Here Is The Evidence which provides access to many hours more. I can't provide the links because if I did this post would be deleted. Get Googling.
    1
  8514.  @Yukivee  But they did. Many hundreds of hours of evidence on the Internet prove it. Google Here Is The Evidence just for starters.
    1
  8515. Putin doesn't want Ukraine, much less the rest of Europe and - least of all - us.
    1
  8516. Ukraine is going to lose and the US isn't going to gets its paws on the $13 trillion of gas and rare earth minerals in Donbass. The dollar is finished as reserve currency.
    1
  8517. Surely he's stopped being orange and has gone gracefully grey? I know they touch up his picture on some mad Derangement Syndrome channels like Meidas Touch, so perhaps it is these you have been watching?
    1
  8518.  @richardmeyeroff7397  And a dog is a man's best friend.
    1
  8519.  @richardmeyeroff7397  It's called sarcasm.
    1
  8520.  @BadOompaloompa79  It's half a mile through a main defence line, which is more to the point. Whether this is enough for a breakthrough remains to be seen.
    1
  8521.  @BadOompaloompa79  Wagner is the best they've got, apart from the Chechens who took Mariupol. Where they're hiding out, God knows. As for the rest, there are supposed to be half a million of them somewhere over the border, waiting to move in. The Russian army was built for defence, and is pretty badly organised, but it tends to just keep on coming.
    1
  8522.  @BadOompaloompa79  Yup - but more Ukrainians getting ground up too.
    1
  8523.  @simongarrettmusic  They weren't trying to take Kiev. They were trying to engage the enemy in order to reduce it. If they were trying to take Kiev they would have softened it up first with missile strikes, then secured territory taken before advancing. Instead they just drove along the road in a column inviting the Ukrainians to come out and get 'em. It was battle they wanted, not territory. Putin doesn't want Kiev or any part of Ukraine other than that he's annexed. That would just involve a never-ending and expensive civil war.
    1
  8524.  @jakeroper1096  Not really. Perhaps you might consider the possibility that the narrative you've been fed isn't the true one. It fits neither the facts, nor normal military practice. Nor does it fit with Putin's oft-stated declaration of his objectives in Ukraine.
    1
  8525. The left eats itself. Yum. Yum.
    1
  8526. I understand from this that while not supporting censorship, Professor Wilson believes that outlets he suspects of purveying inaccurate information should be made difficult to access, or at least not made readily available. This is a neat get-out, enabling him to continue to feel all warm and fluffy inside while at the same time controlling the free flow of information and opinion. Journalism is a dirty trade. His experiences with RT are by no means unique. There is a current scandal in Australia, for example, where the state broadcaster ABC is accused of making Australian soldiers in Afghanistan appear to be war criminals by dubbing the sound of gunfire across footage in which the men were merely sweeping across territory with silent weapons. Ukraine is far from innocent in this regard. From the Ghost of Kiev onwards many of the stories purveyed on the media portraying the Ukrainians as heroes and the Russians as heartless villains bear the unmistakable stamp of manipulation. Zelensky owns a film company, don't forget.
    1
  8527. If they worked 100% then the pandemic would end. As it is, the fact that they only work badly and briefly means that we have to get boosters every three or four months for the rest of our lives - a continuing source of profit. You don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
    1
  8528. Nah. They'd rather have a senile puppet whose strings are pulled by warmongering crooks.
    1
  8529. How dreadful! Lock him up!
    1
  8530. Implode, explode....what's the odds? The Tories in their present form are done and dusted. The party will. however, wriggle out of its old skin and into a new one, as it always does. This will not be in time to prevent a Labour win at the next General Election - whenever that takes place. Labour now must face the challenge of taking Britain through the next five to ten years of what is likely to be one of the most challenging periods in the nation's history. Best of luck.
    1
  8531. "Sorry Volodymyr, now about all those tanks and planes and missiles you ordered....."
    1
  8532. It needn't be a shooting war. If Russia wins(and it probably will) Britain's foolishness will not be forgotten.
    1
  8533.  @ceales3  Writers and entertainers are generally of a different temperament. I've heard it said that the fall of Rome came at a time when actors and sportsmen were especially revered - chariot drivers and celebrity chefs were widely consulted on political matters.
    1
  8534.  @idicula1979  Scarcely insignificant. This is the heavily fortified Ukrainian front line, installed in 2015/16 we are talking about. The Russians are over-running it and there is only one further and weaker defence line before the Donbass border.
    1
  8535.  @buschtaxi75driver55  Around - our paths haven't crossed, that's all.
    1
  8536.  @Mark-xv5lb  Jokes about people confusing a heavily fortified line of defences with "a few villages" you mean? We'll have to wait for the punchline on that one.
    1
  8537. The tank war might actually be over before long. Once Russia takes Donbass it will probably dig in deep behind a heavily fortified system of permanent defences and rely mainly on artillery and missiles for protection - unless Ukraine takes the wise option and talks peace, that is.
    1
  8538.  @_alienblood  It is, on the contrary, a realistic view. Ukraine is retreating on the southern front where Russia is deploying its best troops. It clearly cannot expect to turn the tide there, and so has deployed forces into Kursk, which is defended by less hardened troops and, very possibly, imported North Koreans. Depending upon the strength of its forces it has some chance of gaining territory there which it hopes to continue to retain for negotiation purposes. It shows every signs of being a last-minute gamble.
    1
  8539.  @RobertHughes-sv2mx  I have never copy pasted in my life, apart from sometimes having my views knocked into shape by the Bing bot to get them past the YouTube algorithm bot.
    1
  8540.  @dannylad1600  A tiny village with a prewar population of 11,000, a vast network of underground caverns and sitting on supply routes vital to Ukraine.
    1
  8541.  Bob Billy  And more Ukrainians trying to defend it.
    1
  8542.  Bob Billy  As long as Ukrainians die, it doesn't matter to the Russian hierarchy how many they lose. It's always been their philosophy.
    1
  8543.  @dannylad1600  Secure bomb shelters which can be extended underground to provide a defensive network.
    1
  8544. NATO is no longer required. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union is transformed from a defensive alliance into something very similar to a cheap protection racket.
    1
  8545. Clarke has a lot in common with Zelenski. All style and no content.
    1
  8546.  @rtqii  Belonging and owning are two different things.
    1
  8547. It's foolish to get drawn into this. You make things look worse with every word you utter. This is a good story and -as with all good stories - the press won't let silly old facts interfere with it.
    1
  8548.  @caeruleusvm7621  It depends how you define ownership, doesn't it? On paper, all of Donbas was Ukrainian. In fact great parts of it were rebel-held independent republics. On paper all of Ukraine is Ukraine. But in fact great parts of it are actually Russian. I am developing a theory of how many people seem to think that words are actually "things", and how this leads to a lack of understanding of what actually constitutes reality.
    1
  8549. @ You mustn't believe everything you hear in the Western media, you know. It is mostly lies.
    1
  8550. Remember that slavery still exists in many countries. These countries generally do not allow statues of any kind since God, while approving of slavery, does not approve of graven images.
    1
  8551. Barquero Juan Carlos I find it very amusing to listen to people who have been heavily brainwashed complaining about brainwashing.
    1
  8552.  @ShantKing1  I take your point. Being brought up as a Muslim is not the sole reason for psychotic behaviour of this sort. But in this case I think we can safely assume that it was a major contributing factor. Brevrik's peculiar upbringing at the hands of his VERY peculiar mother certainly contributed to his.
    1
  8553.  @Lotus78aze  It's a psychosis which can have many causes. In this case I think we can safely assume that Islamic indoctrination was the prime cause.
    1
  8554.  @ShantKing1  I am not saying that all psychotic behaviours of this sort are caused by a Muslim upbringing - just that this one was.
    1
  8555.  @Lotus78aze  Of course not. There are many reasons for behaviour of this sort - it's just that in this case Islamic extremism seems by far the likeliest.
    1
  8556.  @Lotus78aze  ...which get out of control, for one reason or another.
    1
  8557.  @Lotus78aze  I think a religious concept is almost certainly at the very root of this act. It may be a distortion of the true and compassionate and freedom and peace-loving truths of Islam, but it remains a concept with a more vicious meaning in the minds of many misguided extremist Muslims. It is called Jihad.
    1
  8558.  @Lotus78aze  Of course. Islam conducts holy wars which involve no killing. Clever, that.
    1
  8559.  @Lotus78aze  Which Islam?
    1
  8560.  @Lotus78aze  Many things. Whether or not Jihad justifies violence for one.
    1
  8561.  @Lotus78aze  Many things. Whether or not to support terrorist organisations, for instance.
    1
  8562.  @Lotus78aze  Many things. What Jihad means, for instance.
    1
  8563.  @Lotus78aze  YouTube won't let me answer. I think the algorithm is Muslim.
    1
  8564. We should never have got involved in the first place. This is a war between gangsters over loot, and the involvement of this country points strongly to the idea that our leaders are in bed with one of the gangs - very probably for immense personal gain..
    1
  8565.  @atso1981  I think you misjudge the situation, and are unduly pessimistic. NATO was created to protect the West against Soviet Communist expansion. The collapse of the SU has made it irrelevant. Furthermore, Putin has merely protected Russian interests in Chechnya, Georgia and now in Ukraine - not sought to extend them. It seems to me that globalists have a need for perpetual war in order to advance their ideology. Neither Trump nor Putin adhere to this. Your assessment of history is incorrect, by the way. Russia was never formally in an alliance with NATO, but there was a period of cooperation. In 1997, the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed, establishing the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council to foster dialogue and collaboration on security issues This was replaced in 2002 by the NATO-Russia Council, which aimed to deepen cooperation. However, Russia did not have a "seat" in NATO, as it was not a member of the alliance. Instead, the agreements were about partnership and cooperation, not membership. While the Founding Act emphasized principles like refraining from the use of force and respecting sovereignty, it did not explicitly require Russia to allow former Soviet states to join NATO. NATO's open-door policy allowed countries to apply for membership if they met certain criteria, and decisions were made by NATO members. Relations between NATO and Russia deteriorated significantly after events like the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, leading to the suspension of practical cooperation. Both sides are at fault in the collapse of these agreements. It is foolish to continually blame things on personalities.
    1
  8566.  @robertgierschick6819  Absolutely not. Grow up.
    1
  8567. @SamDude-cu2jb You totally misjudge the situation as you do Donald Trump. The fact that you cannot comment without making absurd historical analogies simply demonstrates your intellectual inferiority.
    1
  8568.  @DrewRoshambo  You set too much store by the wonders of democracy. Russia cannot deal with it and America has allowed it to be commandeered by war-hungry woke globalists.
    1
  8569.  @davidrumbold-ej6ns  The three big nations have to sort things out between them. One has to hope that they can do so without coming to blows.
    1
  8570.  @ThePedroski007  I don't understand this obsession with GDP. Russia has a huge black economy which doesn't show up in official figures and lots and lots of nuclear weapons, as well as one of the largest reserves of fossil fuels and rare earth minerals in the world.
    1
  8571.  @TreforTreforgan  Trump's bluster is a far, far cry from the idea of military intervention! And Putin has no plans to extend Russia, merely to re-incorporate parts of it mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine. What we have to remember is that both these men are in their 70s. We should really be worrying about the policies and ambitions of those who may succeed them. Empires based on military conquest are - I am optimistic enough to believe - things of the past. Neither Trump nor Putin seem either desirous or equipped to somehow be involved their final flowering.
    1
  8572.  @Bobby-xr4bo  But not by force. The fact that he "didn't rule it out" is a long, long way from making it a cornerstone of policy.
    1
  8573.  @IISveirII  Dark times are already here - and have been here for a while.
    1
  8574.  @elrose1498  It didn't happen like that. This is just a false version of history designed to make Russia look bad. In any case that was then and this is now and circumstances have changed drastically.
    1
  8575.  @Bobby-xr4bo  I don't think "economic force" could be interpreted as "starving into submission"! It just means making one option more attractive than others. In any case, Trump is only half-serious. As with sanctions and tariffs, he just creates an atmosphere of uncertainty which he believes he can manipulate to America's advantage.
    1
  8576.  @boozolini4465  There is no war of aggression. Putin is simply ensuring that the new country of Russia survives in the face of constant attempts by the West to destroy and undermine it. All the wars he has been involved in, as in Ukraine at the moment, have been in response to Western aggression of various kinds which, if left unchecked, would have led to economic and strategic losses to Russia. Russia is not alone in attempting to gain influence in parts of Africa and other corners of the world. China and America are at it too - and they all use very similar methods.
    1
  8577.  @Bobby-xr4bo  I think I can grasp it as much as anyone. He is setting it back on the right track after decades of it becoming corrupted by woke globalist warmongering. (I am not American, by the way. I am English.)
    1
  8578.  @Tassie-Roamer  They want authority tempered by proper democratic restraint -something which they have lost in recent years.
    1
  8579.  @Tassie-Roamer  Does a democratically elected government have no authority then?
    1
  8580. Yup. Biden's got a lot to answer for.
    1
  8581.  @sam-h6f  Or far away from lands which dictators used to rule over. Oppression by one man isn't much different to oppression by committee.
    1
  8582.  @mseeross  The US, obviously.
    1
  8583.  @JenGM24  No-one saw it who wasn't there. But the US has the most to gain, since it destroys a potential Russian bargaining chip.
    1
  8584.  @thomaslunde5014  Is English not your first language, by any chance?
    1
  8585.  @thomaslunde5014  Fascism is a word which has lost all meaning.
    1
  8586.  @rajivshah6128  And you believe the lies the Western media churn out, I suppose? The truth is probably somewhere in between.
    1
  8587.  @thomaslunde5014  I'm not paid to do anything. I merely resent the way in which the whole dreadful Ukraine situation is twisted by Western politicians and media. It is, in essence, a turf war between two kleptocracies: the Russian one and the US-backed Ukrainian one.
    1
  8588.  @PurplePumpkaboo  Disguised as seals?
    1
  8589.  @PurplePumpkaboo  I've had to look them up. I think having only three fingers would prevent them from joining the US Marine Corps, although being green would doubtless be a bonus in terms of racial diversity.
    1
  8590.  @PurplePumpkaboo  I apologise to the Irkens regarding their digital deficiencies. Blame Google.
    1
  8591. The only trouble with this theory is that the old and vulnerable are continually replaced. People get older, you see?
    1
  8592.  @jennifersadler4870  What savings? You really don't get it, do you? Every time a pensioner dies, lo and behold someone else (or several someones) gets to be 65 and qualifies.
    1
  8593.  @jennifersadler4870  I've just done a check and it appears you are right on your figures, so I apologise. There are no figures for the number of people reaching 65 over the past 16 months but this pension saving would seem to indicate that more people have died of covid than have attained this milestone - which surprises me, but there it is. On the other hand the figures are based on projected spending, which, thinking about it, would inevitably decrease with any number of deaths over and above projections. Mind you, I doubt the government will be rubbing its hands in fiendish glee since the OBR report goes on to say: " Excess deaths lower pensioner spending by £0.6 billion in 2020-21 and by £0.9 billion in 2021-22 relative to our March 2020 forecast. DWP has also identified underpayments of state pension relating to entitlements for certain married people, widows and over-80s back to 1992. Our forecast reflects an initial estimate that it will cost around £3 billion over the six years to 2025-26 to address these underpayments, with costs peaking at £0.7 billion in 2021-22." The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
    1
  8594. @ryan oneill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kUAtt2pXlc Just for starters
    1
  8595. @ryan oneill Do these scientist have a time machine or they relying on highly suspect interpretations of tree ring data? Or are they merely sticking The Holy Hockey Stick of the Prophet Mann on recent data and working backwards?
    1
  8596.  @NoOne-ii1th  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kUAtt2pXlc
    1
  8597.  George Who  SCIENCE is a broad church, rent by schism and fierce disagreements of all kinds. It is not the calm and ordered affair you seem to imagine. What do you even MEAN by "believing in science?" Whenever the phrase "Some scientist say, " or "Scientists believe" comes into a news story you can bet your life you are in all probability going to be told a load of bollocks. At least ninety per cent of all scientific theories turn out to be wrong in the long run. It is being able to detect the ones that aren't which is the mark of a true scientist.
    1
  8598. What happened to The Dark Ages?
    1
  8599. Arne Hannah But are climate scientists really scientists? Can other scientists obtain grants to replicate their experiments? Are the computer models they use available for analysis? Do they regularly alter data to conform to their theories? There's good science and bad science (as well as good dentists and bad dentists) The cap and trade industry allows hedge-fund managers to make millions from the continued climate crisis scare which these so-called scientists promote. Don't get me wrong: many of them have been duped - as I am afraid have you.
    1
  8600. Not Russia, maybe, but there are many Russians who own great chunks of Ukrainian industry.
    1
  8601. I expect she'll be President in 2024. She needs a bit of experience.
    1
  8602. Anyone who thinks the National Association of Black Journalists ought to even EXIST is already living in cloud cuckoo land.
    1
  8603.  @geraldhewing2076  Then you are a fool.
    1
  8604.  @bob_the_bomb4508  Racism exists mainly in the minds of those who benefit from the pretence of its existence.
    1
  8605.  @denysunshine9752  This is all so retrograde and negative. The battle is over. The battle is won. Anyone in their right mind now knows that black people and white people are only different in very minor ways. To continue this distinction is a purely political measure, designed to carry on the myth that the Democrat party is on the side on black people. If it is, it is simply in order to harvest their votes.
    1
  8606.  @BCJ1985  Those days are gone. Why keep trying to keep them alive?
    1
  8607.  @Guenther_Berger  I wonder what they'll get for a a bit of swamp and a few potato fields?
    1
  8608.  @Hoophey  All you need is an IPN. No different to watching Russia Today in Britain.
    1
  8609. thinkabout My parrot has just died, due to climate change. I'm getting a new one soon and I shall call it Greta, even if it's a boy parrot. When my dog dies and I get a new one I will call it Spot. My present dog is called Harold and he is quite old so Climate Change will get him soon Thankyou thinkabout.
    1
  8610. The Nature study was deeply flawed and has been overtaken by more recent studies which clearly demonstrate that lockdowns have been totally ineffective. Why does The Independent promote this garbage?
    1
  8611.  @srb7006  How can we capitulate to a country we are not at war with? In the present extremely volatile world of geopolitics we might as well ally with Russia as anyone. We've had our tongue up America's ass for too long.
    1
  8612.  @goodactiondaily8779  How do you define "dirty" money? The way Russia (and Ukraine) have transitioned from Communism to Capitalism might appear somewhat unsavoury to genteel Western temperaments, but it is what it is. Money is money.
    1
  8613.  @drastberry1454  Certainly. I just don't think it matters that much.
    1
  8614.  @peterebel7899  Nonsense. It's just a bit of beer money.
    1
  8615.  @tonymccake3057  The very same - although the situation will be much improved when Trump gets back in and Johnson is replaced with a proper Conservative.
    1
  8616. ​ @goodactiondaily8779 Putin is by no means mad. The invasion is a calculated risk with at least four good reasons for it and every chance of it strengthening Russia's position in the world once it's over. It's a cruel world and no-one cares for anyone else unless there is an advantage to be gained from the relationship. America is falling. Its days are numbered. China is burning itself out. Europe's imperial ambitions are doomed to failure. Under these circumstance Britain will be wise to keep all options open.
    1
  8617.  @carlossaraiva8213  You are an idiot. This war IS America's fault - and the EU's too to a certain extent. NATO has been pushing westwards with country after country becoming missile bases for America. The EU is trying to seduce Ukraine from its long-standing economic ties with Russia. Russia can't be expected just to sit back and take it. And it won't.
    1
  8618.  @carlossaraiva8213  Compared with Ukraine (and Russia!) the Tory Party are innocent choirboys.
    1
  8619.  @walterschluterjun5594  At the moment he doesn't give a fuck. If war comes though we have some chance of remaining neutral if we have the right government in place. A slim chance perhaps, but a chance just the same. Russia is nobody's enemy. It is just a target for the greed of the American military/industrial complex. America is weak and growing weaker. In a conventional war in Europe Russia will win. If it goes nuclear of course then we can all kiss our arses goodbye.
    1
  8620.  @carlossaraiva8213  Politics is not a talent contest. Grow up.
    1
  8621.  @gregoire59  Russia's relationship with Ukraine is somewhat one-sided I agree. But you cannot blame Putin for wanting to keep it going any more than you can blame (some) Ukrainians for wanting to take their business elsewhere.
    1
  8622.  @handarokadath1515  No I'm working for the Intergalactic Federation of Rational Thinkers - IFART for short.
    1
  8623.  @srb7006  The freedoms we enjoy in the West are somewhat more severely rationed in Russia, I agree. This is a necessary requirement, given the volatile Russian character. But things are improving and closer tie with Britain would doubtless have a soothing effect.
    1
  8624.  @highpath4776  I don't think it McDonalds or Coca-Cola Russia objects to as much as having nuclear missiles pointed at it from all directions.
    1
  8625.  @walterschluterjun5594  I'm by no means convinced that there are any reasons for Russia to want to recreate the boundaries of the Soviet empire. Putin has said as much and in very believable and cogent terms. He is motivated by patriotism and pragmatism, not a political ideology. He is, however, a risk-taker, but one who carefully considers the options before playing his hand. I think his move on Ukraine is directly linked to the US disaster in Afghanistan and the strong possibility of Trump regaining the Presidency. The present US administration is a laughable failure. If Trump is returned there is every possibility that NATO will crumble but that at the same time Putin will be provided with economic incentives to stay in his own backyard. Otherwise he might well feel inclined to take nips out of countries where there is a sizeable ethnic Russian population if he thinks he can get away with it. In this event Germany should be safe unless it is foolish enough to take up arms in support of other EU countries.
    1
  8626.  @Dash8Q400Channel  Traitor to what exactly? I am a patriotic Briton and we are at war with no-one.
    1
  8627.  @srb7006  Putin is entirely rational and Britain could be too. There's no longer any need for us to side with Europe against Russia apart from our obligations to NATO and these should be open to negotiation if we are lucky enough to have a sensible US President and a sensible UK PM at the same time.
    1
  8628.  @jonovens7974  Do you really believe the stuff the Western media chucks out is the whole story? Have you been told, for instance, that Russia has tried four times to join NATO? Or that Ukraine is now well on its way to securing membership? Or that America has pumped billions of dollars into the pockets of Ukrainian governments in order to keep this most corrupt of countries on side? Are you aware of the bloody civil war in the Western provinces which has been going on for eight years? Have you heard of the Azov Brigade or the Alley of Angels?
    1
  8629.  @srb7006  Domination doesn't enter into it. Survival would be nice though.
    1
  8630.  @walterschluterjun5594  Putin has no final solution in mind I'm sure. He just wants a bit of respect. In any case it will be easy enough to judge his ambitions after Ukraine is defeated -which I think it will be, and very soon. He is in no position and nor does he have enough life left to extend much further, I would have thought. He has stood by while NATO has spread unremittingly eastwards, but Ukraine would be a step too far. You cannot separate it from Russia in the same way you can other former Soviet republics or territories. The relationship is too intimate.
    1
  8631.  @Dash8Q400Channel  Odd. I don't feel the slightest bit embarrassed.
    1
  8632.  @jonovens7974  The civilians are leaving because Putin is coming in with all guns blazing. That's obvious. Russia has sought four times to join NATO. Putin even made informal enquires in 2000, but was told, somewhat haughtily, that he would have to make a formal application. He should, of course, have been welcomed with open arms. That would not have suited the US military/industrial complex, however, which since the end of World War II has been responsible for untold death and devastation most of the countries you mention -and a good many more.
    1
  8633.  @walterschluterjun5594  Ukraine has always been a line in the sand. I think. NATO's expansionism has been condemned for years, and rightly so. The Americans lied from the very start saying they would not push NATO eastward "by one inch" after 1991. Now look at the former Soviet territories in NATO. It is clear that both Ukraine and Georgia are in their sights. NATO (the Yanks really) have been asking for trouble, and they've got it. The true wishes of the Ukrainian people as a whole are impossible to judge, since it is just as corrupt as Russia. What is pretty clear though is that the Donbass provinces want to secede and if they had been allowed to do so this tragedy may not have been happened. Indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets by the Ukrainian army and sending in Nazi death squads certainly hasn't helped either.
    1
  8634.  @mrnobody3161  I don't necessarily dispute these allegations in principle. If Putin helped Brexit come true then I am very grateful to him. As for "dirty money" - what does that even mean?
    1
  8635.  @peterebel7899  What are we supposed to be the innocent victim of?
    1
  8636.  @highpath4776  I think the American disaster in Afghanistan has changed everything. The nuclear stand-off depends on psychology and right now the thought might well exist in Putin's mind that if he chooses his moment he could cripple the US without drawing an unsustainable degree of retribution. And if the Americans think he thinks that they are at an immediate disadvantage.
    1
  8637.  @therealrobertbirchall  Nothing the Tories have ever done comes anywhere close to what goes on in Ukraine. It is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
    1
  8638.  @DavidMoxham957  Do forgive me for intruding upon a private conversation but you are showing every sign of paranoia. Are you simply incapable of dealing with the idea that there may be people in the world who disagree with you? I am "infesting this forum" because: a)Having intelligent conversations with people I disagree with can be useful in moderating my outlook. b) I like a good argument, c) I enjoy humiliating fools like you.
    1
  8639.  @jonovens7974  What error? Please point it out to me. I must have missed it the first time.
    1
  8640.  @DavidMoxham957  Now your paranoia is really showing. You do not need anyone to gaslight you. You seem to have done a good job on your own. I am tempted to let you continue to believe I am a Russian agent The image if you carefully wiping your doorknob is quite refreshing.
    1
  8641.  @ulfosterberg9116  Lost me there, chum. I do, however, have a lovely vision of Britain, Russia and the USA uniting against a common foe, as in the War. Same foe too, more or less. Scandinavia will be invited to join.
    1
  8642. There is no threat of a Russian invasion unless we continue with our insane provocation. In fact there are far more people imprisoned in this country for speech crimes than there are in Russia.
    1
  8643. It's quite extraordinary how an educated man can somehow possess the same opinions as the most ill-educated and brainwashed American High School junior. Russia is not "expanding into another country." It is merely attempting to regain valuable territory which was stolen from it by a worthless piece of paper; one similar to the "treaties" which the US used to help it commit genocide in the country it first occupied. Tucker Carlson is doing a great service to world peace in attempting to open ignorant eyes to the truth of the situation in Ukraine. We are the baddies here. I can only imagine that whatever traumas Professor Wilson underwent during his time in Russia they have skewered his outlook to such an extent that he has reverted to a permanent state of adolescence.
    1
  8644. You do realise, don't you, that the efficacy of lockdowns in reducing the number of deaths is very much in dispute. There have been at least two extensive peer-reviewed studies which strongly indicate that while lockdowns slow down the rate of infection, at the end of the day the number of deaths is hardly affected at all. It is, as you rightly say, the number of properly-staffed ICU beds which is the problem. You can't stop elderly and vulnerable people from dying. But you can provide facilities to help ensure borderline cases survive and suffer less. Failure to do this is the government's most grievous fault.
    1
  8645.  @AnotherPointOfView944  Strictly speaking a fart is an exhalation of methane molecules. Admittedly these are about ten times smaller than a coronavirus but the analogy is still apt. The weave of your standard facemask will allow several tens of coranaviruses to pass through each aperture at a time. If they smelt you would know they were there. Your joke was quite good, incidentally, and I take no exception to it.
    1
  8646.  @AnotherPointOfView944  OK you got me. Surely though water vapour droplets break up when passing through a mask, thus releasing coranaviruses, shotgun style? And what about the widely accepted suggestion that fiddling with masks much encourages the spread of infection through hand contact? Do you know of any reputable studies that clearly make the case for facemasks in this context? I am always ready to abandon my prejudices in the face of hard evidence.
    1
  8647.  @Raygo.  AS in the present conflict there is propaganda from both sides. It takes two to tango. What about the Azov Battalion? What about the Alley of Angels?
    1
  8648. Then trillions get removed from banks, the banking industry goes into crisis and Putin comes out smiling.
    1
  8649. There is no doubt that the US electoral system is deeply flawed and easily subjected to manipulation.
    1
  8650. Every misguided move by the Democrats to bring Trump down means more votes for him at the polls later this year. More and more people are realising that the whole Orange Man Bad campaign is a scam designed by crooks who are scared of losing their seats on the gravy train.
    1
  8651.  @Leadbelly.  I doubt it. With luck Ukraine will replace Zelensky and Russia will get the rest of Donbass without blood being needlessly shed.
    1
  8652. They are.
    1
  8653. Do you have links to other studies using low dosages?
    1
  8654. Zelensky is not an American ally. He is the puppet of a former American administration - and one who hasn't kept to the terms of his contract.
    1
  8655. Go back to bed and suck a corner of your blanket instead. It will do about as much good.
    1
  8656. Why waste an expensive missile on a playground?
    1
  8657. Let's hope ours is more successful.
    1
  8658. But kids only very, very rarely die of covid now. Why should this be any different in the future?
    1
  8659.  @tomikenic1  No it doesn't. The number of deaths depends upon the number of people available to die. In any case the numbers are so small you can draw no conclusions from any change. Only 30 children under 14 have died in England throughout the entire pandemic, all with severe pre-existing conditions. Even if your reasoning was correct (which it isn't) the entire population could become infected and the number of child deaths wouldn't even reach three hundred.
    1
  8660. In the UK, as in many other countries, masks stopped being mandated months ago. They really are pretty useless you know.
    1
  8661.  @becauseiam7915  Mask mandate and use efficacy for COVID-19 containment in US States Damian D. Guerra1,*, Daniel J. Guerra2 1Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, United States of America; 2Authentic Biochemistry, VerEvMed, Clarkston, Washington, United States of America Background: COVID-19 pandemic mitigation requires evidence-based strategies. Because COVID-19 can spread via respired droplets, most US states mandated mask use in public settings. Randomized control trials have not clearly demonstrated mask efficacy against respiratory viruses, and observational studies conflict on whether mask use predicts lower infection rates. We hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use were associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States. Methods: We calculated total COVID-19 case growth and mask use for the continental United States with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We estimated post-mask mandate case growth in non-mandate states using median issuance dates of neighboring states with mandates. Results: Earlier mask mandates were not associated with lower total cases or lower maximum growth rates. Earlier mandates were weakly associated with lower minimum COVID-19 growth rates. Mask use predicted lower minimum but not lower maximum growth rates. Growth rates and total growth were comparable between US states in the first and last mask use quintiles during the Fall-Winter wave. These observations persisted for both natural logarithmic and fold growth models and when adjusting for differences in US state population density. Conclusions: We did not observe association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states. COVID-19 mitigation requires further research and use of existing efficacious strategies, most notably vaccination. Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, face covering, medical mask, mask mandate, nonpharmaceutical intervention
    1
  8662. He was protecting civilisation in his home town, where he worked and had family.
    1
  8663. It doesn't matter either way to the Russians - as long as more Ukrainians die in the process.
    1
  8664.  @kyle-ld2gh  Perun is a mere propagandist - which not to say that the Russian military is not corrupt and incompetent - because it is! But it always has been, and due allowance is made. This is why lack of efficiency has to be compensated for by sheer weight of numbers. As has clearly seen by the SMO the Russian tactic is to clear ground with experienced well-equipped troops which are rapidly replaced by large numbers of run-of-the-mill guys with old equipment who just soak up the enemy like blotting paper. The Russian army was built for defence and for show, which is why the Russians have to rely so much on mercenaries to do the real fighting.
    1
  8665.  @skitballesnorapa  As long as works it doesn't matter that much. Russia has air, artillery and missile superiority. The Poor Bloody Infantry just has to do its best with what its got and hope quantity bears quality.
    1
  8666.  @fv5855  Dear me. What a lot of silly propaganda you've swallowed. You'll end up with indigestion if you're not careful.
    1
  8667.  @gaoxiaen1  Pretty good on weapons supply though. They'll swap a lot of their conventional stuff for nuclear know-how and processed uranium.. In any case your "most of the world" is a considerably smaller constituency than perhaps you imagine. Most countries are just making polite noises while really they're just waiting to see how things pan out.
    1
  8668.  @adamredwine774  By "normal" I suppose you mean corrupt and self-seeking and in the pockets of warmongering businessmen and criminals disguised as policemen?
    1
  8669.  @adamredwine774  Normally corrupt and self-seeking and dedicated to war, do you mean?
    1
  8670.  @G_Demolished  You don't even know what fascism is.
    1
  8671.  @bogtrottername7001  I know what it isn't. And it isn't everything that the left happens to disagree with.
    1
  8672. The utter shame and embarrassment of it. I think I prefer Antifa.
    1
  8673.  @charlottedowson9460  They are delusional narcissists.
    1
  8674. And yet symptoms in young children are invariably even milder and more short-lived than they are in adults. Big Pharma sure must have a huge stock of their stuff they need to unload sharpish. What a wonder they don't give it away to poor countries instead of selling it to rich countries for obscene profits.
    1
  8675. This is the same nonsense as the "Russian collusion" allegations against Trump, or the Capitol "insurrection"; out of the same stable, spread by the same lying media and believed by the same dim-witted fools.
    1
  8676. It should also be mentioned that Farage gets between 100/145k views for his show, plus another 10k or so for most of his segments from it on YouTube. Not that it's a competition or anything. There's room for everyone.
    1
  8677. Ukrainians are dying by the tens of thousands in order to defend American commercial interests. We really, really, really don't want to be next.
    1
  8678. There have already been referendums in Crimea and Donbass showing overwhelming support for secession from Ukraine. They were almost certainly fixed - but then so is every referendum and election in gangster-run Ukraine -including Zerensky's.
    1
  8679. No. Establishment arselicker.
    1
  8680. Silly brainwashed bint.
    1
  8681. Or launder the money he's already got.
    1
  8682.  @bangbangcan2  And you don't understand grammar.
    1
  8683. @ Your grammar is somewhat faulty, you know.
    1
  8684.  @catsploitation  So Musk and Vance are Islamist Labour party supporters? I really didn't know that.
    1
  8685. @Arfur Fuxxakes Yes Arfur.
    1
  8686.  @hx8457  All infections cause organ failure. Infections are nasty things. Back in 1968/69 30,000 died in Britain from the Hong Kong flu. That's a bigger proportion of the population than Covid 19 has culled. And many of them were children. The cost in terms of years of life lost was far, far greater that than in this pandemic. And no. I'm not on Facebook or any social media. My information comes from expert sources who are not caught up in the politics of this situation.
    1
  8687.  @owenhall5742  Some influenzas are caused by coronaviruses, while others are caused by other types of virus. It makes little difference, All they are are tiny strands of genetic material which cannot reproduce on their own so have to get inside a host cell to pirate its resources. The behaviour patterns of all viruses are broadly similar.
    1
  8688.  @Ninjimdo  The death rate in Sweden compares with other countries of similar population size. It also, like the UK, had what is known as "dry tinder" ie a preceding flu season with very few deaths, leaving a larger than usual pool of frail elderly . The current tests are totally unreliable, giving many false positives and negatives. Boris doesn't know what proportion of the population has antibodies and nor does anyone else. Antibodies last for varying lengths of time, depending upon initial viral load. The very tiny number of people who have been re-infected had only very mild symptoms the first time round and so only built up a small antibody response.
    1
  8689.  Arfur Fuxxakes  You've never proved me wrong once, you deluded fool. Here are a few items of information for you to plough through - although I doubt you will. You have no interest in discovering the truth. You just need to have your prejudices constantly reinforced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ5GKKvOVlo Failures in covid testing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac Good summary overall position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWhvIbvI8D0 Great vid on test stupidity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vvgefwKgSU False positives https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-many-covid-diagnoses-are-false-positives- Henegan article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWjVYzvTHwM Excellent technical on herd immunity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXleN7KFqdc Top american on the folly of lockdowns
    1
  8690.  @owenhall5742  You are quite right of course, but its purely a matter of semantics. It's the flu! Is just a bit punchier than flu-like. Covid 19's behaviour pattern is very flu-like, though, don't you think? Have you come across this guy? I'd be interested in your views on his assessment if you have time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac&t=1724s
    1
  8691. @Arfur Fuxxakes You'll just never escape your ego will you Arfur?
    1
  8692. @Arfur Fuxxakes I just like to find out the truth about things Arfur. It's something I don't think you can ever hope to understand.
    1
  8693. @Arfur Fuxxakes This is getting tedious. I will say though that most of the things you say to me sound very like the things a mother might say to a troublesome child. Have these things been said to you, Arfur? Are you offloading your guilt and resentment?
    1
  8694. I feel just the same when they blather on about their double blinsided placebos or whatever. People are dying who maybe needn't !
    1
  8695. No. Because of one panicky cop and natural causes.
    1
  8696. I just like to remind myself what despicable, sanctimonious parasites are out there getting paid public money to spout an incessant stream of lies. If I didn't see it for myself I wouldn't believe it could be true.
    1
  8697.  unitedwestand  Just collecting liberal tears. Got anything interesting to say?
    1
  8698. Er. No.
    1
  8699. Another man rescuing civilians in Mariupol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XopADw6m9U&t=935s
    1
  8700. "Racism" is just too broad a term. It is a beast of several varieties, some quite sinister, some quite absurd and some quite innocuous. It is, in itself, a perfectly natural evolutionary response to people who look and behave differently. to your group as a whole. Once interbreeding gets under way, then it largely disappears. The instinctive gut-reaction racism which was prevalent in this country in the latter half of the 20th century has now largely disappeared among younger generations, The "racism" which exists today comes from a perception that we are short of resources and services, and this is due to excessive immigration without sufficient infrastructure being put in place. The feeling is that "we were here first"; we deserve first pick at what resources and services remain. The ghetto mentality of many immigrants, particularly Moslems, adds greatly to this feeling of disenfranchisement. It is probably safe to say that if our immigrants were exclusively Christian Africans and West Indians or Indian Sikhs and Hindus, then we would not have the problems that we have. This is an important point to remember when considering Tommy Robinson, who numbers Black people and Sikhs and Hindus among his friends and supporters.
    1
  8701. But Russia doesn't WANT to conquer Ukraine. Don't you get that? It just wants the Russian bits back - which now it very nearly has.
    1
  8702. But Russia does not want to conquer Ukraine. It just wants those Russian parts in the East returned to them. And that has now very nearly happened.
    1
  8703. The West's investment in this conflict just isn't paying dividends. Slowly drip-feeding equipment is good PR, but the real money will be made once its all over and Ukraine is in America's debt for all eternity.
    1
  8704. The Supreme Court should also be abolished. We got on quite well without one.
    1
  8705. This is so obvious to me as a layman. Why only now have we got one lone specialist saying it? Thank goodness vaccines are so ineffective and facemasks more or less totally so -otherwise the demented politicians and their crackpot "advisors" might be able to cause even more damage than they have already.
    1
  8706.  @nenaaa1444  It depends what you mean by racist. Obviously people from different races look different to one another, and even behave differently. Acknowledging this is not racist. What is racist is saying that your own race is inherently superior. It is wrong for white people to use the n- word nowadays simply because it WAS used in a highly derogatory sense by very prejudiced people in the Deep South. But if it was simply a description of black people, and us oldies occasionally make a slip, you must forgive us. No harm is meant.
    1
  8707. To think Putin care a toss about what anyone in the West thinks about him is just plain foolishness. He doesn't care much about what Russians think about him - although the vast majority reckon he's pretty OK.
    1
  8708.  @internetenjoyer1044  It's worth investigating both sides of the propaganda war, don't you think? Russia's case seems to stand up pretty well as far as I can see -and makes historical sense for the most part.
    1
  8709.  @internetenjoyer1044  The question of whether or not Russia "wants to dominate Eastern Europe" is an open one, but I see little evidence for it. It was grateful enough to release its hold on the soviet republics and the satellite countries after the soviet collapse. At that time I seem to recall promises being made that NATO would not expand eastward, and Russia in fact was even ready to join NATO itself in order to help ensure a peaceful future, but the offer was rejected. Since then a further 13 countries have joined NATO, all militarised and all presenting a threat therefore to Russia. Putin can be excused for feeling a little surrounded. No, it is American imperialism and the American military/industrial complex which is yet again at fault here. It needs Russia to maintain a role as permanent enemy in order to justify its existence. As for Ukraine, as with Chechnya and Georgia, its flirtation with NATO must necessarily be brought to a halt. I would imagine Putin has tried to match American bribes with bribes of his own but has been priced out of the market. Hence the invasion. The war could end tomorrow if Ukraine would only concede to Russia's entirely reasonable demands. Creating Donbass as a buffer state and extracting a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO will surely be enough. Putin cannot want the whole country. This would mean a very expensive and very lengthy civil war which would weaken Russia and allow further American expansion in the Baltic.
    1
  8710. Meanwhile in the town of Oroville the river through the park is flooding. I do wish the BBC would stop playing this ridiculous game of blaming every event on climate change. You can bet this is due to mismanagement, construction faults or even theft. Remember "Chinatown"?
    1
  8711. He's got more sense than to string this madness out. Give Putin Donbass and Crimea for good and that will be it. The idea of Russia wanting its empire back is a total myth put out by Western warmongers with a commercial interest in prolonging the conflict.
    1
  8712. I agree entirely, and I think it's probably a good thing.
    1
  8713. Democracy died in America in November. Without it, this is what you get.
    1
  8714. NATO will be a thing of the past before Ukraine gets into it.
    1
  8715. He's the only sane person in the room.
    1
  8716.  @bonnie7898  They are not lies. They are sincerely held beliefs, expressed by Putin's essay on Russian/ Ukrainian relations and history published in the Summer of 2021, and re-iterated in his State of the Nation speeches in 2022and this year. You should read them. All we get in the West is edited versions for idiots, served up by the corrupt media.. You are utterly brainwashed and given a totally false view of the situation. It's pathetic. His reasons for the war are sound. You don't take a step like this on a whim. Russia is under threat from America and its NATO lackeys. The eight million Russians in Ukraine are having their language and culture stolen from them. The mineral riches of Donbass were discovered by and mined and exploited by Russians over many generations. The newly-created Ukrainian government is not entitled to sell them to the West.
    1
  8717. @Xen Not at all! The fact that over half who have died were over 85 and that of those of all ages over 90% had serious existing illnesses is neither here no there. A life is a life,. but it is surely good for the nation that at least some of them should be replaced by these bold and adventurous young people.
    1
  8718. @Xen You misunderstand me completely. I am actually in my seventies and Covid 19 is just one of the things out to get me, and not very high on the list either from what I can tells from the statistics. This thing is what is. We can at least be grateful that its mechanics are such that it really only kills the vulnerable. Back in 1968/69 we had the Hong Kong flu which killed 30,000 in this country. Big difference was that a lot of them were children.
    1
  8719.  Freddy K  I never meet one. Anyone with a severe illness should be isolated and those tasked with caring for them should take rigid precautions. That's all that needed. In any case the pandemic is more or less over. The "advice" is now even more politically motivated than ever.
    1
  8720. It rather depends on who is writing the history, and what the eventual outcome of the war turns out to be. Zelensky could well end up being viewed as a puppet of the West, who used his regime in a bid to finally destroy its old enemy, Russia, the failure of which ill-conceived enterprise was one of the major factors in the collapse of the American empire.
    1
  8721.  @ultonian63  Comrade?
    1
  8722.  @axelv1753  The controversy will doubtless continue for decades. History is like that.
    1
  8723. The journey will continue whether Trump holds any office or not. There is a vast population of American people, already disenfranchised by the woke left, who simply will not put up with any further encroachments on their traditional liberties and beliefs. Once the new administration starts paying off its debts to George Soros, BLM and the Chinese Communist Party there will be hell to pay.
    1
  8724.  @Outspoken.Humanist  Having gone through at least some of the 70 or so hours of sworn testimony given at recent state senate hearings I am personally convinced that there was widespread fraud committed in the election. That there were many serious breaches of electoral and constitutional law causing many thousands of votes to be invalid is incontrovertible. A recent poll has shown that 39% of Americans share this view. This what we mean by disenfranchisement. The strong likelihood of unpunished fraud is what is causing division and resentment, not Donald Trump. Biden will be President in name only.
    1
  8725.  @Outspoken.Humanist  As I said, there are 70 hours of state senate hearings all pointing firmly at fraud, or malpractice at the very least. I append a small sample from one of the Georgia hearings below. Of course Trump knows about this, so there's no need for sarcasm! It was his lawyer Mayor Giuliani who organised these hearings and it is the material in these hearings which provide a bedrock for all those millions of Americans who believe that fraud took place. Life is not a cop show or a courtroom drama, all nicely scripted, so broadly speaking what has happened is this: Courts have refused to hear cases based upon selections from this body of evidence. This was entirely expected since no judge in his right mind would want something as dangerous as this in his courtroom. Trump's lawyers didn't want the cases to go through anyway. Proceedings would take months if not years. Instead state senates heard the evidence - and accepted a great deal of it in many cases - as raw evidence, but once again without the sanction of legal judgement. They were asked to overthrow the election result, but of course did not do so for much the same reasons as the judges were reluctant to take on cases. Instead they have generally promised to try to clean up their acts and alternative electors were sent to the college count on the 6th. Pence could, if he had wished, have accepted these alternative electors but, naturally enough, like the judges and the state senators he was reluctant to take such a serious step. Where we go from here no-one knows. There is hour upon hour of evidence , much of which I found personally very convincing and so too, apparently do around 39% of Americans. It is a recipe for tragedy and the first chapter began on Capitol hill on the day the electoral college met. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuD-zlhwD0M&t=8201s
    1
  8726.  @artmcteagle  Former Ukrainians of Russian descent are not allowed in the Russian military. They can however volunteer to join the partisans armies of Donbass or the Wagner group, which was specifically created to organise those two armies. None of the three units conscripts soldiers.
    1
  8727.  @auroraalpha34  The will of the people doesn't count for much in these conflicts, I'm afraid. It's pretty impossible to determine anyway.
    1
  8728.  @auroraalpha34  No It's Russian historically and economically. Since in neither Russia nor Ukraine is it possible to conduct a meaningful plebiscite of any sort , and since negotiation has been rejected ,the matter can only be settled by force of arms.
    1
  8729.  @auroraalpha34  I don't. Nor does anyone. The Russians living there are concentrated in the industrial areas and many wish to be allied with Russia. That is all one can safely say. Putin's solution, that Donbass should become autonomous, strikes me as the best one but Ukraine was ordered by the West to reject it. The area is sitting on $trillions of gas,oil coal and rare minerals and America wants it and Russia wants to keep it. That's what the war is about. The wishes of the people scarcely enter into it.
    1
  8730. Starmer must go. Immediately. This government needs to be dissolved before Britain is destroyed.
    1
  8731. It may or may not be relevant, but the hospital is run by Christians - Anglicans in fact.
    1
  8732. @ But who actually SUPPLIES the money? And how would they organise themselves to earn it without a CEO and his/her staff?
    1
  8733. @ Some or all of the above, I imagine. And it passes through their hands in the form of wages and investments, to those people who do not create wealth, but merely assist in its distribution.
    1
  8734.  @Fossil_Frank  Then why do businesses, government departments and local authorities waste money on employing them?
    1
  8735.  @markhackett2302  Who supplies the customer with money? And how do the workers organise themselves and seek out markets and suppliers of raw materials? And how is this procedure administered?
    1
  8736.  @Fossil_Frank  I agree that the system is far from ideal and, human nature being what it is, frequently corrupt. But is difficult to see what can efficiently replace it. Even under socialism the same system quite rapidly wriggles back into place with senior positions being awarded to the "political allies or whistleblowers" as you rightly say. It is simply part of the human condition that a pyramidical structure seems inevitable in any form of governance and it is foolish to blame those who evolve to the top layers of the pyramid for the pyramid's collapse. It is equally pointless to be jealous of the benefits they obtain from their position.
    1
  8737.  @Fossil_Frank  It is purely a question of degree, and that degree differs largely due to cultural differences and accidents of history. What one culture considers a crime may be quite acceptable behaviour in another culture. A puritanical crusade to combat what one section of society considers to be criminal behaviour may end up being counter-productive if that behaviour is essential to stability. The wheels of governance are greased in different ways across the world, but greased they always are.
    1
  8738.  @LeafHuntress  Working co-ops invariably disintegrate once the workforce exceeds a certain number - usually no more than a couple of dozen at most. People actually need leaders. They may not necessarily be good people - or even good leaders - but without a focus of some sort any organisational structure will invariably collapse into chaos and anarchy. History proves this. It may be an uncomfortable truth - but it is a truth nonetheless.
    1
  8739.  @Fossil_Frank  Belarus is a good example. The country is actually not that badly run but foreign (ie American) influences create dissatisfactions. Russia will simply not allow Belarus and other satellite countries to change allegiance. We may find this reprehensible but true democracy is a state of affairs seldom reached in any country. This is especially true when it is weaponised by outside influences.
    1
  8740. I imagine Habib was grouping these two together because both have views tainted by a combination of Islamist, globalist and far-left attitudes. Like it or not, this cocktail of inanities is putting the fear of God in the hearts of many Britons.
    1
  8741. Why?
    1
  8742.  @ultonian63  I suppose they must. As it is though, if they lose they will have to knuckle down to some form of Russian overlordship anyway.
    1
  8743.  @marianaibrahim5037  The Ukrainians are the innocent fools who are being used by the West in a bid to undermine Russia. They really don't deserve this, but they have been seduced by propaganda and false promises.
    1
  8744.  @ldhorricks  I direct you to Anna in Russia, who is currently on her YouTube channel doing her Christmas shopping in the huge and splendid mall in her home town in Siberia. If you are the seasoned traveller you claim I find it hard to understand how you can make such a sharp distinction between two groups of such closely-related peoples who have lived under the same systems of government for many years.
    1
  8745.  @robertpatrick3350  Many of them ARE Russians.
    1
  8746.  @jonjack2754  Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Ukraine for Russia too. The Russians you refer to are young men wishing to avoid dying on the battlefield. And who can blame them? But since Russia a population of men of military age of around 33million, it's no big deal.
    1
  8747. But we do have a strong sense of liberty. This is why the right wing is experiencing a resurgence. Labour crushes independence and freedom of thought.
    1
  8748. Jack Richardson. Jack, dear Jack , I'm seriously coming to believe you are a bot.
    1
  8749. Are you very, very proud indeed of being able to use posh phrases you don't know the meaning of?
    1
  8750. Nicholas Santos Yes! We can join with Muslims and Aborigines and other religions and races and convert Republicans and FORCE them to close down their filthy power stations! If they don't listen to reason we can cut the oil pipelines and throw bombs down the coalmines. Everyone should also learn how to knit. That is another very good idea.
    1
  8751. Kids mainly. The officials who neglected fire prevention due to bonkers environmentalist notions are the ones who need seeing to.
    1
  8752.  @darkhorseman8263  Global warming had nothing to do with. The LNP policy on national forests was criminal but so too were the actions of Green politicians at local level.
    1
  8753. All Putin is doing is trying to stop Ukraine selling off highly valuable, Russian- owned mines to the Americans. This is not imperialism,
    1
  8754.  @quito787  I'm trying to be neutral, but I have to say that Russia has very real reasons for taking the actions it has and, more importantly, a quick Russian victory is the only way this dreadful war can be brought to a rapid conclusion.
    1
  8755.  @rowaystarco  Not so. Russia has the capacity to bomb Ukrainian cities into dust, as it did in Syria.
    1
  8756.  @rowaystarco  Because they're cheap.
    1
  8757. I did hear that these sea drones were originally developed by Columbian drug lords to smuggle their product to Florida! Whatever the case they have altered to shape of naval warfare forever.
    1
  8758. But Putin hasn't bombed much yet. Don't you wonder why? He has the capacity to flatten Kiev without even going nuclear.
    1
  8759. The Logan Act has only been used twice since it was enacted in 1799, and never once either in this century or the last. It is a stupid piece legislation which no-one in their right mind takes any notice of.
    1
  8760.  @dubster82  Almost a crime against humanity. If we get a proper trade deal with the US Cadburys will make millions. I
    1
  8761.  @rebeccabradley560  I simply can't tell you what an enormous relief to me this is. Thank you.
    1
  8762. I am now torn between Ben Bradley and Sir Desmond Swayne as my favoured immediate replacement for Boris.
    1
  8763. The point of these attacks is to drain Kiev's air defences. Sèems to be working.
    1
  8764. It was liberated in 2014.
    1
  8765. It has been shut down since September. The chances of a meltdown seem non-existent.
    1
  8766.  @impos8249  Against this must be weighed the fact that this missile is not in use by the Russian army, but is widely used by the Ukrainians. They have been bombarding Donbas for eight years, resulting in many civilian deaths and have regularly fired upon refugees fleeing besieged cities. At the end of the day simply weigh up the benefits of this attack to the Ukrainians against the benefit to the Russians. The Russians gain nothing except further bad publicity. The Ukrainians get more missiles.
    1
  8767.  @Andrew-ob5ij  There are no similarities between these two incidents.
    1
  8768.  @impos8249  Take your pick https://youtu.be/bMKPz2j2oWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJH4Y8ZTrBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFAU5STk7lI&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1b-RKDHZOo&t=1204s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  8769.  @abarlowgsa  Some background showing the extreme likelihood of this atrocity having been committed by Ukrainian extremists in their armed forces: https://youtu.be/bMKPz2j2oWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJH4Y8ZTrBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFAU5STk7lI&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1b-RKDHZOo&t=1204s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  8770.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Because there is no advantage to him in doing do. The Salisbury poisoning is another matter. It was probably merely the result of a spat between various oligarchs.
    1
  8771. This is nonsense. Of course Russians are allowed to return to Russia, but also given the opportunity to resettle in Donbass which had, anyway, a very extensive Russian population before the war.
    1
  8772. Every weapon the West sends to Ukraine prolongs the war and increases the toll of human suffering. Think on that, armchair warriors.
    1
  8773. Trump has a great sense of humour. Liberals don't.
    1
  8774.  @duncan5063  Point proved.
    1
  8775.  @duncan5063  There you go again.
    1
  8776. This event was clearly stage-managed by the Deep State and the Democrats as a propaganda exercise to distract from their manipulation of the election result. All those convicted should be pardoned and compensated.
    1
  8777.  @passivehouseaustralia4406  As I said I am not a scientist, so perhaps you can tell me if when a virus exists in aerosol form water is present. I didn't think it was, but perhaps I am wrong.
    1
  8778.  @robbiedubbelman3024  Russia does not want these cities. All it wants is the rest of Donbass - which is very heavily defended because it is sitting on around 6% of the world's valuable mineral resources - coal, gas, iron and rare earth minerals such as lithium. This is where the real war is happening and it is here where Russia is advancing. It is doing so simply because Ukraine's forces are being depleted by having to defend Kherson, Kharkiv and the like.
    1
  8779.  @user-aero68  It isn't the amount of land that counts, but its value. Both Russia and Ukraine know this. This war is about gaining control of the vast mineral resources of Donbass, and very little else. Who occupies Kherson city or Kharkiv is of no importance.
    1
  8780.  @PawelLeszczynskipav  Defending the Russian speaking population has about as much validity as bringing democracy to Ukraine. They are factors, but this war, like all wars, is about the possession of resources. The mining industry in Eastern Ukraine is Russian. Russians were shipped in to do the work and it has been developed over three centuries using Russian capital. The Soviet Union merely gave the job of administering it to Kiev as a matter of convenience. Now that rare earth minerals such as lithium have been discovered there, to add to the coal, iron ore and gas, Russia is reluctant to see it handed over to Western companies, which was Kiev's intention.
    1
  8781.  @user-aero68  I seriously doubt that Putin will run out of men and equipment before Ukraine, whether or not Trump regains office and, very sensibly, manages to call a halt to this madness. The offers being made to Ukraine might look good on paper, but when you break them down they are not sufficient, I think, to come even close to defeating Russia in real terms. The claims made about Ukraine's re-equipment and Russia's loss of equipment have been greatly exaggerated in both instances, and the latest round of predictions will fall into the same category, I am sure. As to the causes of the war I lay the blame firmly at the feet of the US and its allies and the Western investment companies who have mistakenly seen the vast mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine as fruit ripe for the picking. Without this greed Russia and Ukraine could have settled their difficulties without the need for war. Ukraine would certainly not have been in a position to turn down Russia's entirely reasonable demands without being armed by the West. Eastern Ukraine is far more Russian than it is Ukrainian. The mining and steelmaking industries are operated by and financed by Russia. Putin made it clear years ago that Kiev could ally with the West and join the EU if it wished - but it could not take these resources with it simply because the new country of Ukraine had the same borders of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, all of which was, in real terms, a Russian vassal.
    1
  8782.  @user-aero68  The war started when Zelensky was persuaded to turn down Putin's entirely reasonable proposals to resolve the Donbass dilemma by allowing it a measure of autonomy, and thus not be included in any deal between Ukraine and the EU. America and NATO had already spent billions of creating a Ukrainian army with which to retake Donbass from the Russian-back separatists. They did so because they wished the vast mineral resources of the area to be taken over by Western companies, rather than the Russian companies which have exploited them for centuries. Russia could not really be expected to take this lying down. I sincerely doubt that Ukraine will be able to hold out longer than Russia. The wonderful advances due to new Western weapons have not materialised, and neither has Russia run out of men and weapons. The same predictions are trotted out with depressing regularity, only to come to nothing, and this latest round of will suffer the same fate, I am pretty sure.
    1
  8783.  @user-aero68  Russia had very sound reasons for refusing to allow mineral-rich Donbass to pass into Western hands, as was being planned. Attempt to resolve the situation peacefully were turned down by Zelensky, almost certainly at the West's insistence. The only alternative to war would have been humiliation for Russia and the loss of billions of dollars of income. Nothing is certain in war, but I think it highly improbable that Ukraine will outlast Russia. For many, many months we have been told that new super-dooper Western weapons will turn the tide and that Russia is running out of weapons, ammunition and men. Neither of these things have happened and it is extremely unlikely that they will do so now.
    1
  8784.  @user-aero68  I am pretty sure Russia stands a better chance than Ukraine of emerging victorious, even if Trump does not get re-elected and, very sensibly, puts an end to this madness. It takes two to tango, and Putin's proposals to end the situation in Donbass were entirely reasonable - and certainly preferable to a bloody war. We have been hearing for a long time now how Western weapons are going to turn the tide, and how Russia is running out of men and munitions. Neither has happened, and I think it unlikely that either will happen now.
    1
  8785.  @user-aero68  You are both innocent and optimistic. The causes of the war are complex and Russia cannot afford to lose it. Stories of its losses are as exaggerated as the promises of further help from the West - with or without Trump. Nothing is certain, but all in all the likeliest outcome has to be a compromise which, tragically, will probably result in a situation not dissimilar to that put forward by Putin before he was forced to invade.
    1
  8786. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    1
  8787.  @christopherbennett5858  So you agree this is just another smear exercise, rather than anything to do with uncovering any potential wrongdoing? How very Democrat.
    1
  8788.  @christopherbennett5858  Naah. This is just another Democrat nothingburger. A glossy photo on the menu but with zero nutritional content. Most politicians in America take bribes in some form or another -which don't show up on their tax returns. Trump is more used to paying out bribes than taking them, which is why the corrupt political establishment hate and fear him so much.
    1
  8789.  @1ConfidentWreck  All Trump's tax returns have already been audited by the IRS. So what am I missing?
    1
  8790.  @Nefariously_ignorant  NU is a corrupt Democrat gang hideout where legal decisions are worthless,
    1
  8791. What's wrong with Russians?
    1
  8792. Slightly more complicated than that. Some Ukrainians tried to take their weapons with them and fighting broke out again. The Ukrainian commanders were later court-martialled, I believe. It was not a deliberate trap by the Russians. It was just badly organised and mutual mistrust resulted in a bloodbath with casualties on both sides.
    1
  8793.  @tw25rw  An optimistic view.
    1
  8794.  @jayline3606  In which case may we expect to see Ukraine regain the territory it has lost in recent weeks, do you think?
    1
  8795. I would just like to say that reading the grief-ridden idiocies in these comments has given me enormous pleasure. Thank you all very much indeed.
    1
  8796. Are the lost souls of the working classes much concerned with mathematical formulae? Crowded hospital waiting rooms and rarely hearing the English language spoken on their streets come closer to home.
    1
  8797. What money raised? The US would just stop buying Canadian oil.
    1
  8798. The reliance on magic Masks is truly astounding. They are such an obvious con-trick!
    1
  8799.  @stevewilliams7441  Of course. That's what it was called then. The Nazi's didn't like the word Nazi. I think it sounds like something very rude in Polish.
    1
  8800.  @DJWESG1  That will be some time in the 23rd century or so then.
    1
  8801.  @Yeknodathon  You've been working on that little joke for days, haven't you my sweet lovely!?
    1
  8802.  @Yeknodathon  Actually the figures supporting the traditional view of the timescale involved in the construction of the Great Pyramid are now looking entirely reasonable. No aliens needed. Just lots and lots of people and lots and lots of beer.
    1
  8803.  @Yeknodathon  Alas, time is the enemy. Hopefully though sufficient information on the mechanics of the 2020 fraud will become available to prevent a repetition in next year's mid-terms and to guarantee success for Trump or his nominee in '24.
    1
  8804.  @Lizzbird_  Never said.
    1
  8805.  @stevewilkos7504  He probably won't need to negotiate for that. He'd prefer to keep Donbass and lose Kursk anyway.
    1
  8806. Shh. They didn't.
    1
  8807. He has discovered that helping Ukraine will only prolong the agony.
    1
  8808. Seems the media's job these days is to spread lies in order to promote a political agenda - in which case you're doing just great! Democracy Now!
    1
  8809. Uncle Joe will read us bedtime stories. Should work.
    1
  8810. Despite all the weasel words from politicians and the press it remains a fact that around 40% of Americans believe the election was rigged - including some Democrats. Unless these concerns are properly addressed by some sort of legally constituted tribunal or enquiry scenes such as this will continue. There's a very good chance that if words don't settle it, guns will.
    1
  8811. It is.
    1
  8812.  @BrianV-ie4mw Some of the above, certainly! Plus a few you've left out.
    1
  8813. This was a genuine expression of righteous anger which warmed my heart to see. When democracy has been subverted by deceit what other course is open to the aggrieved?
    1
  8814.  @ArthurTanner-d7s  Untrue. America is far better at manipulating treaties. It is a lesson it learned by using the procedure to help its genocide of the native population of the lands it colonised. Russia is far more honourable.
    1
  8815.  @Apophis1010  No. It will be over. They can have their own government so long as it doesn't join NATO. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea will be parts of Russia with largely Russian populations.
    1
  8816.  @rolandbosley1174  Peace in the area would be a good result, don't you think? The Ukrainians can have their own government and the Russians of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine can be Russian again.
    1
  8817.  @michaeldunham3385  Read his essays too. The one published immediately prior to the invasion is of especial interest. It details the steps taken over many years in a bid to avert the present disaster. He has made it clear on numerous occasions that while the recreation of the Russian empire might be a fine and romantic idea, it is impractical and undesirable. He acknowledges the right of Ukraine to forsake Russia and turn its face to the West - but it can't have Donbass and it can't have Crimea and it can't join NATO.
    1
  8818.  @PaulusN-p3m  But where does Ukraine begin and end? The Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine had various bits of Russia tacked on to it by Moscow, because they were easier to administer from Kiev. Making the boundaries of the SSR the boundaries of the new country was a mistake which has led to the present war. Ukraine's boundaries have altered many times over the years. It is not yet a firmly-defined country. Countries are not created by drawing lines on maps. All you get then are maps - not countries.
    1
  8819. It is so utterly stupid to believe that this isn't exactly what Trump wanted from the very beginning. China has been scared shitless and to delude yourselves into thinking otherwise is just another example of TDS at work. OK. You hate and despise him. You want rid of him. But you ain't gonna get there by thinking that Trump doesn't work to a plan.
    1
  8820. They can of you give them what they want.
    1
  8821. @ Try me.
    1
  8822. The Russian threat to Europe is a myth created by warmongering Western politicians to justify their existence. Lightweights like Shapps should stick to the politics of the parish pump.
    1
  8823.  @anglonorse2943  It simply wasn't true in any objective sense. Germany in the 1930's was nothing like Britain today. Rounding up Jews because they had taken over large chunks of the economy is very, very different to objecting to people smugglers shipping in all and sundry to sponge off the British taxpayer. Political stance doesn't come into it. I am constantly baffled by these false comparisons. Is it because the history of Nazi Germany is all they teach you in schools these days, and you have nothing else to go on?
    1
  8824.  @DavidMoxham957  I don't read the Daily Mail, so I wouldn't know. In any case the Jews in Germany in the 1930's weren't refugees. Many of them had lived there for generations, and the more recent arrivals had done so to take advantage of Germany's economic collapse by buying up homes and businesses incredibly cheaply. Furthermore I don't see how skin colour comes into it. Armenians aren't particularly brown.
    1
  8825.  @SuperLittleTyke  They can thank lefty lawyers who manipulate the system as much as the people-smugglers do.
    1
  8826.  @markhackett2302  What goals? I don't watch football.
    1
  8827.  @markhackett2302  How very confusing. Lineker said that the language being used was the same as the language being used in Germany in the 1930s - and it just isn't. Just read Mein Kampf and take it from there. As for employing illegal immigrants - it goes on all the time. What point are you making? What does it have to do with anything Lineker said? Your last paragraph is utterly unintelligible, so I can't really respond to it.
    1
  8828.  @verystripeyzebra  Fascism does not exist in this country, so how can I support it?
    1
  8829.  @SuperLittleTyke  Then the law needs to be changed.
    1
  8830.  @jonb4155  I am not "promoting" Mein Kampf, you idiot. I am merely suggesting people might compare its rhetoric with language used by our government, which Lineker claims it resembles. He too is a very silly person.
    1
  8831.  @jonb4155  I said read Mein Kampf and take it from there. It was extensively quoted in the anti-Semitic publications of the 1930s and by Hitler in his speeches. If you're looking for an argument you're not making a very good start, I'm afraid.
    1
  8832. dks13827 ..to grow up and realise you've been conned.
    1
  8833.  @mdioxd9200  Certainly. He wanted a planned withdrawal with a carrot and stick approach: bribes to the right people and so on. It would have been nothing like this. Just up sticks and go? And now send 3,000 troops back again to cover the evacuation of Kabul? The Biden administration is totally incompetent. Cheats never prosper.
    1
  8834. What about the case-to-death ratio then?
    1
  8835.  @Hide_and_silk  How do you work that out? I've done it by taking the number of cases in the week ending June 7 (46,825) and the number of deaths recorded three weeks later on June 28 (118) which around 0.25%. This compares very favourably with a similar stage in the second wave when on September 21 there were 44,089 cases recorded in the preceding week and 443 deaths three weeks later in the week leading up to October 5, which is around 1%. Can you show me where I'm going wrong?
    1
  8836.  @Hide_and_silk  Hmmm.
    1
  8837. Why?
    1
  8838.  @abbofun9022  No, just asking for an answer.
    1
  8839. I think people should realise the COP has little or nothing to do with "tackling" climate change, but simply to find ways and means of making money out of it. These conferences are price-fixing exercises to determine the likely progress of the cap and trade market over the forthcoming year. The poorer nations, who supply the market with its raw materials in the form of unused carbon emission certificates, are seeking to increase the value of their product in much the same way as in the 19th century they might have sought to increase the price of ivory or slaves to an earlier generation of colonialist entrepreneurs.
    1
  8840. It has the option of surrender.
    1
  8841.  @kimiannone3427  Why?
    1
  8842.  @kimiannone3427  Don't be so silly. Putin is clear-headed and very, very pragmatic. He is neither a sociopath nor a psychopath. On the contrary, he is a patriot and a devout Christian with a genuine empathy for his people. Just don't cross him, that's all.
    1
  8843. Socialists get a kick from thinking they are helping others. In the UK the working class have rejected them and more and more black and brown people have rejected them. Palestinians are all they have left.
    1
  8844. Is it not possible to be both?
    1
  8845. Intelligent Labour party members (and I suppose there must be one or two) must already realise that if they allow Starmer to bumble along in his jackboots for much longer their party will be utterly destroyed at the next election. The only hope of survival is finding a replacement as quickly as possible. Sadly though, there appear to be no obvious contenders as yet.
    1
  8846.  @ganrimmonim  Metaphorical jackboots. I'm not sure what footwear Stalin favoured.
    1
  8847.  @thomasmoore1499  Time will tell.
    1
  8848. You can't use the word liar about an MP or Minister or even lying. It's the actual word which is forbidden, not the thought behind it.
    1
  8849.  @Dutch1961  Which is why steps are being taken to prevent the abuse of such laws.
    1
  8850.  @atomiccritter6492  Then who?
    1
  8851.  @hamishf7444  Not really. The dinghies are rarely sinking - if ever - just overcrowded. This law will enable other boats and ships to warn the occupants that they are legally forbidden to rescue them and that they had better turn back. If they don't then their fate is in their own hands.
    1
  8852.  @Dutch1961  So what?
    1
  8853.  @petergaskinuk-1785  I return to the point. If these people are deliberately putting themselves in danger they are undermining the reasons why such laws and conventions were drawn up in the first place. It is an abuse and should not be tolerated.
    1
  8854.  @syriuszb8611  These people are not drowning and they have denied themselves the status of asylum seekers because they have not sought asylum in the nearest available country. They are economic opportunists who believe they can find a better and more rewarding life in the UK than elsewhere. The trouble is such opportunities are becoming increasingly rare in this country. Britain may arguably have a duty to protect the interests of British passport holders from abroad, but it has no duty to sustain the impossible dreams of Libyans, Afghanis and Iraqis etc who have be conned into believing that this is the promised land.
    1
  8855.  @hamishf7444  Yeah, but they don't know for sure any more that we're going to save them, do they? Instead of taking them on board all potential rescuers need is a loudhailer through which to tell them that it is now illegal for them to be rescued and they had better turn back. If they're in the water it would be a different story of course, but they never are. At the moment maritime regulations oblige the coastguard and the immigration service to act as taxis. It is a blatant misuse and now it will thankfully be halted.
    1
  8856.  @peterebel7899  The only person drowning here seems to be you - in a sea of foolish metaphors.
    1
  8857.  @sigiriya5149  You show great imagination. Perhaps the British fishermen might show some ingenuity and ship the immigrants around to Norfolk from where they may be enslaved as fruit and vegetable pickers, of which we are suffering a great shortage at present.
    1
  8858.  @peterebel7899  Am I to take it then that only those fleeing the horrors of the European Union are eligible for asylum in our wonderful country?
    1
  8859.  @sigiriya5149  Well if they choose to leave on a "last in, first out" basis I can see no reason to prevent them. Mind you, drowning the Channel would certainly indicate considerable lack of foresight. We would be best rid of such types.
    1
  8860.  @elwynjones763  The people traffickers who deliberately place their customers at risk by putting them to sea in overcrowded rubber dinghies.
    1
  8861.  @firebollocks  Of course not. The rescue services will continue to rescue people in genuine distress but are now able to warn migrants that they may not help them, and that they should turn back to France.
    1
  8862.  @syriuszb8611  It's time the coastguard stopped providing a taxi service on the behalf of international criminals. It's as simple as that.
    1
  8863.  @sigiriya5149  As I said, nobody is drowning. And at least you admit that those seeking our shores are the fittest and the best. It's a shame they are not brave enough to remain in their shithole countries and work and fight to improve them, isn't it? Bugger the peasants, eh?
    1
  8864.  @sigiriya5149  The British were the first nation in the world to make slavery illegal and to send its navy out to intercept slave ships. Britain's wealth is built upon innovation, skill, hard work and courage.
    1
  8865.  @hamishf7444  I was merely suggesting that shouting at them is a preferable alternative to taking them on board.
    1
  8866.  @franciscouderq1100  Are you French by any chance? You are certainly pompous enough.
    1
  8867.  @thomaswilga735  What a startingly original idea.
    1
  8868. So catch covid quickly now. If you are double-jabbed you will achieve near-total long-term immunity at the cost of little more than a runny nose.
    1
  8869. The UK can look forward to a country covered in wind farms and shoddy housing, filled with illegal immigrants on security benefits and a wide variety of sexual deviants on God know what, ruled by a blinkered elite of WEF sycophants who have managed to antagonise beyond endurance the largest nuclear-armed power on the planet. Happy days.
    1
  8870. ​ @SpecialMuppetOperation No such animal.
    1
  8871. Can't you raise your arm above shoulder height any more?
    1
  8872.  @AaronOkeanos  No , he was clearly throwing his heart out in gratitude to all those who voted for Trump.
    1
  8873.  @AaronOkeanos  I don't think it was an idea as such- just an entirely spontaneous and innocent gesture from a man clearly overcome with delight - and very possibly some extra chemical inducements as well!
    1
  8874. @ I don't think it was an idea - more of a spontaneous and entirely innocent gesture. To see it as anything else is surely more revealing of those who see it that way than anything else.
    1
  8875.  @DarkRoomAmbience  Why do you think that? They lose Crimea and Donbass, but they will get enough autonomy to govern themselves as long as they stay out of NATO. Putin doesn't want to rule a rebellious country. Russia doesn't have the resources.
    1
  8876. This was very interesting. It would have been even more interesting with the daily death rate graph included.
    1
  8877. The ONS isn't what it was. Figures were manipulated during the covid scamdemic, and my guess would be there's been a bit of creative massaging going on here too.
    1
  8878.  @nakedmolerat437  It's not nobility. They need people to work for them.Poor people need someone to work for. Seems a good arrangement - and one which has been effective for thousands of years.
    1
  8879.  @corvus1238  The dinghies don't leak. Your argument does. It is customers who provide wealth, as is the case here with these young hopefuls paying 5,000 euros for a seat on a dinghy which is escorted out of French waters by the French Navy and thereafter its occupants are taken safely ashore by the UK Border Service.The workers are the employees of the people traffickers who are paid to arrange things. They are a drain on profit, not a contribution toward it. The dinghies and their motors are entirely seaworthy, since drownings would be bad for business.
    1
  8880.  @nakedmolerat437  Your point being?
    1
  8881. I can't see Putin giving up anything. The Kursk adventure will be over before talks begin. The only concession he might make is allowing a much-reduced Ukraine to join NATO.
    1
  8882. One of the many myths we are being sold is that these raids are designed to destroy civilian morale. They are not. They are designed to destroy support for the military in terms of supply lines, mobility etc. In this they are proving very successful.
    1
  8883. Obviously the Prof doesn't play much poker.
    1
  8884. Every one of them? Did they queue up?
    1
  8885.  @JMM33RanMA  So every single Antifa member is responsible for any crime committed by any member are they? Sounds like good news to me. Could even rope in George Soros for providing the finance.
    1
  8886.  @andrewrobinson2565  What? How many? Is there a video?
    1
  8887.  @gordonstrong5232  I have enormous admiration for George Soros he is one of the most intelligent men ever to have lived and his influence on world affairs have been profound. You should try reading a couple of his books if you haven't already. That he has had a hand in this engineered collapse the United States there can be little doubt. His motives are, as ever, inscrutable but helping to create a world of peace, harmony and love are probably not among them.
    1
  8888.  @pdp977 I do hope this goes ahead. The idea of several hundred blameless Trump supporters being charged with accessory to murder is an enticing one. Arresting them, charging them and trying them will be a process fraught with difficulty and will inevitably lead to considerable bloodshed. Whoever is engineering the total collapse of the USA at the moment is doing a damned fine job, I have to say.
    1
  8889.  @skippythetubrat  You are utterly demented.
    1
  8890.  @andrewrobinson2565  Have you seen any like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  8891.  @barbthegreat586  Mainly arson and assault. Also poor dress sense. Being ugly and mouthing off a lot. Paving the way for the neoCommunist/globalist takeover of the world and the collapse of Western civilisation. Conceit. Obstructing a roadway. Poor personal hygiene. Murder. Intellectual dishonesty.
    1
  8892.  @skippythetubrat  Actually I do rather like it. In the unlikely event of the state trying to prosecute several hundred people on these charges it will greatly advance the timing of the coming civil war. At the moment the suspense is killing me.
    1
  8893.  @robotjin  I so love the American judicial system. Nothing is ever quite what it seems.
    1
  8894.  @barbthegreat586  I dislike them setting fire to things and assaulting people more. I don't mind the uniform really, it's just a bit pretentious.
    1
  8895.  @andrewrobinson2565  Alas, many Americans hold it to be self-evident that their new President is a puppet placed in power by the fraudulent machinations of sinister, unidentified forces. This is why they are so pissed, I think.
    1
  8896. @Nehemiah Scudder Who are we talking about? Anyway I thought Antifa didn't have membership cards. They are just an idea, after all.
    1
  8897.  @ucouco78  I don't understand the point you are making.
    1
  8898.  @ag-bf3ty  What world are YOU living in when you don't realise that an incredibly cheap treatment which reduces the death rate from Covid by close on a third is going to reduce the demand for a vaccine? This "pandemic" is already proving to be far less of a big bad beast than first advertised. Expensive drugs you say! You can get 100 hydroxychloroquine tablets for under $40 and you need to take just two A WEEK as an apparently highly effective prophylactic. Those whose eyes lit up with dollar signs when Covid 19 first appeared are going to have to readjust their expectations. And a bloody good job too.
    1
  8899.  @mastercommander4535  Once is enough in this instance. How they could have been fooled just beats me. It is a staggering blow to their reputation. That article can be said quite fairly to have cost the lives of thousands. And "not up to scratch" scarcely covers it.
    1
  8900. Trump can never have a fair trial. There is no-one in America who has not been subjected to daily barrages of hatred against him by this channel and others like it. Therefore there can be no-one in America qualified to sit on a jury and be expected to be impartial.
    1
  8901.  @Mathew-8896  I would not find Trump guilty under any circumstances, since to do so would be a political act, and not one concerned with justice.
    1
  8902. Not run by the same owners. Sky Oz is Murdoch, who tends to let his papers and stations go their own way as long as they make money for him. Sky UK is run by some ghastly globalist conglomerate with a commitment to all things woke.
    1
  8903. Kemi Badenoch is a white man.
    1
  8904. It makes me sick how Labour politicians constantly seek to make political capital out of tragedies in far-off lands for which we have no responsibility.
    1
  8905.  @AbelMcTalisker  So what? Chamberlain merely said it was peculiar that such things should happen. Nothing to do with "peace in our time" , If Putin seriously does want to restore the Russian Empire we will know soon enough. At the moment though this just a domestic quarrel of no concern to us.
    1
  8906.  @verystripeyzebra  Haven't we already had this conversation? The government is only saying such things to appease the mob.
    1
  8907. @Jon Seymour Not at all! It was utterly vile. This post comes from yesterday when comments sections were going wild and posts were being taken down one after the other. I was just testing the censorship algorithm. If you care to scroll up and down you will find my true views. (Yesterday's weirdness seems to have been some sort of technical glitch rather than a clamp-down.)
    1
  8908.  @loganmancini8759  No. That's if you DO support Ukraine and its allies.
    1
  8909. Endemic obesity wouldn't allow it.
    1
  8910. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
    1
  8911. Trump remains America's sole hope of salvation. Anyone who runs against him runs the risk of committing career suicide.
    1
  8912. @ Russia has a very reasonable case and was only forced into the grim necessity of war by Ukrainian intransigence. Zelensky typifies that intransigence. There can only be peace if Russia's demands are met. Zelensky says he will go if Ukraine is allowed to join NATO. That's not going to happen - but he should go anyway, His masters are out of office and their minions are getting sacked. he's redundant - and I think he knows it.
    1
  8913. @ Russia has a very reasonable case and was only forced into the grim necessity of war by Ukrainian intransigence. Zelensky typifies that intransigence. There can only be peace if Russia's demands are met. Zelensky says he will go if Ukraine is allowed to join NATO. That's not going to happen - but he should go anyway, His masters are out of office and their minions are getting sacked. he's redundant - and I think he knows it.
    1
  8914.  @willysnowman  No it doesn't.
    1
  8915. It wasn't refugees who were put in camps in Nazi Germany though, was it? It was Jews, many of whom were very rich and had been in the country for many years.
    1
  8916.  @SuperLittleTyke  That's true enough - but not all that relevant. Gypsies too, of course. And communists - but mostly Jews.
    1
  8917.  @BlyatimirPootin  It didn't start with refugees either.
    1
  8918.  @mindaugasstankus5943  True enough, but it was Germany's defeat in the First World War and the subsequent influx of Jews which finally tipped the balance. In any case the anti-Semitism in Germany throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries was far, far more vehement and far, far more widespread than anything which exists today in regard to immigrants into the UK.
    1
  8919.  @markhackett2302  How can you not be "most of the people" when you are the largest single group?
    1
  8920.  @dawnmoriarty9347  But nobody's coming for anybody, are they? We're just trying to keep people out who have no real right to be here.
    1
  8921.  @BewareOfTheKraut  We should be in a situation where nobody has the absolute right to enter this country and stay permanently - as was once the case. People arriving other than through ports of entry or airports should be immediately deported. The only reason people choose to come by small boat and land illegally is because they know they would not otherwise gain entry, other than as a visitor, and would thus not be eligible for free accommodation and benefits and the chance to work their way through the system and achieve permanent residency.
    1
  8922.  @BewareOfTheKraut  You apply. You will be interviewed and your case considered. If you do not meet criteria you will be returned to your point of embarkation. If you arrive on a small boat, however, you have been rescued from peril at sea and you MUST be taken in and provided for while your case is considered. Other factors enter the situation, not least of which is obtaining visas etc - and the fact that people smugglers obviously keep their clients misinformed as to their rights.
    1
  8923.  @dawnmoriarty9347  They came in on work visas I believe
    1
  8924.  @BewareOfTheKraut  He can't unless he's got a passport with the right visa. Otherwise it's just a question of which illegal means he chooses. Crossing the channel in a dinghy is faster and more likely to meet with success than, say, getting a forged visa or forged papers and confessing at the port of entry, or applying to the Red Cross at some point along the route. The laws need changing in order to separate the truly needy to whom we have a duty of care from people who are more cunning and richer.
    1
  8925. I don't see how it is possible for the jury NOT to be either prejudiced against Trump or prejudiced in favour of him. This trial is pointless other than as a political gesture.
    1
  8926. Absolutely correct. Thank you for spreading the word.
    1
  8927. Gar Sm Sorry, just a guess - but can we be SURE?
    1
  8928.  @trs4u  While borders and sovereignty are important, establishing where and what they actually are at the root of the problem in this instance..
    1
  8929. Which is exactly no-one.
    1
  8930. What a conservative attitude. Very subtle.
    1
  8931.  Lumi-Eivor Blaidd  I am happy in the knowledge that you are too silly to realise how silly this is.
    1
  8932. ​ markmierzejewski9534 Russia doesn't want territory. It just wants to destroy the Ukrainian army to stop them taking back the territory it already has.
    1
  8933. 600threescoreand6 And I put it to you that you have been conned rotten. Lord Black is quoting original. unaltered data. He said. incidentally that that the first 15 years of this century were cooler than the LAST fifteen years of the last century. Which they were. NASA and the other agencies now regularly and shamelessly alter temperature figures to fit the global warming narrative. It's called "adjustment" or "homogenisation" but it is fraud. In all areas where records have been kept temperatures were higher in the 1930's than they are today, about the same in the 1940's, cooler into the 1950s and then gradually crept upwards from the 1970's until the end of the century after which there was a plateau with very little change until 2016 when temperatures began to rise again. Exactly the same picture was presented in earlier versions of satellite data. You have been "looking up" your data in storybooks. I suggest you try to get hold of unadjusted data. It can still be found, even on NASA sites. Failing that try www.ceres-science.com or co2science.org/video/confirmed/gope_confirmed.php
    1
  8934.  @myfingershavetheflu  The fact that you can't work it out sort of proves how dumb you are, dunnit?
    1
  8935. I believe the others mean foul and disgusting things in certain languages. Epsilon is a Turkish slang term for a sexual practice to bizarre to even contemplate.
    1
  8936. Those Bradleys aren't doing so well, it seems.
    1
  8937. How about the idea that wearing masks costs lives? I've heard it said that if you are unknowingly infected wearing a mask may prevent you from expelling viruses onto others - but where do they go instead? You re-inhale them is what, subjecting you to repeated infections which can turn a mild case into a potentially deadly one. Have any studies be done on this?
    1
  8938. There are reports that many troops are close to mutiny and want to quit against orders.
    1
  8939. We will suffer for this gung-ho stupidity.
    1
  8940. The big difference is that deaths and hospitalisations are rising much more slowly of course.
    1
  8941.  @marvinstorm9153  The ratio isn't looking anything like that at the moment. Because of vaccination symptoms are much milder.
    1
  8942.  @josh3771  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Wf8i7ztyA
    1
  8943.  @blinkusfishus2052  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Wf8i7ztyA
    1
  8944. ​ @ThatsMe1010  Perpetual whingeing won't help.
    1
  8945. Kai James Wot?
    1
  8946. The American justice system is a total farce.
    1
  8947. One battery.
    1
  8948. It's a wonderful experience watching Liberals cope with reality.
    1
  8949. The conference was introduced by an archaeologist who started her TV career digging trenches on Time Team. I stopped watching at that point.
    1
  8950.  @huwzebediahthomas9193  I loved her once, but she is now revealed as a communist agitator so, alas, our romance will come to nothing.
    1
  8951.  @huwzebediahthomas9193  I know. It's sad really, but actors are often such fools.
    1
  8952.  @jacqdanieles  If Zelensky had heeded Putin's peace proposals instead of being seduced into war by the egomaniac Johnson, there would have been no deaths..
    1
  8953. The only assault is on the Dem's long-established tradition of cheating at elections by harvesting black votes.
    1
  8954. Hmm. Maybe Ukraine should have thought twice before getting into bed with her Yankee pimp.
    1
  8955. Natural immunity lasts. Vaccine immunity doesn't.
    1
  8956. This is an attempt at political assassination. America ought to be ashamed.
    1
  8957.  @bundesmememinister1586  Several, including pro-Ukrainian commentators such as DPA War. It s confirmed by satellite imagery.
    1
  8958. Go woke - get smoke!
    1
  8959.  1990skelly  Such as by cheating you mean?
    1
  8960.  @clu4u  Sadly untrue. And not relevant anyway.
    1
  8961.  @MaryEllis119  Or total lack of it.
    1
  8962. Having fallen foul of YouTube's new algorithm several times this week, I am convinced it is not only pro-Palestinian, pro-Ukraine and anti-Trump but somehow manages to illustrate the very worst in the new woke, fascist cancel culture which is destroying freedom of speech and freedom generally. Strange times indeed.
    1
  8963.  @paulschulte1064  America poured billions into Ukraine long before the invasion. Along with other NATO countries it created a huge Ukrainian army to take over the mineral-rich Donbass region. This war is not for charity. It is a business enterprise.
    1
  8964.  @rujiel4620  Is America a democracy? Or is it just another gangster state in disguise?
    1
  8965.  @selcukcilek555  Certainly not in the way many people in the West think it does. It's a hodge-podge oligarchy ready to sell itself to the highest bidder.
    1
  8966.  @WinterGK  Ukraine is Russia's creation. Much of its industry is or was owned by Russians. The nuclear weapons were Soviet weapons, and could only be fired from Moscow. No-one in Ukraine had the firing codes.
    1
  8967.  @bonnie7898  So what? That was then and this is now. No treaty lasts forever. Most last for only a few decades and have to be adjusted or replaced as circumstances change. Every effort has been made to overcome the anomalies of the Budapest accords, and all have failed. The Minsk treaties of 2014/16 were designed to give time to allow Ukraine to iron out the problems in Donbass, instead of which NATO stepped in and paid for an army with which to invade it. If you're looking for bad faith, look there.
    1
  8968.  @bonnie7898  Nobody is denying it. NATO and the US are quite proud of themselves. This is the introduction to a document from NATO published as a fact sheet 2016: "Following the September 2014 Wales Summit, NATO Allies have established five Trust Funds to help Ukraine better provide for its security. " The US Congressional Research Service provides full details. The US alone gave $24billion prior to the invasion. Other NATO countries have also chipped in a few billion. Colonel Musienko is not far wrong in his assessment, although it is a good deal more complicated than that. Russia does indeed wish to maintain its influence on Ukraine - or at least on the Eastern part of it. You might consider this to be only fair since the area has a very large percentage of Russian inhabitants and, perhaps even more significantly, Russia has invested blood, sweat, tears and uncounted billions of roubles in developing the vast mineral resources and industrial potential of Donbass. They are not happy with the Kiev government wanting to sell it off to the Americans, nor with the Americans for bribing the Kiev government so efficiently as to persuade them to do it. As to interference, after Putin persuaded Yanukovych to veto the EU bid, American agents organised widespread rioting in the streets, even allegedly posting snipers on the rooftops to shoot into the crowds. Yanukovych was forced to flee and was replaced by an interim American puppet, shortly to be replaced by the current American puppet, Zelensky.
    1
  8969. He is in the process of doing so. Haven't you noticed?
    1
  8970. False.
    1
  8971.  @paoloporchetti1563  I live in the south of England, if that's any help.
    1
  8972. It's becoming increasingly clear that the virus will find away around every obstacle we put in its path. Nature and evolution make this inevitable.
    1
  8973. Putin is only doing what he has done before in Chechnya and Georgia and what the Americans have done in countless corners of the world. Why this media hard sell on "poor little Ukraine"? It can't simply be that these victims are generally a bit pinker than the others could it?
    1
  8974. Putin has no plans to reclaim the Russian Empire. That is a myth designed to justify Western aggression. And you've fallen for it.
    1
  8975. On the contrary, the effects become less and less apparent. The poles stubbornly refuse to melt and the oceans won't rise. Perfectly normal phenomena which are no worse now than they have been in the past are seized upon as "evidence" of the climate change myth. FIFTY MILLION acres of forest went up in flames in the USA every year in the 1920's and 30's. It's around ten million now.
    1
  8976.  @dominicpelle7841  You've got it ! Now go tidy your room.
    1
  8977.  Jack Richardson  How do you know this? You can't possibly believe it. I'll grant you arctic sea ice, but it goes through a cycle doesn't it and is now begin the thicken and increase? Ice on Greenland and Antarctica isn't going anywhere. It's two miles thick in some places. And how do you measure sea levels anyway? Actually I'll allow you 6cm since the beginning of the last century as a possibility, but not a millimetre more.
    1
  8978.  Jack Richardson  Yup, they are. Ever since dewy-eyed tree-huggers stopped implementing prevention measures brought into place in the 50's.
    1
  8979.  @dominicpelle7841  Climate change is great for business, sure. You can make millions overnight trading in carbon futures, and renewables are a far safer and less volatile investment than fossil-fuels, which is why oil companies are invariably major stockholders. You need states and countries to have "climate change policies" for all this to hang together, you see. And you need soft-brained suckers to make the right noises at the right times to keep things going. But no-one with an ounce of intelligence actually BELIEVES that the world is going up in flames because of some daft theory invented by an obscure Swedish professor in 1893.
    1
  8980. We should grit our teeth and vote Reform in the faint hope that it will one day achieve power. Then we need a PROPER opposition -one that includes Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
    1
  8981. Ukraine broke Minsk.
    1
  8982. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Right-wing US YouTuber Mark Dice has just putout a video making broadly similar points. Worth watching.
    1
  8983. Mister G The dots make a picture drawn by a child.
    1
  8984. Mister G Your scientific knowledge is obviously extensive. Do you have any views on recent assertions that the greenhouse effect is not a radiative phenomenon driven by the atmospheric infrared depth as was previously believed, but a pressure-induced thermal enhancement analogous to adiabatic heating and independent of atmospheric composition?
    1
  8985. Mister G How can you possibly say that? If the composition of the atmosphere is adiabatic its composition does not affect temperature in any way. The amount of carbon in it, whether from burning fuels or by natural exhalation from the sea and other sources, is of no relevance. Temperature is the result of atmospheric pressure combined with the earth's position in relation to the sun -as is the case with all planets in the solar system. No. I am more and more convinced that this entire so-called climate crisis has been created by greedy and clever financial manipulators such as George Soros using faulty science as its basis. AND THAT REALLY IS SOMETHING TO SCREAM ABOUT!
    1
  8986. Mister G No troll, but I have warmed bigly to God Emperor Trump since he came to office; although that is scarcely relevant since I am British. I want to ask you how you react to the fact that We Don't Have Time, the organisation which gave us Greta Thunberg and the school strike, is founded and operated by people with purely financial backgrounds? They are hedge fund managers and have brought out some utterly terrifying cartoons which show they want to rule the world by dictating everyone's carbon footprint. I must say this worries me somewhat.
    1
  8987.  @MartintheTinman  Any time.
    1
  8988.  @ChrisPage68  No. It was a charming fantasy, no more.
    1
  8989. No. Biden has just made NATO declare war on Russia. Not a good plan.
    1
  8990. Another hideous blunder by this incompetent administration. It can only encourage the Russians to step up their air attacks before the system is up and running. America is getting better and better at starting wars and prolonging them, but is utterly useless at bringing them to an end.
    1
  8991.  @bobs_toys  Analogies are dangerous.
    1
  8992.  @bobs_toys  Hardly. Like Russia we've realised empires are more trouble than they're worth!
    1
  8993.  @bobs_toys  America. It's still creating an Empire and wants Ukraine to be in it.
    1
  8994.  @mbolduc  On the contrary. This is a needless war and the consequence of gross miscalculation in several quarters. It can only end in either the defeat of Ukraine or worldwide nuclear obliteration. Hopefully the former, and as quickly as possible.
    1
  8995. Herd immunity is the way in which nature, via evolution, responds to viral epidemics. We, because we are clever humans, can reduce the inevitable casualties by protecting the vulnerable. We can also attempt, far less successfully, to attempt to prevent the spread by attempting to block its path with dangerous measures such as lockdowns, or ineffective ones, such as facemasks. There is nothing "covert" in this. Herd immunity is the only answer to this problem. All herd immunity means is that the otherwise inevitable victory of fast-reproducing viruses is prevented by a sufficient number of slowly-reproducing hosts developing individual immunity to block the pathways of the virus. It is a denial of territory. The virus. being short-lived and incapable of reproducing without hosts, consequently passes into obscurity. Darwinism works whether Boris Johnson - or you - understand it or not.
    1
  8996. Very few -if any - will be seriously ill and none will be dead - unless the occasional 90-year old has snuck in to have a good time.
    1
  8997. Can anyone explain why 50% of covid cases in England occur among the double vaccinated, while in America the figure is put at 1%? It couldn't possibly be that the poor Americans are constantly lied to by this evil little fraud and his minions, could it?
    1
  8998.  @graff8757  In England it is - and thereby certainly in the entire UK. It's actually more than 50% in older age groups.
    1
  8999. Biden is steeped in the corruption which characterises all aspects of Ukrainian political life. He is a liar and a fraud, as is Zelensky.
    1
  9000. Because they are such ghastly showoffs?
    1
  9001. What relevance do cases have? It is their consequences which are important and the UK's death rate is only the 11th highest in Europe.
    1
  9002. So a conceited buffoon who has a Winston Churchill complex who helps plunge distant countries into a bloody and needless war is an object of admiration? Is that it?
    1
  9003.  @bobjohnbowles  Not in the minds of true poets.
    1
  9004.  @adrianbell6041  You make my point exactly. By imagining Putin to be like Hitler you completely fail to understand the true situation we face at present. He does not " constantly invade other countries." He merely fights to retain control over counties already within Russia's sphere of influence. Do you not understand that by selling us the idea that Putin wants to act like Hitler and take over the world we are being manipulated into supporting the American war machine? Hitler was in his fifties. Putin is in his seventies. Hitler had declared his intentions of expanding Germany and of massacring the Jews. Putin, in his writings, has declared that while it might be a fine, romantic notion to restore the Russian Empire, it is neither possible nor even desirable to do so. But he will not allow the West to encroach upon his country's interests by a strategy of divide and conquer, as it is doing now. By allowing yourself to be manipulated as you are you are supporting the worst and most vicious capitalist state ever to come into being.
    1
  9005.  @adrianlloyd6403  I think that must be it. Mind you, I do detect a few signs that the blessed Saint Zelensky might be falling off his perch and a change of narrative might be on the cards. Wishful thinking I expect.
    1
  9006. PR. Masks are pretty useless but we were told to wear them as a sign that things were bad. Now we are being told only to bother if we feel like it as a sign that things are getting better.
    1
  9007. I don't know. Was it in a movie or a video game? Perhaps you just had a bad dream.
    1
  9008.  @adshdhhhd7783  It is when your neighbour is stealing your groceries off the front porch.
    1
  9009. kim weaver Your fears are groundless. CO2 only creates increased temperature in laboratory conditions and computer models. In the real world it is part of a thermostat system, keeping the atmosphere stable. Increased temperatures are caused by the behaviour of the sun and the movement of the planets combined with atmospheric pressure.
    1
  9010. Ukraine has lost. It really is time to realise this and stop the killing..
    1
  9011.  @jarirobert4234  Exactly!
    1
  9012.  @jarirobert4234  Exactly!
    1
  9013.  @charlyf9521  It's changed its mind though. The Russia which recognised the borders is not Putin's Russia.
    1
  9014.  @tnndll4294  There has been no invasion, strictly speaking. Which is why the Russians call this a Special Military Operation. The Ukrainian's right to Donbass is questioned by Russia, so their action is seen as one in which the territory is liberated from foreign control.
    1
  9015.  @drewmalesky9869  It's broadly what the Russian's think - and I find myself in agreement with them in many respects.
    1
  9016. Isn't that called a General Election?
    1
  9017. And in many other countries also.
    1
  9018. Russia claims to have destroyed the entire Ukrainian air force.
    1
  9019. The BBC tells lies as a matter of course. These two or three little examples are as nothing compared with the lies and disinformation this organisation peddles every day.
    1
  9020.  @yvonnetomenga5726  Unfortunately I don't have the BBC's resources, but fortunately I don't have their prejudices either. The BBC follows an agenda. It filters every news item through its particular upper middle class "woke" lefty globalist view of the world and rejects any information which does not fit its agenda. That is not journalism, it is propaganda and I despise it utterly. For the truth - or at least viable alternative views, try Patrick Lancaster on the Ukraine war, Tony Heller on climate change or Drbeen on Covid. It might broaden your mind.
    1
  9021.  @niBBunn  I'm not sure where you got this information from, but as far as I am aware Drbeen was merely interpreting and commenting upon a study which is in wide circulation in the medical community.
    1
  9022.  @paulgibbon5991  Don't be so silly. Can't you understand that there are people in the world who use their brains and experience to THINK with instead of just being sponges to soak up propaganda? You don't have to be paid by the Kremlin of a fifth columnist to see that this war has been created by the US deep state and that it is wrong, wrong WRONG!
    1
  9023.  @yvonnetomenga5726  Hello again. Forgive me for butting in but I think this is the actual interview. How's your Italian? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDj723_jbtA&t=40s
    1
  9024.  @marilenaganea6578  The gradual advance of NATO countries towards Russia, all militarised with Russia as their target. Ukraine was a step too far.
    1
  9025.  @kimwit1307  To deny that Putin has a rational case is to deny reality. It has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting him.
    1
  9026.  @marilenaganea6578  I can give you 13 -the former Eastern bloc countries which have joined NATO since the Russian Federation came into being thirty years ago. As an extra you can have the US and the UK training and arming Ukrainian militia who have been viciously trying to put down separatist rebellions in the Russian aligned Eastern provinces.
    1
  9027.  @marilenaganea6578  I have every every sympathy for your family's sufferings at the hands of the Soviet Union. But the Russian Federation is a different entity altogether. In fact its own people have suffered the curse of Communism as much as have the peoples of other countries under Soviet thrall. Do you not think it would have been preferable for the Western powers to have accepted the hand of friendship offered by the new Russia instead of casting it in the role of eternal enemy?
    1
  9028.  @kimwit1307  If wishing to preserve the integrity of your nation's borders is irrational, then yes.
    1
  9029.  @marilenaganea6578  It depends on your view of where the borders are and what you count as "attack." The Budapest agreements which set the borders of the modern Ukraine were a bit of a mess. Crimea had only been tacked on to it in 1954 because it was easier to administrate it from across the isthmus than across the strait. The Eastern provinces have a large Russian population and the incompetence of the Ukrainian government added to a general desire to get back into the Russian fold. As I said, NATO has crept gradually Eastward since 1991. I don't like analogies as a general rule but Russia is a bit like a householder who sees enemies gathering around his fence. One of then gets a bit too close so he goes out and thumps him.
    1
  9030.  @marilenaganea6578  No it was NATO which crept. The Eastern European countries were crept up on.
    1
  9031.  @marilenaganea6578  He did it to help save Britain. He was a great patriot.
    1
  9032.  @kimwit1307  It is America and NATO which are at fault. Russia tried at least four times to actually join NATO but was rejected. Since then its only activities in Europe have been to suppress potentially dangerous governments in Chechnya and Georgia. Meanwhile NATO has expanded steadily eastwards. As to Ukraine's borders - that's a difficult question to answer. Don't forget it was only made a "country" by Stalin because he wanted an extra seat in the UN and Crimea was only tacked on in 1954 for the sake of administrative and logistical convenience. Like other swathes of Ukraine, including Donbass, the original inhabitants were shipped out and replaced by Russians. There is considerable support for separation in these areas, especially since the newly-independent Ukraine made such a hash of things.
    1
  9033.  @kimwit1307  NATO/UN knew nothing of the sort. Russia had been forced by the collapse of Communism to relinquish control of vast swathes of territory. It could easily have taken them back if it had regrouped and attacked them one by one, but did not do so. If it had been allowed to join NATO then all would have been well, but NATO exists as a market place for the international arms trade and to protect the interests of US military/industrial complex. It needs Russia to remain a permanent enemy in order to justify this. Chechnya and Russia were two separate and different cases but both were showing signs of escaping Russian influence and so were stopped. Ukraine's case is different also, but the threat of its becoming a NATO outpost has made the situation worse for Putin. It occurs to me reading your last line that we maybe at cross-purposes. I have no particular sympathy for Putin other than that I can entirely see his dilemma. I just think that more bloodshed can be avoided if we grant his demands. And if you start talking about Neville Chamberlain I shall scream. Furthermore if you call people ""comrade" in Russia you will get some very strange looks. The fact that you used it shows that you, like many others, have failed to understand that Russia is not the Soviet Union.
    1
  9034.  @kimwit1307  We will just have to agree to differ. I don't quite see how it is possible for the West to reconcile the apparent belief that the Russian Army is badly-equipped and organised with the idea that Putin is planning to mark his declining years by recreating the Russian empire. He just wants to slap Ukraine into place, that's all.
    1
  9035.  @kimwit1307  The point is though that it is clearly no Wehrmacht, any more than Putin is a Hitler.
    1
  9036. I still can't get over the fact that he is being hauled over the coals for breaking rules which have actually killed more people than they've saved.
    1
  9037. This war,in its current stage, has nothing to do with gaining territory. Russia's sole objective is to destroy the Ukrainian military machine.
    1
  9038. There may be a few racists in Reform - but they are the fringes, not the core. Farage won't even let Tommy Robinson in and he's not even a racist, but simply seen as one by the ignorant.
    1
  9039.  @AWhileHanlin  Ashton's argument? Precisely.
    1
  9040.  Praxis Alba  I'd rather people have fun, but work is often a grim necessity. I simply don't understand why you paranoid control-freak Lefties suddenly won't believe my age. What part of your group psychosis is it that will not process this entirely mundane piece of information? I have obviously escaped the brainwashing that has you in its grip, and that's because I left school long before it was insidiously introduced. I know my chances of de-programming any of you are pretty slim, but it amuses me to try.
    1
  9041.  Praxis Alba  What a nasty piece of work you are. You simply cannot seem to believe that I am simply someone who disagrees with you. Instead I must be some "troll" who must be criminalised for daring to challenge your conditioning. I wonder which countries you are referring to, by the way? All countries have been affected differently by this disease, and have responded in different ways too. The number of factors involved makes it impossible to extrapolate any definite conclusions as to which has done best. I see no reason whatsoever why the UK should not immediately lift all restrictions and return to normality as quickly as possible.
    1
  9042. Depends whether you're protecting property or trying to destroy it.
    1
  9043. Is it true that Irishmen tuck their shirts inside their underpants? Just askin'
    1
  9044. So if you're fit and healthy hurry up and get it before Christmas. You'll gain full immunity in time for the New Year.
    1
  9045.  @davideaston8314  I'm sorry but all the latest data shows that a combination of double vaccine and recovery from infection creates more or less total immunity, lasting for an as yet unquantifiable period, but very probably for several years at least. Although 160,000 cases have been recorded of people testing positive twice within a 90 day period, this is strongly believed to be because they are either carrying the same infection, or because one or both of the tests was a false positive. The number of cases where there is a high probability of double infection is around 50 only, since the second test revealed the presence of a different variant. This is immunity. And with symptoms in healthy, double-vaccinated people being no more severe than a common cold there is every reason to encourage such people to become infected as quickly as possible.
    1
  9046.  @davideaston8314  I'm sorry. I don't speak emogi.
    1
  9047.  @davideaston8314  You are obviously as incapable of understanding satire as you are of making making a reasoned response. You get covid. It doesn't hurt much. You are immune. Lots of you become immune. The virus runs out of people to infect. It goes into retreat and becomes entirely containable. What's illogical or irrational in that? As long as the vulnerable continue to be isolated (more than they are now!) the drawbacks are minimal. Shoot me down in flames if you can, but don't fucking patronise me.
    1
  9048.  @davideaston8314  Still no reasoning. Just childish pictures, I see.
    1
  9049.  @davideaston8314  Chicken! You have no understanding whatsoever of the process whereby new variants emerge. You don't even know what a mutation is.
    1
  9050. Unfortunately we won't be able to sue the big pharma companies for peddling their overpriced muck during the pandemic.
    1
  9051. Not ppl. Just knuckle-dragging dumbasses with IQs lower than their shoe size
    1
  9052.  @TheMeMe2047  Considerably less than half at the moment if the polls are anything to go by.
    1
  9053. But wasn't Phil talking about "the will of the people"?
    1
  9054.  @carlossaraiva8213  I'm not being dense. He said it. He said the statue-topplers were acting on behalf of the people of Bristol.
    1
  9055.  @carlossaraiva8213  How am I being dense? The government has more right to claim that it represents "the will of the people" than any individual or pressure group, since the government is democratically elected. Mind you, the whole idea of "the will of the people" is pretty crackpot anyway.
    1
  9056.  @DavidMoxham957  The verdict is subject to appeal, and it will be up to a Court of Appeal to decide if the jury's verdict was correct in law, should we go down that route That is only right and proper. Personally I don't think it was correct since criminal damage clearly did take place and the justification for it was questionable, to say the least.
    1
  9057.  @DavidMoxham957  Certainly. I can think of no other.
    1
  9058.  @carlossaraiva8213  By what process of deduction have you concluded that I am a (dense) Brexiteer? And what's rethoric?
    1
  9059. ​ @MrFiction80 Actually it has - compared with what it is capable of, even without the nuclear option.
    1
  9060. @thelastvigil111 They are already reducing Kiev's air defences. This is not a good sign.
    1
  9061.  @superhumantrueman  What a wimp you are then!
    1
  9062.  @superhumantrueman  Where is the contradiction? Russia wants control of Crimea and Donbass. The rest of so-called Ukraine can do what it will so long as it doesn't threaten Russian interests.
    1
  9063.  @superhumantrueman  Are you being deliberately obtuse? Initially Russia wished for the annexation of Crimea to be ratified because it is Russian. It also wanted Donbass to be autonomous so it could continue trading with Russia. These reasonable demands fall by the wayside only if you believe that Ukraine's borders are sacrosanct in their post-1992 pre-2014 form. Russia doesn't - and has sound reasons for this conviction. I realise this may be a little complicated for you to understand, but I have some hope that , with a little effort, you will be ae to do so.
    1
  9064. ​ @worldwithoutwar8622 They went towards Kiev simply to draw out the Ukrainian army in order to attempt to destroy it on its own territory. In this they have largely succeeded.
    1
  9065. ​ @worldwithoutwar8622 Superficially mainly. And all unnecessary. A deal was always on the table.
    1
  9066.  @superhumantrueman  It's not a matter of whinging and crying. It's a matter of historical facts.
    1
  9067.  @MrFuckwit999  It was colonised by Russia at the end of the 18th century who took it from the Turks. It has never had a sizeable Ukrainian population.
    1
  9068.  @superhumantrueman  They remain the same. No treaty lasts forever and the Russia which signed those treaties is not the Russia of today. In those 30 years NATO has pushed steady Eastwards and Western entities have set their sights on taking Ukraine's mineral wealth for themselves . Budapest is dead in the water and has bee for years.
    1
  9069.  @superhumantrueman  Ukraine is no such thing. And even if it was, Russia would still have the right to prevent it forming an alliance with a self-declared enemy.
    1
  9070.  @superhumantrueman  But you have just repeated yourself too. It isn't a question of 'right' - it's a question of pragmatic survival. Russia cannot be expected to sit back and accept continued encroachment on its interests and nationhood. Putin has put forward a number of peaceful solutions, but all have been rejected because they do not accommodate American commercial ambitions. Ukrainians and Russians are dying in their tens of thousands in the cause of American corporate greed.
    1
  9071.  Reggie Cyde  It will be the same here, What's happening now is no worse that in flu seasons at the beginning of the century. It's the way all viral epidemics behave. The only reason Covid 19 has killed so many is because they were there waiting to be killed due to surviving the mild flu seasons of recent years.
    1
  9072.  Reggie Cyde  The whole thing was and continues to be an hysterical over-reaction. People are up to no good. Have you seen this yet by the way? https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  9073.  @JohnCavendish-ql4jc  Nope.
    1
  9074.  @JohnCavendish-ql4jc  What for? Protecting his country from terrorist fanatics?
    1
  9075. @@user-hc2rz6vs8h And most of them are not really "Palestinians." They are descendants of itinerants from neighbouring Arab countries who came to the area to cash in on the prosperity created by Zionism.
    1
  9076.  @stephenclarke2206 And? Russia (and Putin) shook off communism more than three decades ago.
    1
  9077.  @stephenclarke2206  But he is not a communist. Only academics and students are communists these days. I don't think he wants the satellite states to come under Russian rule either. But he doesn't want them to fall under Western influence and thus present a military threat -which is why he is resisting attempts to make Ukraine part of NATO.
    1
  9078.  @stephenclarke2206  Not to invade -but to make it a member. Ukraine is in the pocket of the corrupt US administration. These nutjobs will do anything for power, profit and personal advancement. Putin has to make it clear he will stand up to them, as well as protecting the very many Russian heritage people in Ukraine.
    1
  9079.  @stephenclarke2206  It's about the Russian people, not the Ukrainian people. If the Ukrainian government fully joins NATO then this represents a direct threat to Russia. We mustn't forget that Ukraine, like N Ireland and Israel, is a country which owes its existence to colonisation. Russia made it what it is today. For the US to bribe and bully its way into government, as it clearly is doing, is a threat to the balance of power in the region. How would the US react, for example, if the Russians began building missile sites in Cuba as the Soviet Union did in the 1960s? Or what would the UK feel about the Republic of Ireland leaving the EU and joining the Russian Federation? Ukraine is already part-member of both NATO and the EU. Putin's actions are a direct result of hawks in the Biden administration seeking to alter its status to allow it to become an outpost of the US military.
    1
  9080.  @paulgibbon5991  Ukraine can keep the worthless bits.
    1
  9081.  @derwolfpack3599  Keep drinking the Kool-aid. The Ukrainian army is running out of men and munitions. The Russians have their best and most experienced forced lined up and eager in Donbass. Wagner Group has gone in first to clear the path, they will be followed by the DPR and LPR armies, backed by parachute brigades and Syrian veterans and finally the Chechens who took Mariupol will sweep up what crumbs remain. There's another450,000 strong Russian army in the north. When that comes out of Belarus and heads for Kiev the shreds of the Ukrainian army won't know which way to turn.
    1
  9082.  @asherloat8570  Bakhmut is surrounded. Kherson is not needed.
    1
  9083.  @RideAcrossTheRiver  You're the physicist! More like bouncing back.
    1
  9084.  @derwolfpack3599  It could go either way - but only if Ukraine gets a lot more equipment and a lot more trained men in the field. Otherwise its curtains for them.
    1
  9085. So well said. Black History Month is, by very definition, a racist concept.
    1
  9086.  @braveheart4603  The ones I trust predict it's happening any day now - as soon as the ground hardens a bit more.
    1
  9087.  @stephenwakeman3074  Indeed they do! And the fight goes on.
    1
  9088.  @johnmarkrobinson2924  But the modern country of Ukraine is NOT the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine - which is what Russia "gave" Crimea to.
    1
  9089.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  In error. At the time Russia was foolish enough to believe that the Ukrainians would stay loyal.
    1
  9090.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  My reply deleted. The Russia then is not the Russia now is all I can say.
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  9091.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  He hoped it wouldn't be necessary, I'm sure. But he simply can't allow Western agencies to take over resources in which Russia has invested time, blood, sweat and money for many decades.
    1
  9092.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  The situation has changed radically since then. (My original reply deleted by the YouTube brainwashing service.)
    1
  9093.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  Rather to regain territory which is historically, ethnically and economically predominantly Russian. This could have been done by peaceful means but Crimea and Donbass are sitting on around $14trillion of oil, gas, coal and rare earth minerals and greedy Westerners have set their sights on getting it. Putin's compromise was to give these areas independent status so they could maintain links with Russia. But the West spent billions on creating a Ukrainian army to keep a hold on them. Putin could either give in or go to war. He chose war.
    1
  9094.  @hanging4176  Appeasing dictators can work quite well, in point of fact. Russia did it for a couple of hundred years when the Mongol warlords ruled. Kiev defied them and got wiped out.
    1
  9095.  @hanging4176  Appeasing dictators has sometimes worked quite effectively, in fact.
    1
  9096.  @Comm.DavidPorter  What??
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  9097.  @Comm.DavidPorter  Many of my replies are not appearing -although the people they are intended for are receiving them. Could you possibly confirm what your "When???" response was in connection with? The YouTube algorithm is becoming increasingly unhinged.
    1
  9098. There are a couple of deposits in the West.
    1
  9099. I'm glad you mention an alternative reality. If there are two realities, each roughly occupied by the same number of people, how are we to judge which is the correct one?
    1
  9100.  @explorer47422  Which is which-?
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  9101.  @LeonieRomanes  Who checks if the moderators are checking the facts correctly? They weren't fact checking. They were pushing a narrative.
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  9102.  @cadpole  There are few facts in politics, just opinions
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  9103.  @pic101  In fair fight, without Harris knowing the questions and having rehearsed the answers with the questioners, it would be a rather different story.
    1
  9104.  @cadpole  There are few facts in politics, just opinions. Just because some people say there is "no evidence" that pets are being eaten it doesn't mean that they aren't.
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  9105.  @thomasmoore1499  God ( if there is one) works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.
    1
  9106. And for the Ukrainians? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbiAGkBQ9HY&t=0s
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  9107.  @fritanke2318  What do you mean "links"? Just Google state senate hearings electoral fraud and you will have access to hour upon hour of testimony from Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania. This is straight coverage of process with no cuts or slants. Just have a skim and it won't be long before you find something that ought to make your ears prick up. Election officials admitting that procedures are not followed. Military computer experts explaining how voting machines are tampered with. Observers saying how they were abused and prevented from carrying out their duties. The list goes on and on. There is simply too much of it to ignore.
    1
  9108.  @TheMarsCydonia  The claims have NOT been examined. Judges - probably very sensibly - have found technical reasons not to allow cases to proceed. It would be impossible in any case for any fair and detailed hearings to take place in less than many months. Trump and his teams know this and cases have been filed merely to fit a legal requirement. If justice is done and some form of tribunal IS set up (as it very much ought to be) then Trump's lawyers will simply be able to point to the fact that they tried to make the case at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime Trump and his team are now merely trying to persuade state legislatures to question the veracity of their elections in the forlorn hope that something can be done before Jan 6. It won't be of course but Republican senators (some 14 so far) have indicated that they will not recognise the Biden presidency unless a full judicial enquiry into the election process is promised.
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  9109.  @ricos1497  You are right of course. Democracy in the US is an utter sham and all elections are rigged to some degree or another. I would suggest however that this one is a real doozie. The Dems have gone too far and have been rather clumsy. The sheer amount of fake ballots cast and the delight with which they have proved that voting machines are just devices designed to allow fraud to take place will hopefully prove their undoing in the long run. I find it interesting that you seem to assume that voters in minority communities are inevitably going to vote Democrat, and that Republicans therefore seek to prevent them from voting. This can no longer be assumed. Black and brown people have provided voting fodder for the Democrats for far too long. They are starting to realise where their true interests lie and herding them back onto the plantation isn't going to work for much longer. It seems to me probable (if may prejudge the issue) that in this case the cracks were beginning to show by the end of election day and that plan B was brought into operation in the early hours with a concerted flooding of false and repeat votes taking place at this point. As I say, this can only be resolved by a detailed judicial enquiry. If the Biden administration fails to condone such, then it will be forever condemned by its its reluctance to do so.
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  9110.  @lolwalters2936  I'm sorry to keep hammering on but there are literally hours and hours of evidence -or allegation if you prefer - readily available from the state senate hearing that have taken place in recent weeks. A simple Google search will give you access to the full hearings. Whatever this may add up to it is certainly a great deal more than zero.
    1
  9111.  @Waltzhybrid92  If your judgement (?) is going to be based on your assessment of character then Biden surely fails the test far more than Trump. If Trump is a crook then he is merely a small-timer as all property developers on his scale have to be - considering who runs the unions and the cement industry. Joe Biden on the other hand is a war criminal who has spent almost half a century abusing public office for personal profit and whose final achievement seems likely to be to allow himself to become the front man for the CCP's schemes to incorporate the US in its strategy for world domination.
    1
  9112.  @TheMarsCydonia  No. It speaks to the reluctance of judges to examine it. If I was a judge I wouldn't touch it with asbestos gloves on. It has not been examined. If it has where is the result of that examination? When did it take place? (A court saying it is not going to look at something is not the same as looking at it.) And what is your interpretation then of the various statements made by Republican senators, headed I gather by Ted Cruz? Trump will be gone in a few weeks, but he is going to leave a deep pile of shit for President Harris to deal with. And I return to my original point. The new administration MUST give full answer to these claims and it can only do so following detailed judicial process. Unless of course we are already operating under CCP rules.
    1
  9113.  @ricos1497  Nothing has been thrown out by any courts. Courts have merely declined to take on the cases. There has been no examination. No detailed presentation of evidence or rebuttal thereof has been permitted. And it is that which is the point. The considerable circumstantial evidence of illegal voting and the deliberate use of electronic machines to alter counts has been ignored. Why, in the latest Georgia hearing an expert witness claimed that he and his team had hacked into a Dominion machine AT THAT VERY MOMENT while votes were being cast. The manual actually tells you how to do it. Accusations like this cannot simply be allowed to hang in the air. A mere denial is not enough. A "fact check" by a prejudiced source is not enough. The literally hundreds of allegations of electoral malpractice simply have to be answered by a due process of law. Failure to do so can only be construed as clear evidence of guilt. And just because poor and ethnic minority voters can no longer be relied upon to vote Democrat, and may instead to choose to support initiatives designed to help them better themselves is a pretty poor excuse for replacing them with computer software.
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  9114.  @lolwalters2936  None of the allegations has been "explored". Courts have merely declined to hear cases on the very sensible grounds that to so would be very dangerous to the future prospects of the judges concerned, among other things. Saying something just ain't so is not enough. Offers of proof of allegation have been made - and in considerable detail. Those making the allegations have been questioned by state senators but no court has been willing to hear cases in detail and to pass judgement upon them. The accusations are alive and kicking and won't die on their own. Those making them must be answered or sued for perjury and defamation. This is not going to go away. It has the potential to become one of the greatest scandals in American history.
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  9115.  @TheMarsCydonia  That is just silly. So far there have been no answers. If the allegations - or at the very least a fair cross-section of them - are brought before a court and found to be false by due judicial process then so be it. Those making the false allegations deserve to be punished. It is a test of a civilised society that allegations of wrongdoing must be properly refuted and that failure to do so leaves it very much open for those accusations to be true.
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  9116.  @mattgreek1066  Hi Matt! How's the therapy going?
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  9117.  @stevemak8620  No-one wins here. In the end everyone has cause for sadness.
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  9118.  @TheMarsCydonia  The essential difference of course is that there was a lengthy and expensive investigation into the Russiagate allegations against Trump. Surely time and money should be spent on investigations into the far, far more substantial allegations of fraud and malpractice levelled against the Biden campaign in this election?
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  9119.  @ricos1497  Sez you. But things are at the stage now when mere opinion is not enough. The numbers are not adding up. I'm no mathematician but people who are come to some pretty thought-provoking conclusions. They, and the humble observers with tales of intimidation need answering. The videos of election workers apparently passing ballots though machines time and time again or apparently palming thumb drives and smuggling them away need explanation. All this and much, much more is generally being withheld from the American public by a media cabal which seems up to is own neck in a conspiracy to circumvent democracy and place a puppet it the White House who probably owes vast debts to the various sinister forces who helped put him there. This will become clear to large numbers of Americans, if it is not clear already, and the only likely alternative to judicially sanctioned transparency will be violent, bloody revolution.
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  9120.  @TheMarsCydonia  Your logic (if such it can be called) is somewhat twisted I think. Trump was accused of colluding with Russia to help him win the election. No evidence was found for this. In law the fact that the investigation found no case to answer does, indeed, prove that Trump was innocent. That's how it works. As I explained, the cases brought by the Trump team and others in local courts were brought with no real hope of success, and indeed with the expectation of merely testing the water at best. The exchange you posted between the Trump lawyer and the Michigan judge clearly illustrates this. The lawyer gave the judge good excuses to decline to hear the case and so avoid a dangerous situation for all concerned. I'm sure His Honour was very grateful and the Trump lawyers could surely see no point in instigating a lengthy legal procedure which could in no way reach a conclusion by the time of the Electoral College vote and which would in any case be liable to appeal. It is not a question of the judge being crooked. He is just being pragmatic - as indeed is the lawyer. The situation remains that absolutely no-one - not the state legislatures nor SCOTUS - are prepared to do anything which might allow Trump to win. No-one wants to reap the whirlwind. Unless he really is a brilliant three-dimensional chess player with a series of masterly strokes in reserve Trump will have to give up the Presidency, and he know it. But that of course is just the beginning. Trump probably didn't cheat all that much - and look what happened to him! On the other hand it very much seems as though Biden cheated like hell and this, combined with the alliances he has made with the likes of Antifa, BLM the Chinese Communist Party and George Soros are going to lead to a very volatile and unpredictable situation for America. I think it unlikely that it will be possible to avoid bloodshed.
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  9121.  @TheMarsCydonia  You still seem to be missing the point. The case against Trump was the result of a lengthy professional investigation which turned out to have been based in large part on manufactured evidence from a single source ( Steele). It failed. The case against Biden is based upon numerous allegations from various individuals and the authorities have thusfar failed to investigate them. The evidence is there but it has not been investigated. I have, for instance, just watched a video which appears to show Trump's vote actually DROPPING quite substantially at various junctures. Votes which had been recorded for him were quite suddenly taken away. How can this be so? Is it so? Are the analysts who have produced this evidence mistaken or lying? We need to know. And I never said the judge you quoted was crooked. He was just being sensible. Equally well the representatives of the various agencies you mention are also being sensible. It would be a bad career move for anyone to stand up to the Biden crew at this point. Barr is a glaring example of this. Your view of the situation seems overly simplistic. I repeat: the allegations have neither been proved or disproved because no court has had the courage - or folly - to consider them properly - or any investigative agency the instruction to investigate them. And thus they remain hanging in the air and are far more varied and substantial that vague stories about Trump people meeting with Putin people in hotel rooms. If someone can explain how more than 400,000 votes disappeared from Trump's totals in Pennsylvania, then that is just one anomaly to be ticked off. Others spring up to take its place. Even now in Georgia Republican observers are being denied the legal right to observe signature verifications. Why? As to your remark on the final part of my last comment I'm afraid you may be LOLLING on the other side of your face before long. America is a disaster waiting to happen at the moment.
    1
  9122.  @TheMarsCydonia  You can't find something if you don't look for it. Whether or not you believe it exists doesn't enter into it. A thing either exists or it does not. In this instance there are overwhelming indications that fraud has taken place - both from anecdotal evidence from people who observed it on the ground and from statistical analysis of the pattern of the results. There was motive and opportunity. There has been a cynical attempt to circumvent the democratic process engineered by extremists who have infiltrated the Democrat party. Dominion voting systems' HQ was, until very recently in a building in Toronto which housed various extreme left-wing pressure groups financed by George Soros. Ballot manipulation by computer has been added on to more traditional methods of electoral fraud to make the democratic process in the United States no more than a meaningless charade. Think about that. Republican or Democrat you owe it to your country to prevent the reins of power being removed from the people and placed in the hands of tyrants. Cruz has called for an immediate audit. Very many people are descending upon Washington at this very moment to scream very loudly that the election was stolen. Their claims MUST be thoroughly investigated, and not just dismissed out of hand. (Incidentally, believing people who hold opposing views to be insane is a sign of intellectual weakness. In the Soviet Union you were put away in an asylum if you denied the precepts of Marxism.)
    1
  9123.  @ricos1497  Even if not fraud then electoral malpractice to such a degree as to make the elections unlawful. And there was fraud. Lots of it. The Democrat party has been taken over by Marxists who ironically despise democracy. And you poor sweet, trusting souls -you useful idiots in Stalin's words - don't even know it.
    1
  9124.  @ricos1497  What interesting and perceptive questions! I'm so glad to meet such honesty, really I am. I was particularly pleased with your comments about business as usual "green" policies to get the useful idiots on board. Instilling the troops with a sense of virtue is so important to group discipline. If you can't invoke patriotism, making them think about rainforests and naughty, naughty carbon will bring the appropriate tears to the corners of their eyes. What am I doing here? I suppose I'm just out for an argument as much as anything. I despise Marxism on a great many levels and while I admit it is extremely unlikely that I would ever be able to make an intelligent Marxist see the error of their ways it can be fun having a try. Equally well, since most of the occupants of the comments sections of channels such as this appear to be brain-damaged juveniles it is entertaining to taunt and enrage them. I may even be able to sow seeds of doubt in some cases. Does this make me a troll? I am unsure of the definition, but since I believe in everything I say this cannot surely be the case. Mine is more of a missionary position.
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  9125.  @TheMarsCydonia  Think nothing of it. I'm not quite sure how I managed to do it, but as long as you're happy that's OK by me.
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  9126.  @TheMarsCydonia  I think this must be something like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It gives a whole new dimension to the concept of circular thinking.
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  9127.  @TheMarsCydonia  I do struggle sometimes. Our conversation has put me very much in mind of that excellent book "The Alchemy of Finance" by George Soros, with particular regard to his development of the concept of reflexivity. Are you familiar with it? Your technique of disputation, such as it is, mirrors some of the diagrammatic explanations with uncanny exactitude.
    1
  9128.  @TheMarsCydonia  You seem to be becoming increasingly juvenile. I am rather disappointed.
    1
  9129.  @TheMarsCydonia  George Soros is one of the most intelligent men ever to have lived. I say this in all honesty. Perhaps I did bring him into the conversation to tease a little, but the comparison I made was quite genuine. His ideas on the way people think and how those processes can be manipulated are very insightful. According to reflexivity you and I are both stuck in a perpetual feedback loop at the moment. We know what each other thinks, and we know why they think it. There is little hope of meaningful progress unless the loop is broken. One of several ways to achieve this is the input of new information. I assume you to be left-leaning, though to what degree I cannot tell, and it struck me that it would be both pertinent and useful if you were to have some understanding of Soros' work. That's all.
    1
  9130. It's okay It will now become a useful satellite of the new world economic order, benevolently run by the Chinese Communist Party. You will be quite safe.
    1
  9131.  @cat_sanwich  Thank you David Starkey.
    1
  9132. The election in Georgia stank to high heaven. Instead of having black people harvest cotton the Dems harvested them for votes.
    1
  9133. We can only hope so.
    1
  9134. This is great news. Big Macs kill more people than covid anyway.
    1
  9135. Lots and lots of people pulling ropes. It was a race with a crate of beer and a hog roast for the winning team.
    1
  9136. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Dr Davis as a radical activist for left-wing causes has, like her fellow-travellers, seized upon the pandemic with fiendish glee throughout. Whether this predilection is the result of some deep-rooted psychological peculiarity or part of a plot to destabilise society in the interests of the glorious revolution it is of course impossible to say. It is certainly a phenomenon worth investigating.
    1
  9137. Try watching black people viewing this on reaction videos. They think it's hilarious!
    1
  9138. Good job too. The sooner it runs out of non-immune subjects, the sooner it fades into the background.
    1
  9139.  @rockbutcher  What did you just do there if not judge?
    1
  9140.  @JohnJones-mz2tc  They are underfunded largely because the extent of our population is, I believe, considerably underestimated and that the government mis-spends money to a horrifying degree. In this case, though, I can't help suspect that there might be other reasons why he was not properly dealt with.
    1
  9141.  @andreer-k6136  Most don't. But there is limit to personal preference.
    1
  9142. The poor bastard has been conned rotten by the CIA. He's a lightweight who believes his own publicity and thousands of his fellow-countrymen have died as a result of his political ineptitude. Putin should keep him on as court jester.
    1
  9143.  @jamesjackson9606  America and its NATO lackies arming Ukraine and Joe Biden and other American crooks trying to steal Russian resources left Putin with little choice.
    1
  9144. Ukraine 's military capability has been exaggerated as much as Russia's has been scorned. Any Ukrainian advance will merely result in more bloodshed with no real political consequences. A compromise is still just about attainable but the chances of peace are receding day by day. It really is time to stop.beating the drum and making fierce noises.
    1
  9145.  @pgknippel  Carelessly. Prone to manipulation.
    1
  9146. Another paranoia junkie.
    1
  9147. That's probably inevitable. Which is why herd immunity via actual infection is the only answer.
    1
  9148. We now have two pragmatists who can sort this out between them. The war in Ukraine going on in people' minds is not the war as it taking place on the ground, and the reasons for it are not the reasons we are told.
    1
  9149.  @stephenhill545  I'm 76 and a bit bored at the minute.
    1
  9150. There was a row on that occasion too which shows great similarities. In both instances a great many simple-minded people were persuaded to make a gesture supporting a criminal organisation. The "European salute" for the Nazis. Taking the knee for BLM.
    1
  9151.  @atomiccritter6492  Trump has never gone away. He or his nominees will govern the US some day soon - as long as they can find away of stopping the Democrat war machine from cheating.
    1
  9152.  @conchronic  But many athletes in1936 were persuaded to raise their arms in salute in support of a racist doctrine - in exactly the same way that modern-day athletes take the knee in support of another one.
    1
  9153.  @conchronic  And isn't it great that things have got so much better since then? And isn't it a shame that BLM are trying to turn the clock back in order to help advance their Marxist agenda?
    1
  9154.  @factstrumpprejudice6740  To worship God, not a fascist/Marxist organisation.
    1
  9155.  @conchronic  I've read the Communist Manifesto and one or two other bits and pieces and I once wasted part of a perfectly decent holiday in Goa trying to wade through Das Kapital, but, like so many, I had to give up. In fact I don't know anyone who's got all the way through it. What I could decipher seemed the most arrant nonsense. Engels puts the case far more coherently, but Marxism really is like a long grocery list sent to a laundry by mistake. Did you know that Engels in one of his letters claimed that Marx once said to him;" You know Freidrich, I am not really a Marxist." Funny that.
    1
  9156.  @factstrumpprejudice6740  I was speaking on behalf of Dr King who was, of course, a Christian fundamentalist preacher.
    1
  9157.  @conchronic  If you has read much Marx- or even Engels, Lenin and Trotsky - you would realise that Communism needs both an oppressed proletariat and a tame middle-class intelligentsia if the revolution is to succeed. Unfortunately the proletariat is no longer oppressed, and even when it was it gave Marxism the cold shoulder in most locations. So a substitute oppressed proletariat has to be created. Troops are needed to go on the marches, carry the flags, shout the slogans and throw the bombs. The Marxists have selected racial and sexual minorities for the job; carefully massaging their feelings of rejection and exaggerating their ills to fire their enthusiasm for revolution As for the middle-class intelligentsia, there are always plenty of them about. "Useful idiots" Lenin called you.
    1
  9158.  @daanvanderrol5627  These poor brainwashed lefties cannot go for long without Hitler and "fascism" being trotted out. If only they realised how much they resemble themselves the wide-eyed innocents of the Hitler youth snarling about "Der Juden."
    1
  9159.  @conchronic  Yes, we've all been oppressed into owning our own houses, running two cars and going abroad for our holidays. There is still slavery in the UK of course but it is pretty much brown on brown. As for red - BLM's leaders have of course taken the usual course of stealing all the donations to provide themselves with luxury lifestyles. How anyone with half a brain can fall for this crap utterly beats me.
    1
  9160.  @dianesleeman5940  There's no need for a quid pro quo. Zelensky has nothing left to give. No cards, as Trump said. The war is over. Ukraine has lost. The Ukraine parliament is already considering impeaching Zelensky. All that has to happen now is for Trump and Putin to settle the peace between them.
    1
  9161. Quite right. Democracy in the US has been a tottering invalid for decades. It is now dead, killed in November by a massive fraud carried out by people calling themselves Democrats. The irony!
    1
  9162. THIS NOT RACISM!! This is politics. Christ, Channel 4 you are not only biased - you are stupid too.
    1
  9163. Biden will win. The Deep State needs its puppet.
    1
  9164. This is all lies .Every word. Every statistic. Every graph. Shameful propaganda.
    1
  9165. Ukraine has been abandoned as a poor investment. This pop-gun stuff is just face-saving to keep the Zelensky groupies in the West from going berserk. Are Hague and others like him in on the con, or are they just as dim as those morons with blue and yellow flags in their windows?
    1
  9166. What journalism?
    1
  9167. Ukrainians are dying in America's absurd war against Russia. Are we all fools to believe that this is about anything else?
    1
  9168. Just another arms salesman hawking his wares.
    1
  9169. America is falling though - and not before time. This war will lead to a major shift in the distribution of world power whatever the eventual outcome.
    1
  9170.  @StofStuiver  Very well put. It is so hard to get people to understand this though.
    1
  9171.  @StofStuiver  Think nothing of it. Justifiable anger can do that to you. The whole process of brainwashing has been enormously successful. I'm getting on in years and was hatched and fully formed before it really got under way, but some of the ideas my children and grandchildren accept without question are truly appalling. It isn't simply that the questionable is accepted as fact, it's that the whole process of critical thought has been manipulated. "You can't SAY that grandad," they hiss at me! And I can't either, especially not on YouTube .
    1
  9172. Ukraine has an easy way out - all it has to do is surrender.
    1
  9173.  @JOzzie-u8z  Who's "we"?
    1
  9174.  @gord8743  Then shut it.
    1
  9175.  VINLAND_777  How many treaties is that? Three?
    1
  9176. Completely wrong. Holding on to Donbass and Crimea is Russia's sole objective, but the West hasn't allowed this because it wants to get its hands on the immense mineral riches of these territories. The Russian and Ukrainian mothers who have lost their sons ultimately have Washington to thank.
    1
  9177. And we can only hope he will become so once again.
    1
  9178. I think this war is wrong. I think Putin has done wonders in transforming his country. I hope with all my heart that Trump wins the election. Does this make me a troll?
    1
  9179. I think you should stick AMV33X up your arse.
    1
  9180. Working on the assumption that both the Tories and Labour are now well fucked, the Lib Dems are likely to pick up renegade votes from both sides. Europhile do-gooders whose politics are based on feeling all warm and fluffy inside will find a home there, as will traditional Tories who can't quite stomach Nigel's spivishness. Knuckle-dragging nationalists like me will put up with him for now - but only until such times as the law is changed to allow Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and his cohorts to form an effective opposition truly representative of the much abused and disenfranchised British working class.
    1
  9181. False flag? At the end of the day the Russians will do better out of this than the Ukrainians will.
    1
  9182. And the American ones got to vote for Joe Biden.
    1
  9183.  @spxram4793  He stands in the way of peace. It's as simple as that. Russian has won this war and we have to decide by how much - not keep the hideous needless mess carrying on indefinitely as Z seems to want.
    1
  9184.  @spxram4793  Trump wants peace and to establish better relations with Russia. Zelensky is in the way.
    1
  9185. So you want a war then?
    1
  9186. @ And that's where you are wrong and why this jingoistic sabre-rattling you lot go in for is so dangerous. Russia invaded Ukraine in order to prevent the Ukrainian government selling off the highly valuable and largely Russian-owned mining and steel-making industries in Donbass. The rest of Europe - and indeed the rest of Ukraine - has nothing much to do with it. Russia is intent merely on protecting its existing interests. The Russian "threat" is a myth designed to support the Western arms industries and NATO.
    1
  9187. Typical cynical Ukrainian cold-bloodedness. Instead of removing civilians from warzones they keep them there as human shields, using their deaths to bleed more cash from gullible Westerners. They did it in Mariopol, and they are doing it now in Kherson and Bakhmut.
    1
  9188. And why should he?
    1
  9189. UK courts are just as political. The Supreme Court was created by Tony Blair as a Labour filter to replace the House of Lords - the traditional Conservative filter. Its members are still generally left-leaning champagne socialists.
    1
  9190. Hasn't worked out too well for the Dems though, has it? They're set to crash and burn. And to think they had to cheat like hell to get where they are!
    1
  9191. What do you want for Christmas?
    1
  9192. Donald is just taking the piss. He's good at that.
    1
  9193.  @leed206  None whatever. I guess you might be having problems with selective memory, however.
    1
  9194.  @OmANnIe  I was referring to the people you were referring to not to the jurors as selected, although there is every chance that they too will be prejudiced against Trump. In fact, given the never-ending demonization of the man on this and other similar channels, there seems to be little chance of finding anyone in the entire country who can bring an unprejudiced view to the case. Doubtless this will be one of the many reasons for appeal when this present stage of the farce is over.
    1
  9195. England, unlike the other three UK countries does give figures for a 10-19 age group. Covid related deaths amount to 32.
    1
  9196.  @WHS_reviews  I sometimes wish I too lived in comfortable little fantasy world like yours.
    1
  9197. The lying, cheating incompetents currently in the White House and the Pentagon are showing their true colours day by day.
    1
  9198. So where does espionage come into it? It's perfectly possible that some secret stuff got mixed up with personal papers but this is not an offence under the Presidential Records Act so slimeballs in the DoJ are trying to make out it was in contravention of the Espionage Act. The reek of desperation yet again
    1
  9199. It's a total myth that the air attacks are designed to cause civilian discontent. Experience shows that they tend to strengthen resolve - and Putin knows this as much as anyone. They are designed to restrict military movement, to cut off supply lines and so on. Imagine trying to move armies around without trains. Imagine fuel depots where the pumps don't work. Like so much else in this war we say what we think Putin is doing, and when he hasn't done it, we are told he has failed. The whole ethos of the support for Ukraine is built on lies and thousands are dying as a result. Time to call a halt.
    1
  9200. Support for the lying, corrupt Zelensky regime is beginning to falter at last. Keep it coming! Give peace a chance!
    1
  9201. Other way around, surely.
    1
  9202. There is surely more to all this than meets the eye. Rwanda is now starting to figure hugely in the carbon futures market and any millions bunged its way under the auspices of this bizarre refugee scheme will surely grease the way for improved cap and trade deals with the UK.
    1
  9203. Bakhmut goes and the rest of Donbass follows. That's all Russia wants and has ever wanted.
    1
  9204. TDS is a notifiable disease, common among actors for some reason.
    1
  9205. Russia couldn't care less what the West thinks . It's out there to win. There is nothing symbolic about Soledar. It's a stepping stone to victory.
    1
  9206. I am offended by the use of the word "stochastic" . It incites me to violence.
    1
  9207. Like so many military men this buffoon's career has depended upon the myth of Russian empire-building. That's America's game - our greatest ally!
    1
  9208. Plant Fuelled A repressive Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship in other words? Oh no though. PR would mean Tommy Robinson could form his own party and get a couple of seats in the House of Commons. I'm warming to the idea. By the way, it may have slipped your notice but Tony Blair has already reformed the House of Lords He replaced most of the hereditary peers with arse-lickers who couldn't get elected in the Commons. The Tories have been forced to follow suit to match the numbers. It was better in the old days really.
    1
  9209. Plant Fuelled Ah! How much simpler it would be if we could vote purely on a candidate's hairstyle or beard! I welcome the day. To hell with political judgement and suchlike nonsense. Proprep will give us a full array of everything from plaits to a full Jehovah! What could possibly go wrong?
    1
  9210. Plant Fuelled We could do it according to who tells the best jokes. How does that sound? Everyone from Bernard Manning to Russell Howard.
    1
  9211.  @joedowning2428  At least pants keep the shit off your trousers. Facemasks do nothing useful.
    1
  9212.  @jameslyons532  This from the British Medical Journal I've tried sending the link but YouTube is deleting it. They don't want you reading evidence in an internationally famed medical journal. Disgraceful. BMJ April 2020 They concluded, “The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against covid-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.”
    1
  9213.  @joedowning2428  The vapour comes out the sides and top of your mask and falls on whoever's standing behind you. If you do happen to be infected you will keep breathing in the viruses which don't escape this way, resulting in multiple repeated infections leading to worsening symptoms and possible death.
    1
  9214.  @joedowning2428  Useless in the event of a cough or a sneeze, but a social distance of around a metre is probably a good idea. That's about as far as droplets go in normal breathing or quiet speech.
    1
  9215.  @AreYouSellingMints  Droplets travel about a metre in normal breathing. If you cough or sneeze you should put your hand in front of your mouth anyway. Most infections occur when viruses get on your hands and you then transfer them to your mouth, nose and eyes- such as when you fiddle with your mask. The viruses only remain in the air in water droplets for a relatively short period. Gravity soon brings them down to rest on surfaces, where they can survive for many hours.
    1
  9216. This makes a great deal of sense; but why oh why did the Democrats elect a senile political con-artist as its candidate to beat Trump? And why oh why do they show open support for Marxist revolutionaries intent on creating anarchy as a prelude to revolution?
    1
  9217. But it was Trump's predecessors, don't forget.
    1
  9218. @ I think this is a myth. The war in Ukraine is a border dispute over territory rich in mineral resources, that's all. The very fact that Russia is having such incredible difficulty in taking these regions proves that it is utterly incapable of large-sale expansion - and probably doesn't want or need to either.
    1
  9219.  @VinceLammas  I think this is a myth. The war in Ukraine is a border dispute over territory rich in mineral resources, that's all. The very fact that Russia is having such incredible difficulty in taking these regions proves that it is utterly incapable of large-sale expansion - and probably doesn't want or need to either.
    1
  9220. The Ukrainians lost more.
    1
  9221. So Newsmax, have you been suckered or are you part of the con?
    1
  9222.  @desmondgroves6998  Russia never wanted to take Ukraine, much less in three days. It is fighting to retain control of mineral-rich Donbass which has been invested in by Russia and worked with Russian labour for hundreds of years. What you are told is an invasion is in fact a war of liberation.
    1
  9223. Of course Biden will win. The establishment will fix it so he does, same as they did last time.
    1
  9224. It's not just a Tory trait. George Brown was notorious for his insane tirades. And Bercow has of course joined Labour. Plenty of other examples I'm sure.
    1
  9225.  @dougbritton3239  Whoops! I meant Gordon Brown of course. George Brown was only nearly Prime Minister and although a total piss artist and quite rude from time to time, I don't think he quite matched Gordon's reputation. Standards were somewhat different in his day, of course. Snowflakes were thin on the ground.
    1
  9226.  @sueyourself5413  Today's "bullying" is just yesterday's robust management techniques. So yes.
    1
  9227.  @sueyourself5413  It's an emotive word. However if it simply means "unless you do as I say, I will see this is done to you" then that is surely a technique in common use. If you're on the receiving end you can either fold or call the boss's bluff. Weeping and complaining will generally get you nowhere.
    1
  9228.  @sueyourself5413  Difficult to define, so difficult to substantiate legally. If you are told to have a haircut or get sacked is that blackmail? Improve your sales figures or get demoted? Do as you're told or we'll get you for fiddling your expenses? Vote with the party or face de-selection?
    1
  9229.  @sueyourself5413  I was so shocked by your assertion that I Googled it and came up with this: "If the employer is satisfied that the employee has no reasonable grounds for objecting to the dress code and there is no potential discrimination against the employee, the employer may ask the employee to change their hairstyle, and commence disciplinary action in accordance with its disciplinary procedures if the employee refuses. A continued refusal to comply with the employer's dress code may lead to a fair dismissal of the employee on the grounds of misconduct or "some other substantial reason".
    1
  9230.  @sueyourself5413  I am in interested in your 2 spirited penguin. What is that? And the law as stands does give the employer the right to impose a dress and appearance code, although I think you can fight it on ethnic or religious grounds. The point though is that threats do not always equate with blackmail as such. It depends upon what behaviour is being expected of you.
    1
  9231.  @sueyourself5413  Now THAT'S probably at the limit. But having said that, politics is a dirty business and if there is an actual case of such pressure in the present instance I don't think it would be all that unusual. Wrong yes. But not unusual. And yes, blackmail.
    1
  9232.  @philippschwartzerdt3431  None of your analogies work. Rape and child molestation have never been socially acceptable as far as I am aware and modern plumbing has put paid to the necessity of emptying your potty out of the window. Smoking in public places is abandoned simply because smoking is minority occupation now, and causes physical discomfort to those who do not smoke. But there is a world of difference between physical discomfort and being all hurty-hurty because someone has been rude to you. Be rude back!
    1
  9233. Do you have any thoughts on hydroxycloroquine? There seem to have been some developments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM Just discovered your channel. Excellent.
    1
  9234.  Andrew Ongais  But hundredsof lives have been saved, Do watch the video. The doctor explains all sides of the issue in a very fair way and comes to what I think can be the only rational conclusion, namely that if hydroxocloroquine is administered along with an antibiotic and zinc in the very earliest stages of the illness it can prevent virus replication in lung tissue, thus avoiding a fatal outcome. An earlier study coming to this conclusion is cited. That's it. No more than that. The drug is useless once the virus has taken a proper hold. Dr Katz is not pushing it as a wonder treatment. He is not pushing it all. He is totally objective, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM
    1
  9235.  Andrew Ongais  An early pre-Trump support study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hsu1OU1voQ
    1
  9236. MrisaacE So this is a new thing?
    1
  9237. Martin Emes The hottest since records began! In 1910. I expect it was very, very cold before then.Temperatures recorded above 50c were obviously the result of faulty equipment. Even today modern thermometers cannot be trusted. They are showing up to 10c less than the figures on the weather channels.
    1
  9238. Sean G Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, Sky News Australia. Nov 14. "There are conservationist and green policies which I think have exacerbated the situation. "One is the lack of control burns,of fire reduction burns." He also goes on to cite the fact that new regulations now lead to cut undergrowth being piled upon previous cut undergrowth, greatly adding to fire hazards. "The aborigines would never done that. They knew what they were doing." Regulations also limit dates upon which precautionary burns can be carried out, often on a seemingly arbitrary basis, as well as restricting the widths of firebreaks to sizes which farmers often think too narrow. All these wonderful ideas are of course accompanied by the threat of substantial fines for non--compliance. Naturally too, lengthy forms have to be filled in.
    1
  9239. Sean G Is what he says untrue?
    1
  9240.  @nickryder9669  I don't think there's a hierarchy. All require support to varying degrees, but at least OAPs have paid for it from their own pockets.
    1
  9241.  @piccalillipit9211  And provided wage-earners with homes and the incentives to go out to work and pay taxes. Are those the ones you mean?
    1
  9242.  @piccalillipit9211  Neither are. Never said anything different. It was you who made the initial distinction.
    1
  9243.  @piccalillipit9211  I'm one myself, so perhaps a little prejudiced. Having paid around a third of my income to the government over the course of my working life I do feel entitled to some simple comforts at my time of life.
    1
  9244.  @jasonmcclatchie6877  But a benefit which has been earned, I'm sure you must agree.
    1
  9245. Kursk is a farce.
    1
  9246.  @brianchandler1365 Only partially. The bodies had fairly eclectic origins.
    1
  9247. What's the plan then? Lockdowns forever? It's either that or face up to the inevitable epidemic Australia will face. Vaccines do not stop the vulnerable from dying; they reduce symptoms in the healthy, that's all. Australia will have to face up to the reality of covid, same as everywhere else.
    1
  9248.  @ryanthompson1981  What? An advertising agency for arms dealers?
    1
  9249.  @rmdomainer9042  Thanks for the publicity!
    1
  9250.  @rmdomainer9042  Well, you're reacting, aren't you?
    1
  9251.  @rmdomainer9042  I didn't get many views either - which is why I gave up!
    1
  9252.  @rmdomainer9042  What is indefensible? To what do you refer?
    1
  9253.  @mazzaelili3713  It doesn't really. If your umbrella is made out of a fishnet you're still going to get wet.
    1
  9254.  @mazzaelili3713  As yours does me.
    1
  9255.  Dimwits Vote Tory  Small scale stuff, even if true. And I wasn't thinking so much about financial corruption, despite the Biden family's lifetime of exchanging political favours in return for financial gain. The corruption is embedded in the entire system . The American people are sold promises as if they were soap powder or toilet rolls. To succeed in American politics you have to accept the system of bribes and favours in order to climb up the greasy pole, picking up wealth and power along the way. Trump came in from the outside, which is why the establishment hates him so much. They can't manipulate him. They've got nothing on him -so they have to make it up. As for the covid epidemic, I find its politicisation particularly distasteful. It is a natural disaster about which little can be done except make gestures. It could have been better or worse here and there if so-and-so had done such-and-such, but we will never know, will we?
    1
  9256.  @haansolo7834  I wonder if you have taken a few hours to assess the evidence presented to the recent state senate hearings? There are about 70 hours of such. No evidence has actually been assessed by any court. Courts have merely declined to accept cases on a variety of grounds- and very sensibly too. There was never any purpose in this for the Trump side since there was no possibility of any judgement being reached before the Electoral College met. Personally I have found much of this evidence pretty convincing - and certainly worthy of full judicial assessment.
    1
  9257. ​ Whinging Righters destroy Freethinkers accounts  The court cases are irrelevant. Of more importance is the mountain of evidence and accusation brought before various state senate hearings in recent weeks. As to the Middle East situation I assume you are unaware of the various accords between warring potentates set up by Trump, the astonishing spectacle of Israel being recognised by some Arab countries and the large-scale withdrawal of US troops from the area.
    1
  9258.  @caballoloco100  Many Republicans have disliked Trump from the start. Really he only chose to be a Republican in order to further his aims. The contest now is really between Trump MAGA and The Establishment. The demonization of the ill-fated Capitol protest is just another example of the brainwashing you poor souls have to continually undergo. There was no plan for a coup! Just a a demo when a few attention-seekers got over excited. Comparing it to 911 or Pearl Harbour is an insult to your intelligence, if you have any. You ask for evidence. There have been around 70 hours of claim and evidence presented to various state senate hearings in recent week. Below are a couple of samples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin Violence is a last resort but unless reasonable explanations and redress can be offered for these matters then those who deny the legitimacy of the Biden administration have every right to so; to ignore its edicts and to counteract any measures directed at reducing their liberties by force if necessary. PS Both Hitler and Mussolini came to power via free and open election, and were enthusiastically welcomed by the vast majority of their respective populations. As a keen student of modern history you should know this.
    1
  9259.  @micococo3396  The cases against Hunter Biden and their implications for his father have not been heard, but the circumstantial evidence is considerable. As to the second there have been 70 hours of evidence of voter fraud and criminal electoral mismanagement presented to state senate hearings in recent week. I append a small selection below. As to the third I would be grateful if you could provide me a link to these recordings, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  9260.  @haansolo7834  Haven't we been through this already? The court cases were an irrelevance. No point to them. It would take months or even years for procedures to take place- long after the meeting of the Electoral College. The lawyers and the judges both were more than happy to set them aside. More important were the state senate hearings at which over 70 hours of evidence have been presented. I thought I'd passed this on to you before but I'm so busy trying to counteract media propaganda at the moment I may have you mixed up with someone else. Anyway here are a couple of examples which lend considerable weight to the fantasies I share with 39% of the American population. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  9261.  @caballoloco100  But why did Biden's handlers have to cheat? And if they didn't why will his administration not take the obvious step of avoiding civil insurrection by taking steps to prove it? A couple of other points: Trump obviously didn't choose to run as an Independent because he wouldn't have won and the 911 and Pearl Harbour comparisons were foolishly made by senior Democrats, not me. Also it is rather insidious to bring Trump's ancestry into the argument. They were men of their time whose careers displayed a certain rugged, frontier spirit but they are irrelevant to the matters at hand. The very fact that you have found it necessary to introduce them demonstrates the weakness of your case.
    1
  9262.  @haansolo7834  God! You have opened my eyes! In spite of getting large sums from Putin Trump has taken money from his supporters in order to bribe around a thousand people to lie for him?! I never thought of that!
    1
  9263.  @micococo3396  I see nothing in this, nor in any of the speech, which could be interpreted as a direct call for violence and if the DoJ are persuaded by an increasingly insane Democratic leadership to bring a prosecution on this basis, they will fail. Trump is pissed. Around 40% of the American people are pissed. The "baseless" claims of fraud are not baseless at all. They may be wrong, but they are certainly not baseless and until they are proved to be false in the minds of those millions of people the threat of civil war remains a reality. The administration will have to tread very carefully indeed. Any of the crazy acts of retribution recommended by the peabrained adolescents in this comments stream, or the equally deranged Democratic puppets at the top, will lead to a violent reaction. This is, of course, may be exactly what the forces which have engineered this situation actually want.
    1
  9264. A myth. Most front-line soldiers are highly paid volunteers.
    1
  9265.  @kcccc5682  With widely differing results. Proxy data is in no way reliable.
    1
  9266. What a very, very middle class remark!
    1
  9267. He'll be dead of old age first!
    1
  9268. A definition of "explosion" might be useful. Assuming that explosives were the cause is jumping to conclusions. A huge amount of water breaking suddenly through the dam is going to make a pretty huge bang.
    1
  9269. ​ @damianeadie510 A quick Internet search will reveal any number of dam collapses which had far, far bigger impacts than this one. And you can bet they didn't happen quietly! I couldn't be bothered with Broe he's just a mad propagandist and I'm sure there are at least 18 reasons why Russia dun it. But that doesn't mean that they did. I've already answered the Falklands question of course they're British.
    1
  9270.  @stuartbenson4195  There is considerable evidence which Dominion will have to disprove - if it comes to court, that is. This is a big numbers scare tactic, that's all.
    1
  9271.  @stuartbenson4195  Have you seen any of the state senate hearings? A military cyber security expert demonstrated how voting patterns could be altered using Dominion's own instruction manual. There was also a practical demonstration in one of Georgia's counting rooms. Plenty of other stuff too, including mathematical analysis etc. Apparently there is some sort of hackers convention in Vegas every year where Dominion machines are used. A ten year old kid hacked one four minutes. The US legal system isn't much geared up for justice as such so there's every chance that Dominion will be able to buy silence - but a chance too that they will be exposed.
    1
  9272.  @stuartbenson4195  No verdict on fraud as such has been issued, certainly, since no trial as such has taken place. Investigations are proceeding in several states however, although into breaches of electoral regulations more than anything. One such regulation is that electoral machines should not be capable of being manipulated - which Dominion machines certainly are. Proving that they actually were manipulated will of course be more difficult but there is statistical, eye-witness and video evidence that this was indeed the case. Dominion's complicity in the fraudulent use of its machines and software must be the main point of issue, I think. The contention is that Dominion machines and their software were produced with the express purpose of being capable of fixing elections. How much proof of this there is remains to be seen. Allegations of suspicious activities by senior Dominion staff during election night have also to be substantiated. If the case goes ahead I think there will be considerable doubts shed over the use of this equipment in future elections at the very least.
    1
  9273.  @shermanderek2  He wasn't trying to steal votes. He was asking the governor to find the votes that had been stolen from him.
    1
  9274. There would not even be a need for demilitarised zone if Ukraine and the West acknowledged Russia's historical right to Donbass and Crimea, both of which have been developed by Russia for generations and have large Russian populations. They are Ukrainian in name only, and then only because they were included in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine - at the behest of Russia.
    1
  9275.  @Pat20247  Why are you people so brainwashed that you cannot understand that people who disagree with you are not paid Russian agents but SIMPLY PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU??!!!???
    1
  9276. Where's the irony?
    1
  9277. So the elderly and the infirm are stupid, selfish and gullible are they? Because that´s who covid kills.
    1
  9278.  @AdrianColley  Not too. Pretty exclusively.
    1
  9279. The oligarchs (whoever they are) don't need fake news to undermine socialism. We "poor people", as you toffee-nosed Commies call us, know our lives will be richer and safer when we are ruled by people who know what they're doing, rather than by a bunch of half-arsed intellectuals with grandiose ideas.
    1
  9280.  @noahbrooksphoto  You have no idea what I have or have not done.
    1
  9281.  @rogerwilco5918  So all the wars America and its stooges have been involved in since then are illusions, right?
    1
  9282.  @jassianterri  Makes sense to anyone capable of understanding.
    1
  9283.  @karylhogan5758  Why do all you people write "loosing" instead of "losing"? Is it simply lack of a proper education?
    1
  9284.  @karylhogan5758  Loosing IS a word. But it doesn't mean "losing.". At least you know now, huh?
    1
  9285.  @davidmcintyre8145  You are simply wrong, and that's all there is to it. Read the constitution.
    1
  9286.  @davidmcintyre8145  You are wrong. Read the Reform constitution. All members - and they are members - have full voting rights on policy matters and in any leadership contest and can even call for a vote of no confidence in the leader if more than 50% agree.
    1
  9287.  @rocketscience4516  And a jolly good morning to you too! Why don't you put The Guradian to one side and have a read of this? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30229-1/fulltext
    1
  9288. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    1
  9289. I see little difference between QAnon and the BBC. They both spread false information to promote dubious theories about how the world is run. QAnon is satire of course. The BBC and other woke brainwashing media outlets are only too horribly real.
    1
  9290. If you like supercilious and slightly menacing.
    1
  9291. The fact remains that the Covid vaccines are based on a hitherto untried technique and their long-term effects are not known. Considering that Covid 19 kills the elderly or the seriously compromised pretty exclusively, and that in all probability the seriousness of its effects will diminish over time, hailing the vaccines as a silver bullet to kill the beast is probably not the best idea.
    1
  9292. UK deaths are currently between 16% and 18% above the five year average - and less than half can be attributed to covid. The rest are in all probability due to lack of treatment for serious conditions as a result of hysterical over-reaction to the disease - which continues to kill mainly the very elderly, vaccinated or not. Nonetheless the vaccination programme, combined with increasing immunity gained through infection, is creating an ever-widening gap between the number of cases and the number of fatalities. Should Johnson choose to call an election almost any combination of likely statistical outcomes could be manipulated to his advantage. He will be able to say: "We have learned from our mistakes, now let us get on with the job of putting Britain back on its feet again." And people will believe him.
    1
  9293.  @jonathonpotts5666  Alternative to what?
    1
  9294.  @aaronsinger  The reality that America is run by criminals who are far, far worse than Donald Trump and has been for decades? Is that the actual reality you mean?
    1
  9295.  @aaronsinger  Is that the one where the US is run by warmongering criminals?
    1
  9296.  @aaronsinger  Which is what? What you believe it to be? What you are told it is?
    1
  9297.  @aaronsinger  Where God made little green apples and the American Way?
    1
  9298.  @richardherdman2121  That is a very interesting point. It's one those things that one assumes from whatever tenuous knowledge one has of biology and arboriculture.
    1
  9299.  @richardherdman2121  I am beginning to doubt my own existence. I will now re-read Kant on the subject of a priori and metaphysical knowledge before coming up with an answer to your question.
    1
  9300.  @richardherdman2121  You're tying my brain in knots. Stop it!
    1
  9301.  @richardherdman2121  Is this a crossword clue? If so, how many letters?
    1
  9302.  @richardherdman2121  That is to say nothing in a tangled rubber polity.
    1
  9303.  @richardherdman2121  Go on then. I haven't seriously tried to dismantle your earlier offering, since it occurs to me that you could simply be playing mind games and what is seemingly unintelligible nonsense could be just that. You claim to have solved my simple anagram. Evidence of this would be welcome before we proceed.
    1
  9304.  @richardherdman2121  I hate to be a disappointment. I presume you are trying to draw my attention to a particular building in this area of Manhattan, although I can't think why. You still haven't convinced me that you solved my clue, by the way.
    1
  9305.  @richardherdman2121  I still think it highly possible that the answer to my tangled letter jumble might be in the affirmative. No matter. I certainly have nothing in common with the two characters you mention, the real-life one I have never even heard of before. Cards on the table: you seem to be directing me towards Trump Tower and the Democrat Party. Are you simply making the point (with which I wholeheartedly agree, by the way) that reality (such as it is) has very little to do with individual definitions of it?
    1
  9306.  @richardherdman2121  The word "tangled" in my post "That is to say nothing in a tangled rubber polity." was the giveaway. We seem to be having trouble with knotty anagrams. It was your Typo:MarcaTo which led me towards Democrat Party.
    1
  9307.  @richardherdman2121  But I was wrong - never having heard of this Marcato person. I couldn't make out the meaning of the second part of your post but I thought it might in some way provide me with the d -e -r-t needed to make Democrat Party. So no intellectual elitist. Just wrong (That isn't an an anagram, by the way. At least not intentionally.)
    1
  9308.  @richardherdman2121  Then you are most fortunate. It is best you do not know.
    1
  9309.  @richardherdman2121  Alas, the truth might be too much for you to bear.
    1
  9310.  @richardherdman2121  Free speech? Good luck with that!
    1
  9311.  @richardherdman2121  Absolutely not. I am a free speech extremist.
    1
  9312.  @richardherdman2121 How can it be extremist to wish for something which is fleeting and unobtainable to be more permanent and accepted? Optimistic perhaps. Idealistic perhaps - but not contradictory.
    1
  9313.  @jonathonpotts5666  It already is.
    1
  9314.  @richardherdman2121  Forget all that. Tell me about yourself.
    1
  9315.  @richardherdman2121  I thought you might be interesting, that's all.
    1
  9316.  @richardherdman2121  Well, yes... but your earlier wordplay was actually more interesting to me than the subject of our discussion. (Have you bothered to untangle my anagram yet, by the way?)
    1
  9317.  @richardherdman2121  I am an elderly Englishman with a long white beard.
    1
  9318. I still don't understand how cooler temperatures affect these fires. If it's 35c or 45c the fires will still burn, won't they? Someone please explain!
    1
  9319. Dan Ellis-Jones Thanks. You've explained that very clearly.
    1
  9320. Obviously we should colonise South Georgia. How many boat immigrants would fit there?
    1
  9321.  @paulfenton734  This is a myth. Russian and Chinese state broadcasters are no more or less propaganda machines than the MSM in the West. Have you heard of this Internet thing? You can get hold of all kinds of information there. Even if you live in Russia or China.
    1
  9322. Hurry! The MSM is going to have to find something else to scare us with! (PS Climate Crisis has lost its punch. Won't hack it.)
    1
  9323.  @Afterthoughtbtw  Huh?
    1
  9324.  @PaulDenison-r7r  Ukraine is fighting bravely, constantly re-armed by the West.
    1
  9325. The widening gap between infection levels and death levels should solve these problems quite quickly, it is hoped.
    1
  9326. @E KL I am from England, and "International Law" is an artificial and basically meaningless construct, created after the end of the Second World War to give a sheen of respectability to continuing American aggression. Even then they break it, as in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Syria, to name but three examples.
    1
  9327.  @gigmcsweeney8566  No it isn't. It is an anomalous and entirely artificial construct.
    1
  9328.  @Deadlus-p3m  That relationship ended quite some time ago, I think you'll find!
    1
  9329. You must ask nicely though.
    1
  9330.  @dpelpal  But he never said it. Some commanders said it to their troops by way of encouragement. This was picked up on TV chat shows and so the myth began.
    1
  9331.  @dpelpal  The Russians are as big a bunch of liars as the Ukrainians. In this case though you can be sure Putin never said this. He is far too intelligent.
    1
  9332. Spivs, shysters and carpet-baggers have taken over the Conservative Party.
    1
  9333. Take pity on the fool. Don't let's go all American Fascist and demand she goes to prison.
    1
  9334. No.They just shortened it.
    1
  9335.  @deselby6669  Of course it can. I'm not saying it will - but it can. In fact, it's odds-on favourite as things stand.
    1
  9336. This was so obvious. Boris may be a lying charlatan but his opponents seem as thick as shit.
    1
  9337. I think Ukraine is just asking for trouble.
    1
  9338. To put the deaths into perspective the projected UK death rate for 2020 was 9.4 per 1,000 of population. It turned out to be 10.2 - and that's with two major outbreaks of covid. And as, everyone knows, most of the victims were over eighty and many in their nineties. This is not the stuff of major disaster. Earlier flu epidemics killed fewer, but many were children and young people who were denied the chance of meaningful life. And as for that 10.2 per thousand figure EVERY death rate in the 20th century was that or higher.
    1
  9339. I doubt the Talibs will want the uniforms. America spent $30 million on jungle camouflage kit instead of the desert variety.
    1
  9340. Throughout this war Ukraine and the West has been labouring under the misapprehension that Russia wants the territory it took. It does not - apart from Donbass and the land bridge to Crimea. The battles which have taken place until now have been merely to drain Ukrainian resources.
    1
  9341. Anyone with any sense knows this was a put-up job, no matter what else they've been forced to say. The remarks were in no way racist and ten million quid is well worth having.
    1
  9342. The UN is increasingly irrelevant.
    1
  9343.  @sunshineandshadow4560  Gotcha! Obviously it was all done on Putin's orders!
    1
  9344. And how does America fit into your analysis? Odd too how the long-awaited effects of Brexit happen to coincide with a worldwide recession created by the Ukraine war and covid mishandling.
    1
  9345. Examples?
    1
  9346. I'm sure he looks on Elon as a son!
    1
  9347. I'm sure he looks on Elon like a son!
    1
  9348.  @jamesmorrow1646  Gibberish with many precedents.
    1
  9349.  @casuallyretarded5161  No profit in a country with a crippled industry and no access to the sea which is costing you a billion bucks a week to keep afloat at all.
    1
  9350.  @jamesmorrow1646  But Haliburton always comes in after America has fucked a country to pieces. There's as much money to be made clearing up the mess as there is in creating it. In this case though the US is probably not going to get its hands on Ukraine's mineral resources as planned, so the rebuilding might be a bit makeshift.
    1
  9351.  @alyshabushagingerlylove9377  Nope.
    1
  9352. What it's about is that Cummings has a plan to stop the evil Slimestream Media foisting its lying leftwing propaganda on the long-suffering public. Led by the BBC they have launched a KGB style smear campaign in order to get rid of him. Fall for this and you are helping undermine the roots of freedom and democracy in this country.
    1
  9353. Why?
    1
  9354.  @verystripeyzebra  In what possible sense is Russia our "geopolitical adversary"? Are we rivals in the supply of oil and gas? Does Russia wish to peddle an alien ideology? Do they want to take over our society and make our women have their babies?
    1
  9355. @ In what possible sense is Russia our "geopolitical adversary?" . What does that even mean? This fear of Russia is quite pathological and serves only to justify the West's arms industry, as far as I can see.
    1
  9356.  @stevieporteous  I know - but the brainwashed mugs only go on about it if its not left in.
    1
  9357.  @paddington1670  What are YOU talking about? NATO and NATO countries have been involved in numerous conflicts. It is not a defensive organisation. It is a front for American imperialism. Here is a list of some of the countries bombed, invaded or otherwise interfered with by NATO in the past thirty years or so: Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Phillipines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine
    1
  9358. The problem is that Lavrov has a different idea to where Ukraine and Georgia begin and end. In Russian eyes both these countries have had bits of Russia stuck on to them by mistake.
    1
  9359.  @Brian-om2hh  Do you think it all possible that it is not a good idea to advertise your true intentions to your enemies?
    1
  9360.  @blengi  What norms are they then?
    1
  9361. He didn't say it was justified, he said it was understandable. Which it is. (In my view it was also justified, but Farage clearly doesn't think so.)
    1
  9362. God, these working-class people are such utter dirt, aren't they Professor?
    1
  9363.  @anthonyclegg1511  He doesn't want Kiev at all. Never has. Never will.
    1
  9364.  @anthonyclegg1511  Why should he? It would mean endless civil war. All Russia wants are those areas of Eastern Ukraine where there are large Russian populations, and which are really Russian, despite what the maps say.
    1
  9365.  @anthonyclegg1511  He knows that is impossible. He only wants the Russian parts. Trying to run the rest would be too much of a headache. He has said this many times, and it makes complete sense.
    1
  9366.  @Swish-x7b  No vegetable inducements are required. And I don't troll propaganda, I attempt to contradict the propaganda that is infecting the minds of so many.
    1
  9367. What makes you believe that C02 emissions cause atmospheric warming? Ice core records show that warming PRECEDES C02 increases by 5-600 years. While it is certainly true that C02 interacts with other gases to contain the heat of the sun on the earth's surface for a period of time it has not been possible to reliably quantify to what degree. Equally well the ice-core records themselves are merely proxy estimates of previous levels of atmospheric C02 and cannot be totally relied upon. Tree ring and leaf stomata data indicate considerably higher levels of historic C02. Anecdotal evidence -Romans growing grapes on Hadrian's Wall, large rivers drying up in the 11th century etc etc indicate that it was warmer then than the present day. All in all it seems likely that the so-called Climate Crisis is a political weapon, designed to destabalise those industrial societies daft enough to fall for it.
    1
  9368. commuted There are many people all over the world already doing this. They don't have any money.
    1
  9369.  @peterdollins3610  The overall trend is always less deadly, however, at least according to Smith's law.
    1
  9370.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  What action? A pathetic and inconsequential bit of window-dressing is all we are going to get, believe me!
    1
  9371.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  What action? Bringing in a fraction of the recommendations of a report which looked at the question of child abuse in general, without particularly singling out the Moslem grooming gangs?
    1
  9372.  @weswheel4834  The report looked at the question of child sex abuse in general, not at the unique phenomenon of Pakistani Moslem grooming gangs. Belatedly bringing in a few of the recommendations of that report will do very little, if anything, to address this specific problem.
    1
  9373.  @weswheel4834  I meant bringing in the legislation is belated, as is quite clear from my posts. The rapes and child trafficking are still taking place, and these measures which are being introduced will, I suspect, do little or nothing to prevent this.
    1
  9374.  @oscarw7805  Before winter's over.
    1
  9375. Shouldn't she be in the outback somewhere, digging up weevils with a stick?
    1
  9376. Ukraine is going to be left in the lurch. Good.
    1
  9377. Where's the hypocrisy? There 's a difference between a gun kept for self- defence and one used to rob a grocery store, or kill members of a rival drug gang.
    1
  9378.  KamiEuKiTo Increasing living standards across the board is a lengthy procedure. It has been going on a while. In the meantime I'm not about to allow someone to increase his living standards by taking my stuff. That may not be that nuanced, but that's the way it is. The day criminals throw away their guns is the day I'll throw away mine.
    1
  9379. It is so wonderful watching this dreadful, dreadful woman commit political suicide.
    1
  9380. Support for Palestine is the gateway drug leading to the horrors of extreme Islamist fundamentalism. Beware. There are always more Palestinian flags at Labour Party conferences than Union Jacks. The way muddle-brained lefties have been conned into believing the myth of the poor, oppressed brown people victimised by Jews almost defies belief. But then again you have to be pretty credulous to be a Socialist in the first place.
    1
  9381.  @MikeJones-eh4zv  UKIP scarcely exists these days but it always had members of many races .So saying it's racist is pretty stupid. Racism isn't quite dead in this country yet -mainly because it is being kept alive by Marxist organisations like BLM which need their idiot-fodder to have something to rail against.
    1
  9382.  @MikeJones-eh4zv  Neither. I'm just not brainwashed as you so obviously are. Racism in this country is being kept alive by organisations like BLM because they are Marxists and Marxism needs an oppressed group for identity politics to work. The working class has turned down the kind offer and so the people who are controlling your brain at the moment have invented "systemic racism." It is an intellectual construct and does not exist in the real world. Equally well Marxist globalism needs to flood western countries with third world immigrants in order to further this strategy. UKIP recognised this and many immigrant families, already established here, recognised it too. Have you read the BLM manifesto.?You will find that rectifying systemic racism is just one objective. It is far from an end in itself, it is a route to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Communist bureaucratic dictatorship.
    1
  9383.  @sabi2557  It's called "thinking". You might want to try it sometime.
    1
  9384.  @danieldrew2356  BLM is Marxist by its own admission. Read the manifestos.
    1
  9385.  @MikeJones-eh4zv  What facts? Initially I queried the existence of examples of systemic white on black racism in this country. I'm still waiting. You got a few facts on those lines you'd like to share?
    1
  9386.  @MikeJones-eh4zv  I don't agree with you at all! I've had about six goes and trying to explain this but the silly YouTube algorithm won't let me! Big tech is on your side my friend!
    1
  9387.  @MikeJones-eh4zv  I meant proportionately of course. The number of black people in custody is way above what it should be statistically, which of course means that more die in custody than would be the case if the number of prisoners was in proportion to the population. It isn't for obvious reasons. And it's not because they are being picked on.
    1
  9388. ​ @MikeJones-eh4zv  Police have to identify potential lawbreakers and sure mistakes are sometimes made ( I've given a fuller view but, once again, that pesky Youtube algorithm has decided it was racist or in some way improper. Which it wasn't. Honestly, I feel as though I'm being stopped and searched!)
    1
  9389. Why this constant obsession with infections when it is the rate of infections to death and serious outcomes which is important?
    1
  9390. @Yevi N. You're no fun, are you? Covid is an airborne respiratory pathogen and has much in common with influenzas and colds. It is indeed probable that the components of the common cold were as severe as SARS-Cov 2 when they first arrived but then adapted and evolved into their present less virulent forms. With the help of vaccines Covid 19 is being kicked along the same route.
    1
  9391. @Yevi N. WE cannot comprehend it fully, but we can take an educated guess as to its place on the list of the horrors which afflict us. Pretty far down, really.
    1
  9392.  @briancarton1804  Armenians? Iraqis? Ukrainians? Libyans?Congolese? Moroccans? Even the Good Samaritan would have second thoughts if he thought the wounded traveller was faking it.
    1
  9393.  @briancarton1804  You merely mentioned Empire, so I have scarcely proved your point. Commonwealth citizens are entitled to British passports and such benefits as this entails. As to more recent meddling, we have done so as lackeys of America, and so it is difficult to judge what level of responsibility this involves. In my view what help we give should be given grudgingly and amid much protest. This won't make us feel quite so warm and fluffy inside - but that isn't what charity should be about, is it?
    1
  9394.  @AM-fs1je  Wot?
    1
  9395.  @PhilippaBeale  And once again the accomodation was purely temporary.
    1
  9396.  @PhilippaBeale  Merely that unlike present-day asylum seekers the Holy Family were not seeking to set up permanent residence in their places of exile. Comparing Iraqi chancers and Armenian drug dealers with Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus does seem a bit of insult, really.
    1
  9397.  @adz951  But I love listening to people I don't like.
    1
  9398. @Abdullah Irfan Joe Biden is a Frankenstein monster, stitched together from the body parts of earlier frauds. Donald Trump, for all his faults, is his own man - not a front man or a twitching puppet.
    1
  9399. He ain't so bad.
    1
  9400.  @2nostromo  It just seems a bit low-key and pointless. Plenty of civilians like flying drones around airfields and this just smacks of nerves on our part. Could be wrong though!
    1
  9401.  @robertscott961  I think it being illegal probably adds to the fun!
    1
  9402. It is Biden's incompetence and failure to stand up to Washington's warmongers and expansionists which has led to this. The more Putin is boxed into a corner, the more likely he is to exercise the nuclear option. And he will if necessary
    1
  9403. Ukraine is more Nazi than Russia. There were many Ukrainians who supported Hitler, and that spirit of extreme right-wing nationalism is still very strong there. Their persecution of Russian-heritage peoples in the Eastern provinces is one of the main causes of the present crisis.
    1
  9404. Neal McTaggart Pragmatic? A recipe for worldwide disaster more like. Klein is just a sad old-school Marxist beating an out-of-tune drum for personal profit.
    1
  9405. Not so. Their presentation may be influenced by them trying to please their "paymasters" - but that's the same in any job.
    1
  9406. This is simply untrue. Pre-adolescent children rarely get the disease in any severe form and rarely pass it on to adults. No-one quite knows why but there are a number of theories. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9407.  @JamieA93  It's not true, that's why. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9408.  @iamthesink  Children under 16 don't spread the disease to adults. No-one knows quite why, but they don't. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9409. @Victor Greenwood They don't. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9410.  @alexanderhamilton5237  Not before puberty. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9411.  @mlpsh6995  As well as rarely getting the illness, and when they get it only getting it mildly, children under the age of 16 very rarely spread the disease to adults and then only in its mildest forms. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9412.  @ManiacallyQuiet  At last! Someone who gets it!
    1
  9413.  @nirvanafan500  You're wrong. Studies show that children under 16 rarely spread the disease to adults. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
    1
  9414.  @ramondreddington3265  Matt Hancock is a liar and a buffoon. Not only do children not get the disease much nor pass it on much but the reasons why this so are going to be a great help in dealing with it.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03496-7
    1
  9415. Millions of dollars are pouring in to his campaign fund. Oppressed black and Hispanic people will recognise what is happening to him and finally and sensibly desert the Democrat charlatans who depend upon them for power.
    1
  9416.  @thomasrussell2812  We sure do.
    1
  9417.  @Midland_Wolf_71  That's OK. I'm not socialist.
    1
  9418.  @danmayberry1185  Which originated as reactions in the minds of ordinary, decent people.
    1
  9419. Cowards and pessimists are notoriously anal-retentive.
    1
  9420.  @zulubeatz1  Yes. The first phase was designed to reduce Ukraine's army on its own territory - which it did. The second phase is happening now as Russia pushes back the Ukrainian forces occupying the northern parts of Donbass. All Russia wants is Donbass and Crimea. It now seems certain he will get them.
    1
  9421. Then you would get only stupid politicians - or saints, of which there are but few in the world.
    1
  9422. Tommy Robinson has many black friends, and at least on black niece. Reform has a number of black and brown members.
    1
  9423. Tommy Robinson has many black friends and Reform has a number of black and brown members. Can't say how many since the question isn't asked, and nor should it be.
    1
  9424.  @guyincognito6430  Russia has three - in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. Ukraine has one, in Donbass against separatists assisted by Russian "advisors." Now what?
    1
  9425.  @zardosspinosa6944  Terrible things were done under Stalin. That was then and this is now. Ukraine has either got to allow Donbass its independence or suffer many years of civil war.
    1
  9426.  @guyincognito6430  Chechnya and Georgia were about protecting Russia's borders, same as Ukraine. Ukraine has been fighting a war in Donbass for eight years which has killed around 1,500 people, devastated the area, and caused around a million people to flee to Russia.
    1
  9427. What exactly is wrong with an alliance between Russia and America?
    1
  9428.  @samragsdale2301  Well he would say that, wouldn't he?
    1
  9429. @Paul Denison What's conceited about that?
    1
  9430.  @windyhillbomber  Maskirovska
    1
  9431. @Paul Denison I repeat, what's conceited about it? It might be thoroughly reprehensible behaviour in the eyes of many - but where's the conceit?
    1
  9432.  @samragsdale2301  Sure you do. He could have bombed Kiev to ashes if he wanted. Instead he threw out ground forces in an extended campaign designed to reduce Ukrainian resources - which it did. The cost was high but he has succeeded in his objective of taking Mariupol ,and much of Kherson and Donbass. I don't personally believe these stories about him wanting Ukraine, let alone wanting to recreate the Russian Empire. He wants control of the sea and access to the mineral resources of his new territory, plus I believe he has a genuine concern about the abominable way ethnic Russians have been treated by their new overlords.
    1
  9433.  @samragsdale2301  Of course we don't believe what Putin says. Mind you, he did actually say that he had no ambitions to control Ukraine, just to rid it of the Nazis who have been oppressing Russians ever since Ukraine was created 31 years ago. If he gets his hands on all the coal, steel and gas in Donbass then that's an added bonus though!
    1
  9434.  @samragsdale2301  No swimming is involved. Just look at the results. The Russians now just need to decide on the position of their front line. They will then become the defenders, not the attackers.
    1
  9435. Who he?
    1
  9436. Pimping a child to serve a corrupt political agenda! Disgraceful!
    1
  9437.  @superhumantrueman  That's because the treaty was fix, designed to advance US interests at the expense of the Russian Federation.
    1
  9438.  @rockbutcher  I care alright. I care for peace. Which means I don't care about cunning treaties invented by the US to advance its commercial interests.
    1
  9439. Are you slowly coming to realise that there restrictions are purely for show? No-one in their right mind believes they are of any use. If you are young and healthy and fully vaccinated you stand more chance of choking on a cocktail sausage than you do of dying from covid.
    1
  9440. The opportunity has been lost. There are a very large number of ordinary working people - potential Labour supporters - who bitterly resent the way lockdowns have impacted on their lives. There is also a considerable body of informed scientific opinion which says that lockdowns do very little good and may even be harmful. Instead of taking this view on board Labour has joined the Tories in an hysterical and ill-judged over-reaction to the pandemic. I find this incomprehensible.
    1
  9441.  @iamsorryforbeingrudebefore1626  And who by?
    1
  9442.  @iamsorryforbeingrudebefore1626  Exactly - invented by the Americans to justify their perpetual power grabs while they make the world safe for hypocrisy.
    1
  9443. America did it. Proven, signed, sealed delivered and effectively admitted. Just one more act of war by the world's leading warmonger nation.
    1
  9444.  @DarkRoomAmbience  One can only hope that those few Trumpists will be able to persuade others. This is turning into a bad investment.
    1
  9445.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  That might take some time.
    1
  9446.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  The first with the threat of nuclear annihilation . The second by forming powerful new alliances with the other BRICS countries and other emerging economies which are heartily sick of American bullying. America and most of these "powerful economies" are built on foundations of sand anyway.
    1
  9447.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  Your math is the math of a credulous child.
    1
  9448.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  GDP is not the be all and end all of economic strength. It is but a fragile flower.
    1
  9449.  @buschtaxi75driver55  Same to you! Keep up the good work!
    1
  9450.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  They all are in their separate ways. Overt support might not be advisable just now, but many countries are helping Russia evade sanctions and are just waiting for the right moment before declaring their true allegiance.
    1
  9451.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  So what? Much of that goes on nuclear armaments (not yet relevant , fortunately) and what is being spent on assisting Ukraine is already becoming to be resented.
    1
  9452.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  You have a touching faith in the power of algebra to resolve human issues.
    1
  9453.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  Russia is a far cry from Yugoslavia. (Keep your eye on Kosovo, by the way. Putin is twitching the reins.)
    1
  9454.  @gandalfstormcrow2486  You apparently haven't noticed the missiles currently raining down on Ukraine.
    1
  9455. These people aren't "far right". They've just had enough and they KNOW that under Labour things are going to get worse. Calling them "far right" is just journalistic laziness.
    1
  9456. He's saving the world.
    1
  9457. George Soros.
    1
  9458. Michael RCH The world's entire scientific establishment? Really? Even if the infamous 97%of scientists were true (which it isn't) then what about that 3%? And what about the scientists who are petitioning the IPCC in increasing numbers to halt the AGW hysteria? Everything coming out of NASA is now fake. The Urban Heat Island effect is NOT being taken into account while dozens of automatic stations are being set up in cities to further boost average temperatures. And that's just one of the frauds your "scientific establishment" is carrying out. I've just found a new game you might like to play. Google any country in the world and add "is warming faster than." You will find they are ALL warming faster than average -usually "more than twice as fast." How does that work, pray?
    1
  9459. A new resistant, less virulent strain is just what we need at the moment.
    1
  9460.  @0firelili0  So what?
    1
  9461.  @paulacoyle5685  A moral compass in US politics will lead you on to the rocks pretty quickly.
    1
  9462.  @leeg1069 It is you who is blinded. People ten times more evil than Donald Trump are selling you a line, just so they can stay in power.
    1
  9463.  @spiceyhotpot  No he didn't. It's all a con trick. And you've fallen for it.
    1
  9464.  @s4ss1n  You do release you are doing nothing more than repeating your conditioning, don't you?
    1
  9465.  @s4ss1n  Guess what. I'm English and living in England and there are plenty of people here - like you - who have caught TDS quite badly. I had it myself, but fortunately only relatively briefly. It went away when I realised that it was a germ spread by criminals fearful that this odd person, Trump, was going to deprive them of their livelihoods. PS. It's actually" realise" if you are English. Whether it was my aged brain or or some computer glitch which provided "release" I cannot say!
    1
  9466.  @s4ss1n  Political blindness is just one symptom of TDS, which very much exists and ought really be a notifiable disease.
    1
  9467. RuleofFive No. She's Swedish.
    1
  9468.  @notaspy1227  Not every time. But I agree that Russia is no stranger to duplicity. All the same it wouldn't surprise me if Ukrainian intelligence hadn't helped move things along. There are supposed to be a number of disaffected Muslims from Russian-dominated countries who have joined up with the Ukrainians.
    1
  9469.  @Neutralino  This is on a rather different scale. That accusation is still somewhat in doubt , but even if true it was only to justify the campaign against the Chechen rebels. The war against Ukraine does not need any more justification than it has already - certainly in the eyes of the majority of Russians.
    1
  9470.  @jim2376  True enough. But I'm not Russian and I can easily visualise a scenario in which Ukrainian intelligence helped organise this somewhat obscure ISIS spin-off group into a weapon of mass destruction.
    1
  9471.  @jim2376  True enough. But I'm not Russian and it's quite easy to visualise a scenario in which Ukrainian intelligence helped organise this somewhat obscure ISIS spin-off group and use it to such devastating effect.
    1
  9472.  @TheParadoxDestroyer  All US elections are fixed. Democracy is a sham.
    1
  9473.  @gavindoyle692  Don't forget to tour round black neighbourhoods with your pocketbook.
    1
  9474.  @TheParadoxDestroyer  Multiple ways. There are literally millions of names on electoral registers of people who don't exist. Votes are forged, bought and paid for and voting machines are very easy to re-program.
    1
  9475.  @TheParadoxDestroyer  Try United Sovereign Americans
    1
  9476.  @TheParadoxDestroyer  We need to know what it is first.
    1
  9477.  @nicindiff  How would you like Moscow to be spelled?
    1
  9478. It was a demo, not a coup d'etat!
    1
  9479.  @zrob692  https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  9480.  @AK-us2di  These "knuckle-draggers" are the front-line troops in this, the first stage of a coming civil war.
    1
  9481.  @BJHolloway1  Just stop slavering at the mouth at the prospect.
    1
  9482.  @BJHolloway1  Just don't sound as though you're enjoying the prospect.
    1
  9483. One just has to consider the dreadful possibility that elements within the SS deliberately colluded in the assassination attempt.
    1
  9484. Get back to your comic books.
    1
  9485.  @jimtakahashi4638  Didn't you hear me the first time?
    1
  9486. America's insane foreign policy on Ukraine has already led to worldwide recession and astronomical energy prices. May as well star a nuclear war as well.
    1
  9487. Buy roubles.
    1
  9488.  @TouringTony  He threw out EDL members for being violent and whenever there is a demonstration in the offing he circulates messages on social media calling for restraint. Demonstrations he organises are staffed by stewards trained in ways of calming things down. The joke - and it is a sick one - is that there are so many people such as your good self who have fallen for the media and leftwing hype characterising this intelligent and courageous man as a violent thug. (Which is not to say, of course, that if you set yourself against him you won't be downed pretty quickly.)
    1
  9489.  @TouringTony  Click it then.
    1
  9490.  @FreshBinBag  He has never abused a woman. That's just another of the lies. His ex-wife has released a statement saying so only today and calling on Farage to apologise.
    1
  9491.  @FreshBinBag  When has he ever domestically abused a woman? That was just one of the lies told by Farage. Tommy's ex-wife has now issued a statement denying the accusation and asking Farage to apologise.
    1
  9492.  @gerryjamesedwards1227  There are many people of in the world with feelings of inadequacy of which they are ashamed. This gives them a deep inner psychological need for a hate figure on whom to transfer their mistrust of themselves. Politicians are often clever enough to be able to persuade such people to concentrate such attentions on an enemy or rival. In this way these inadequates derive relief from denigrating such individuals, often by the use of nicknames or references to physical characteristics. Actual facts go by the board, and panic often sets in when it is pointed out to them that their appraisals may, in fact, be incorrect.
    1
  9493.  @FreshBinBag  What domestic abuse? This is just another false accusation.
    1
  9494.  @FreshBinBag  He was having a drunken row with his girlfriend - who was giving as good as she got. The off-duty policeman tried to break it up and Tommy decked him. His partner, whom he later married and had children by, has now issued a statement denying he ever abused her . Why do you have this need for hate figures?
    1
  9495.  @FreshBinBag  He has never been charged with domestic abuse. They were having a row, that's all. The woman involved, who he later married, has now issued a statement calling for the allegations to stop for the sake of their children.
    1
  9496.  @FreshBinBag  Why do you need a hate figure? Why do you suppose bringing up and twisting out of context an incident which happened when the man was very drunk and very young has any bearing on his views?
    1
  9497.  @FreshBinBag  She divorced him, many years later, mainly because of the pressures on their marriage caused by his activism. You are being absurdly ingenuous in trying to link this one-off incident when they were both very young and drunk to their divorce. Of course I would not like my daughter to be screamed at in the street. But I would not for a moment think it at all reasonable of me to discount the political views of the bloke screaming at her on account of it. Tommy Robinson is what he is. He is far from perfect. But he is a courageous and intelligent man whose views match mine to a very considerable extent.
    1
  9498.  @FreshBinBag  It's about the best excuse there is -but I'm not making excuses. Tommy has a temper on him and, like many of us, has done things in life which he very much regrets. Haven't you?
    1
  9499.  @Shaboinki  Minor details. His campaign has suffered no court losses. The cases you refer to were brought by individuals or small groups, not the Trump campaign itself. The Michigan suit was withdrawn because of the egregious tampering with witnesses carried out by Democratic thugs and will be replaced with a new one in all probability. The Georgia recount was meaningless since there was no check on the legality of the votes that were recounted.
    1
  9500.  Christie Malry  He might well have to go - but the Biden administration will be forever tainted and no American will be morally obliged to respect or follow its instructions. Funny won't come into it.
    1
  9501. @Arfur Fuxxakes Hi Arfur! What hate? What lies? He's breaking the back of the corrupt US political system. He's draining the swamp, which is why the political establishment hate and fear him. He doesn't need their gravy train, he's got one of his own. Considering the kind if things Governments spend our money on, tax evasion is a national duty. Of course now that Donald is on the other side of the equation he may have to review his approach somewhat. Although no intellectual giant and somewhat inarticulate, Trump is blessed with a natural cunning and quite exceptional tactical instincts. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he spins out the tax evasion hoax in the same way he span out the Russiagate hoax while he sits back chuckling quietly as the Democrats tangle themselves in yet another mess of their own making.
    1
  9502. @Arfur Fuxxakes I had to ask because I don't know. And you haven't told me. All you can do is come out with meaningless insults and cliches. You are an empty shell. A nothing. Truly
    1
  9503. So nice to see an end to this nastiness. Such a low trick by the Democrats. It certainly helped them lose the election though!
    1
  9504.  @jetli740  Fake studies, now overturned. Keep up.
    1
  9505. What a waste of space the ICC is It just provided highly-paid jobs for lawyers, and has increasingly less relevance to the world of reality.
    1
  9506. Globalist strategy. Britain is no longer to be a food producing unit in the New World Order. It is to be covered with cheap housing used as a dormitory for low-caste consumers.
    1
  9507. He was not shot for a traffic violation. He was shot after going for his gun. Good clickbait headline though, ES scumbags
    1
  9508. The contrast is quite effective. It must be Feng Shui or something. I think Richard really ought to grow a moustache though; one much like Einstein's or possibly something more military and bristly, like Stalin's.
    1
  9509. They will. The offer is always on the table. Zelensky won't come to the table though.
    1
  9510. They have all been passed by the IRS. The Democrats are just looking for something they can twist out of shape to continue conning poor mugs like you.
    1
  9511.  @davew9652  Bloody hopeless.
    1
  9512.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  No. And they won't achieve it anyway.
    1
  9513.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  No.
    1
  9514.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  Money down the drain.
    1
  9515.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  No.
    1
  9516.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  No.
    1
  9517.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  I disagree with most of these, but this government is so bad that whatever they do will be done badly and will costs several times more than they claim.
    1
  9518.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  I actually meant money for the NHS. It certainly could do with a cash injection - but that isn't its main problem. It is badly organised and having to deal with the consequences of an unplanned-for overpopulation. Whatever money this inept government allocates, a very high percentage of it will go down the drain.
    1
  9519. The truth is seldom black and white. Great video by the way.
    1
  9520. So two wrongs make a right then?
    1
  9521. No. America. For money.
    1
  9522.  @emm_arr  How's you brain cell today, made any friends yet?
    1
  9523.  @TheGeosto  Why is Russia an adversary? And why in God's name do you think it right to subsidise American workers by killing tens of thousands of people in a foreign country?
    1
  9524.  @Mrwednesday79  I fully understand the ramifications of this war and they are NOT the fairy tale you have been brainwashed into believing.
    1
  9525.  @TheGeosto  How is Russia an adversary? And why is it right to subsidise American workers by killing tens of thousands of foreigners in a far-off land?
    1
  9526.  @giantpurplebrain  The Ukrainians are not fighting on behalf of the free world (whatever that is). They are fighting on behalf of one gang of oligarchs against another gang of oligarchs over the possession of around $14trillion of gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals lying beneath the soil of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. It just so happens that America is backing one set of oligarchs because they have been promised that they can get their hands on the goodies instead of Russia - which spent decades and billions of roubles on exploiting these resources and is reluctant to give them up.
    1
  9527.  @WabiSabiLady  Ukraine is not an ally of America and I am not an American.
    1
  9528.  @TheGeosto  How is Russia an adversary? And how is is justifiable to subsidise American workers by supplying armaments to kill tens of thousands of foreigners in a far-off land?
    1
  9529.  @rensinclair4218  I am British and therefore - regretfully and hopefully not for much longer - my fate is entwined with that of your great nation.
    1
  9530.  @Maelstromme  How well are you doing over there, come to that?
    1
  9531.  @tesos2866  Putin and Hitler have practically nothing in common. Trying to pretend they have is just one of the tricks being played on you to make you support this needless war.
    1
  9532.  @tesos2866  Hitler and Putin have very little in common. You're just supposed to think they are the same so you support this needless war.
    1
  9533.  @bonnie7898  Ah. The Cancel Culture arrives! My country is sadly (and hopefully not for too much longer) tied to America's coat-tails. We too have been propping up Ukraine for far too long.
    1
  9534.  @bonnie7898  You've cancelled (or tried to cancel) my right to speak about anything I like - including America. The only authority I need is the authority of my wish to do so. (I wish to do so because, very unfortunately, America leads the Western world and right now it is leading all of us to our doom.)
    1
  9535.  @bonnie7898  By authority of my wish to do so. I need no other. Having said that, America is ,perhaps unfortunately, the leader of the so-called Western world and is , in my view, currently leading us down the road to perdition.
    1
  9536. ​ @davidchang5265  Perhaps they wouldn't MIND that much, but because of its relatively low existing Russian population it would be troublesome to administer- unlike Donbass No, I think probably Kherson's biggest value for the Russians is amount of losses Ukraine will suffer trying to retake it.
    1
  9537.  @musiconabudget3712  Could be right. The Dnieper is a natural division.
    1
  9538. @evren That's not likely! They want Crimea and they want Donbass. Everywhere else is just a killing field.
    1
  9539.  @user58553  Perhaps they wouldn't MIND that much, but because of its relatively low existing Russian population it would be troublesome to administer- unlike Donbass No, I think probably Kherson's biggest value for the Russians is amount of losses Ukraine will suffer trying to retake it.
    1
  9540.  @Omega0850  I don't see what's immature about it. If anything, it's all this gung-ho support for poor little Ukraine which is adolescent. I'm 74 by the way.
    1
  9541. Any hysteria will do. Climate hysteria, racist hysteria,sexist hysteria: all are grist to the mill of the true fascist - not someone who seeks to reinforce capitalism, but anyone who seeks to obtain power through coercion and lies. The capitalist refrigerator may break down from time to time but the socialist model doesn't work at all. Greed beats envy as a source of power, that's why.
    1
  9542.  @markwelch3564  It didn't America did with a long-term strategy of weaning Ukraine away from Russia, culminating in equipping and training a large Ukrainian army with the objective of stepping up the civil war in Donbass and attempting to invade Crimea - both of which are predominantly Russian, not Ukrainian.
    1
  9543.  @shiroamakusa8075  Russia is merely trying to recapture territory lost following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The annexations are simply technicalities, like the absurdity of calling the invasion a "special military operation". They lend a spurious legality to Russia's actions.
    1
  9544.  @fishyfish3090  Why do wankers like you always think that someone who disagrees with you is a "bot" - whatever that is?
    1
  9545.  @freshwaterspaceman7194  The route to peace is not gung-ho support for one side or the other, but to realise that while there may be no excuse for Russia's behaviour there are plenty of reasons for it - American provocation being high on the list.
    1
  9546.  @octavianpopescu4776  You may well be correct, and I'm sure that Russia would not stand in the way as long as it is recognised that it needs to protect its own territorial integrity and the wishes of the people of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  9547.  @MorningtonCrescent  If Ukraine and the West had recognised the provisions of Minsk and allowed the Donbass to become an independent buffer state, and to recognise the fact that Crimea is historically and ethnically Russian, then Putin would not have been provoked. What is a "sovereign territory" anyway?
    1
  9548.  @bentels5340  And who decides the limits and boundaries of such a territory? Are they forever engraved in stone? Modern Ukraine is the creation of Imperialist Russia and the Soviet Union. NATO expansion is seen, justifiably, as a threat to Russia which has shown no desire to expand since the collapse of the SU, but only to protect its borders, largely by the creation of small buffer states. Putin's invasion was not an act of either madness or a desire for conquest. It was a pre-emptive act designed primarily to decimate Ukraine's armed forces and thus to safeguard the Donbass republics and Crimea.
    1
  9549.  @bentels5340  Indeed not. It got in first. Whether this was the right decision remains to be seen.
    1
  9550.  @MorningtonCrescent  I don't doubt that the referendums were cosmetic - as are most "democratic" procedures these days. The "will of the people" is just another toy to play with. The fact is that Russia feels threatened by NATO expansionism and insulted that Ukraine -with which it has a unique relationship - is being colonised by America and the EU. Undoubtedly, however, there is a strong pro-Moscow party in Donbass, which has seen considerable economic decline since being taken over by Kiev. And of course it is an area rich in mineral resources - all of which have largely been developed and exploited by Russia and Russians, incidentally.
    1
  9551.  @MorningtonCrescent  The American hegemony is not real then? Do not NATO, the Anglosphere and many vassal states simply dance to America's tune? Would this war have happened were it not for sordid relationships between certain American politicians and certain Ukrainian oligarchs, fostered of course by the CIA?
    1
  9552.  @shiroamakusa8075  The Ukrainian army is just as much on course to being obliterated as Russia's. Which was rather the whole idea.
    1
  9553.  @countofmontechristo6507  Weasel words.
    1
  9554.  @markwelch3564  It was perhaps a surprising move, but we have yet to know if it was worth it in the end. I cannot believe it was simply a grandiose act or that the Kremlin has was so misinformed of the situation that it did not realise that a ground attack without prior extensive aerial bombardment would not result in heavy casualties. I can only conclude that its objective is to destroy as much of the Ukrainian army as possible in order that Donbass and Crimea are retained without being under constant threat of Ukrainian attempts to retake them. The campaigns this winter ought to decide that, I suppose, though as long as the West goes on supply weaponry the longer the war is likely to continue.
    1
  9555.  @shiroamakusa8075  I think you could be confusing victories with military actions designed to deplete enemy forces.
    1
  9556.  @octavianpopescu4776  As I said, the referendums were certainly cosmetic. The real point is that relatively small concessions to Russia at this point would have prevented this dreadful war. Putin has pumped billions into Crimea since 2014 and there is no doubt that it was, and is, predominantly Russian. As for the Donbass - well, being a vassal republic might be better than being a permanent warzone.
    1
  9557.  @MorningtonCrescent  I only align with the quickest route to peace which is to recognise that American ambition and greed has provoked Russia into taking such extreme measures.
    1
  9558.  @octavianpopescu4776  I don't think you're right. Georgia is surely more Russian than Ukrainian, certainly in terms of ethnicity and historical precedent. I imagine the people are divided on which set of gangsters treats them best, but the annexation went off with hardly a shot being fired and whatever the area's present condition I would imagine it is preferable to playing host to a violent and bloody invasion. Putin is getting old and his regime cannot last forever. Ten years in limbo is better than ten years in a state of constant warfare. He has been content with the compromises reached in Georgia and Chechnya where, curiously enough, the death and bloodshed involved did not excite the passions in the West as much as the present conflict has. I wonder why?
    1
  9559.  @countofmontechristo6507  War trumps weasel words - or fine legal phrases for that matter.
    1
  9560.  @markwelch3564  Yet both Putin and Lavrov seem highly intelligent and practical men. Their generals may be a bit loopy, but then most generals are. I would certainly imagine that Putin has overestimated the effectiveness of his army and underestimated the support given to Ukraine, but Russia is notoriously extravagant with men and materiel in warfare and it remains to be seen whether or not any such miscalculations will result in defeat. I tend to think not.
    1
  9561.  @countofmontechristo6507  Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not saying might makes right, merely that the exercise of military power puts treaties on the back burner. If treaties work, then they are abided by. If they don't work they are disputed and if their inadequacies cannot be overcome by negotiation then violent interaction is the frequent outcome. The Russia which entered into these agreements is not the Russia of today. The country of Ukraine was never a country before it became a Soviet Socialist republic. The UN is not God. Opportunities for peaceful resolution were twice agreed at Minsk but were ignored. These facts are far more important than quoting documents which have clearly failed in their purpose.
    1
  9562.  @octavianpopescu4776  I rather thought it might have been because America did not have the financial interests in Georgia and Chechnya that it has in Ukraine, to say nothing of the fact that the wars there coincide with a rather distracting financial crisis in the West.
    1
  9563.  @octavianpopescu4776  I still think we're looking and two old dogs fighting over a bone. One was growling and the other took a bite. You're entirely right of course, guns will have to settle it now but I very much fear that the West will think it worthwhile to continue arming Ukraine in order to capture Crimea and Donbass. This would be a disaster. I really believe Russia will start making peaceful overtures soon, and they should not be ignored.
    1
  9564.  @countofmontechristo6507  If a treaty is designed to avoid war then the UN Charter isn't exactly working, is it? History is littered with failed and broken treaties. Russia may be acting foolishly but on the other hand it may well be acting in the interests of self-preservation and have a somewhat different view of the future shape of the world than one which involves the continued supremacy of America.
    1
  9565.  @octavianpopescu4776  Oh dear, these analogies always get out of hand. I'm sure though that the Russian dog would be content with just a couple of bits of the bone. He is old and his teeth are worn. Crimea and Donbass would appease Russia's injured ego and prevent further bloodshed without, surely, a great deal of suffering for the respective populations?
    1
  9566.  @countofmontechristo6507  While tens of thousands die in the process. Clever that.
    1
  9567.  @countofmontechristo6507  This is an utterly false analogy. Hitler was a relatively young man, democratically elected to power on the understanding that he would take steps to overcome the humiliation of Germany's defeat in the Great War, which he immediately proceeded to do as soon as he had created one of the strongest war machines the world has ever seen. Putin is 70 and has ruled for two decades without showing the slightest signs of any territorial ambitions other than preventing neighbouring territories becoming outposts of his enemies. Crimea is Russian historically and ethnically. Donbass has a majority Russian population, and all Putin ever wanted was that it should be recognised as two independent republics which would trade with Russia and act as a buffer against an increasingly westernised Ukraine. If these relatively modest requirement had been met we wouldn't be in this mess. Russia is in no position to conquer the world and Putin knows it.
    1
  9568.  @octavianpopescu4776  Resentment of the undoubted horrors inflicted by Communist Russia both in war and in peace is understandable. Surely though the Russian Federation is an entirely different animal? The people may be much the same and there are those among them who will behave vilely if given the chance. The trick is not to give them the chance and by provoking Russian into this war that is exactly what the West has done. In Donbass the Ukrainians committed many attested war crimes against separatists. The Ukrainian police force and prison service is no better than Russia's when it comes to torture and cruelty. In the present war those who have collaborated with the Russians are, I am sure, being punished very severely. What we owe it to ourselves to do is to prevent the circumstances which allow these horrors to occur. A reasoned peace is possible. Ukraine and Russia are near exhaustion. Why must we continue to stoke the fire?
    1
  9569.  @countofmontechristo6507  You still haven't explained why Putin has waited this long to launch his bid for world domination, nor why the Russian army isn't exactly eating up everything in its path. And Putin is on record as saying that while it would be a glorious thing if Russia could reclaim its dominance and prestige it is just not a practical proposition. Which clearly it is not. The only real similarity is that the Treaty of Versailles, like the various agreements by which the Soviet Union was dismantled, did not entirely and accurately reflect the true situation and was the indirect cause of a later conflict.
    1
  9570.  @countofmontechristo6507  It has already done so. Ukraine is in fact occupying parts of Russia - in Russia's eyes, at least.
    1
  9571.  @countofmontechristo6507  There is no rhyme. Apples are not oranges or tennis balls.
    1
  9572. ​ @V.E.R.O.  TDS is certainly a very serious condition.
    1
  9573. The Democrats lied about Joe being OK. Take comfort from the fact that they have lied about Trump too. He has his faults, but if he manages to evade the machinations of the FBI and get to the White House again there is every chance he will prove to be a very effective President.
    1
  9574.  @GaddaDasder  Funny sort of open prison. It was given to the so-called Palestinians in an effort to appease them. They responded by destroying its infrastructure and industry and setting up rocket launchers in its hospitals and schools.
    1
  9575.  @chasserpasser  Sorry. Don't understand you, Must be a lack of intellect.
    1
  9576. He is defending his people from NATO aggression. And it is his people in the Eastern provinces who are being bullied.
    1
  9577.  @bilgyno1  When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, the former Soviet Republics did not force Russia to leave. Russia could have crushed any one of them with ease. Instead Russia effectively gave them their independence. The agreement with NATO was that NATO would not seek territory "one inch further". Here is a list of former Soviet Bloc countries that have been allowed to join NATO. Albania Bulgaria Czech Republic Slovak Republic Slovenia Croatia Estonia Latvia Lithuania Hungary Poland Romania and now proposed Ukraine. And remember, this is all within just 30 years. NATO has "militarised" every single one of those countries. What is Russia to make of this? In their eyes Ukraine is "Little Russia." Around one in six of Ukrainians are Russian. Most are concentrated in the Eastern provinces where promises of regional autonomy have been broken, resulting in a civil war which has claimed many lives and made the area virtually bankrupt. If you want to find out about Nazis - real, live unashamed Nazis - I suggest you look up the Azov Battalion which has been operating with the Ukraine army in these disputed regions.
    1
  9578. The only reason for US concern is the Biden family and their associates' extensive financial links with the corrupt Ukraine government.
    1
  9579. Why not? All he wants is Crimea and Donbass and the chances are is that what he'll get - having destroyed nine-tenths of the Ukrainian military in the process.
    1
  9580. Ukrainians lie better, that's all.
    1
  9581. This experiment has failed. Time to stop throwing money at it.
    1
  9582. Are you sure?
    1
  9583. If it wasn't this it would have been something else These Democrat scum have no shame.
    1
  9584. It works but at a heavy cost, Vaccination should mitigate that cost.
    1
  9585. To make money on the cheap?
    1
  9586. Russia doesn't want Ukraine. It just wants Donbass and Crimea - which it largely has.
    1
  9587. Assuming Putin stays alive for a few more years the situation will arrive where Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine will become parts of Russia in the eyes of much of the world - and that will be that.
    1
  9588. Why am I banned?
    1
  9589.  @thomasmartin8202  Because I think?
    1
  9590.  @HumansAreShitFactories  Hmmm. Since existence consists only of myself and everything else, the two might well be synonymous.
    1
  9591.  @HumansAreShitFactories  I'm actually quite proud of my understanding. How could I possibly be proud of my misunderstanding?
    1
  9592.  @des_smith7658  I wish I'd said that.
    1
  9593.  @HumansAreShitFactories  Compared with?
    1
  9594. The trouble with oppressing Chinese people is that a couple of hours later you want to do it again.
    1
  9595. An unlikely revolution with an unlikely leader - but many Americans have now tumbled to the fact that they have been stitched up for decades by politicians of both parties. Now it's MAGA v The Rest - and MAGA needs to win if America is to survive, let along prosper.
    1
  9596. And if you're fully vaccinated and get infected you will achieve practically total immunity at the cost of a runny nose.
    1
  9597.  @tomd5678  I'm afraid that around half of people who are hospitalised or die are double-vaccinated, and of course the ratio is increasing as more people get jabbed. This is because hospitalisations and deaths do not follow directly or proportionately upon the number of people who become infected. The number depends upon the number of people whose immune systems are sufficiently compromised to prevent them resisting the infection - and this number is constant. So there is a sense in which viral load is only a small component in the equation. It's not how many you infect, or even how badly you infect them, what is important is WHO gets infected along the chain.
    1
  9598.  @tomd5678  I've tried to send a couple of direct links but they aren't getting through. Below is the intro of a story published by The Conversation and in various other outlets on or around July 14 based on a then recent Public Health England Survey. As the article says, these figures are in no way surprising. Deaths continue to be mainly among the very elderly and frail and, sad to say, they are unlikely to survive even the slightest extra pressure on their immune systems, vaccinated or not. This adheres to one of my previous points in that the prevalence of deaths is a consequence not of efforts to reduce infections, but of the continued exposure of those so frail that they will inevitably die if so exposed. "More vaccinated people are dying of COVID than unvaccinated people, according to a recent report from Public Health England (PHE). The report shows that 163 of the 257 people (63.4%) who died of the delta variant within 28 days of a positive COVID test between February 1 and June 21, had received at least one dose of the vaccine. At first glance, this may seem alarming, but it is exactly as would be expected."
    1
  9599.  @tomd5678  Just an extra. Factcheckers are useful. From FullFact in attempting to disparage the story: "These figures are roughly right. Of the 117 deaths, 3 involved people whose vaccine status was unknown, 70 were people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine (61% of the 114 known cases), and 44 were people who had not been vaccinated (39%). Fifty of the deaths (44%) were people who had received both doses." This is just England of course, but there is no reason to suppose the other nations are much different. And the percentage will have gone up since then.
    1
  9600.  @tomd5678  But the facts are the facts. Even the factcheckers say what the facts are. The source is impeccable. But you are right about people being killed by false information. The information that masks of a standard lower than an N95 fitted respirator mask are effective protection against the spread of covid is a good example of this, as is the idea that if you shut down society for months on end people won't kill themselves or go mad, or be unable to get treatment for chronic conditions which will eventually kill them before their time.
    1
  9601.  @tomd5678  The context is of course important and the "ordinary person" (whoever he is) has to grasp the idea that although this might appear that vaccines are ineffective, this is not the case. I have not posted medical misinformation. The figures for that period clearly show that in England 44% of those who died of covid were double vaccinated. The authorities are being understandably shy about giving out more recent data, but since the age demographic for deaths continues to be predominantly the very elderly, and since the very elderly are the most vaccinated, in stands to reason that this proportion must continue, and is in fact probably well exceeded by now.
    1
  9602.  @tomd5678  The last sentence in the Conversation intro offers immediate re-assurance. This is one instance when a certain amount of censorship might be permissible, but don't lets push it, eh?
    1
  9603.  @tomd5678  It has now been discovered of course that the virus is predominantly spread by aerosols against which only high standard masks offer any degree of protection. The objections to the public wearing facemasks during epidemics were (and are) several and at the beginning of the pandemic every medical authority advised against their use. The sudden turn around was politically motivated, and not based on science. It still is. (I'm still scratching my one head over your one testicle and one breast.)
    1
  9604.  @bekeneel  I asked first.
    1
  9605.  @boink800  Simple solutions are often the best.
    1
  9606.  @boink800  Next: a big boost for the Russian concrete industry. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
    1
  9607. Biden pardons potential criminals before they are even tried. Trump pardons innocent people caught up in a stage-managed farce.
    1
  9608.  @anglonorse2943  I think a close examination of the facts will show that my assessment is a perfectly rational and probably accurate one.
    1
  9609. Still no pile of bodies though.
    1
  9610.  @vice.nor.virtue  These are all perfectly normal variations in climatic conditions. And there have been far bigger fires in both California and Australia in the past. And the icecaps aren't melting. It's all a con to manipulate energy prices. It plays on fear, pessimism and neurosis.
    1
  9611.  @JeffreyGoddin  History is littered with conspiracies. AGW is a real doozie though!
    1
  9612.  @JeffreyGoddin  And obviously you're easily fooled.
    1
  9613.  @JeffreyGoddin  You do seem to like jumping to conclusions though. Hardly scientific objectivity is it? What rigorous foundation of evidence have you employed to come to such firm conclusions about my character? Or that increased atmospheric carbon is going to fry us all, come to that.
    1
  9614.  @JeffreyGoddin  Because there's nothing ahistorical about them and the devastation, so-called, has many historical precedents, as far as can be judged. We are emerging from a period of relatively cold into a period of relative warmth, as has happened thousands of times before. We are being conditioned to panic because the spectre of AGW is a vast money-spinner. We need to be made afraid so that carbon emissions can be regulated for profit.
    1
  9615.  @JeffreyGoddin  Of course it has- insofar as can be judged anyway. The past is buried and all we are left with is arguments over proxy data. Far more people died in natural disasters in earlier centuries, we can be reasonably sure of that. We can be reasonably sure of the existence of the Medieval and Roman warm periods from anecdotal evidence, and we can be reasonably sure of immense data manipulation by those agencies with vested interests in keeping the fear alive. Homogenisation I believe it's called. You are accusing me of exactly that which you are guilty of. Perhaps there's a word for that too.
    1
  9616.  @JeffreyGoddin  Well forgive me, but I just don't like the idea of a massive fraud being committed on the human race.
    1
  9617.  @JeffreyGoddin  But how can you possibly KNOW that? All temperature records from the late19th century up until the 1970's have been altered or expunged. They showed rapid periods of extended heat occurring with great suddenness. But they can't be right. The thermometers were faulty. So we adjust the data to fit the theory. And before that all is lost in darkness. The mighty rivers of Europe dried up in 16th century and barelegged Romans grew grapevines against Hadrian's Wall but it cannot POSSIBLY have been warmer then, huh? Why not? I am not in denial. You are. You can check old newspapers for stories about heatwaves in the 1890's and the 1930's. The original records have been removed and replaced with up-to-date computer graphs. But these are lies. The climate crisis is a racket. Vast fortunes can be made on the carbon futures markets as permissions to exceed emission limitations are traded, and that is just one scam. A whole financial industry relies on the fear being kept stoked - not the GOP, much less Alex Jones.
    1
  9618. He's not dictating though. He's just asking nicely.
    1
  9619.  @elliottpenlington4993  Covid is only more deadly because it is new. It has taken our immune systems by surprise. The classic Gompertz curve, with rapid peaking and slower decline, is a sure indication that this new virus has sought out most of its vulnerable targets. Its death rate was always minute - something less that one percent - and now it is even less. It is no more to be feared than influenza. Less so, in fact, since it does not kill our children.
    1
  9620.  @adventurecalling3193  Absolutely.
    1
  9621. Does anyone still really believe that Russia wants Kiev? I'm astounded. The object of the SMO was purely to grind down Ukrainian forces in order to prevent them retaking Crimea and Donbass. The US military seems to be fighting a war in their heads which has nothing to do with the war on the ground. No wonder the US is in trouble.
    1
  9622.  @bannedit999  A bit longer than that but not much. Nature is remarkably resilient.
    1
  9623. The more the Ukrainians milk this the more it looks as though it was them what dun it. They have at least as much to gain from this as the Russians. Probably more.
    1
  9624. It doesn't seem to have sunk in yet that the drones/missiles shot down are generally decoys, designed to expose a missile and radar locations for future attacks.
    1
  9625.  @tomsociete9253  Why though?
    1
  9626. Many from dead people or created by a computer algorithm.
    1
  9627.  Dimwits Vote Tory  You haven't been keeping up, have you? Seventy hours on the Internet, some dozen of which I have already graciously presented to you. Sad, very sad.
    1
  9628.  @erikaverink8418  Biden will be President - but not for very long. I can't really see Trump being convicted of anything. Like many Americans I'm not sad as much as angry. If Trump had unequivocally lost in a fair fight that would be one thing, but the evidence of fraud is very much there. It certainly exists in sufficient quantity to demand some answers and unless those answers are forthcoming, the unrest will continue. The Democrats and their allies in the media are very good at pulling the wool over your eyes but the MAGA people aren't fooled The media has paid little attention to the state senate hearings in recent weeks where over 70 hours of evidence and allegation was presented . You may not even have heard about them. Here are a couple of examples of the sort of stuff which makes us think Joe Biden is a crook who has killed democracy stone dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  9629.  @erikaverink8418  The states concerned have admitted malpractice and have agreed to clean up their act in many respects. Some officials have been dismissed. The main point though is that the very serious allegations indicating fraud have not been answered. It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what I think, but in the eyes of millions of Americans this evidence is enough to convince them that the election was stolen. And they're just not going to take that lying down. Unless a full enquiry is launched, similar to that brought against Trump on the Russian interference issue, those millions of Americans will continue to believe that Biden is not their President. Depending very much upon the administration's response and general behaviour there could well be a full-scale armed rebellion before very long.
    1
  9630. Our attitude to this war is based on a number of false assumptions - assumptions deliberately inculcated into our minds by US warmongers seeking to lay a smokescreen around their real motives. This is a simple border dispute over resources. Donbass contains at least $13trillion in coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals. These resources have been developed by and paid for by Russia, using Russian labour. Even following Ukrainian independence these resources continued to be in Russian ownership for the most part. Western companies, predominately US owned, have set their sights on obtaining these resources and have persuaded ( guess how) the Zelensky government to arrange for them to be transferred in their ownership. Russia obviously wishes to prevent this, and peaceful means having failed, has been forced into the grim necessity of war. Trying to pretend that Putin is Hitler and, at the age of 70+, has decided to recreate the Soviet empire is such bollocks that it defeats me how so many people can think this. Equally, the idea that this is fight to bring "freedom and democracy" to brave little Ukraine is so naive as to defy comprehension. You have been sold a pup. The answer is to give Russia what it wants - and which it is entitled to - and call a halt to all this needless killing. Hopefully, Donald Trump can see this and will set about achieving it without too much hysteria from the ignorant masses.
    1
  9631. Chuck Kistler Go for the prize then since you're so sure! Hint: Evolution is real Atmospheric CO2 is not a major driver of surface warming, Greta Thunberg is employed by a firm of hedge fund managers to destabalize the cap and trade carbon futures market. The article you quote is a pack of lies concocted with much the same purpose in mind.
    1
  9632. Ukraine was once all Russian anyway.
    1
  9633.  @RoxyRebel  Can you give me an example from all this material of an incitement to violence?
    1
  9634.  @DavidMoxham957  You aren't exactly making yourself clear. How about a specific example?
    1
  9635.  @RoxyRebel  Do you have an example of actual incitement to violence though?
    1
  9636.  @SydneySortsItOut  Getting his own way. It seems to have worked pretty quickly with Columbia, Mexico and Panama.
    1
  9637.  @SydneySortsItOut  As the elected President his will IS the will of the people. And so far his strategies seem to be producing immediate benefits.
    1
  9638.  @Cygnus888  But they serve the same functions. In urban warfare an artillery attack followed by infantry incursion is clearly the best way to take territory and destroy the enemy. Many modern armies are trained to employ tactics which reduce their own casualties. Russia doesn't much bother.
    1
  9639.  @ginmar8134  My old auntie, who is a bit of a psychic.
    1
  9640.  @Registered_Simp  NATO 's resources are not infinite. The present US government is run by fools who are no match for Putin's pragmatism. In war, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain, but instinct tells me that Russia is going to come out on top in the end.
    1
  9641. Keep working on it. They had a damned good try in Soviet Russia.
    1
  9642.  @timsharp8233  No need to bother. It's much easier to send people who disagree with you off to labour camps, or shoot them.
    1
  9643. I do hope people are beginning to realise that the whole "insurrection" narrative is a contrived myth. Wake up slaves!
    1
  9644. And the death-to-infection ratio is dropping too. How dreadful!
    1
  9645. So you can't raise you arm above shoulder level without being a Nazi? Is that it?
    1
  9646. @ Yup. Nazis saluted with both arms, but only after dancing like monkeys and practically turning somersaults.
    1
  9647.  @mootedtols4865  I thought I was thinking for myself instead of falling into the trap of following the sheepies down the nonsense line that his gesture was a Nazi salute.
    1
  9648.  @davidd6130  I agree. But what evidence do you have that anyone wants this?
    1
  9649. Is less than one per cent "hefty" ? In the US just over 400 children under 17 have died. In the UK the figure is around 60.
    1
  9650.  @2006glg  It's scarcely splitting hairs. And the deaths are NOT avoidable. The way things are going, practically everyone who can get covid will get it unless a sufficiently wide cordon of immunity is created. Those who die -including children - will do so because they have a pre-existing condition which weakens their immune response. In the US morbid obesity adds greatly to the death toll.
    1
  9651. Yes! It will make women infertile and solve the overpopulation problem, as well as altering brain cells to make us all happy, happy, happy!
    1
  9652. Finally common sense. There you go. Another one.
    1
  9653. Why rejoin a failing entity?
    1
  9654.  @emm_arr  It's an anachronism.
    1
  9655.  @emm_arr  The EU is a construct of the years immediately following the end of World War II. In essence the motives behind it were noble. But history and human greed have overtaken it. It has become a vehicle for bureaucratic excess and overweening political ambition. It is dangerous. Without it, there would be no war in Ukraine and no economic collapse in Greece or societal collapse in the Republic of Ireland, to name but three of the most obvious disasters it has engendered.
    1
  9656.  @Lynnefromlyn  I don't think it is. The EU has been an experiment based on the noblest of motives, but which has turned into a nightmare. Without it there would be no war in Ukraine, people in Greece would be able to afford groceries and rural communities in Ireland would not be rioting against their oppressors. It exists now mainly to provide bureaucrats with obscenely huge salaries and to threaten world peace with is federalist/imperialist ambitions.
    1
  9657. This is wonderful initiative -but does it go far enough? Climate change denial is already widely accepted as a form of child abuse. Children should be encouraged to report any adult they hear voicing anti AGW ideas to their UN approved climate change teacher who can then take appropriate action. This might include posting the offending adult's picture and personal details on various websites or, even more effectively, arranging for children to picket the offender's home with suitable placards and chants. In time of course such views will be made illegal and defined as hate speech, in which case the teacher should report the crime immediately to the police.
    1
  9658. The killer is apparently a member of a wealthy Somalian family. His father was once an advisor to the country's President. How does that fit in?
    1
  9659.  @kirishima638  Lonely nutters have been trying to assassinate public figures since time immemorial. I don't think it's more frequent now. Attempting to harness the phenomenon to your political prejudices is probably not a good idea.
    1
  9660.  @jacqdanieles  I have no idea. If Russia has forbidden the Ukrainian language I have not heard so. Are there actually any regions in Russia with substantial majority or near majority Ukrainian populations?
    1
  9661.  @jacqdanieles  And most former colonists resent it bitterly.
    1
  9662.  @lurker668  I said as a starter. You can use it for sources. I don't think Putin writes reports for Amnesty International or the UN.
    1
  9663.  @lurker668  From Human Rights Online, the UN report on the war in Donbass published in 2021. This is a brief extract. Methods of torture and ill-treatment on both sides of the conflict line included beatings, dry and wet asphyxiation, electrocution, sexual violence on men and women (rape, forced nudity and violence to the genitals), positional torture, water, food, sleep or toilet deprivation, isolation, mock executions, prolonged use of handcuffs, hooding and threats of death or further torture or sexual violence or harm to family members. Among Government actors, the most common perpetrator of arbitrary detention and torture was the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). During the initial phases of the conflict, “volunteer battalions” were also regular perpetrators.
    1
  9664.  @lurker668  I find it useful as I say. Just go to the sources at the bottom and check their bona fides. To deny that Russians in Donbass were not extensively tortured and murdered in 2014-16 is absurd. They were bombed to bits as well. Have been ever since.
    1
  9665.  @anastasiawhite7482  You have me at a disadvantage. I can find the names of none of the authors of this very extensive document. Are you suggesting it is a fabrication? It seems very fair to me. The armies of the republics come in for more criticism than the Ukrainians in fact.
    1
  9666.  @anastasiawhite7482  Sorry, your latest post has only come partially through. Are we talking about the same report? "Arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment in the context of armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, 2014-2021" I admit haven't read it through. It is far too depressing. And I only selected my original extract to make the point that Ukraine tortures opponents, as indeed does Russia. As I said, the report makes no bones about detailing tortures by the other side, but that isn't the point at issue. It is very detailed and utterly convincing. It is also backed up by similar reports from other agencies. I am most surprised that you should doubt its veracity.
    1
  9667.  @anastasiawhite7482  Alas, once again I am only getting the first couple of sentences of your reply, which is a great shame. I have to say that I find the mass of circumstantial evidence and detailed accounts of these horrendous entirely convincing. As to political motivation the fact that ALL sides are condemned makes me wonder what those political motives might be. It doesn't surprise me in any way that such things occur. It doesn't take much for people to become brutalised. Both Ukraine and Russia endured decades of Soviet rule under which such behaviour was the norm. Old habits die hard.
    1
  9668.  @anastasiawhite7482  I see no conflict of interest, particularly since as, I repeat, she was very condemnatory about the behaviour of the Russian-backed separatists. And she obviously did not work alone. It is a 24 page report which collates dozens and dozens of items of evidence gathered from number of sources. I wonder why you find it so hard to believe it is substantially true.
    1
  9669.  @anastasiawhite7482  What nonsense. Even if what you say about the authorship is true (and I have yet to see proof) the Russian and her team have compiled a list of scandalous incidents. Are they all fictions in your view? And why do the number of incidents involving the Russian backed separatists greatly exceed those involving Ukraine? If this report was in isolation it would be a different matter. But it is not. Ukraine's record of human rights abuse is a matter of general knowledge. The 2021 Amnesty International report, for example, refers to many hundreds of cases of torture by the police on their own people, let alone to the many hundreds of cases of torture and murder committed in the early years of the Donbass war, the perpetrators of which have not yet been brought to justice, even though in many cases their identities are known.
    1
  9670.  @anastasiawhite7482  If they are lies they are not my lies. I merely report what professionals involved in reporting on human rights abuses have to say. I do not do this to denigrate Ukraine as such but merely to counterbalance the widespread misconception that Ukraine is a saintly nation struggling against a Satanic foe. The behaviour of elements of your armed forces towards separatists in Donbass is just as gross as that of the separatists towards loyal Ukrainians. It would be odd if it were otherwise.
    1
  9671.  @anastasiawhite7482  I think it's true to say that because of their intense and understandable hatred of the Soviet Russians many Ukrainians sided with the Germans in the last war and that Nazi symbology and philosophy has filtered down since then. It is a powerful creed. It does, however, have no particular relevance to the current situation, other than that it is cited by Putin as one of his reasons for invasion. What irks me, as I say, is the widespread assumption that Ukraine occupies the moral high ground in this conflict. One can every sympathy with your country's desire to become less corrupt and more liberal and democratic than it has been in the past - but picking a fight with Russia at the behest of the US doesn't strike me as being the best way to set about it. Whoever wins, this war will set civilisation back considerably.
    1
  9672. Makes sense. Deaths follow cases by 2 to3 weeks.
    1
  9673.  @emm_arr  It's rather better than your inept attempts to sound intelligent.
    1
  9674.  @emm_arr  Oh yes it is! (Pantomime season starts here,)
    1
  9675.  @flowpipe  I read history and contemporary documents and they show that Putin has no interest in territories other than the mineral-rich Russian areas of Ukraine. Selling the idea that he is bent on world conquest is just a propaganda trick designed to get mugs to support this needless war.
    1
  9676.  @flowpipe  I do. There is no evidence that Putin wants anything other than the mineral-rich Russian areas of Ukraine, mistakenly included in that new country when it was created in the early 1990s.
    1
  9677.  @robertscott961  I think it's you who falls into that category. Simple - and credulous to believe that Putin wants anything other than Russianised Crimea and Eastern Ukraine - or even that he has the capability to take more, even if he wanted to
    1
  9678.  @robertscott961  Are you? I think you must be to believe silly propaganda.
    1
  9679.  @flowpipe  I do. And there is no reason to suppose that Putin wants any of these countries.
    1
  9680.  @flowpipe  There you are, yet again, completely wrong. News media in Russia has at least as much freedom as that in the West, in its own way. There are hawkish warmongers on the airwaves there, as there are here. If however, you have watched any interviews with Putin you will know that he rejects all such chauvinistic ambitions. Recreating the Russian empire is a fine and wonderful idea, he says - but it can't be done and even if it could, it would be more trouble than it's worth.
    1
  9681.  @flowpipe  We do not have a free press. As a journalist for many years I know the extent of legal restrictions, and these have been added to considerably in more recent times since newspapers and TV station have been taken over by monolithic financial institutions which do not countenance any opinions which might adversely affect their profits. In Russia, equally so, opinions which may adversely affect the balance of power can be silenced but there is really very little difference between the two systems in actual effect.
    1
  9682.  @flowpipe  Well, I'm retired now, but I assure you I laboured in that thankless vineyard for more than 40 years.
    1
  9683.  @KuriosDiogenesJar  He's got enough headaches without setting himself up as a world conqueror, I think!
    1
  9684.  @flowpipe  I live in Britain. Too wet to be thoroughly authoritarian.
    1
  9685.  @flowpipe  Gullible??! That's good coming from someone who appears to have swallowed every fairy tale about the Ukraine situation trotted out by the Western media!
    1
  9686. I doubt it would be as clear-cut a contest as you imagine.
    1
  9687.  @jayclarke6671  Russia is no threat to Europe. If Europe threatens Russia, however, you can be sure it will have no easy job in carrying out that threat. Putin will use the nuclear option if cornered too.
    1
  9688.  @ChrisBrown-dj1mi  It's taken them 33 years?
    1
  9689.  @ADifferentBias  I wouldn't expect US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland to be worried about the Russians getting hold of a school lab.
    1
  9690. The Seven Grifters of the Apocalypse agree to put the lives of millions at risk by taking sides in a turf war between two kleptocracies. American warmongers get their evil way again.
    1
  9691. @charles You and your feelings Charles, gosh! He didn't defy them and while the BBC is busy day after day trying to brainwash you into believing he did a government report into the mass rape of tens of thousands of under age girls is being shoved under the carpet, the Royal Navy is colluding with gangsters to run a people-smuggling racket and Marxist civil servants are making a last ditch bid to scupper Brexit.. Cummings will stop it -which is of course why the BBC....
    1
  9692.  @Robin4  Cummings broke no rules. He acted as he did in order to ensure that his 4 year-old autistic son would be looked after by people he knew should his mum and dad both come down with the disease. This is exactly the type of eventually mentioned as an exceptional circumstance. The hyena media have been hunting for days to find someone who was fined "for doing the same thing as he did." They haven't found one. What you probably don't realise is that while Cummings and Boris were down with Covid anti-Brexit civil servants were plotting a deal with the EU to extend negotiations for another two years in a bid to eventually stop Brexit altogether. Cummings got back in time to pull the plug and so the remoaners in the civil service and the media have orchestrated this entire smear campaign in a bid to get Cummings out before the mid-June deadline. You have been conned by some very clever and unscrupulous people. Wake up.
    1
  9693. Islam scares me shitless. Does this make me an Islamaphobe? If so, where can I go to seek treatment for this embarrassing condition? Are there support groups in my area -and if not, why not?
    1
  9694. A cure for TDS has been discovered. Soon you will be well.
    1
  9695.  @HectorBrocklebankHBFash  I think you are confusing reality with some sort of computer game. Look at any reputable mapping channel and you will see that Ukraine is being crushed in Donbass and contained in Kursk.
    1
  9696.  @jrelle8380  Well they are rather. Look at a map.
    1
  9697.  @MrAnderson927  Yes. The land Russia has captured is heavily defended, very valuable piece of real estate containing trillions of dollars of mineral wealth. The land Ukraine has captured - or rather just walked into - is virtually undefended forests, swamps and field of very little value. I don't like analogies but you might say that Russia has nearly captured a fortress while Ukraine has simply taking a nice stroll in the countryside.
    1
  9698.  @Apollonos  There are fighters from all nations fighting on both sides. I don't think the numbers are particularly large though. Russia's manpower problems are pretty much like their problems with running out of missiles - in other words problems created by Western propaganda. There is no shortage of Russian volunteers, especially from Siberia, it seems. The pay package is huge by anyone's standards and of course nearly all Russians have gone through military training. If Russia is indeed recruiting men in Nepal and Africa they will be looking for battle-hardened mercenaries who can adapt to fighting in any army. This is not desperation. It's just shopping around.
    1
  9699.  @MrAnderson927  I think you should give your crystal ball a polish.
    1
  9700.  @Apollonos  You are trotting out your propaganda points like a good little student, but all you have are false assessment and dubious predictions. International brigades are among the most feared armies in the world, taking the French Foreign Legion as perhaps the best-known example, but Wagner follows the same tradition. The language of war has a pretty small vocabulary. Ukraine is not destroying Russian oil refineries. It is slightly damaging some of them with little drones. Sure, Ukraine can keep going if the West keeps supplying it, but the country as an independent entity is defunct. It has already run out of money and is now running out of troops. Before long its Western paymasters will run out of patience and call a halt to their ill-considered adventure.
    1
  9701. Gosh! Has Trump really taken a coven of drug-crazed witches to a house in Hollywood and ritually murdered six or seven people? I didn't know that. No wonder people dislike him so intensely and think he should go to prison.
    1
  9702.  @davelate4148  Oh I see what you're getting at now! Trump as the evil mastermind eh? Very clever. Shame there was no actual murdering done, but you can't have everything.
    1
  9703.  @JK-vp2ux  One cop died of a stroke the next day. He had suffered no injury beforehand. A few cops were half-heartedly roughed up but the guys doing it were pulled off by those with cooler heads. Not exactly a murder spree. The only person murdered was Ashli Babbitt, shot in the face by a cop.
    1
  9704. A masterly and massive psych-op orchestrated by Marxist subversives - including the BBC.
    1
  9705. Boris' only hope now is another major news story to act as a distraction. I don't think much less than the sudden death of the Queen will do it though.
    1
  9706. George Soros has pumped millions into election campaigns for idiot Democrat mayors and DAs in cities all over America. He is a very, very intelligent man and has scorned socialism and Marxism in the past. Why is he doing this? Does anyone have any idea?
    1
  9707. Mask Withdrawal Syndrome is a severe psychological condition. Carry on wearing a mask at all times and encourage others to do so.
    1
  9708.  @kevinbrum9940  Masks are more or less totally useless - but whatever keeps you happy. Mind you your attitude is quite refreshing. Most school teachers for instance seem scared of catching covid off the kids -not giving it to them.
    1
  9709. Leigh Foulkes Any idea where the money comes from that funds the far more massive and expensive propaganda campaigns that push the climate crisis agenda? Who's paying the wages of whoever taught you this crap, by the way?
    1
  9710. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Am I allowed to say that?
    1
  9711.  @tomjones5453  Obviously there should be a plaque explaining who had stood there before and the role played by St George in having him torn down. We owe this to history and to those who come after us.
    1
  9712. ​ @John.Handle  But Colston shipped slaves. A far,far greater crime, surely? Replacing a slave-trading businessman with a drug-crazed petty criminal is a symbol of how far the world has progressed.
    1
  9713.  @heniakonas9439  To that and further, I'm afraid.
    1
  9714.  SMEGY 89  but colston murdered and tortured thousands i expect there were pregnant womans too
    1
  9715. If there is an election it will simply be Johnson trying to prove to the Tories who want him gone that he still has pulling power. And he probably has.
    1
  9716.  @merrilouneigenfind104  Sure he did. Perhaps the first President since JFK to do so. All the rest have just been stooges for the deep state. Now Joe has returned to this fine old tradition.
    1
  9717.  James Ratliff  Joe's budget is 6.8 trillion for this year alone.
    1
  9718.  @rickkeeton9246  But aren't you saying Trump isn't rich anymore? Budget figures are freely available and show Trump's pragmatic investment in job and wealth creation to have pulled the US from the brink of ruin, before the unforeseen arrival of the pandemic. Biden's insane ideas will drag the country to utter ruin within two years. Good job he won't be allowed to put them into practice.
    1
  9719.  @rickkeeton9246  Do the Democrats never raise funds from their supporters then? What about the billion or so raised through BLM which went straight into Joe's pockets instead of the community projects people thought they were forking out for?
    1
  9720.  James Ratliff  Fascist
    1
  9721. A witch doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYkIK6-TNok
    1
  9722. @ Sounds a sensible bloke.
    1
  9723.  @RobertWilson-jb4xw  I see it more as being defensive. In Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya and Syria all of Russia's military actions seem to me to be purely to defend existing interests from threats of takeover.
    1
  9724. @ ...and the facts are that the Russian Federation appears to have learned from the mistakes of the Soviet Union and is generally quite content to stay in its own backyard. The only reason it has invaded Ukraine is to keep hold of the mineral riches in the East, which are traditionally Russian and are still largely owned by Russian companies.
    1
  9725.  @istvanglock7445  What don't you understand? These mines are owned by Russian companies and worked by Russian labour. They trade through Russia and their profits largely go to Russia. Ukraine's deal with the EU would prevent this, and protecting these centuries-old interests is largely what this war is about.
    1
  9726. Thanks for the doom and gloom as usual BBC. I don't suppose you like the idea that deaths NOW and from ALL CAUSES are below the national five year average and that when this is over it will become plain that most of those excess deaths occurred in people who aren't showing up in the present figures. They aren't showing up because they're already dead, geddit?
    1
  9727. Collusion between Ukraine and the Islamists is entirely possible.
    1
  9728. The question is: how much more money is the West going to put into the Ukrainian slot machine before it gives up on the jackpot?
    1
  9729.  @marviwilson1853  What with?
    1
  9730. In a sense. Hamas are fighting for the Iranians, and the Ukrainians are fighting for the Americans. In both cases they will, I think, come to regret their actions.
    1
  9731.  @OrlandoDibiskitt  America wants the $14 trillion of coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. It has been Russia which has exploited these resources for generations but the Zelensky government has been bribed into transferring them to American companies. Russia is resisting this. Following the Minsk Agreements of 2015/16 America and NATO have spent billions on creating a large well-trained Ukrainian army which is currently in the process of being destroyed by Russia.
    1
  9732. There have already been votes, but Ukraine is so utterly corrupt that the results are meaningless. The referendum organised by Ukraine resulted in an overwhelming majority wishing to remain in Ukraine. The vote organised by Russia resulted in an overwhelming majority wishing to align with Russia.
    1
  9733.  @Iazzaboyce  Many people argue the contrary. The population of Crimea is almost 70% Russian, as it is in the industrial areas of Donbass. The Russian held referendums of 2014 claimed 90+ % support for splitting from Kiev. The Ukrainian held referendums of 1991 and 1994 are subject to controversy and a variety of interpretations. Kiev chose to interpret them as a desire to become or remain part of Ukraine.
    1
  9734.  @MrDogsledder  And it will take another quarter of a million deaths to even TRY to achieve that. And the territory isn't "conquered". It is taken back after being stolen.
    1
  9735.  @MrDogsledder  This has nothing to do with socialist dictatorships. Ukraine was Russian long before 1917. The Ukrainian people and the Russian people share a common history. Both suffered under communism, but their joint development goes back long before that. Eastern Ukraine has emerged as more specifically Russian than that section of the country to the west of the Dnieper. It was, after all, once known as little Russia, and to this day has a high percentage of population which identifies as ethnic Russian and speaks Russian as its principle language. In Crimea and the industrial cities of Donbass, for example, the figure is around 70%.. Perhaps more to the point is that the vast mineral resources of Donbass were developed by Russia, using Russian labour, and Russia resents having all that wealth spirited away. The Budapest Accords, which created the modern country of Ukraine in the early 1990's, failed to acknowledge the complexities of Ukraine's history and merely decided that this new country occupied the same territory as the former Soviet Socialist Republic - which was itself a creation of Soviet Russia. This has led to enormous difficulties which many attempts have been made to resolve. Unfortunately America and other Western agencies have seized this opportunity to attempt to gain access to the coal, oil, iron and rare minerals which lie under the ground of Donbass. That, in a nutshell, is the cause of the present war.
    1
  9736.  @MrDogsledder  Russia is not a socialist dictatorship. That all ended in 1991 and the Russian Federation is a capitalist, Christian country. It is, like Ukraine, an oligarchy in which following the collapse of communism, resources ponderously and inefficiently administered by the state were taken over by a number of piratical businessmen who have made a much better job of it. The dilemma facing Ukrainians is which particular gang of crooks they would prefer to rule over them. The situation is complicated by the fact that, generally speaking, people in western Ukraine prefer oligarchs who deal with America and, generally speaking, those in the east prefer the Russian gang. There is no moral duty for any country to support either side in this argument. This conflict is being sold to ignorant people in the West as some kind of battle between good and evil. It is nothing of the kind. It is a turf war between gangsters and we are being conned into supporting the American mafia rather than the Russian one.
    1
  9737.  @MrDogsledder  Where do you get the idea that Putin wants to "rebuild" a socialist dictatorship, or that he is a communist? These absurd inaccuracies are typical of your absurd arguments. The nuclear weapons in Ukraine weren't theirs to give up. They were Soviet missiles and could only be fired from Moscow. And I can swap you video by video of atrocities committed by Ukrainians over the course of this war. Both sides are as bad as each other in this respect.
    1
  9738.  @MrDogsledder  You really are too silly for words. Putin totally rejects communism. It is dead in the water, and has been for more than thirty years! Neither has he any ambitions to recreate the USSR or the Russian Empire. He has written essays on the subject and been interviewed many times on it. His position is quite clear: he regrets the passing of Russia's days of greatness but acknowledges that it is impossible to recreate them. He doesn't even want the whole of Ukraine, much less the rest of Russia's former territories. Trying to keep them under control was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the SU. It would be even more difficult in today's political climate. As I have already explained, the invasion has nothing whatsoever to do with a "resurgence of socialist dictatorship." It is merely a matter of Russia securing its borders against NATO aggression and keeping control of the mineral wealth of Donbass. You are being conned - as are your heroes to a considerable extent. Zelensky is the charismatic front man for Ukrainian gangsters who are in league with US business interests to gain the riches of Donbass. People are dying by the thousand in a sordid squabble over profits. It has nothing to do with freedom or democracy or any of those other buzzwords which confuse the minds of the gullible so readily.
    1
  9739.  @MrDogsledder  Good Lord! Putin is a devout Russian Orthodox Christian. He doesn't have a socialist bone on his body, much less a communist one! Get it through your head: Russia is done with communism - and socialism. It has embraced capitalism with fervour and under Putin its people are experiencing standards of living totally unknown in Soviet days. Crimea is part of Russia, which is why Russia took it back in 2014. It was merely stuck on to Ukraine in 1954 as a tidying up exercise by the Soviet Union. The transfer was not even ratified. Ukraine didn't "escape the USSR". The USSR collapsed due largely to the inefficiencies inherent in the communist system of government. Russia escaped the USSR too - which is why it has no wish to return to it. The Russian Federation merely requires to be respected and to escape from the creeping monopolar world order desired by the West.
    1
  9740.  @MrDogsledder  You don't seem to have been listening. This isn't propaganda, but an attempt to explain to you the reasoning and historical background to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. You may well think the invasion was unjustified, but if you do it would be better if you did so when armed with facts, rather than Western propaganda. My concern is solely that I believe all the gung-go posturing and sabre rattling we have inflicted upon us every day are going to prolong this needless war. It could have been prevented. It could be stopped almost immediately, and the only thing that is keeping it going is the greed of largely American commercial interests who wish to demean Russia, to take from it the fruits of its labours, and to attempt to maintain US hegemony. That isn't going to happen, and hundreds of thousands will have died to no purpose.
    1
  9741.  @MrDogsledder  Only some of them are correct. Russia is not expansionist and the nuclear weapons were not Ukraine's. They were merely stationed there. The Budapest accords have proved impractical. Peaceful attempts have been made over the years to iron out their anomalies, culminating in the Minsk agreements which Ukraine merely used as cover for expanding its army, instead of advancing reform in Donbass, as was the intention. Once again I return to the main point at issue. This conflict, like all conflicts, is not a matter of moral rectitude. It is concerned with access to wealth. If you are going to support the continuation of a bloody and needless war, a least do so for the real reasons, rather than some sham good guy/bad guy scenario. Putin has made it entirely clear that Ukraine can align itself with the West in certain regards should it wish to. But it can't take Crimea and Donbass with it, and neither can it allow itself to become a platform for Western military aggression. These are entirely reasonable requirements and there is every chance they will eventually be met. The tragedy is that tens of thousands will have died to do so.
    1
  9742.  @MrDogsledder  The Ukrainians are not fighting for freedom. The are fighting to prevent Russia from retaining Crimea and having access to the mineral wealth of Donbass. Once these objectives are attained Putin will allow the rest of Ukraine to go its own way. He simply doesn't have the resources or the desire to do any more. Buying into this myth of poor little Ukraine fighting off big, bad Russia is just going to extend this bloody war. This suits the Americans because they still think they have a chance to get their hands on the oil, gas, coal and rare minerals in Donbass and even if THAT fails they can screw their own taxpayers out of billions by getting Halliburton or somesuch to clear up all the mess. Put aside your morals and your ethics and your legal niceties. It's all about money.
    1
  9743.  @MrDogsledder  No expansionism involved, as I keep telling you. Russia owned Ukraine for hundreds of years. Now it just wants a bit of it. How is that expansionism?
    1
  9744.  @MrDogsledder  My feelings don't matter, but Putin's very much do. He sees Western expansionism in Ukraine as an existential threat, and has responded accordingly. He is right too. He is not going to give up and if push comes to shove he will nuke Kiev. What do we do then? American greed and incompetence have created this situation. By promising the Ukrainians the dubious benefits of living in a liberal democracy in return for robbing them blind, America has led the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. What price your fine words and noble principles then?
    1
  9745.  @MrDogsledder  No, you are wrong. The very fact that you have to trot out this absurd Hitler/Poland analogy proves the point. Hitler was a comparatively young man who was elected to power on the promise that he would restore Germany's greatness, which he then proceeded immediately to do. Putin has been in power for twenty years and all his military activities have been exclusively to protect Russia's borders and existing interests. And neither is Ukraine much of a free country, once you probe beneath the surface. Opposition parties are banned and news outlets which don't toe the official line are shut down. Corruption is rife on every level and its prisons are a disgrace to humanity. Ukraine is Russia in a pretty dress, and to pretend it to be a beacon of freedom and democracy is just part of the big con to convince the world to take its side in what is basically a domestic squabble..
    1
  9746.  @MrDogsledder  You are simply repeating yourself in an increasingly desperate fashion. I suggest to take steps to inform yourself more fully before proceeding further. You could begin with accessing some of Professor John Mearscheimer's lectures on the situation. You might also benefit from reading Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published in the summer of 2021.
    1
  9747.  @MrDogsledder  I'm afraid you force me to follow your example and repeat myself. There is no evidence whatsoever of any expansionist tendencies by Putin. Putin very much regrets Ukraine's apparent desire to ally with the West, but it cannot take the predominantly Russian areas with it when it goes. Attempts at diplomatic solutions have failed and therefore Russia has been forced to apply a military solution. If the West persists in pursuing its false narratives and continues to arm Ukraine the result will be the needless deaths of many tens of thousands, and the very real possibility of the eventual use of nuclear weapons.
    1
  9748. This morbid paranoia a weird condition that seems to affect many left-leaning people.
    1
  9749.  @ChipsBojosidiotson  Ouch!
    1
  9750.  @Carlos12330  I'm afraid I have given my tinfoil hat to someone who believes these assassination attempts were staged by the Trump team to improve his poll ratings.
    1
  9751.  @neilmcintosh1200  Accidents can happen under the best regulated of circumstances, to quote Mrs Beeton.
    1
  9752.  @Carlos12330  I'm afraid I have given mine away to someone who believes Trump faked these incidents for publicity purposes.
    1
  9753. The FBI runs America.
    1
  9754.  @fireiron369  Well, he isn't a politician, he's a businessman. The skill sets are rather different. He was up against a monster of a machine which hated him for being who was and itself for getting beaten. I can allow myself the optimistic hope that the machine has now set upon a path of self-destruction.
    1
  9755.  @fireiron369  If it wasn't for Covid no amount of deceit and trickery would have beaten him, I think. As it is he has focussed the ambitions and needs of old-school patriotic Americans and made them realise they can stand up to the political machine. Against them they have a largely college-educated mass of largely brainwashed left-leaning types who confuse moral sensitivity with moral rectitude. Yes, Thatcher would have got on well with Trump. The UK has no-one like her now.
    1
  9756.  @fireiron369  Reagan had a lot going for him in retrospect, but he was basically a front man - which probably all US Presidents apart from Trump have more or less been. He is his own man. I will of course be giving my age away when I say I have grandchildren with views similar to your sisters! Yes, most grow out of the ridiculous notions instilled in their heads at college etc, but the education system and the media in both the UK and the US need a complete overhaul - before it is too late.
    1
  9757.  @fireiron369  The trouble is some of these kids never grow up. They become politicians and college lecturers!
    1
  9758.  @fireiron369  Both??!! No, college lecturer I guess.
    1
  9759.  @omnicaster1701  Nor are elections.
    1
  9760. New Zealand's (and Australia's)escape from covid has been truly remarkable. One can't help wondering what the future holds, however. Since it is clear that the vaccines provide only temporary and far from universal protection - and very little indeed for the seriously vulnerable - a population with no natural immunity through infection can be expected to suffer quite severe consequences once the virus takes hold That is inevitable, even with the draconian, police-state style measures currently in force in these countries, even if they continue indefinitely.
    1
  9761.  @andrewbogle3350  Every cloud has a silver lining. Perhaps I was wrong to group NZ with prison camp Australia - still, are you happy to go on like this forever?
    1
  9762. The sentence is irrelevant. What is important is that there is a clear connection between middle-class socialism, worship of black people and paedophilia.
    1
  9763.  @tomspain6696  Fleabites.
    1
  9764.  @terryharris1291  They seem to be driving the Ukrainians back at the moment - so what are they using?
    1
  9765.  @terryharris1291  They take ground where it counts - and, yes, the Russians have a rather old-fashioned idea about warfare.
    1
  9766.  @Lepocoloco  The maps where Russia is meeting its military objectives and taking all of heavily defended and very, very rich Donbass.
    1
  9767.  @terryharris1291  Those bits of ground are sitting on top of very large resources of very valuable minerals - which is why they are being fought over so intensely.
    1
  9768. Putin didn't invade Ukraine. He has liberated parts of Russia from control mistakenly handed over to Kiev.
    1
  9769. Judaism doesn't want to take over the world.
    1
  9770.  @boink800  The Eskimos you mean?
    1
  9771.  @emm_arr  It still sold.
    1
  9772.  @willc1294  Perhaps he is. I'm sure he gets good advice. And how about Sister Rachel - she seems reluctant to fill in her tax returns at all. Not bad for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    1
  9773.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  Can't find what? Your arse with both hands or Tommy Robinson's "Manifesto" ?
    1
  9774.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  Can't find what?
    1
  9775. @Liam Wright You do sound a pompous little prat
    1
  9776. @Liam Wright BAME people in cooler climes produce B vitamins less readily then white people. B vitamins aid resistance to infection. The sun is a racist.
    1
  9777.  @franklingoodwin  You are a total berk. The slave trade was ended in 1805 due to intense and lengthy pressure by devoted British and American Christians. The British government spent millions on buying the freedom of slaves in the colonies. A country cannot be racist. Only people can. There are some racists in this country. Most of them are either non-white or so consumed by sanctimonious self-righteousness that they have lost the power of reason. What's an epithony?
    1
  9778. @Liam Wright Is this because the sun is racist? Is it due to genetic predispositions of various sorts? Or is it that BAME people live in more crowded conditions? Whatever the case it has nothing to do with the death of a drug addict criminal in far-off Minneapolis does it?
    1
  9779. ​ @SH-wn9xh  BLM ALL CAPS TOO (Geddit?)
    1
  9780.  @SH-wn9xh  CAN'T SAY I DO
    1
  9781. Sun worshipping Black Buffalo My parrot died due to Climate Change. It didn't put wind in my sails I can tell you.
    1
  9782.  @J_Bone1888  Almost anyone.
    1
  9783.  @J_Bone1888  Almost anyone within reason
    1
  9784.  @Stickyman61  Of course Ukraine has a choice.
    1
  9785.  @jeh51-e9q  Does anyone?
    1
  9786.  @Klemheist-vf1hx  You can't break a memorandum. A memorandum is not a treaty. It is exactly what it says it is: merely a record of a temporary agreement.
    1
  9787.  @Klemheist-vf1hx  It could never have happened.
    1
  9788. @ And is that the best YOU'VE got?
    1
  9789. The Democrats will organise massive electoral fraud through postal ballots -simply because they can. Over four years they have revealed themselves to be totally lacking in moral compass and so hysterically opposed to Donald Trump that they have even supported and encouraged violence and anarchy in the streets. Paying a few people to lose Trump postal votes and forge Harris ones will be as nothing to these creatures of the swamp.
    1
  9790.  @Moonscafe7  Lockdowns will kill more people than they save? Covid vaccinations safe?
    1
  9791.  @churly9717  See for yourself. There is considerable evidence that many votes were counted which, according to law, ought not to have been.
    1
  9792.  @JOEFABULOUS.  Yes. Investigated by those accused of doing the stealing. Hardly a surprising result then is it?
    1
  9793.  @xensonar9652  You could do worse.
    1
  9794.  @ionnanskilliorus  You do. You are right now. You are ignoring the several thousand items of concern listed in several web sites, plus the many hundreds of hours of evidence presented to several State Senate committees immediately after the election. You are accepting the official assurances that all was well at its face value. That's cherry picking.
    1
  9795.  @xensonar9652  Who are you to decide who are "the worst people"?
    1
  9796.  @xensonar9652  But I didn't say who they were.
    1
  9797.  @ionnanskilliorus  If I was a narcissist I couldn't possibly do that, could I?
    1
  9798.  @ionnanskilliorus  Speak to someone about my narcissism. Although, on reflection, a true narcissist might be delighted to speak to someone about his narcissism, if only to convince them that he wasn't a narcissist.
    1
  9799.  @xensonar9652  Sure I have people in mind. But they are all people who aren't me. So where's the lie?
    1
  9800. The American taxpayer mainly.
    1
  9801.  @akinwaleakinola1787  They already do.
    1
  9802.  @bobbysox897  You can't rely on referendums or elections in either Russia or Ukraine. The fact that the Russians were welcomed with open arms in 2014 with the police and the army transferring their allegiance almost to the man reveals more about the genuine feelings of the population than an election. The fact that Putin has spent billions on regenerating Crimea after decades of neglect by Kiev has only strengthened that feeling.
    1
  9803.  @bobbysox897  For administrative reasons, as I said.
    1
  9804. Pomposity too.
    1
  9805. The ne variant (if there is one) can just as easily develop here and, according to Smith's Law of Declining Virulence, should be less lethal than its predecessors.
    1
  9806. Every unnecessary vaccine administered to a child is one a vulnerable adult in a poor country won't be getting don't forget.
    1
  9807. What a fascinating comparison. I like it.
    1
  9808. There is a dark side to this if you believe, as I do, that the Russians have no great interest in conquering and keeping new territories but that their strategy throughout has been simply to destroy as much of the Ukrainian armed forces as they can. Kherson could well be a trap. Russian troops and Russian sympathisers have been evacuated. The Russians can now bombard Kherson from just across the river and from the air, killing practically everyone in it in a relatively short time.
    1
  9809.  @brainwasher9876  A complete myth. Putin's objectives were declared very clearly in an essay he published several weeks before the invasion.
    1
  9810.  @glennbateman4483  I feel much the same about people such as yourself who swallow lies so greedily.
    1
  9811.  @brainwasher9876  That was a complete myth. Putin's declared objectives have always been to retain Crimea and take the whole of Donbass, nothing more.
    1
  9812.  @lilbubz2803  They didn't. The first stage of the invasion was purely about weakening Ukraine's army so it would be unable to win the real war, which is taking place now on the southern front.
    1
  9813.  @brainwasher9876  This was something said to encourage the troops and was taken up by hosts on a Russian TV show - and US General Miley! But it was never a viable proposition. In fact Putin's objectives have been outlined by him often enough in essays, articles and interviews. All he wanted originally was to keep Crimea and Donbass out of Western control and to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. He'll probably be wanting a bit more now though.
    1
  9814.  @brainwasher9876  A myth. Putin wants Crimea and Donbass, that's all.
    1
  9815.  @datboib3432  This is all myth and propaganda. Putin knew that faced with a multi-billion dollar Ukrainian army, paid for by the US and NATO, that he was in for a long haul. The pretend attack on Kiev and points West of the Dnieper was designed to drastically reduce that army's effectiveness. Which it did. The real war is going on now in the trenches on the southern front. The Ukrainians are thoroughly depleted and it is only a question of time before they are defeated.
    1
  9816.  @lilbubz2803  It was the blotting paper principle. Raw troops and old equipment were sacrificed in the knowledge that at least a proportion of the Ukrainian army would be destroyed. The chances of victory were extremely remote in this phase. This can clearly be seen in the way the operation was conduced. The more experienced troops - Wagner, veterans of Syria etc, - were kept in reserve ready for the real battle which is happening now on the southern front as Putin fights to keep mineral-rich Donbass out of Western hands.
    1
  9817.  @datboib3432  Not the same soldiers. Raw troops were thrown into the first phase while veteran professionals were kept in reserve. These are the ones in the trenches - or rather in the tanks which are over-running the Ukrainian trenches even as we speak.
    1
  9818.  @datboib3432  These figures are plucked from the air by Ukrainian propaganda you realise. But yes, Russian casualties have been very high by Western standards. That is part of the Russian military ethos. Soldiers are rather expected to die; it is their job. In the West we have made keeping our soldiers alive a priority. This is not so true in Russia. It's results that count and the enormous sacrifices made by these men now seem to be bearing fruit. From Russia's point of view, everything is going pretty much to plan.
    1
  9819.  @datboib3432  I never watch Russian media. My conclusions are based on a little bit of knowledge and rational assessment - plus discounting practically everything the Western media says and working out WHY they are taking the stance they are. As for the reality on the ground I pay heed to the objective assessments which can be found on several specialist military channels - and also visit Russian bloggers and YouTubers who have no axe to grind, but simply report on their daily lives.
    1
  9820.  @datboib3432  What 3 day war? There never was a 3 day war. I re-iterate: the object of the exercise was to destroy as many Ukrainian troops and as much equipment at possible, regardless of the cost, and to do it on Ukrainian territory, not in Donbass. The exact degree of success we cannot know, but it seems to have been considerable. The Russians slowly retreated over many months, killing Ukrainians as they did so, and are now in a position where they are pushing a much depleted Ukrainian force from heavily defended territory in the northern part of Donbass, thus securing the entire region in the Russian interest.
    1
  9821.  @datboib3432  here do yo get your opinions from then? From the entirely biased Western media I would guess, and without processing the information through any kind of judgemental procedure. This means that not only do you not know what you are talking about, but that your opinions are merely regurgitated propaganda.
    1
  9822.  @datboib3432  What do you base your opinions on then? An uncritical swallowing of what the Western media tells you? It's fair to say that would lead you up the garden path, and no mistake.
    1
  9823.  @datboib3432  What three-day war? There never was one. I'm talking about the months in which the Russians retreated slowly south, taking out a considerable portion of the Ukrainian army as they went. This stage of the conflict was never about taking territory. It was about destroying the Ukrainians, as far as possible. And it was done with the usual Russian disregard for its own losses - which is something we in the West still find very hard to understand.
    1
  9824.  @brainwasher9876  You make the common mistake of attributing Western values and motives to Russia. This war has never been about conquering territory - other than those parts of northern Donbass which remain in Ukrainian hands, and which are now been gradually retaken. It's prime objective has been to destroy the multi-billion dollar army which the US and NATO provided Ukraine with following the Minsk agreements. This has now largely succeeded. Two of Putin's military objectives are therefore close to being achieved. As to the cost in manpower and materiel there is a reason why Russia still has general conscription and keeps all its old equipment. It is to throw it at the enemy regardless of losses. This was the way war used to be done. The idea of keeping troops safe and bringing out new expensive bits of kit all the time is a relatively modern concept, and really the result of turning war into a profitable business concern, as the Americans have done. The costs to Russia are far from catastrophic compared to the gains that seem likely. Russia would have lost considerable international standing if it had allowed western interests to set up NATO bases in Ukraine and to syphon off the immense mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea. As it is that wealth - estimated at around $13 trillion - seems likely to remain under Russian control, as it has been for centuries. By international standing I do not mean the approbation of that narrow circle of sycophantic nations which surround America, but the world at large: those emerging nations which are queuing up to join the BRICS group which Russia helped to found, and which hold the future of this planet in their hands.
    1
  9825. Robert Trusardi How is it possible to tell that past temperature rises were mostly localised? Is the proxy evidence for this assertion available at all in any detailed form? Equally, since this is the first time in human history that global measurements have been obtainable, how can we say what global conditions were in the past? Just asking.
    1
  9826.  @yvonnemccalla7282  Send?! What kind of dictator do you think I am?
    1
  9827. Then there will be months and possibly years of further suffering.
    1
  9828.  @queenbrightwingthe3890  Never done it. Don't see the appeal.
    1
  9829.  @magpieeuc4846  Looks like you made it!
    1
  9830.  @66BranDo  Everyone has had the chance to be vaccinated. People in vulnerable groups should be isolating permanently - or take the risk if they prefer. In the meantime their long-term safety is improved as herd immunity is approached.
    1
  9831.  @Chrishagen  Close fitting surgical masks with respirators are of some use in certain conditions, but cloth masks and the little blue jobs you hang off your ears provide no protection at all worth speaking of. As for surgeons, a survey published by the Royal Society of Medicine in 2015 revealed that 4% of surgeons don't actually wear masks during operations and 20% said they only did so because they thought it was expected of them. And I'm not a troll and nor do I watch Fox News.
    1
  9832.  @Chrishagen  The statistics come from a fairly extensive survey. Another 40% said they disliked wearing masks because they made their glasses and face-screens fog up.
    1
  9833.  @ab-ym3bf  What false information? If you believe hanging a bit of cloth on your face has any significant effect on covid then you're the one spreading false information. Only an N95 fitted respirator mask or above has any efficacy and - as the 95 suggests - even this is not 100% effective.
    1
  9834.  @hasse102  The link won't post, but all you have to do is go to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Website and scroll down to the July 2015 edition. It's all in there.
    1
  9835.  @RockyScorcese  The ability to read.
    1
  9836.  @christurner68  And it has one which has failed the test of time.
    1
  9837.  @christurner68  But what and where is Ukraine? Modern Ukraine is entirely the creation of Russia. In the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was deemed to be a sovereign country. This is true only on paper. Crimea and much of modern Ukraine East of the Dnieper has much stronger affiliations with Moscow than it has with Kiev. Compromises were attempted in the Minsk treaties but these fell foul of American and EU efforts to grab Ukrainian mineral wealth, and in the meantime the US and NATO financed and trained a large Ukrainian army with the apparent objective of gaining control of Crimea and Donbass by force. It is a great mistake to buy into the story of poor little Ukraine fighting off an evil invader. The truth is a great deal more complicated than that.
    1
  9838.  @christurner68  Putin cares about Russia and the Russian people - Ukraine, not so much. Ukraine has allowed itself to be a pawn in the power struggle between the US and Russia which has been going on since the end of World War II. More to the point it has allowed itself to be a battleground in a shooting war. Zelensky is a fool, and the current US administration is incompetent almost beyond belief. Putin was pushed to edge and chose to fight back. Russia's survival as an independent nation is his agenda. He calculates that at the end of the day it is going to be the US and its allies which are going to come off worse in this needless struggle which they have initiated. He could well be right.
    1
  9839.  @christurner68  Russia and Ukraine are both corrupt kleptocracies. Until very recently they vied with one another to be the most corrupt countries in Europe and Ukraine was once judged to be the most corrupt country in the world. America and Europe have taken full advantage of this. Deals with Ukrainian oligarchs have reaped a rich harvest for US crooks and politicians (often synonymous terms.) Zelensky was brought to power by one such oligarch, Ifor Kolomoisky, who owned a large chunk of the US steel industry and half of downtown Cleveland. Zelensky himself has billions of dollars salted away in offshore accounts. This war is a turf war between two sets of gangsters, and without US and EU interference would have been settled years ago with little or no bloodshed. Putin is tough, but he is patriot. He simply could not stand by and watch Ukraine being removed entirely from Russian influence, especially Crimea and Donbass which owe their very existence to the sweat and toil of Russians. Did he make a mistake? Only time will tell, but I tend to think not. Hopefully the new US Congress will hold back on the billions of dollars needed to keep Ukraine afloat and some sort of treaty can be arranged. It will on all probability end up very like the treaty proposed by Putin in December of last year, the sneering rejection of which caused him to invade.
    1
  9840. There are no immediately accessible rare earth minerals in Western Ukraine. Those that there are - mainly lithium - are in Eastern territories under Russian control. Trump knows this and Zelensky knows this, but because - like Phil - he thinks Trump is thick he doesn't know that Trump knows this. Trump isn't thick. Far from it. He may be no intellectual and has probably never read a book in his life, but he has an immense amount of animal cunning. OK, it sometimes misfires but in this instance he is well on his way to arrive at a swift, peaceful solution in Ukraine which leaves the US recovering much of the money it has thrown away and welcomes Russia -finally - into a meaningful and equitable relationship with the rest of the world. Idiots like Starmer and his gaggle of globalist no-hopers are going to be out in the cold as Trump and Putin divvy up trade and resources and lay the foundations for a prosperous - and peaceful - future.
    1
  9841. It must be tough being black in the US today Who should you hate more - the cop who kneels on your brother's neck until he dies or the self-serving politician who thinks the colour of your skin is the only virtue you apparently possess?
    1
  9842.  @avegoodtime  Withdraw it should. Billions of dollars, mostly from the pockets of American taxpayers, is being used to finance programmes which are in direct conflict with American interests. It's time to break off the engagement and find new ways of negotiating between nations. A forum may not even be necessary at all, and certainly not in the semi-criminal shape of the UN.
    1
  9843.  @avegoodtime  NATO has served and continues to serve a viable purpose in protecting Western interests. It is difficult to see how this applies to the UN. The WHO's role in the globallst takeover is more recent but its reputation must now be called into question. Does the globe need leading? At some time in the distant future a form of international unity may evolve through natural progression, but in the meantime sovereign states should look to their own and co-exist through a system of separate treaties.
    1
  9844.  @avegoodtime  That's already happening. And the UN is one of the main platforms for doing it.
    1
  9845. Oraf As hard as may be for you to take, she really is just a puppet for financial interests. By restricting the amount of carbon a company can emit as waste, permissions to do so obviously have great value. There is a market for these permissions so you can make vast fortunes overnight by buying cheap and selling dear. Publicity stunts like Greta's magnificent caper allow the market to be manipulated. And carbon isn't even dangerous although many scientists have been brought to believe it is. They, like you, like the carbon emissions market, are being manipulated by very clever people who just LOVE getting rich.
    1
  9846. Are hubris and nemesis words in America?
    1
  9847. It is rumoured that later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire. So far, Russia has refrained from massive bombing or missile attacks, nuclear or otherwise. The Russians may well care very little how many troops or how much materiel they lose on the ground - but they are far from stupid. They are not playing the role we have assigned to them. Their current losses are entirely predictable and must have been anticipated - as must the response.
    1
  9848. It looks to me as though the USA is more in line for collapse than Russia. It is an over-extended empire, as the USSR once was. Russia is forming new alliances which are likely to result in an enormously powerful economy to rival anything America has to offer.
    1
  9849.  @AnAmericanPatriot1555  I'm used to it. The world is run by robots, wokeists and Muslims.
    1
  9850. They were found in a ditch beside the Fox River in Outagamie County, Wisconsin. https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/ Here are a couple more instances of the way things are going to go: https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/04/08/wisconsin-election-3-tubs-ballots-found-mail-processing-center/2971078001/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0
    1
  9851.  @Frack_Black  What's silly about them? You lot need educating.
    1
  9852.  @andrewadams6905  Not if you know the background to it, it isn't. The only possible plan Zelensky can have is to get the West to spend more money in his increasingly desperate efforts to fight off Russia's relentless attack. I doubt he'll get it. He is a failed investment.
    1
  9853.  @jonhadley-zx2iu  Hopefully never.
    1
  9854.  @eyeneffjay  The UN has released several reports on the conflict in Donbass, highlighting significant human rights violations and potential war crimes since 2014. One notable report from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine covers the period from 2014 to 2016, detailing widespread killings and a lack of accountability. The report states that the conflict, particularly in Donetsk and Luhansk, resulted in up to 2,000 civilian deaths, with nearly 90% of these deaths caused by indiscriminate shelling of residential areas. Additionally, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that from April 2014 to June 2021, the conflict resulted in approximately 42,500-44,500 casualties, including 13,200-13,400 deaths and 29,600-33,600 injuries. The reports emphasize the rampant impunity for these crimes, with both sides of the conflict being responsible for various human rights abuses. The initial abuses were carried out by Ukrainian militia in 2014/15. Since then, however, the rebel armies, aided by Wagner, have paid back the Ukrainians threefold. Perhaps the report you read was Ukrainian propaganda?
    1
  9855.  @eyeneffjay  The UN has released several reports on the conflict in Donbass, highlighting significant human rights violations and potential war crimes since 2014. One notable report from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine covers the period from 2014 to 2016, detailing widespread killings and a lack of accountability. The report states that the conflict, particularly in Donetsk and Luhansk, resulted in up to 2,000 civilian deaths, with nearly 90% of these deaths caused by indiscriminate shelling of residential areas. Additionally, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that from April 2014 to June 2021, the conflict resulted in approximately 42,500-44,500 casualties, including 13,200-13,400 deaths and 29,600-33,600 injuries. The reports emphasize the rampant impunity for these crimes, with both sides of the conflict being responsible for various human rights abuses.
    1
  9856.  @eyeneffjay  There is considerable evidence of systematic terrorism. The measures taken were so severe that YouTube will not allow me to detail them. Initially they were the work of Ukrainian militia against Russian inhabitants, although later in the conflict the tables were turned, with Ukrainian sympathisers being badly treated by the partisans. While there can been no doubt that Russia had a hand in fomenting the rebellion, there was no initial large-scale invasion. The army and the police transferred their allegiance to Russia almost to a man, as they did in Crimea. They had considerable civilian support as resentment had been building up ever since Kiev took over. Wages had dropped dramatically and there was little or no investment in industry. Instead there was a process of de-Russification, with the language being threatened, streets being re-named and traditional holidays and religious practices being sidelined. The fact that in the present war millions of Donbass resident have fled not to Ukraine, but to Russia, clearly shows where their sympathies lie.
    1
  9857.  @eyeneffjay  I have to disagree. The reports both give details of actions carried out by both the Ukrainian army and militia groups such as the notorious Azov Brigade which cannot be interpreted in any other way. Measures employed were so disgusting that YouTube will not allow me to detail them. The rebellions in Donbass had widespread support, with the army and the police transferring their allegiance almost to a man. Russia obviously helped organise and equip the separatists, but a great many residents fully supported the actions taken. To you it was an illegal invasion. To Russia it is a liberation.
    1
  9858.  @TheMasterMind144  "To a man" means more or less all. Whatever input Russia had into the revolution in Donbass, there can be no doubt that it was based on genuine dissatisfaction with the way Kiev was treating the numerous self-identifying Russians in the area. Ukraine attempted to crush the rebellion with extreme prejudice - as the Americans say - and very many were indeed killed - innocent civilians as well as fighters. All this aside the most significant element to the rebellion and the current war is undoubtedly the ownership of the vast mineral resources of the area, estimated at least $13trillion.
    1
  9859.  @TheMasterMind144  This would imply then that Russia is in total control of all of Donbass and that no-one actually leaves until they arrive. Far more likely is that Russians living in Donbass flee to Russia, where they have families and friends. They fear reprisals as collaborators if they fall into Ukrainian hands.
    1
  9860. ​ @TheMasterMind144  While renaming streets might cause some degree of resentment, as might attempts to fade out Russian from schools and government, the greatest cause for alarm in Donbass was surely the prospect of Russian-owned and operated mining and manufacturing interests falling under EU and ultimately US control? And while Yanukovich might well have been a Russian puppet, he was no more so than Zelensky is a Western one. That's the problem , isn't it? Ukraine is a divided country with a large proportion of the population in the East favouring Moscow and nearly all in the West favouring Washington and Brussels. Elections and referendums clearly show this divide. Regional autonomy for the Donbass oblasts, as called for in the Minsk Accords, would to some extent have ironed out the problems and would certainly have been infinitely preferable to the present dreadful war.
    1
  9861.  @TheMasterMind144  Very many Russians living in Ukraine have family and friends in Russia and naturally chose to flee there instead of into Ukraine. Your scenario implies that no-one chose to escape until the Russians had actually taken over their towns and villages.
    1
  9862.  @TheMasterMind144  Yanukovich was a Russian puppet in much the same way that Zelensky is a Western one. The fact is that Ukraine is a divided country, both geographically and in in terms of national self-identity. Regional autonomy for Donbass, as outlined in the Minsk Accords, would have helped solve the anomalies, and would certainly have been preferable to the present dreadful war.
    1
  9863.  @TheMasterMind144  I think recognition of Crimea as Russian and regional autonomy for Donbass would probably have been sufficient to satisfy Russia's interests. They need more territory now to ensure a land connection with Crimea, but in any forthcoming peace treaty they might even give that up. In my view, this war is a war between three gangs of crooks: Russian, Ukrainian and American. Zelensky owes his ascendancy to Kolomoyski, who was trying to forge an alliance between Ukrainian crooks and the US. Zelensky may have tried to wriggle out of his obligations since assuming power but when America tells him what to do, he has to do it. I can only hope that before long they will tell him to pack it all in and agree to a sensible peace deal.
    1
  9864.  @TheMasterMind144  I don't think the history of Putin's leadership shows anything more than a desire to protect Russia's surviving interests post the collapse of the SU. I see no evidence of expansionism, merely securing borders and existing economic benefits. Even the present war merely seeks to enshrine realities which were covertly accepted when Ukraine had pro-Russian administrations.
    1
  9865.  @TheMasterMind144  I still think Zelensky is the instrument if not of the US government as a whole, then certainly of commercial elements based largely in the US. Kolomoyski did more than provide funds though. Like Trump in America, Zelensky owes his success largely to exposure on a popular TV show! (Is Kolomoyski actually persona non grata, or is this just another of his tricks? I really don't know.)
    1
  9866.  @TheMasterMind144  Nothing of Putin's actions since coming to power suggests to me that he does anything not directly connected with maintaining Russia's surviving borders and interests, post the collapse of the SU.
    1
  9867.  @TheMasterMind144  No. It made him a very suitable front man for Kolomoisky though. Has he rebelled against his mentor? That does seem likely.
    1
  9868.  @TheMasterMind144  Well they were certainly wrong there, weren't they!?
    1
  9869. He's planning on what he's going to do with the judge and the prosecutors when he gets back to the White House.
    1
  9870. Surely America is entitled to use the promise of eternal bliss under the EU to foment rebellion in foreign countries? And it is surely entitled to do so by buying support for its plans? It is the American Way ,after all - and so what if it results in a bloody war in which many thousands die?
    1
  9871. More of a credulous fool, really.
    1
  9872.  @krashme997  The EU wanted Ukraine, not Russia. This would have denied Russia access to the highly profitable mineral resources of Donbass, which it has operated for centuries, even after Ukrainian independence.
    1
  9873.  @SchnuffiJames  So what? That was then and this is now.
    1
  9874.  @SchnuffiJames  So what? That was then and this is now.
    1
  9875.  @ethancoster1324  But EU restrictions would surely have seriously undercut Russian interests in Donbass to an inacceptable degree. This war is about retaining control over vast resources.
    1
  9876.  @Arctic_Dude  Of course it does. But it is entirely unfair for it to take Donbass and Crimea with it. These areas owe their prosperity entirely to Russian investment and labour. Putin has made it entirely clear that -however regrettable - Western Ukraine can join the EU, but it cannot hive off centuries of Russian investment and labour in the East.
    1
  9877.  @SelfProclaimedEmperor  That is total crap. Russia and Ukraine could have sorted this border and resources dispute out between them without a shot being fired. But greedy Western eyes have prevented this. It is America, the EU and Western investment companies with their eyes on Ukraine's mineral resources which have led us into this dreadful war.
    1
  9878.  @Antimonium  Russia already has access to Ukraine's mineral resources. It is having this taking away which is causing this needless war.
    1
  9879.  @Dread_2137  Why would Russia want to though?
    1
  9880.  @natopor  But the EU did want to take Ukraine on board. And this would have had dire economic consequences for Russia. Peaceful solutions, advanced over more than ten years. were rejected, leaving Russia with little choice other than to take military action.
    1
  9881.  @Boosher_  It is not a false narrative. The false narrative is the one you have been fed.
    1
  9882.  @norbertlipusz3892  You are confusing logic with reason. There are no moral imperatives involved here.
    1
  9883.  @norbertlipusz3892  But what if it was your stupid, drunken grandfather who signed the paper while a cunning lawyer put the pen in his hand?
    1
  9884.  @mihaimoldo  You couldn't find your arse with a compass and a map.
    1
  9885.  @norbertlipusz3892  Huh?
    1
  9886.  @Raven777777777777777  You're not too far out, but the simple fact of the matter is that Ukraine joining NATO and the EU would, in their separate ways, be disastrous for Russia. Whatever foolishness his predecessors may have indulged in, Putin has recognised this and has taken steps accordingly. You mention Budapest. These treaties are just another example of how steps taken to bring a halt to a dangerous situation create a far more dangerous situation a decade or three hence. Without Versailles there would be no World War II , for example. And without the Entente Cordiale and the various treaties following the Franco-Prussian war there would have been no World War I. And without the Budapest Accords there would be no present war in Ukraine.
    1
  9887.  @miguelmartinez5886  No gymnastics needed. I never said the EU did it.
    1
  9888.  @Mr_Topek  Ukraine joining the EU was the trigger which started this war.
    1
  9889.  @damianosdamai1022  You miss the main point, which is that in joining the EU Ukraine would deprive Russia of access to at least 13 trillion dollarsworth of coal, gas, oil and lithium and in joining NATO would severely infringe upon Russia's military security. War has been very much the last resort, all peaceful diplomatic solutions having been rejected by Ukraine, largely at the behest of the US and its allies.
    1
  9890.  @Mr_Topek  Obviously Russia does have a say in the matter, otherwise there would be no war.
    1
  9891.  @Raven777777777777777  This just shows how much Putin would have preferred a peaceful solution.
    1
  9892.  @Dread_2137  This is imperialism only in the sense that Russia is fighting to protect its existing interests.
    1
  9893.  @norbertlipusz3892  Huh?
    1
  9894.  @juliuszkocinski7478  I think Putin realises this. In his essay on Russia/Ukraine relations published just before the invasion he makes it clear that, however regretfully, he cannot stand in the way of Ukraine turning its face to the West - but he draws the line at the more Russianised parts in the East being forced to do so. This is entirely understandable, especially since it would prevent Russia's continued access to the huge mineral wealth of these areas, which are worth billions of dollars a year.
    1
  9895.  @Dread_2137  In fact they do. The mines and industries of Donbass are the result of decades of Russian investment, and many are still owned by Russian companies and their wealth is channelled through Russia. The big mistake was assuming that the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was a discrete country as such. It wasn't. It was an annexe of Russia, more or less, and the Eastern parts and Crimea were only included for administrative reasons - by Russia.
    1
  9896.  @Dread_2137  Possibly so. But you can see Russia's point - and a great deal of force doesn't come into it. Many inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are Russian and prefer rule from Moscow to rule from Kiev. The Russians were generally welcomed with open arms when they went into Crimea in 2014 and the separatist movement in Donbass, although orchestrated by Russia to a large extent, nonetheless has a firm basis in local feeling.
    1
  9897.  @Mr_Topek  Who said anything about a document or agreement? Russia's position has nothing to do with legality or otherwise, it is based on an entirely understandable self-interest.
    1
  9898.  @norbertlipusz3892  This is totally irrelevant. Even if you are forced to process everything through some kind of absurd moral filter before making a judgement, this parallel doesn't even get to first base.
    1
  9899.  @norbertlipusz3892  You are already being silly. Putin is his country's leader, and his country supports his actions. He has been forced into the grim necessity of war to prevent Russia from being humiliated by its enemies, and to prevent a very significant source of energy and revenue from being taken over by foreigners. Before giving medical advice you might perhaps learn a little history, as well as getting rid of the cod psychology and abandoning the high moral tone.
    1
  9900.  @Dread_2137  I don't know where you got this tosh from, probably from CNN. The separatist movement is a genuine response to Kiev's neglect of Donbass, where wages and profits dropped dramatically following Ukrainian independence and where the authorities were pursuing a policy of "de-Russification." Russia helped organise and coalesce it certainly, but this is no different to what America does and it still doing in Georgia and which it did in Ukraine before and after independence. There were practically no Ukrainians living in Crimea when Russia took it from the Ottomans in 1783, and there were very few living there when Russia took it from Ukraine in 2014. The population was overwhelmingly Russian. Tatars were shipped out from Crimea, and indeed Donbass, during imperial times and under Stalin, and replaced by Russians so I suppose you must have got this piece of history mixed up with present day events.
    1
  9901.  @norbertlipusz3892  You do have a talent for drawing absurd parallels, don't you? I can't really see Ronald Macdonald taking up arms to take back a business which he had given up anyway.
    1
  9902.  @Mr_Topek  Who says? Modern Ukraine is largely a Russian construct for one thing, and for another countries obviously have an interest in regulating the behaviour of their neighbours if that behaviour threatens to harm them. As it does in this instance.
    1
  9903.  @norbertlipusz3892  There is no such thing as international law in any real sense of the world. How can there be? A system of law can only exist in a defined community, with a defined set of values and a police and legal system geared to protecting these generally agreed principles. A country can have and police laws because it is such a community, but the world as a whole is not such a community. After World War II the victors, led by America, attempted to set up a system of international law, but it is an utter sham, designed purely to advance American interests on the world stage. Russia is resisting American colonialism, which proceeds under cover of this sham. You can't put the cart before the horse. It is possible that one day the world will be a united entity, and then a system of agreed laws can be put into place; but you can't create a united world by installing a system of laws designed to protect the interests of one country and then expect the world to become united because of it.
    1
  9904.  @norbertlipusz3892  I really do think that the Russian Federation is an entirely different animal to the old Soviet Union. The Russian people recognised its oppression as much as those in Warsaw Pact countries, and this was one of the several reasons for its demise. It might be argued that having experienced the horrors and stupidity of communism, and the difficulties in maintaining an empire, Russia is now in a position where it ought to become integrated into a wider world community - but it must be allowed to do so on its own terms, and not as just another American vassal, which seems to be the only option being made available to it at the moment.
    1
  9905.  @norbertlipusz3892  It has nothing to do with appeasing a dictator and nothing to do with the excesses of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation is an entirely different animal - but it has the right to preserve its territorial identity and its existing commercial interests. Ukraine joining the EU strikes at the heart of the very large commercial benefits Russia still obtains from the mining industry in Donbass, and Ukraine joining NATO strikes at the heart of Russia's security from Western aggression. It is foolish to imagine Ukraine's activities operate in a vacuum. Its policies impinge upon Russia and this gives Russia not only the right but the necessity of attempting to restrict them.
    1
  9906.  @norbertlipusz3892  Why would I want to scold him? He's only doing his job.
    1
  9907.  @norbertlipusz3892  It may not directly benefit Ukraine for Russia to be a member of BRICS, but I cannot see any way in which it brings any direct harm - which, as I have explained, is not the case with Ukraine's potential membership of the EU. That is the essential difference.
    1
  9908.  @norbertlipusz3892  Putin being necessarily ruthless has nothing to do with the fact that Russia is now a reasonably prosperous country, where the shops are full and life is full and corruption and bribery are but a shadow of what they were under communism. It is necessary, for some reason, for people in the West to have something to hate in order that they behave themselves properly. Russia has filled this role for far too long.
    1
  9909. By the Indian strand do you mean the very fine beaches at Goa?
    1
  9910. And the amazing thing is they haven't yet found a way of blaming it on climate change! (Actually the earth's magnetic core is shifting, but they don't want us to know that.)
    1
  9911.  @stratinthehat399  You don't see much about it on the news though, do you? I would have thought that the magnetic north pole marching slowly and steadily up into Siberia after wandering aimlessly about in Northern Canada for centuries might excite a bit of interest. If the poles reverse and all our power grids and communication satellites get destroyed by cosmic radiation it'll put increased carbon levels into the proper perspective.
    1
  9912.  @X0XStephixox  Thank you. I am much re-assured.
    1
  9913.  @honeybadger9425  Full marks for effort! The idea that the miniscule reduction in Arctic sea ice will result in pressure on the earths crust causing volcanoes to pop like a teenager's zits is a masterpiece. You should get a job working for NASA.
    1
  9914. The only important question is what form the new Labour government is likely to take. The degree of infighting is likely to make the Conservatives' little squabbles look positively juvenile.
    1
  9915.  @howtoappearincompletely9739  Let's hope not. Britain now needs firm government - it scarcely matters which direction it is coming from.
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  9916. @ Plunder is the wrong word. The mineral resources i Eastern Ukraine belong largely to Russian companies and are worked almost exclusively by Russian labour. Any "plundering" was what would have happened if Ukraine had joined the EU and forced the Russians to give them up.
    1
  9917.  @jackjones7062  You might also visit the evidence given to various state senate hearings immediately after the election. There are more than 60 hours of this. The Arizona and Georgia hearings are particularly revealing.
    1
  9918.  @jackjones7062  Keep your eyes open for a film entitled 2,000 Mules, soon to be released. The book is already published.
    1
  9919.  @jackjones7062  Google Here Is The Evidence
    1
  9920.  @jackjones7062  Apologies for the scatter gun approach but YouTube censors are intent on keeping the truth hidden. Only some of my posts will get through. Here is the evidence is an information site for journalists which contains over a thousand items of interest.
    1
  9921. Britain led the world in the abolition of slavery, banning he slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833. The government paid out millions to buy slaves from their owners and grant them their freedom. Johnson's book is a comedy. The twisting of history and a total lack of a sense of humour are two characteristics of the socialist mind-set which have helped virtually destroy the creed in the UK.
    1
  9922. Try telling people this and they think you're mad. They're as brainwashed as Soviet citizens were back in the day.
    1
  9923. Because MPs are not supermarket shelf-stackers, that's why.
    1
  9924. @ Because life isn't fair.
    1
  9925. @ Now you're just being silly.
    1
  9926. @ Chicken
    1
  9927. Putin - for good or ill - has saved Russia from becoming yet another US lapdog.
    1
  9928. @LivingroomTV-me9oz Fat chance.
    1
  9929. Putin is far from insane.
    1
  9930. Not needed for now.
    1
  9931. Putin only want Donbass and Crimea - which are Russian in all but name.
    1
  9932. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead and the route to the Donbass border now wide open. No kind of victory at all really.
    1
  9933. Expecting virtue-signalling paranoia junkies to give up their masks??!!! They'll be wearing them in the grave.
    1
  9934.  @slashingbison2503  I'm okay, thanks.
    1
  9935. If the Ukrainians were hoping to engage the Russians in large-scale warfare with this bizarre exercise, then it seems they might be disappointed.
    1
  9936.  @veryimportantrus  Unless my translation app has gone haywire these are the names of stations where Ukrainian materiel was located. They are all a considerable distance from Kramatorsk and the attacks were launched some 10/20 hours before, not 10/20 minutes. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
    1
  9937.  @jaroslaval9159  They do. They have been killing their "own people" just a few miles from here for eight years or so. Around ten thousand of them so far.
    1
  9938. @Russian-HQ destroyed On the contrary, there was considerable provocation. First and foremost was the threat of Ukraine joining NATO which could have led to US nuclear missiles being sited within seven minutes of Moscow, thus upsetting the delicate balance if power which has hitherto prevented nuclear holocaust. Second was the ongoing civil war in Donbass of which this present conflict is an escalation. Around ten thousand people of Russian heritage have been killed by the Ukrainian army and this resource-rich area lies largely in ruins. This latest atrocity at Kramatorsk is just another example of extreme nationalists within the Ukrainian armed forces murdering innocent women and children -with the added bonus that they can blame it on the Russians, and so persuade the easily persuaded to give them more weapons.
    1
  9939.  @rocketscience4516  All are opinions which have the advantage of being the result of rational consideration, rather than knee-jerk reactions to globalist propaganda.
    1
  9940.  @tommohawksaxe2609  Panic-buying certainly has been widespread, but I wouldn't disagree with you about the fragility of our supply chain. It has to be strengthened, and paying more money to the people employed in it will be the only answer.
    1
  9941.  @tommohawksaxe2609  I agree that capitalism is in a crisis to a great extent, largely due to globalist interventionism. Having said that the immutable laws still apply: if there is a need it will be met, insofar as it is possible to do so. In this instance HGV driving has fallen way, way behind in terms of wages, conditions and even respect. People in absurd and pointless jobs get paid far too much and there are many jobs which if they disappeared entirely would have no effect. This doesn't apply to lorry-driving, and so pressure of demand for services ought to result in an increased value placed upon those services. Pay up, or do without - but we simply can't do without.
    1
  9942.  @rocketscience4516  Science these days is a many-splendored thing which has replaced religion as a means of exercising political control. The science of greenhouses gasses is based on laboratory experiment conducted more than a century ago and takes no account whatsoever of continuing discoveries in cosmology which have shown that the sun is not a bunsen burner and the atmosphere is not a static entity trapped in a metal container. Your rationality is a delusion and your enthusiastic credulousness is a great asset to those who manipulate your every move.
    1
  9943.  @rocketscience4516  If I must accept your taxonomy of scientific disciplines then let it be so. I was referring to recent developments in the understanding of the structure of the solar system, with especial regard to the behaviour of the sun. Obviously the dense atmosphere of Venus affects its surface temperature to a considerable extent, but comparisons with the recent increase in the earth's atmospheric carbon levels are a little far-fetched, surely? How, for example, do you react to the suggestion that the pattern of oscillation created by this increase merely redirects reflected heat, rather than invariably reflecting it directly downwards? And what proportion of reflected heat passes through this alleged "greenhouse" anyway? Isn't it more like a tattered net of gossamer which appears to have evolved to act as a sort of thermostat controlling heat in relation to atmospheric pressure and the proximity and position of the sun? I must admit that these and similar questions do occupy me somewhat in my solitary fastness, and if you could dredge through the memory of your scientific training to answer them I would be most grateful.
    1
  9944.  @rocketscience4516  Well, that wasn't very helpful, I must say. I certainly don't pretend to understand the subject in anything like depth, but the questions raised by my ignorance seem to find few answers. The fact that the icecaps are not melting, sea levels are rising by a few millimetres a year, as normal, extreme weather events seem no more frequent nor more extreme than they ever have been and the gradual (and fluctuating) rise in temperatures seems entirely in accord with historical patterns over hundreds of thousands of years are all things which contribute to my scepticism. The apparent manipulation of data in the cause of "homogenization" adds greatly to my suspicions that what we have here is a political agenda to which "science" is but the handmaiden. As far as the sun is concerned, are its regular 11-year pulses of plasma followed by a further 11-year sequences after its poles reversed factored into climate change projections as far as you are aware?
    1
  9945.  @rocketscience4516  You're such a busy person. I do hope your job doesn't involve mending windows, otherwise you might melt.
    1
  9946.  @rocketscience4516  Don't worry. I was hesitant to draw your attention to it, however obliquely, since I am not infrequently guilty of such embarrassments myself!
    1
  9947.  @amayastrata4629  Yes. I was selecting the most up-to-date figures available. You have made my point exactly. They clearly show that not only have Covid 19 deaths reduced dramatically (which we already know) but would seem to imply the possibility that it is running out of victims. Ie. all those extra deaths in the figures you provide were due to happen in July , August and September but they can't because they have happened already.
    1
  9948.  @darthkek1953  Russia has always had conscription. All Russians are expected to do two or three years military service unless they can get out of it - which quite a few do.
    1
  9949. But clever.
    1
  9950. Like the BBC, the British police seem infected by Wokavirus. If Nigel Farage had been a Labour MP visiting Dover to welcome the illegal immigrants and ensure their safety and comfort he would probably have been given a police escort and a nice cup of tea afterwards.
    1
  9951.  @davidkennedy8929  That's not going to happen though. Crimea is Russian and a similar case can be made for Donbass. The people there would surely prefer Russian administration to living in a permanent war zone.
    1
  9952.  @Aaron-rw3lv  What they've done is to take steps to protect their country from American imperialist aggression. No shame in that.
    1
  9953.  @steveborgmalta  It was - about a thousand years ago. Putin doesn't want the whole of Ukraine only the Russian bits.
    1
  9954.  @steveborgmalta  The whole of modern Ukraine is a Russian creation. Crimea, added in 1954 by Russia has an 80% Russian population. In the Donbass, added in 1922, the industrial areas and cities have similar proportions of Russian residents.
    1
  9955.  @corvomichele  Zelensky brought this on himself. Putin 's solution was to grant autonomy to Donbass, acknowledge Crimea as Russian and for Ukraine to promise not to join NATO In my view these were entirely reasonable demands given the historical and ethnic situations of these areas. Under pressure from America and its lackeys Zelensky refused and instead set in motion plans to retake Crimea and Donbass, using a mult-billion $ army supplied by NATO. Invasion therefore was the only rational response. The tragedy is that now there is a good chance that Russia will get even more than it initially wanted at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
    1
  9956.  @obstreperous1113  IN the eyesof US arselickers you mean. Most will revise their opinions as the political situation changes.
    1
  9957.  @hannahdyson7129  Children are effective destroyers of the covid virus. The efficiency of the immune response in their noses is sufficient to ensure that any virus that gets in there has no chance to reproduce in anything like the large numbers which occur in adults. Any child which ends up with covid in any virulent, long-lasting form can only do so due to the existence of some life-threatening condition which has weakened their immune system.
    1
  9958.  @Yeknodathon  Comparisons may certainly be drawn. In terms of death rates covid is about three times worse that the worse flu, but given the ages of the majority of victims the number of years of life lost puts it more or less at the bottom of the list of respiratory infections which have affected this country.
    1
  9959.  @Yeknodathon  Which falsehoods? The falsehoods perpetrated by the government and their advisors have done incalculable harm to this country. And I don't suppose anyone takes much notice of me anyway - or indeed, sadly of those epidemiologists and other experts who share my concerns.
    1
  9960.  @Yeknodathon  But all my opinions have a scientific basis. They are not knee-jerk guesswork like so many of the policies you have presumably been slavishly following.
    1
  9961.  @Yeknodathon  Is this some sort of code?
    1
  9962.  @simoneclarke7746  And due to their generally low viral load children infecting other children and adults is comparatively rare. https://adc.bmj.com/content/106/5/429
    1
  9963.  @simoneclarke7746  If you look at the BMJ article I sent you you will see that children only very rarely spread the disease, either to other children or to adults. Forcing any child under 16 or so to wear a facemask is an utterly gross and pointless thing to do.
    1
  9964.  @simoneclarke7746  I realise the DMJ paper is rather long and technical, so here is a relevant extract: "However, more recent studies report that children are less likely to get infected after contact with a SARS-CoV-2-positive individual. It has been suggested that children and adolescents have similar viral loads and may therefore be as likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 as adults. In addition, the viral load may be similar in asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals. However, reassuringly, transmission in schools from children either to other children or to adults has been rare." There have actually been some tentative studies that indicate exposure to young children with covid can actually build up immunity in adults. It also seems that reaction to rhinoviruses can also wipe out the coronavirus pretty quickly. In other words, if you've got a headcold you can't catch covid! Still early days on that one though.
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  9965. Death rates continue to decline in all age groups though.
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  9966. Why so? Fascism simply means a collection of strong men bound to strong leader. It comes from Roman legionaries piling up their spears together around a platoon-leader's pike. Mussolini and Hitler -both socialists - took it on board. Far left infiltrators who lie, cheat and bully to push their creed can quite reasonably be described as "fascist" and I hope the term will become widely applied to them. They certainly deserve it.
    1
  9967. A brave man. But what has happened to the millions of dollars of sophisticated military hardware "sold" to Ukraine by the Americans? Why are they being forced to fight with Molotov cocktails and army-surplus assault rifles?
    1
  9968.  @andrewwilliams3137  There must be some reason for it. DEI is a disease, really. There may have been the best of reasons behind it, but it is causing immense damage in many areas of society. Trump is right to want to see it dispensed with. All we can do is hope that employers are sensible enough to realise the worth of applicants on an individual basis.
    1
  9969.  @berndschreiber1167  Minsk II. Minsk 1 merely attempted to impose a ceasefire. Minsk II adds the important element of self-determination for Donbass, which if it had been achieved, would have prevented the war.
    1
  9970. This is all because natural immunity has been compromised by masks and lockdowns.
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  9971.  @chaoscorsair  They might have been happy to get another Russian-leaning government back in power - but Putin is on record as saying that he doesn't want any part of Ukraine other than those parts of Russia which were stuck onto the SSR of Ukraine by the Soviets - namely, Donbass and Crimea. This isn't for purely sentimental reasons, of course. There's an estimated $13-14 trillion of coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals there.
    1
  9972.  @michaeldunham3385  Soldiers die in wars. It's a thing. The objective of the war is purely to recapture the mineral-rich parts of Russia mistakenly appended to the new country of Ukraine when it was formed in 1991. That objective is now within sight.
    1
  9973.  @ll0l0l0lolo0l  Long before then, I would imagine.
    1
  9974. What world are you people living in? Putin's war aims are to secure Donbass and Crimea and he's nine/tenths on the way to achieving exactly that.
    1
  9975.  @orvarino  Nice one Oscar!
    1
  9976.  @mrharry448  I am English, since you ask. My chosen name does echo a character in Peter Pan, I suppose. Tick Tock.
    1
  9977. @Mister Dude Not much point. The BBC hasn't had a hardon since Suez.
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  9978. I's not just your dog that's barking, is it?
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  9979. An interesting fact is that the ICC prosecutor who is taking Putin to court, Karim Ahmad Khan, is the brother of Imran Ahmad Khan, a convicted paedophile and former UK Conservative MP, who was released less than halfway through his sentence, reputedly thanks to the influence of his lawyer brother. This is probably irrelevant, but it gives a certain grotesque symmetry to the allegations against Putin, who has done nothing other than remove children from war zones, and from the internationally notorious hell-holes which are Ukraine's orphanages and "care homes."
    1
  9980.  @adshdhhhd7783  Why stop when you're winning though?
    1
  9981. You are not allowed to see the evidence. It is not permitted to present it.
    1
  9982. ​ @tonyg2554 Works both ways. And Russia can afford to lose more.
    1
  9983. You will doubtless be pleased to know that we far-right fascists are a bit fed up with Nige for one reason or another. Many of us would like Jazza to replace him, as being more of a Trump-like figure
    1
  9984. As an optimist I watched this and was not a bit alarmed Mindless credulity does not equate with common sense - and empathy, or lack of it, doesn't enter into the equation at all.
    1
  9985.  @marviwilson1853  They are totally different in character. It is utterly absurd to compare the two, or the two situations with each other.
    1
  9986. What's to be scared of? Your chances of dying were never very high if you were under sixty, and they're even less now. Get a life!
    1
  9987.  @kevinlee7678  Even better! I'd really like to be wrong!
    1
  9988. They already have. Unfortunately there aren't enough racial minorities, brainwashed university graduates and sexual deviants to make up the numbers.
    1
  9989.  @weswheel4834  Well if you reckon millions leaving your country and millions dying on the battlefield and your economy in ruins is "doing alright" then you might have a point.
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  9990.  @Darthdog4957  Putin is nothing like Hitler.
    1
  9991.  @maxfracture2185  Russian military is pretty crap, riddled with corruption, nepotism and drunkenness. Bu the "Kiev in three days" thing is a myth. It was just something said to the troops to encourage them.
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  9992. Here's hoping.
    1
  9993. ​@Mere bad manners.
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  9994. To Russia... (history, ethnicity, right of conquest)
    1
  9995. Freedom Fighter If he was a proven quack I would consider it a strong possibility. (I don't think the experts are liars, by the way. I just don't think they're very expert.)
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  9996. Ryan Baker What are you babbling about? There is no analogy here at all that I can see.
    1
  9997. Eric Beckstead When it is applied objectively. Contemporary climate 'science' is not. It is invariably manipulated to support the AGW dogma.
    1
  9998. Eric Beckstead I despise both the propaganda and the 'science'. It just takes one fallacy to be injected into a computer model for that model to become corrupted. When models fail to accurately predict outcomes then a true scientist would search for the fallacy. This is not the practice in climatology. Instead the fallacy is included in even more complex models produced on even more powerful computers and when reality still won't play ball results are manipulated. The new manipulations are inserted into new models and so it goes on. Fortunately this egregious behaviour is not usual in other disciplines and current developments in solar physics and cosmology will hopefully set the balance straight before very long..
    1
  9999. Ryan Baker Jesus Christ you're thick! If I'm told I've got cancer and I've only got weeks to live and 20 years later I'm still alive, then I haven't got cancer. If I've got a spot on the end of my nose and 20 years later I've still got a spot on the end of my nose then I've got a spot on the end of my nose. Cancer is real because millions die from it. Climate change is real because the climate is changing. Always has. Always will What is not real is the idea that mankind is causing it. What is also not real is the idea that any serious disasters are going to suddenly occur because of it.
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  10000. Freedom Fighter No. I haven't been brainwashed and I don't have a career to consider. I am a journalist with many years experience in dealing with religious cults and financial scams. This one's a real humdinger.
    1
  10001. Ryan Baker You guys! You and Eric and Freedom Fighter are reacting exactly as members of a cult usually do when confronted by heresy. You huddle together like sheep seeking the comfort of the herd and conclude that the heretic must be tn the employ of some sinister force about which you have been warned. You know you cannot be wrong, and therefore the heretic must have some other motive than a desire to discover truth. You become increasingly hysterical and angry, and when the tactics of rebuttal you have been conditioned to use fail you either sulk or descend into childish insult. In many cases you will become violent. From Nazism to Communism to Scientology to Climate Activism, and all the con-trick cults before and in between, the pattern is always the same. People with conformist tendencies, low intellect but an ability to retain and regurgitate information become the tools of highly intelligent psychopaths. Watch out for the Kool-aid boys.
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  10002. The flaw in your comparison is that unlike the majority of those who have died with covid, those soldiers and blitz victims would have expected many years of useful life had it not been for the war. In terms of years of meaningful life lost covid is still way behind several influenzas. This is not to say of course that this ramshackle excuse for a government has not made a disgraceful mess of dealing with the epidemic.
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  10003.  @clivethomas6864  And I am sure that a great many weren't expecting to. People have to die sometime and unless you are particularly miserable and ill, you will want that day to be as far off as possible - but having said that most of the people who have died would have died soon anyway -covid or not and they will have known it.. Those few weeks or months extra have been bought at a tremendous cost to the general community both at home and abroad. Babies in Third World countries are dying of malnutrition as the economic consequences of lockdowns in the West reach them. Is an old person's life worth less than a younger person's? Well yes. They have made their contribution. Most people who have died in this country have been over 90 and 75% over the age of 75. I'm getting on a bit myself but I wouldn't want any kids in Africa to have to starve to death just for a few more weeks in a wheelchair.
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  10004.  @superhumantrueman  What "allies" ?
    1
  10005.  @superhumantrueman  Ukraine is not our ally, much less Iran or "Palestine."
    1
  10006.  @superhumantrueman  Ukraine is not an ally. It is merely auditioning for the role of client state. As for Iran and Palestine I thought from your post you may possibly been have referring to that other war currently taking place in which Ukraine groupies tend to be the same sort of people who support the Arabs.
    1
  10007.  @superhumantrueman  You really should try to investigate the background of this conflict. Russia has been forced into this action after trying for twenty years to resolve peacefully the border anomalies created when the new country of Ukraine was given the same boundaries as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. The truth of the matter is that Kiev and Moscow could almost certainly have resolved the problems had it not been for Western interference - interference motivated by a greedy desire to lay hands on the mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  10008.  @superhumantrueman  It is not a crime to protect your country's interests. The mines and industries of Crimea and Donbass have been developed, financed and worked by Russians for centuries. Even after the new country of Ukraine was created, and Kiev neglected these industries, Russian owners continued to derive what benefit they could from them. Now that lithium and other rare earth minerals have been discovered there in large quantities, foreign interests have "persuaded" the Kiev government to take them from the Russians and sell them off. Putin cannot allow this. The income derived from this industries represent a substantial input into Russia's economy.
    1
  10009.  @superhumantrueman  You are missing the point - or several points. Ukraine and Russia are both oligarchies. And if Ukraine had joined the EU it would have placed severe restrictions on Russia and damaged its economy. That is a real threat, as indeed was the continuing proposal for Ukraine to join NATO.
    1
  10010.  @superhumantrueman  But a goodly proportion of Ukraine is occupied by Russians, who are more Russian than Ukrainian. It really is two countries, with many of those in the Eastern parts still feeling loyalty to Moscow. Some form of partition is clearly the answer to these difficulties.
    1
  10011.  @superhumantrueman  Three decades - and as the result of a mistake. The borders are no longer recognised though - which is rather the point. Russia no longer recognises them and nor do many of the people living within them. Drawing lines on bits of paper doesn't make a country.
    1
  10012. Does Black History Month make any mention of the tens of thousands of slaves who escaped the plantations to join with the British during the American War of Independence? Just askin'
    1
  10013. Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    1
  10014. There was no insurrection and people are in jail or no good cause - other than to foster the myth.
    1
  10015.  @Th3Dreamcrusher  Sadly this Trump blind spot on the otherwise excellent Sky New Aus seems to go back to a decades-old spat between him and Rupert Murdoch.
    1
  10016.  @chadl1876  All will be overturned. It's got beyond the stage of whether or not he is guilty - the guilt lies with those who have cheapened the judicial process by abusing it for attempted political gain. It is a good example of natural justice that these sordid efforts will bring Trump more votes than they will cost him.
    1
  10017.  @chadl1876  The only people guilty here are those who have abused the judicial process in the pursuit of political gain.
    1
  10018.  @aaeedee35  Ukraine is - and has been for eight years.
    1
  10019.  @tylerbrennon4023  And disproved by multiple others - far more convincingly.
    1
  10020. I do find it rather odd that a Conservative Prime Minister is calling for higher wages to be paid to HGV drivers, while socialists seem to want to undercut them by importing foreign labour.
    1
  10021.  @davidharris5736  Which were low. If it should happen that foreign drivers are again enabled to work freely in the UK the million or so UK drivers with unused HGV licences will not be enticed back behind the wheel with offers of higher wages, will they?
    1
  10022.  @markargent4962  I refer my honourable friend to my previous answer.
    1
  10023.  @davidpryle3935  The ones I know rather welcome the idea of earning £70,000 a year.
    1
  10024.  @markargent4962  That's the number of letters the government is sending out to persuade LGV licence holders to get back behind the wheel. And blaming Brexit for the shortage is pretty silly. The problem has been going on for years with tens of thousands of licence holders quitting every year.
    1
  10025.  @markargent4962  The departure of the European drivers has certainly tipped the balance - because they quit all at once. But this could turn out to be a good thing for drivers as a whole in this country since employers (and agency sharks) will be forced to vastly increase wages and improve conditions in order to attract former drivers and encourage new ones to train.
    1
  10026.  @markargent4962  Stop paying them badly. Which was my original point. Workers are now in the position of being able to insist on higher wages because cheap labour from the continent has been removed. If businesses can prove they can't afford to pay such wages then the government will simply have to subsidise them to do so. Prices and taxes will increase of course, but as long as the labour market is active wages will have to increase to keep pace. Immigration from poor countries is simply a way of keeping wages low in richer ones.
    1
  10027.  @teddyboysdontknit810  Surely it is you who is being xenophobic by suggesting that British people are inherently unwilling to do certain jobs? You are also incorrect. Many of the jobs you mention are efficiently carried out by British Asians, and if they were not here native white British would certainly do them, as they have done in the past. HGV drivers are another case. It is a highly responsible, highly skilled occupation with several social disadvantages. Long before Brexit drivers were leaving in droves due to over-regulation and poor wages. Cheap labour from Europe has enabled the situation to continue. Wages will now have to find their right level and a figure of around £70,000 a year should be attractive enough and eminently justifiable. I do not see any reason why in a free market there should be less choice in the shops or even price hikes in real terms. The cost of higher wages will be passed on of course, but a lessening of regulations will compensate to some degree. You speak of history. Do you realise how much your arguments resemble those of 19th century industrialists who objected to education reforms and reductions in working hours because it meant their wages bills would be higher - and, shaking their heads, warned this would mean inflation, higher prices and reductions in output?
    1
  10028.  @markargent4962  I didn't actually vote for Brexit as it happens, but now it is here we should do our best to take advantage of it where we can.
    1
  10029.  @markargent4962  My view is that there will be short term economic difficulties and problems, such as the present one; but they will inevitably be overcome. Describing Brexit as the "worst economic disaster in history" just goes to show the absurdity of an extreme view. In the long run the EU is doomed to fail because it seeks to create a political unity in Europe which can never be viable. Europe is not a place. It does not exist. Only the countries within it do. Sensible trading relationships between these countries is one thing; attempting to forge them into some kind of federal nation is a process which is neither practical nor desirable. The EU will have to collapse at some point and at least if Britain is out first it gives us the chance to recreate our place in the world.
    1
  10030.  @markargent4962  It's not that I couldn't be bothered, it's just that I was undecided on whether the immediate and inevitable short-term difficulties would be compensated for by the fact of our escape.
    1
  10031.  @markargent4962  Tories care about having a peaceful and prosperous nation. Unfortunately some of them don't care quite enough about how this achieved. Which is where you lot come in!
    1
  10032. There is no longer a Republican Party. There is no longer a Democrat Party. All there is now is MAGA v The Rest.
    1
  10033. It could be even more shocking. Up until January 1 there were apparently just 75 deaths "involving Omicron" according to official statistics It seems highly likely that the current figures may mostly consists of a residue of Delta deaths.
    1
  10034. These people are brainwashed idiots.
    1
  10035. I don't think even a brain transplant would allow Phil and his followers to understand Trump's devious dealings. You are all just too nice!
    1
  10036. @ Nothing like. Trump appears to work on instinct as much as anything.
    1
  10037. He has every right. As a Brit I have to say that I find the US justice system utterly corrupt and contemptible. It's like something out of the18th century.
    1
  10038.  @Mathew-8896 A clearly politically biased judge sitting in a trial which clearly has a political rather than a judicial motive. Putting witnesses on the stand for the purpose of attempting to denigrate the defendant instead of providing evidence relevant to the charges - charges which in themselves have clearly been dredged up from a series of technicalities in order to denigrate the defendant, rather than to punish a wrongdoing.
    1
  10039.  @Mathew-8896  Thank you also. Trump may well be guilty, but those who have engineered this charade are guilty of a far greater crime.
    1
  10040. Putin doesn't owe them money.
    1
  10041.  @LazerEyez  It's not their colour. It's their nasty habits.
    1
  10042.  @LazerEyez  It's not their colour. It's their intransigence.
    1
  10043. Actually, tank crews are reservists, not conscripts.
    1
  10044. Kansas is suing Pfizer alleging serious health damage as a result of covid vaccines. There is little doubt that these procedures have resulted in adverse side-effects- including the most extreme side-effect of all. A full investigation is needed as soon as possible.
    1
  10045. Lucifer Black Please PLEASE don't tell me that you think the NZ eruption was the result of climate change.
    1
  10046. He added $4.75 trillion. Biden has added $12.55 trillion.
    1
  10047.  @johnstone7697  According to the US Treasury Department, as conveyed to me by Google, the National Debt was $22.72 trillion in 2019 and $26.95 trillion in 2020.
    1
  10048.  @johnstone7697  In 2019 the figure was $22.72 trillion and in 2020 it was $26.95 trillion.
    1
  10049.  @johnnydoe3603  I'm not lying. Ask Google.
    1
  10050.  @johnnydoe3603  I asked Bing and Bing told me these figures come from the US Treasury Department.
    1
  10051.  @bera0014  I've made nothing up. The figures I've been given by my search engine are from the US Treasury Department.
    1
  10052. During the peak covid years there were next-to-no hospitalisations for flu. Odd, that.
    1
  10053. It's a total myth that the air attacks are designed to cause civilian discontent. Experience shows that they tend to strengthen resolve - and Putin knows this as much as anyone. They are designed to restrict military movement, to cut off supply lines and so on. Imagine trying to move armies around without trains. Imagine fuel depots where the pumps don't work. Like so much else in this war we say what we think Putin is doing, and when he hasn't done it, we are told he has failed. The whole ethos of the support for Ukraine is built on lies and thousands are dying as a result. Time to call a halt
    1
  10054.  @michaeldunham3385  How do you know I've never been to Russia? If Putin is using NK soldiers it is because they are cheap and expendable. It's called промокательная бумага - look it up.
    1
  10055.  @michaeldunham3385  No, he's using them (if he is) because they are cheap and expendable. There is a word for such troops in Russia its промокательная бумага. Look it up.
    1
  10056.  @michaeldunham3385  No, if he's using them it's because they come cheap and are expendable. And they're not Russian.
    1
  10057.  @michaeldunham3385  промокательная бумага
    1
  10058. What Musk is doing isn't exactly being covered up, is it? And you seem to ignore the fact that, at a stroke, Trump has got both Canada and Mexico to man-up on drug and people smuggling.
    1
  10059. Marc Lecarre I heard she is actually a 47 year old man suffering from some rare and terrible medical condition. He is only kept alive with injections from the pituitary glands of puppy-dogs. I'm sure this can't be true.
    1
  10060. The US so-called justice system is utterly disgusting. It's as though they got stuck in the 18th century.
    1
  10061. I'm quite sure Trump and Putin both know exactly what the solution to the Ukraine situation is. Trump's problem is selling it to an American and European population which for almost three years has been labouring under the misapprehension that they are supporting a crusade for freedom and democracy.
    1
  10062. Good for you!
    1
  10063.  @michelem9277  Any more than thinking it isn't makes it not so.
    1
  10064. The conceit, greed and incompetence of the US military intelligence network have led directly to this dreadful situation. The only way Ukraine can come even close to winning is if America and its allies continue to pour further wasted billions down its throat.
    1
  10065.  @frogandspanner  No irony at all. Perhaps we should wait for a year or two to see who's the fool and who isn't.
    1
  10066.  @CircusOfValues-BH486  Who knows indeed. However there is more than a fair chance that if Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine everything could be all sweetness and kisses in a few weeks.
    1
  10067.  @CircusOfValues-BH486  He's certainly fooling plenty of people. He may well have considerable territorial ambitions but at the moment all he wants is for the Russian inhabitants of the Eastern provinces to be spared persecution and for Ukraine not to become a NATO missile base.
    1
  10068.  @dontfeedthetroll7224  No. He probably wants to restore the Russian Empire. But this is just a local quarrel, designed to shut out the Yanks and the EU.
    1
  10069.  @davidpaz9389  And profits.
    1
  10070. It is rumoured that later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire. So far, Russia has refrained from massive bombing or missile attacks, nuclear or otherwise. That may well now change. The Russians seem to care very little how many troops or how much materiel they lose on the ground - but they are far from stupid. They are not playing the role we have assigned to them. Their current losses are entirely predictable and must have been anticipated - as indeed must have been the response - which may well extend to exercising the nuclear option.
    1
  10071.  @holymoley1920  At least you are happy in your world of delusion.
    1
  10072.  @lynnlovattjones4171  No need to be his buddy. Anyone with a grain of sense can do it.
    1
  10073.  @A4Natty  I hate to point out a typo. I do it myself often enough. But I am not taking gibberish nor talking it. I am speaking the truth, hard as it may be for you to accept it.
    1
  10074.  @nomennescio4604  What was happening in Istanbul then? A tea party?
    1
  10075.  @PaulDenison-r7r  Budapest is dead in the water. It was, anyway, just another of those cunning treaties got up by the Americans to fool people into thinking they were getting something they weren't. Putin saw through it and made it clear it didn't apply to his regime. No treaty lasts forever.
    1
  10076.  @Lepocoloco  You have it all about face. This war and the treaties that preceded it are simply about America and its allies turning Ukraine into a client state and getting their hands on its immense mineral riches - which Russia has spent decades of blood, sweat and tears in developing.
    1
  10077.  @PaulDenison-r7r  No treaty lasts forever, Putin didn't renege on it. He merely pointed out that it not longer applied. Budapest was a dreadful mistake .It created the situation leading to the present war because it made the boundaries of the new country of Ukraine the same as the boundaries of the former SSR of Ukraine. Russia, in fact, had appended bits of Russia - Eastern Ukraine and later Crimea - on to the Ukraine SSR purely for reasons of administrative and logistical convenience. These areas are Russian in all but name and attempting to drag them into the deals Kiev wants with NATO and the EU is the main reason for the conflict.
    1
  10078.  @Lepocoloco  Minsk was an attempt to ratify a complex situation. Essentially, Ukraine is a deeply divided country with the Western part looking to Europe and America, and the Eastern part still looking to Russia in many important respects. Minsk was designed to find a compromise by giving regional autonomy to the Donbass republics so they would not be included in any deals Kiev made with the EU, which would have prevented them continuing to trade with Russia. Whatever anyone might think of this compromise it was surely better than a war in which many thousands have died.
    1
  10079.  @A4Natty  The Russian Federation is neither the USSR or the Russian Empire. All it has ever done is try to defend itself against US imperial aggression in Georgia, Chechnya and now Ukraine.
    1
  10080.  @Scaleyback317  That instead of taking steps grant autonomy to Donbass, Ukraine re-armed itself in order to be able to take it back by force..
    1
  10081.  @Scaleyback317  Putin had a very clear idea of what to expect. The Russians in the East did indeed welcome his troops, as did the Russians in Crimea in 2014. He did not expect Ukrainians to do so. Before you go any further I strongly suggest you read his essay on Russian/Ukraine relations published shortly before the invasion. It makes his position very clear.
    1
  10082.  @dorotazapolnik234  The rebellion in Donbass had very real causes. It was certainly aided by the Russians, but the underlying causes cannot be ignored. The people there could not put up with their culture being dismantled, nor their wages plummeting. The owners of the mines and factories - generally Russian - could not put up with businesses being nationalised and then sold off to American and other foreign agencies.
    1
  10083.  @stevenmartin8828  No. It is you who apparently has no clue. Why don't you tell me what you think the reason is?
    1
  10084.  @A4Natty  It sold them instead. To Wagner. They were no longer in the possession of the Russian state.
    1
  10085.  @A4Natty  Yes. Anyone can declare a treaty no longer valid. There have been numerous examples of this throughout history. (I am not Russian, by the way. I am English.)
    1
  10086.  @A4Natty  I think you're wrong there. There was deep resentment of the process of de-Russification in the East, exacerbated by a huge drop in wages and general neglect of services by the Kiev government.
    1
  10087.  @A4Natty  None. Unless you count the Soviet Union as a country rather than a federation.
    1
  10088.  @A4Natty  It was the Soviet Union which did this, not the Russian Federation. You cannot seem to grasp that these are two entirely different entities.
    1
  10089.  @Scaleyback317  But it was the Soviet Union which did these things, not the Russian Federation. The RF cannot be blamed for the policies of the SU.
    1
  10090.  @Scaleyback317  You are not only apparently ignorant but reluctant to have your ignorance corrected. Putin has no wish to conquer Kiev, nor any of Western Ukraine. The SMO was designed purely to draw the Ukrainian army out in order to fight it on Ukrainian territory, instead of in Donbass, which was Ukraine's intention. The tragedy is that I am sure Ukraine and Russia could have arrived at a peaceful solution were it not for the intervention of foreign - predominantly American - interests who have mistakenly seen the vast mineral riches of Eastern Ukraine as ripe for the picking. (And Vladimir Putin is a highly educated and perceptive commentator whose views and analysis cannot be ignored if you have any wish to understand the present situation. But apparently you do not. You merely wish to unload the rage years of Western propaganda have instilled in you.)
    1
  10091.  @A4Natty  Law and order in Russia compares very favourably with the situation in many Western countries. There are Westerners who have emigrated there for this very reason.
    1
  10092.  @A4Natty  This shows nothing of the kind. Karelina's sentence may have been harsh by some standards, but she nonetheless supported the enemy in a time of war. In my country, if someone like her had contributed to the German cause during World War II they would haver been charged with treason.
    1
  10093.  @Espiritu-o7x  Is this so? How do you know?
    1
  10094.  @A4Natty  The sentence on this woman was indeed very harsh, as I have already said. And obviously Russia is at war with Ukraine -whatever technical description the Russians may use to define it. The point I was trying to make is that in times of war providing aid and comfort to the enemy -in whatever form - cannot be tolerated. The analogy I made was simply that if, during the Second World War, an Englishwoman had donated money to a charity providing help to Germans she too would have been charged with an offence. I agree that Russia is a very corrupt country, run by crooks - as indeed is Ukraine - which is why I find it so hard to understand how we in the West can claim any moral high ground in so fiercely supporting one set of crooks in their quarrel with another. The Russian crooks have a better case for claiming ownership of Donbass and Crimea, in my view, which makes me resent even more being expected to cheer for Zelensky.
    1
  10095.  @A4Natty  I see where you are coming from. It is a nice legal point -typical of the sort of cunning trickery of lawyers worldwide, but American ones especially. Let me put it like this: Russia is at war with Ukraine, and obviously knows it, even though it does not say so officially, because to do so would be detrimental to its position as, according to the US-created concept of "international law", this would restrict its strategies. The woman is indeed behaving in a moral way in that she believes here money will go towards relieving human suffering. From the point of view of the Russian state, however, she is behaving in a way which - however insignificantly - contributes to the comfort of Russian's enemies.
    1
  10096.  @Comm.DavidPorter  Russia did not violate Minsk, Ukraine did by failing to make provision for granting regional autonomy to Donbass, which was the prime objective of the treaty.
    1
  10097.  @A4Natty  Was the Mink upset? Seriously though, even if this happened (in fact it was Wagner, not the Russian State) this is a minor breach compared to Ukraine's total disregard for the main issue.
    1
  10098.  @A4Natty  AS I keep telling you, no treaty lasts forever and Budapest was a bad treaty to start with. A treaty is a temporary measure, not a noose round a country's neck.
    1
  10099.  @A4Natty  Russia can't be expected to have an Islamist state on its doorstep.
    1
  10100.  @A4Natty  But Russia had rather stopped being aggressive at this point, had it not? The SU had just collapsed and the Russian Federation has never done anything other than try to protect its existing borders and its existing interests.
    1
  10101.  @dorotazapolnik234  You are right about the country being divided into a pro-Western West and a largely pro-Russian East. In fact, it is a country in name only, and two countries, in fact. So each of these two communities should be able to choose their own destiny. And Ukraine isn't winning at all. Russia's grim plans are succeeding. Donbass will almost certainly be captured before long and it will then be merely a question of admitting that - like Crimea - it has returned to being part of Russia.
    1
  10102. That thought has been in many people's minds long before Johnson became PM!
    1
  10103. Dulce periculim Tommy Robinson was in the BNP for about five minutes. He quit when he took one of his many black mates along and they wouldn't let him in. Tommy Robinson is not a racist. He just greatly fears the spread of radical Islam. So do I.
    1
  10104. Exciting times. The right wing is definitely in the process of reforming itself but, as in the USA, the old battle lines are now defunct. It isn't Tory versus Labour any more, but a globalist uniparty against the rest. I don't think the Corbynite, old school Left in the Labour party realise what they have got themselves into, whereas we of the Right have seen quite clearly what must be done. Conservatism is a broad church and the new opposition which is forming - and which will hopefully form a government to save the nation -may well include present-day Conservatives and may even keep the name, but it will be a very different animal to the one which ruled so ineptly for fourteen years.
    1
  10105. You could see this coming a mile off. While the Gray report might well be a damp squib, howling for police intervention was clearly a huge mistake. Those who did so have fallen into an obvious trap. Not only can the investigation be spun out for weeks and even months but the whole premise of the alleged "crime" can be called into question. Boris may be a bozo but Tory strategists behind the scenes are a very cunning bunch and sadly, some Labour supporters are very, very stupid. All is not lost, however. Boris will go as soon as the Tory hierarchy decree - but not until he has introduced right-wing legislation. The reduction in universal credit period is only the start.
    1
  10106.  @jiversteve  I am told you are a clone account. Perhaps you could clone my account and say ridiculous things which I could then have fun denying. Also I have a friend called Matt Greek 1066 who lives mainly over on Maximilien Robespierre. You could clone him too. I'm sure he would be grateful.
    1
  10107.  @ijc9984  I've deleted the comment you refer to - simply because the situation is more complicated than can be expressed in a few lines. It is true nonetheless that Murdoch is now only a bit player when it comes to political influence in the UK - and indeed in the world.
    1
  10108.  @ausbrum  And Vanguard and BlackRock.
    1
  10109.  @curlyjoh9055  Profit rules.
    1
  10110.  @ausbrum  You are having to go far abroad and delve deep into history. The present-day influencers are the globalists who operate Vanguard and BlackRock which between them own much of the world's media, most of the world's vaccine- producing companies and the medical journals which peer-review their skewed studies. Johnson's support for zero carbon is no coincidence either. He let it slip the other week with his use of the word "lucrative." V and BR are essentially hedge fund companies as much as anything and they are creating an entirely new world currency in the form of carbon bonds which will eventually replace the dollar and gold as the standard against which other currencies will be set. Control of the means of production through trading in permissions to exceed agreed carbon limits is the new key to great wealth. Murdoch is an an old-school venture capitalist and he probably knows that tinkering with UK election results is no longer particularly lucrative.
    1
  10111.  @curlyjoh9055  A reasonable point. Just for the ego-trip, I guess! (One wonders if Jerry Hall gets on with Lady Nut-nuts in this context. I'm sure Rupert would like to give his missus a Prime Minister as a present!)
    1
  10112.  @kenwaller670  Get fed up more then.
    1
  10113.  @Anashadk  What the UN recognises doesn't matter a damn. What Russia and China and their increasing number of allies recognise is far, far more important. Former oil/gas customers will just have to do without and plunge deeper and deeper into recession as a consequence. Russia can sell all the gas and oil it wants elsewhere - and get paid in currencies other than the rapidly failing dollar too.
    1
  10114.  @FrankWinchester  And Russia is busy taking it back!
    1
  10115. @Covid-19 Education I agree 100 per cent. The lockdown is worse than the disease. The trouble is that if it was lifted tomorrow there WOULD be one or two instances of it causing deaths and these would be seized upon by the media. The politicos are scared of that so we are stuck in this madness.
    1
  10116.  @zechsmerquise5105  This is just silly propaganda. Sanctions have entirely failed to prevent Russian missile production and procurement, as is clearly demonstrates day by day in Ukrainian cities. They have also produced a new range of highly mobile armoured support vehicles with multiple cannons and machine guns, plus four laser-guided missiles. On the corruption front, the US has been forced to despatch teams of investigators to prevent the armaments they have sent being sprited away by Ukrainian oligarchs and sold on the black market.
    1
  10117. Absolutely!
    1
  10118. You mustn't talk about poor old Joe like that.
    1
  10119. He's a crook and a fraud. When will people finally cotton on?
    1
  10120. As well taxpayer money, USAID is financed from private sources - including substantial contributions from George Soros organisations. Just sayin'
    1
  10121.  @nickryder9669  He was guilty of making a good film with some bad bits in it. Some of his witnesses exaggerated the bad behaviour of the boy at the centre of the row, and he included their testimony without checking it. This was his initial error. His crime was to continuing showing the film unaltered after being forbidden by a court to do so.
    1
  10122. Since the man with the hammer was living in a gay squat in Berkley and was best man at a nudist wedding, the chances of him being a MAGA supporter are pretty slim, I would have thought. I really admire the way in which CNN and the Dems are trying to spin what appears to be a sordid domestic squabble into yet another piece of anti-Trump propaganda. Full marks for trying!
    1
  10123.  @Werewolf0216  Doesn't everybody?
    1
  10124.  @Werewolf0216  How do you know it's garbage then?
    1
  10125. Do you believe it is more prevalent, or just more of an issue?
    1
  10126.  @Nithalm  But he said "before the war."
    1
  10127.  @lordoftherings999  A tragic waste.
    1
  10128.  @jokubasmirinas116  There is a force of up to half a million men ready to invade.
    1
  10129.  @ghostlightx9005  I think it just as likely that Russia has been doing the tricking.
    1
  10130. That's because it isn't true. Insofar as one can much sense out of very dubious statistics India currently has around 70 deaths per million. The US has around 700.
    1
  10131. Do you include street markets in Donetsk and railway station packed with refugees? Or the other numerous Ukrainian attacks on civilians in Donbass over the past eight years?
    1
  10132. USAID appears on the surface to be typical of the way in which left-wingers take over charitable enterprises to advance their theories - and make a few bucks for themselves on the side as well. This is not an unusual combination by any means.
    1
  10133. Russell Newton Don't sit well with us poor folk neither.
    1
  10134. Munde Rex And soon you will have rat hairs in your paprika. It really is a great deal to bear.
    1
  10135. Are you suggesting that the violence is caused by any other faction than BLM and Antifa? The trouble with your analogy is that now the situations are being filmed from all angles, and people can see exactly what is going on. In this instance a citizens' militia was protecting a property against rioters. Some of those rioters pursued Kyle after he put out a fire they had started., placing him in fear of his life after shots were fired and objects thrown at him. All on footage all over the Internet. Kyle worked in Kinosha and the gun was already in the state, by the way. Your Joseph Goebbels act isn't very convincing I must say Needs more work.
    1
  10136.  @pazyryk9  As wordy as this is, it contains much I agree with. My position is that BLM and Antifa are essentially Marxist (even though many of their supporters don't realise it!) They are following a standard playbook in inciting rebellion amongst a a perceived underclass, and gaining support for this among the "student" class. This is exactly what Lenin and Trotsky did in Russia in 1917 and Mao and Pol Pot did later on. The essential difference now is that the underclass is not the "proletariat" because the proletariat aren't having any. Black people have been whipped into a frenzy to take on that role. The revolutionaries are well trained. The perfectly decent black people and students get excited and are turned into a howling mob. BLM agitators and Antifa black bloc herd them along while setting fires, smashing windows etc etc. The more excitable of the innocents join in. So too do criminals who are just there for the looting. The objective is the destabilisation of society and its replacement by a system of soviets, such as those tried out at Portland etc. Kyle Rittenhauser is a victim of this. He is a foolish and headstrong child who has responded to the evil he sees engulfing his world and, armed with a weapon which in other countries' would earn you a life sentence for owning, he has taken two lives. I think he has a good case for self-defence, although it will be touch and go. Scared kid. Bullying thug chucking stuff. Possible shots fired nearby. The people he shot were baddies and he was a goodie at the end of the day. It could have gone very badly for him if he hadn't been armed. And I really don't think he fired out of hatred or devilment. It was from fear.
    1
  10137.  @philipmain5701  Monaco tends to keep itself to itself.
    1
  10138.  @anthonyhulse1248  And all from the kindness of the corporate heart!
    1
  10139. In the interests of restoring community relations we should start thinking about a replacement statue to place on the plinth recently vacated by Edward Colston. I would like to nominate George Floyd. Are there any other suggestions?
    1
  10140.  @syttt7925  So this means anyone can interpret anything anyone says any way they like, does it? Or have I got that wrong?
    1
  10141.  @syttt7925  So as well as being able to interpret anything anyone says any way we like we can also predict the future? Or have I go that wrong too?
    1
  10142.  @Radchenister  This seems to me to be characteristic of long-established political discourse, and by no means restricted to those on the right.
    1
  10143.  @Radchenister  But the violence has done Farage no good at all. I don't think he was in any way calling for it, but merely warning of its likelihood.
    1
  10144.  @Radchenister  I think you are being paranoid, quite frankly. So many on the left seem to have a deep-seated urge to regard their opponents as monsters, or criminal in some way. We on the right, by contrast, tend to regard our opponents as being fools. The violence does the right no good whatsoever. TR was forced to disband the EDL because of it. In the present situation he issued a number of videos calling for caution and moderation. On the other hand, the frustrations of the marginalised working class have little other avenue of expression. Right-wing activists are in a bit of cleft stick here. To condemn the violence would be to alienate a substantial section of their support base, while to condone it leaves them open to severe criticism and even the absurd threat of criminal prosecution.
    1
  10145.  @Radchenister  He's slipped up on this one, no doubt about that.
    1
  10146. It seems almost certain that this virus is highly selective in many ways. Sadly, racial dogmas might hinder objective research.
    1
  10147. What threat is that then?
    1
  10148. @ Just keeping his powder dry I guess. I'm sure he can buy it - if not directly from Denmark, then by simply bunging a few million dollars to each of the inhabitants.
    1
  10149. ...that you're losing.
    1
  10150. If you don't, you are blind. Google Here Is The Evidence for details.
    1
  10151. At last SCOTUS seems to be calling a halt to the dangerous and degrading process of abusing the judicial system for political ends.
    1
  10152.  @Amradar123  How substantial? A far as I can make out it amounts to around $14 billion in immediate support, and only some of that is in the form of immediately available weaponry. Furthermore, you can be sure that Putin has made allowances for the input in his strategy.
    1
  10153.  @rocketscience4516  Not mine. With excess deaths now over 3,000 a week it is quite clear that serious concerns voiced at the time as to the long-term effects of lockdowns, etc were entirely justified.
    1
  10154.  @rocketscience4516  Alas, I think that accepting payment for my services might affect my objectivity. In any case, I doubt that opinions voiced in YouTube comments threads have much effect on geopolitical outcomes.
    1
  10155. The Klu Klux clan was founded by Democrats.
    1
  10156.  @matthewcummings9024  Putin will not allow it. He will reduce Kiev to dust before he allows it.
    1
  10157.  @qili3899  Interesting. I was thinking more of the $14 trillion of gas, oil and rare earth minerals in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine which the US appeared so keen to take from the Russians. You have a point though. Wars are obviously very good for the arms industry but this one is getting a bit bogged down and losing it will not be a good look.
    1
  10158.  @akselmani  The only part of this near to the truth is the possible creation of jobs in the arms industry. This of course has resulted in the needless deaths of around half a million people - but they were only a bunch of foreigners so that scarcely matters, does it?
    1
  10159.  @akselmani  But they are not facts.
    1
  10160.  @akselmani  Russia is not only holding its defensive lines but is about to extend them by launching an assault on those areas of Donbass still under Ukrainian control. How they can do this if their forces and equipment are as depleted as you say I cannot imagine. Perhaps you have been misinformed. Russia has a large criminal economy which is evading most of the restrictions you mention. By exporting through third parties its oil is reaching markets all over the world, both old and new. American and European trucks are running on Russian crude refined to diesel in other countries, mainly India. Tankers are going back and forth, to and from the Pacific Rim via the Arctic Ocean in large numbers. Entrepreneurs, both Russian and Asian, have been buying up old tankers by the hundred. None of this trade, of course, shows up on the official figures you quote. The world order is changing. We are moving from a monopolar. American-ruled world economy to a multipolar one Emerging nations in Africa, South America and Asia are looking on the progress of the war with keen interest. If America fails in its latest proxy war, and the vast mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea remains in Russian hands, then you may be sure that this will mean an end to American hegemony and economic disaster for those European countries who do not adjust to the new situation. Already these emerging economies are queuing up to join BRICS, as are the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. As to the relative excellence of weapons, this is not an area with which I have any expertise but it seems to me that American hardware is getting slagged off as much as the Russian stuff. And America cannot afford to see its tanks and ant-aircraft systems perform badly. Make no mistake - this could go either way but at the moment my money is on Russia emerging victorious, blooded but unbowed, while America slides deeper into degeneracy and economic collapse. This is the inevitable fate of empires.
    1
  10161. Boris Johnson is a turd.
    1
  10162.  @ephraimluwanomwanganya2418  Tough old world, isn't it?
    1
  10163.  @bangbangcan2  I do check. Perhaps the things YOU believe are actually disinformation. Have you considered that as a possibility? You really ought to.
    1
  10164.  @bangbangcan2  I do check. Perhaps what you believe is "blatant disinformation" - have you ever considered that possibility?
    1
  10165. So rational he has practically begged Putin to invade.
    1
  10166. Computer modelling has a lot to answer for.
    1
  10167.  @johnrussell3961  I thought science was supposed to be about separating the spurious from the actual by a process of rigid intellectual examination. Or have I got that wrong?
    1
  10168.  @johnrussell3961  And can science destroy all these arguments?
    1
  10169. I thought this was one of the definitions of infinity.
    1
  10170. This is just the triumph of misplaced optimism. Ukraine can never win in the long run, especially now Trump has withdrawn US support.
    1
  10171.  @jiversteve  This makes no sense. It is not written in English.
    1
  10172.  @candidaprout560  You really should acquaint yourself with the historical background to the crisis. The people of Eastern Ukraine want to be free too- free from Ukraine. And the Russian people want to be free from the threat of NATO encirclement,
    1
  10173.  @arturobianco848  It is entirely reasonable to expect Ukraine to agree to regional autonomy for Donbass and to guarantee they will not allow their country to become yet another NATO base with missiles pointing at Russia.
    1
  10174.  @peterebel7899  Stop being so foolish. If a country is threatened and attempts for a peaceful solution have failed then war is sometimes the only answer.
    1
  10175.  @klausschumacher7126  In an ideal world you first assertion could well be true, America has carried out a strategy of expansion through violence or the threat of violence for many years and many people have been killed as a result. Although it is suggested that Putin has similar motives I don't believe this is true. He is defending his country against American aggression via NATO.
    1
  10176.  @jiversteve  This is not a game. It is not a series of cricket matches. Victories and defeats in war have true impact and meaning. The present situation is that the US, via NATO, has been encircling Russia every since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Russia simply cannot be expected to tolerate this. No country should. Ukraine's slow seduction is the last straw. More than with any other of its neighbours Russia has a very special relationship with Ukraine. To allow it to become a missile base for a declared enemy would be intolerable. All Russia asks us that Ukraine agrees not to join NATO and allows the Donbass regions to become autonomous republics, acting as buffer states, just in case. If this is agreed the war could end tomorrow.
    1
  10177. ​ @ellied.violet7372  Not much chance of China joining up I agree! If I use the word "encirclement" too loosely then please forgive me. The fact is though that, despite early promises that it would not happen, no fewer that 13 countries have joined NATO since the break-up of the Soviet Union some thirty years ago. Countries such as Finland, Sweden and the Eastern former Soviet republics will be seduced into joining, and the courtship has already begun in several cases. You may or may not know his but Russia has itself made overtures to join at least four times since the Soviet collapse, but has been turned down flat. NATO, or rather the US military/industrial complex, needs to maintain it as a permanent enemy in order to justify its own existence and its continued expansion.
    1
  10178.  @candidaprout560  I'm not quite sure which Candida Prout you are but it scarcely matters. The answer is that Putin has already taken Eastern Ukraine and is busy securing its borders. Ukraine has been distracted from this primary objective by the threats to Kiev and other cities.
    1
  10179.  @peterebel7899  Have you heard of the pre-emptive strike, asterisk wimp?
    1
  10180.  @peterebel7899  That's not such a bad suggestion in its way. But it will be a long time coming! NATO membership might have to come first.
    1
  10181.  @jiversteve  Try to encircle then. To push up against a wall and try to surround if you prefer. You get the picture I'm sure. The simple fact is that since the break-up of the Soviet Union 13 countries have joined NATO, all militarised and pushing towards Russia one way or another. Other prospects are in the pipeline. Nations certainly apply to join NATO, but are you so naive as to believe that they are not invited to do so and, more to the point, offered inducements to do so? NATO brings much business America's way and is exceptionally profitable for the international arms trade.
    1
  10182.  @ellied.violet7372  I find myself in agreement with much of what you say, but it is the fact that Vladimir Putin does not agree which is pertinent to the matter at hand. He has, in fact, offered little objection thus far to former Soviet states and satellites embracing the delights and luxuries of Western culture. Ukraine though is a special case. The relationship is a complex one, but a very intense one - far more intense than any Russia may have with any other former Soviet territory. The economic ties are stronger too. Ukraine is a line in the sand for Putin. The compromise he has offered seems entirely reasonable. If Ukraine were to agree the war could be over in a moment.
    1
  10183.  @rocketsurgeon2135  One must have great sympathy for the Finland and Sweden in their present predicament. If they decide to join NATO to escape being attacked by Russia, Russia may attack them to prevent them joining, as he has in Ukraine. Self-determination is one thing. Allowing yourself to become a missile base threatening Russia is another. You can't really expect Russia to simply take it on the chin every time. I do warn you against make analogies between Ukraine/Russia and other countries complex relationships with one another. It is a trap I have fallen into myself and it gets you nowhere. Every situation is different and attempts to apply general principles invariably mis-fire. Your request for a list of countries fitting categories you yourself have created is merely impertinent. It is best to stick to the matter at hand. Two incredibly corrupt countries with a long, interwoven joint history have fallen out with one another because one of them has sought to join an enemy alliance. Ukraine's so-called "sovereignty" is a moot point and of no great significance apart from in terms of international law, which is itself often of no great significance once the shooting starts. Russia has offered a reasonable and viable compromise which Ukraine has refused. This decision will result in continued bloodshed
    1
  10184.  ger du  Ah a liberal democracy with no liberality and no democracy then? Too many of those about already.
    1
  10185.  @peterebel7899  You said it!
    1
  10186.  @arturobianco848  Past history and past treaties are not much to the point. Force of arms has replaced legal nit-picking. As far as can be judged the majority of the population of the Donbass districts want independence. Russia will doubtless regenerate them and repair the damages of the war if this is done. For Ukraine to join NATO is clearly an act of aggression - or provocation at the very least, and cannot be tolerated. A prolonged civil war is the only outcome. Ukraine and Russia will both slowly bleed to death. The West, or at least some elements within it, might well want this but it is something both countries should surely best try to avoid.
    1
  10187.  @arturobianco848  Not so. You are seeking to define the terms of the discussion - and I'm not having it.
    1
  10188.  @Dash8Q400Channel  Obviously you have misunderstood me, I apologise. Short/medium range conventional missiles based in Ukraine is what Putin fears. Any pre-emptive nuclear strike Putin might undertake could come from anywhere, as you rightly say.
    1
  10189. All politicians lie, but Donald Trump lies magnificently and shamelessly, thus spreading much confusion among his enemies - especially virtue-signalling so-called journalists. It has been most amusing over recent months to watch them scurrying about in increasing panic, like ants whose comfortable nest has been disturbed by some unidentifiable intruder. How long will it take them to realise that after years of conning the public they are now themselves being treated with contempt?
    1
  10190. Putin does NOT want to conquer Ukraine. He just wants as much of the Eastern parts of it he can reclaim for Russia. And he's very nearly there.
    1
  10191. Putin has no wish to occupy all of Ukraine. He will be more than content with just a tad more than he has got already.
    1
  10192.  @DCLTP  The history is written in history books. And Putin is no more a dead man walking than anyone else.
    1
  10193. All the lefties think the BBC is a hotbed of fascism. All right-wingers are convinced it is run by woke commies. To journalists, this is a sign that you've got it right!
    1
  10194.  @ADifferentBias  I watch it for the same reason I might read the Guardian- to groan in amazement from time to time. I wonder why you watch it?
    1
  10195. How long have we been at war with Russia then? Can someone remind me? And why oh why is this Socialist channel consistently allying itself with US imperialism?
    1
  10196.  @jiversteve  What's that got to do with anything?
    1
  10197. @SBVAudioLDN They got the wrong goblin, is all.
    1
  10198.  @altheogre  What is my punishment to be Al the Ogre?
    1
  10199.  @J.R.Y.  I don't think we get much choice. Putin is far tougher than any Western leader. Being strong and brave isn't much use when you've got guided missiles landing on your head.
    1
  10200.  @slayerr4365  Too true. The shameful incompetence of the retreat from Kabul marked the beginning of the end. The Ukraine war is another nail in the coffin.
    1
  10201. Johnson's strategy is a considered gamble. With the ratio of cases to deaths and hospitalisations currently a fraction of of what it was in the first wave, it could well come off. If it does come off then Labour will lose even more credibility in the eyes of the public. If it doesn't then of course Johnson will have to go.
    1
  10202.  @simonfernandes6809  You are broadly speaking correct. One can only imagine that the government expects the cases to admissions and death ratio will peak and then decline quite rapidly. There is actually a potential for this to happen. This does very much look like a bid for herd immunity - with the vulnerable being at least partially protected from serious outcomes by vaccination. .
    1
  10203.  @atomiccritter6492  I have no brief for Johnson - on the other hand always bowing down to a worst case scenario is no sign of leadership. It is a sign of cowardice. In this case the data and the science provide a reasonable scenario for an escape from this mess with acceptable casualties. Johnson has put his entire career on the line and his career means a lot to him. The alternative is long drawn-out death for our entire way of life. And what have you got against "white van man types" anyway you snob? Salt of the earth!
    1
  10204.  @atomiccritter6492  There is some sense it what you say, just for once. Likeliest victims will continue to be the elderly and frail but hopefully vaccination will protect at least some of us, but the young and healthy should largely be able to go through brief ordeals of varying unpleasantness and emerge immune at the end of it. This should provide a reasonable cordon to protect the rest of us and so, with the help of the vaccination programme, achieve herd immunity. Yup. Lockdowns etc are gradually being worn away and Johnson is merely setting an official seal of approval on a process which has begun without governmental consent. Your two paragraphs contradict one another to some extent, but oddly enough it seems that if we are not exactly singing off the same hymn sheet we both recognise the tune. Comfort yourself: either this is over soon or Johnson is toast.
    1
  10205. Jockum T Although you are of course absolutely right about atmospheric pollution are you aware of recent studies which suggest that CO2 returns IR radiation to the surface only in proportion to that required to maintain the atmosphere in a condition of thermodynamic stability? This means of course that the greenhouse effect cannot in fact be increased by increased carbon and that therefore any global warming must be due to other causes.
    1
  10206. It's just you.
    1
  10207. It just isn't feasible.
    1
  10208. The US/ Ukraine propaganda campaign is crumbling. Not before time. We have got to resist being drawn into this by a mesh of lies. It's time for the media to start asking some REAL questions instead of blindly accepting what is being fed to them.
    1
  10209.  @Yeknodathon  Ok. You got me. Please explain!
    1
  10210. They really, really do.
    1
  10211. Haven't they occupied much of Ukraine's coast and much of its steel and coal=producing areas. How did they manage that?
    1
  10212. / @bobcprimus  In a way. America has been attempting to take over Ukraine via the back door for years - most notably by organising a coup to overthrow the Russian-leaning president in 2014, and putting its own guy in. This led to the current problems. Russian money and Russian labour have historically organised the extraction of coal, gas, oil etc etc from Eastern Ukraine and Crimea and it is put on the market through Russian intermediaries. Losing this multi-billion dollar business is more than Putin was prepared to put up with and although peaceful solutions were put forward between 2014 and 2022 none worked. Hence the Russian invasion. American imperialism and greed, see?
    1
  10213. Every time the West does this it prolongs the war. A peaceful resolution is entirely possible. Russia wants it. Washington doesn't. Meanwhile the corrupt and foolish Western media cons us into believing there is some high moral purpose behind this warmongering.
    1
  10214.  @pocolol8424  I think that's been the plan from the outset.
    1
  10215.  @nickjervis8123  My country is England and until recently we were annexing a quarter of the globe. Europe has just tried to annexe us, but we've wriggled out of it (just). It happens all the time. Modern Ukraine was built by Russia and is simply a former Soviet Socialist Republic with a new label on it. Russia was reasonably content to kiss it goodbye when the Soviet Union broke up. but ever since then the US and the EU have been moving in and trying to use it as military base and to stop Russia trading there. Russia is understandably peeved and since the very many Russian attempts made at diplomatic solutions have been scornfully rejected by the West the old, old solution is being tried. War.
    1
  10216.  @achosenman9376  Scarcely any. Until conquered by Russia the area was the scene of many tribal skirmishes and in the two world wars of the 20th century attempts were made by Ukrainian nationalists to escape Russian control by throwing in their lot with the Germans. Neither was successful or long-lasting. The difficulty is that Western Ukraine is somewhat of a different entity to much of the country east of the Dnieper, to say nothing of Russian Crimea, which was only appended on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 as a matter of administrative convenience.
    1
  10217.  @nopants4259  There are absolutely no similarities whatsoever, you buffoon. The Russian Empire transmogrified onto the Soviet Empire and extended its territories and influence. Putin has no more intention of claiming lost territories back on a grand scale than the UKs crew of clowns want to reconquer India! As is clear from Chechnya and Georgia, all he wants is to secure his borders with buffer states and ensure favourable trading conditions are maintained. If he had been granted that none of these bloodshed and destruction would have happened. The tragedy is that this is more than likely what he'll end up getting anyway.
    1
  10218.  @GrandmasterFU666  The former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, in other words. Built by Russia and with a large Russian population.
    1
  10219.  @GrandmasterFU666  I was aware. About a thousand years ago, wasn't it? They were Vikings of course. And Sweden tried to conquer Western Ukraine back in the time of Catherine the Great.
    1
  10220.  @ninaotan7811  Both sides have ignored various aspects of the several treaties signed between them since 1991. That is the way it generally is with treaties. This is why there always have to be new treaties. Putin offered a treaty in December last year, the terms of which were generally reasonable, and I daresay Ukraine would have accepted them if America hadn't decided the time had come to capitalise on its investment in the country and sacrifice it in the latest stage in the battle to make the world safe for hypocrisy.
    1
  10221.  @ninaotan7811  I never suggested the EU has any military bases. That is an ambition set in the future which I sincerely hope will not come to fruition. Russia's quarrel with the EU comes from the efforts to allow Ukraine's entry, which culminated in the Maidan riots of 2014. Russia does not want to lose the economic benefits of its hitherto close relationship with Ukraine; benefits to which it feels entitled since what economic strengths Ukraine has are built almost entirely upon the sweat and efforts of Russia and Russians. I do not know any more than anyone how all this is going to pan out by I sincerely hope that one of its results will be the demise of the EU.
    1
  10222.  @StoltHD  The Ukraine you refer to is not the modern Ukraine. It was a mainly riverside settlement, founded by the Vikings, extending a few miles on each side of the Dnieper. Crimea and the steppe to the East of the river was inhabited by tribes of wandering Tatars, later supplemented by Cossacks from Russia. It was not a country in the modern sense. Modern Ukraine only really began under Peter the Great and then Catherine the Great. It became part of the Russian Empire after various wars with Poland, and Sweden especially. Even then the infertile steppe to the East was largely ignored. It was all Russia. The situation changed at the end of the 18th century when coal and iron ore was discovered beneath the plain. Oddly enough it was a Welshman who taught the largely Russian population how to mine it, and it was generally Russians who moved in to carry on the work. After the Russian Revolution large numbers of Russians were brought in and it was they who established the Donbass as an industrial heartland. Ukraine was THE Ukraine then, or Little Russia , as it was known. It was designated a Soviet Socialist Republic and only became a "country" because Russia wanted an extra seat in the UN. Crimea was only appended in 1954 as a matter of administrative and logistical convenience.
    1
  10223.  @ninaotan7811  I apologise. I must have been getting getting confused with the first Great Northern War earlier in the century. (Peter the Great, not Catherine the Great!)
    1
  10224.  @davidallison5529  What you say may well be true. What is important though is that Russia does not recognise it, and is prepared to go to war over it. Furthermore there are many countries playing both ends against the middle which will flock to Russia's side the moment it seems it is likely to win. An entirely new world power structure could rapidly emerge. India, China and the Middle Eastern oil producers. along with Brazil and South Africa for starters. Russia is already supplying oil to China with one pipeline and another is on the way. Every day rusty old tankers loaded with cheap Russian crude are docking in India's ports. Turkey and Iran and even some European countries are supplying technology through the back door. It is facts such as these which are important, not the fine words uttered at the United Nations by politicians.
    1
  10225.  @ninaotan7811  I bow to your superior knowledge. It was just an aside designed merely to highlight the fact that Ukraine has been much fought over, even by the Swedish.
    1
  10226.  @a0flj0  I do not dispute the fact that the separatist movement was fomented by Russia, but I do dispute the claim that there was no anti-Ukrainian, pro-Russian feeling to be exploited. And as far as I can see the two separatist armies have fought bravely and effectively for more than eight years, during which time the Russian element was less than 20% - similar to that of American "advisors" in other conflicts.
    1
  10227. @ The territory was Russian long before it was Ukrainian, and even when it was part of the SSR of Ukraine it was still really run from Moscow. Russia just wants it back - really to stop it becoming part of the EU. There is a very large Russian population there and much of the industry remains in Russian hands. There is no need to suppose Putin wants even the rest of Ukraine - let alone other countries in Europe.
    1
  10228. @ The truth has meaning.
    1
  10229.  @PerJohansson-Xeizo  The Kievan Rus wasn't Ukraine though. It occupied different territory and was entirely destroyed by the Mongols 800 years ago. Trying to pretend modern Ukraine has anything to do with this dead civilisation, other than having the same capital city, is both disingenuous and dangerous.
    1
  10230. Trump makes the occasional slip, as most of us do. Biden has a brain like runny porridge and Kamala sounds like she's drunk more often than not.
    1
  10231.  @amandag5072  Not like this. We are not at war with Russia. We are merely the lapdogs of US warmongers. Attempting to establish relations with the Russian Federation is a thoroughly noble and worthwhile aim.
    1
  10232.  @petyrkowalski9887  If we were officially at war with Russia then this would be the case. But since we aren't, it isn't.
    1
  10233.  @neilgodwin6531  I really don't believe that any of this is true. It reeks of propaganda.
    1
  10234. Labour is simply following WEF/globalist policies. You've been taken for a ride.
    1
  10235. It's difficult not to see all this as some kind of divine retribution for the fraudulent election. On the other hand it could simply be evolution at work, Biden being unfit to hold office.
    1
  10236. What war? The only war Britain is likely to get involved in is one of our own making - by paying heed to US warmongers.
    1
  10237. And it's all his fault. The Ukraine conflict and its inevitable escalation is the direct result of US interference in the region.
    1
  10238. Why shouldn't Russia interfere with US elections? America has been interfering with Russia for decades.
    1
  10239. The BBC is a propaganda channel.
    1
  10240. The RNLI is being used as an unpaid taxi service by people-smuggling criminals. They are taking the piss - and you are fools not to see it.
    1
  10241. There's every chance that Russia will take Donbass and fortify it before the Western powers even finishing arguing about what to do. This gamble just isn't paying off. No matter what the generals ask for, the politicians and the bankers are likely to make only token contributions.
    1
  10242.  @davidmasters2408  Hopefully we'll know in time, but this is the behaviour of a paranoid schizophrenic and the age is right for the first emergence of the condition. Sadly such people are very likely to become even more unhinged than usual by brainwashing and radicalisation.
    1
  10243.  @superhumantrueman  I don't think we need get into the numbers game, but the fact is the protesters were there to counter-demonstrate against demonstrations which did not take place. The explanation for this is not clear, but right-wing channels are claiming that the plan is to keep doing this until the counter-demonstrators (and the police) stop turning up in such large numbers, at which point the genuine anti-immigration protest will take place.
    1
  10244.  @superhumantrueman It isn't a numbers game. Right wing channels are suggesting this is a deliberate strategy to weaken the opposition by getting them to turn out to a series of fake protests, and when they inevitably stop coming a real protest will take place.
    1
  10245.  @superhumantrueman  It's not about numbers. It's about strategy. I've had a couple of goes trying to explain what that strategy probably is, but YouTube apparently thinks this is too incendiary, and has deleted my replies.
    1
  10246.  @jiversteve  How else do you think epidemics are defeated? Magic? The power of prayer?
    1
  10247.  @Yeknodathon  Experience in dealing with influenza epidemics is obviously of benefit in dealing with the current situation. Ingrowing toenails - not so much.
    1
  10248.  @JohnSmall314  My reasoning is as follows. Please feel free to criticize and correct: For the week ending July 12 there were131 deaths with covid recorded in the UK. When these victims contracted the disease cannot be exactly known but assuming a reasonable pattern of infection we might say that many of them contracted covid three weeks before. That would be the week ending June 28 when 161,805 cases were recorded. 131 is .08% of 161,805. This may be contrasted with a similar position at the start if the second wave. On Nov 23 there were 3,404 deaths recorded in the preceding week. Three weeks before that in the week ending Nov 2 there were 160,104 cases recorded. 3,404 is 2.1% of 160,104 This clearly shows the huge impact vaccinations are having. It might also indicate that the delta variant is following a widely expected evolutionary pattern in being more transmissible but less virulent than preceding variants. Javid has said that daily cases might reach 100,000. If the current death to case ratio is maintained .08% of 700,000 will mean 560 deaths a week. This is entirely sustainable, considering that the current death rate from all causes is below the 5-year average and the covid victims continue to be very elderly and many of whom would have been likely to die from pre-existing conditions anyway. I cannot calculate how long it would be before the HIT is passed but with 700,000 people a week contracting the disease and becoming immune it cannot be be more than a few weeks.
    1
  10249.  @Yeknodathon  I refer you to my answer to John Small elsewhere in this thread.
    1
  10250.  @atomiccritter6492  Please look at my actual response to John Small. Don't worry, I don't require an apology.
    1
  10251.  @jiversteve  Through herd immunity created via vaccination.
    1
  10252.  @brianharris7243  Don't quite agree with the second part. I hold the somewhat heretical view that mutations often achieve prominence THROUGH social intervention.
    1
  10253.  @Yeknodathon  How many? Any idea?
    1
  10254.  @atomiccritter6492  The figures come from my favoured source: The World Health Organisation website.
    1
  10255.  @Yeknodathon  My information is gained from the World Health Organisation's own website. I am entirely willing to listen to alternative interpretations of the figures.
    1
  10256.  @Yeknodathon  It's vague enough. The WHO were against masks at the start but now give them faint praise, as is the case here. Only high-spec fitted masks in crowded, poorly ventilated conditions can be proved to have any effect. Cloth masks and the little blue jobbies are virtually useless in all situations.
    1
  10257.  @Yeknodathon  We are at cross purposes. The figures I gave are WHO figures. Herd immunity will be achieved through vaccination, as they say. The fact that vaccinations are proving not to prevent infection in all cases, but to dramatically reduce symptoms, is of great benefit. It means that millions of people will become immune with just the mild inconvenience of suffering something which is no worse than a bad cold in most cases.
    1
  10258.  @Yeknodathon  Once again, yes. The advice is that healthy people under 60 CAN wear non-medical masks. The emphasis is clear: only proper high spec masks are really any good. In any case these recommendations date back to December and the situation has changed quite radically since then with the discovery that 60% of covid infections are caused via aerosols which masks do nothing to contain. The emphasis is now on ventilation and reducing crowding, something which backs up the WHO and other medical bodies' reservations in the first place, namely that placing too much reliance on the protective capabilities of masks can lead people to ignore dangerous situations.
    1
  10259.  @lazytitan9987  I think it is preferable to judge the situation on a week to week basis, since daily counts are subject to greater variation. So to put the numbers back another week to fit your 4 week criterion: June 21 there were 96,843 cases in the preceding week July 12 there were 131 deaths in the preceding week That is to say.135% .135% of 700,000 equals 910 deaths a week. This is surely acceptable given the gravity of the situation and that at this rate of recovered cases HIT is very much on the horizon. The other figures you mention are even more imponderable than this! Hospital admissions are increasing only slightly and given that those who have been vaccinated are generally experiencing only mild symptoms and that the percentage of vaccinated people on the case list is increasing - to say nothing of the fact that the number appears to be levelling out and I don't think at all unlikely to suggest that this is a scenario with which hospitals should well be able to cope with. As for long covid, latest research is suggesting that 1.2% of patients under 30 experience long-term symptoms, rising to 4.8% in the middle-aged. As to permanent damage - we just don't know. On that note though, one good thing which ought to come out of this mess is that it should spark much-needed research into the long-term effects of respiratory pathogens on a small proportion of patients.
    1
  10260.  @Yeknodathon  No. I quote their guidelines as written. You sent me the paper. Try reading it.
    1
  10261.  @lazytitan9987  I don't think we're too far apart. Both of us are performing the usual very human trick of viewing our figures to the advantage of our case. So, putting the calculations to one side, can you be sure that your 1000+ deaths a week are preventable? My view, for what it is worth, is that since the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly and all have pre-existing conditions the fact that covid is getting through to them first could well mean that might have died very soon anyway. And deaths from all causes are currently low. Apart from that, the deaths may well have been prevented or postponed if lockdowns had not been imposed, thus driving a coach and horses through their care plans in many instances. (I have to say at this point I am feeling more and more like some old buffer during World War I or II stuck at home sticking coloured flags in a map, but no matter. Let's keep calm and carry on.) The caseload does actually seem to be levelling out at the moment and the proportion of those who are vaccinated is increasing. This would seem to me to indicate a reasonably optimistic scenario in which, while HIT will take longer to attain, the bill in terms of deaths and poor outcomes will be lower - or at least appear to be since it too will be spread over a longer period.
    1
  10262.  @Yeknodathon  But as I have explained already my views on masks, lockdowns and herd immunity coincide with those of the WHO, generally speaking. What you have to realise is that the WHO is subjected to incredible political pressures and has to bend with the wind. If you read these documents carefully you will learn that the WHO only recommends lockdowns as a short-term measure to allow governments to organise healthcare facilities. They give details of the type of masks to be worn by which categories of people, and say simply that cloth and a medical masks MAY be worn by healthy people under 60 - thus clearly implying that, unlike the other categories, whatever good they do won't matter, since you are unlikely to die or get very ill if you are healthy and under 60. It says that HIT should only be approached when vaccination programmes are in place. Which is exactly what we are doing. The WHO naturally enough has to express itself very carefully, whereas I can say what I like. That's the difference. And if my views depart from official WHO guidelines -that's too bad. Even within the WHO there is wide disparity of opinion and the guidelines are evolved via committee, with all the disadvantages this implies.
    1
  10263.  @lazytitan9987  I too hear what you are saying but cannot agree. Covid, like it or not, is something which in times past we would have called "the old folks' friend" and the current low overall death rate could well be due, in considerable part, to the fact that covid has swept so many of them away in recent months. And you can't die twice. I disagree about children too. All evidence suggests that not only do they only not get the disease severely, but rarely pass it on to adults. The virus is generally neutralised in the immune systems in their noses and throats before it reaches their lungs and therefore it is not coughed out and does not achieve transmission very readily. Teacher, leave those kids alone! I'm not convinced by the 86% threshold either. It could be far, far less than that. Once the virus finds its infection pathways blocked it will die out, or be reduced considerably in number, very quickly indeed. I really think we've got this thing beat if we hold our nerve.
    1
  10264.  @lazytitan9987  I didn't say without antibodies- just that the antibodies in their noses and throats seem strong enough to kill off the infection before it reaches their lungs, and this has been cited as a reason why their symptoms are so mild and why they appear to pass the disease on in mild form when they do. Anyway here is the latest BMJ assessment - I haven't had time to get through it yet and the view expressed above was based on some American research a few months ago. I have also included a study from Scotland which makes no great claims for its findings, but it is interesting enough just the same. There is also another in vitro study going on in Scotland I believe which suggests that the antibodies which deal with rhinoviruses may be effective against C19. Yes, obviously I think the international condemnation is wrong. So perhaps it's just as well it doesn't matter what I think! https://adc.bmj.com/content/106/5/429 Covid in kids https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20196428v1 Young children may convey immunity!
    1
  10265.  @Yeknodathon  You still don't get it, do you? Medical opinion is of course divided sharply on all these issues. The WHO's guidelines adopt a course best suited to political stability - although you can be sure there are many experts whose views differ, but who have lost the vote. And again, despite this my views coincide with WHO's official guidelines to a considerable degree as I have already clearly explained.
    1
  10266.  @Yeknodathon  Ignore me as much as you like. The "conspiracy site" little atomic kitten refers to is Swiss Policy Research. It is indeed considered as such by the establishment but it actually provides a useful service in collecting together scientific evidence which goes against the official view, and which is consequently hidden away. It includes papers from the CDC, the BMA etc etc which portray views suddenly reversed as well as access to other lesser-known organisations. All the evidence is the work of experts and much of it is peer reviewed. You are being given only a very narrow view of the situation and one which is affected by political considerations as much as issues of public health. If you do not feel you have the confidence to consider a wider spectrum of views without your head exploding, then I quite understand.
    1
  10267.  @lazytitan9987  Here's that year-old US study's details, for what it's worth. As I said everyone cherry picks the data to suit their position and instincts. As for the CDC it seems to be swayed by political pressure even more than the WHO and the BMA. I genuinely worry about possible long-term effects on young developing bodies of these vaccines, I must say. If they could be proved to be unnecessary I would think it a good thing. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200710100934.htm
    1
  10268.  @atomiccritter6492  But I agreed that it was so considered the first time you made the accusation. This doesn't mean that it is - and it doesn't detract from the validity of the papers it directs you towards.
    1
  10269.  @atomiccritter6492  Sometimes it's best to do nothing - as is the case now.
    1
  10270.  @atomiccritter6492  Only if you're being conspired against. When supplying information is considered a conspiracy you know you're in trouble.
    1
  10271. Project 2025 has lots of good thing in it, especially regarding reducing the power of government agencies. It has some crazy stuff too and my guess is these elements will get dropped one by one, thus giving lefties the illusion they have won something.
    1
  10272. Keep up with the times. There may be a few 60plus year-old Tories who are racist but the vast majority simply are not.
    1
  10273.  @WebToolkit  Don't you realise how racist your comment is?
    1
  10274.  @DavisJ-ln6fw  No she doesn't. The fact that anyone thinks she does is what's racist.
    1
  10275.  @DavisJ-ln6fw  No need. It's true.
    1
  10276. We won't be defending ourselves in the event of World War III. We will be just like the poor Ukrainians and dying to keep America in coke and burgers.
    1
  10277. Utterly incorrect. Russia doesn't want Ukraine. It just wants Donbass and Crimea. Until now the entire object of the exercise has been to utterly deplete the Ukrainian army - which is close to being achieved.
    1
  10278.  @neodym5809  But how long is the West going to carry on replacing the losses? In any case, the whole nature of the war is likely to change by spring. One Russia has secured Donbass and the land bridge to Crimea it will dig in behind massive defences and fight off attacks with artillery. The tank and infantry war is coming to an end.
    1
  10279.  @tyranneous  Well, it's true enough, isn't it? Ukraine would not exist without Russia, but that does not mean that Putin is foolish enough to land his country in a permanent civil war. His compromise- for Donbass to exist as semi-autonomous republics - was clearly the best solution, but events have overtaken that now. Even so, I cannot think that Putin will do any more than take and secure Donbass and the land bridge to Crimea, and leave it at that. Unless Ukraine comes to its senses and makes peace I imagine he will build extremely strong permanent defence lines and see what Ukraine has left to throw at them.
    1
  10280.  @yoloswaggins7121  British Intelligence. Don't make me laugh. If that ever WAS the plan, which seems ridiculously unlikely, events have ensured that it is untenable. If a pro-Russian government is eventually installed in Kiev it will be through economic and internal pressures rather than through military conquest.
    1
  10281.  @Barrystue  I think Putin would very much like to re-establish family relations with Ukraine, but if that proves impossible he will be content with keeping hold of all the coal, gas, oil and other minerals in Donbass. He's got more right to them than the Americans have.
    1
  10282.  @tyranneous  Not the entire nation. There are (or were) eight million Russians in Ukraine, and a great many of them would prefer to look to Moscow than to Kiev for leadership. Modern Ukraine only became a "country" because the USSR wanted an extra seat in the UN. Before that it was a Russian province and then a Soviet Socialist Republic. It's entire infrastructure and industrial and mineral wealth are the result of Russian effort and largely Russian labour. Whatever moral arguments are made the fact is the Russians are there - and they're not likely to be shifted. Putin's proposals put forward before the invasion should at least have been considered but Zelensky, being a puppet of the West, was ordered to turn them down out of hand. We now see the dreadful results of that decision.
    1
  10283.  @yoloswaggins7121  These statements by Putin were merely to provide a moral justification in the eyes of the Russian public. Of course the retreat from Kiev was part of the plan. If he really wanted to take it he would gave blitzed it first, as he is doing now - and he would have secured the territories taken before moving on. After the initial rush, experienced troops were withdrawn and replaced by large numbers of raw troops and old equipment , simply to act as blotting paper to soak up Ukrainian forces - and that's exactly what has happened. The next stage of the war is now under way, with experienced troops and mercenary forces breaking through the crippled Ukrainian army to take and permanently secure Donbass - at the very least. A Moscow leaning government in Kiev, if it does happen at all, will be the result of internal pressure rather than military takeover.
    1
  10284.  @puraLusa  And the coal, steel and rare minerals too.
    1
  10285.  @yoloswaggins7121  The Russians walked into Crimea because the predominantly Russian population welcomed them with open arms. There could be no such welcome in Kiev. I repeat: Putin wants neither Kiev nor the rest of Western Ukraine. He knows that to attempt this he will be letting himself in for a drawn-out civil war. The SMO was just that - a special operation designed to reduce enemy forces NOT to acquire unprofitable territory All he wants is Donbass and Crimea, and as things stand it is very likely he will get them.
    1
  10286. Putin and Trump are both essentially hard-headed pragmatists. They both know they are there to divvy up Ukraine's mineral riches between them.
    1
  10287. Most Tories realise this too. We will perhaps have a ludicrous situation where the Tories are trying to get rid of him while Labour praise him to the skies!
    1
  10288. So refreshing to see the hysterical pearl-clutching from the brainwashed normies in this comments thread. Time Radio never lets you down!
    1
  10289. The Ukrainians have obviously given up all hope of winning on the main front and are now trying to keep a hold of this little bit of pretty useless land in Kursk to use in peace negotiations - which will hopefully be happening before very long.
    1
  10290. Odd, isn't it, how the current tragedy in Ukraine is also a direct result of American and UK greed?
    1
  10291.  @ironic3980  Col Douglas Macgregor also holds this view. If the city isn't of strategic importance then its function is to contain Ukrainians to be killed.
    1
  10292.  @teniente_snafu  They can get out by retreating north, obviously. But then the Russians move in. Throughout this campaign Western observers seem fixated on the idea that the Russians are fighting for territory. They are not. They are using territory to kill Ukrainians and retreating when the kill ratio gets too high to sustain. The current front line is surely the turning point though. Russia really needs to take the whole of Donbass before very long if its war objectives are to be achieved.
    1
  10293.  @45641560456405640563  How am I making a fool of myself? The Russians appear to be firing on the city from relatively high ground and making no serious moves to actually move in. They are shooting fish in a barrel. If Bakhmut has no strategic value then why are the Russians attacking it, other than to use it as a killing ground? (I am actually quite introspective, which is perhaps why I do not swallow Western propaganda with the same unconsidered enthusiasm as you seem to do.)
    1
  10294.  @citizenychoux  I think this is more in line with what Western MSM SAYS Russia said! And I am not Russian. I am British, and my feeling is that my country should not be involved in a turf war between two sets of gangsters. Americans need to realise that this dreadful war is a direct result of their country's aggressive and incompetent policies towards Russia over the past twenty years. This isn't going to end well.
    1
  10295.  @bartoszstrzelczyk829  About as good as CNN though.
    1
  10296. Decades of conditioning.
    1
  10297. Dean Walker What do you call people who lie over and over again and drive children insane with terror over a bogeyman that doesn't exist? Answer: Climate scientists (well, some of them anyway) Paedoconners maybe
    1
  10298. This war was the result of EU meddling as much as anything. If anything confirms we were right to get out,, this does.
    1
  10299. And Iraq has just issued an arrest warrant too. Will his troubles never end?
    1
  10300.  @lydrose.x  He's just conquered nearly a quarter of Ukraine. If NATO missiles hit Russian targets he will launch missiles on NATO targets.. at which point we can only hope that the clowns who lead us will have the sense to back off.
    1
  10301. Name one.
    1
  10302. Meanwhile elderly and vulnerable people in poor countries aren't getting any. Irish kids who don't need them are being given them instead.
    1
  10303. This is a bizarre view of history. Until Zionists began arriving in the latter part of the 19th century the entire region was a desert occupied by wandering tribesmen with herds of goats. The population was tiny. Jews created a well-watered, productive nation out of this desert and Arabs flooded in from Syria, Jordan and elsewhere to take advantage of these initiatives. To say that the Israelis "occupied" land belonging to Arabs is an utter travesty.
    1
  10304.  @luisbustamante9869  But this is the plain truth of the matter. Today's "Palestinians" only have to look back two or three generations to find they originated in Syria, Iraq or Jordan. Palestine is not a country. It is some arbitrary lines drawn on a map by the British after the Great War and given a name dimly recollected from an English public school Latin education.
    1
  10305.  @caspar_gomez  I have replied to this but although my reply is factual it has been censored somewhere along the line. Peace be with you in any case. This folly must end soon.
    1
  10306.  @Andrew-ob5ij  The Donbass was practically uninhabited until the industrial revolution, when large tracts of coal were discovered there. It was a place to go to for Russians ever since then, and, as you rightly say, this was especially true in the 1930s when large numbers of Russians were shipped there. The Budapest agreements were signed in the haste and confusion of the collapse of the Soviet Union and do not reflect the realities of the situation. The later Minsk agreements were designed to put the balance right, but have largely been ignored. This war is basically a turf war between two sets of oligarchs: one Russian and the other Ukrainian, supported by America which is largely responsible for the present escalation of the conflict, due to certain elements using it as a vehicle for expanding US interests there. One can safely discount the results of the referendums. Like elections in both Ukraine and Russia they are totally unreliable.
    1
  10307.  @DannyMancheno  Do they exist?
    1
  10308. And the war in Ukraine is a direct result of this such evil greed by largely American criminals.
    1
  10309. Our consciousness has evolved to enable us to deal with those parts of "reality" which we need to be able to deal with in order to survive. But there's a lot, lot more going on. Broadly speaking we can call the area of our perceptions "territory" which we must conquer and retain. Is it possible that both the sub-atomic world and the further reaches of the cosmos are not "territory" at all, but something entirely different? We have no choice but to use the organs of perception we have developed to deal with life on the surface of the planet and we have no choice but to interpret the sub atomic world and the world of outer space in terms of "territory", which they are not. Damn. I swore not to drink so much coffee today.
    1
  10310.  @T5Zplayer  There's around $13 trillion of gas, coal , oil and rare earth minerals in Eastern Ukraine. It is mined and developed by Russia. That would no longer be possible if Ukraine joined the EU.
    1
  10311.  @boink800  And nor has Russia in this instance. Hospitals when they are hit are hit by accident - unless they are being used to hide military targets.
    1
  10312.  @dpelpal  You've dropped your silly Russian accent and bad grammar. Try harder.
    1
  10313.  @dpelpal  That's better!
    1
  10314.  @boink800  Well, I dunno. It will be a long, hard haul and I don't think Ukraine has the resources, and I think other countries are slowing up on helping out. And the fact is these territories don't much want to be "liberated". They getter a better deal from Moscow than they do from Kiev.
    1
  10315.  @boink800  And right now very few people believe that the USA will implode. But it will.
    1
  10316.  @boink800  Well, that covers the USA more. And Russia no longer has an empire, in case you haven't noticed.
    1
  10317. Polls don't count. Votes don't count. It's how the votes are counted that counts.
    1
  10318. Ever heard of China?
    1
  10319.  @kems3743  Absolutely impossible to say. More important than what I think is what China thinks!
    1
  10320. You believe the lies you are told. So what's the difference?
    1
  10321.  @MiguelDLewis  Absolute rubbish. There have been a few black people in Britain since Roman times - but very few. Humankind was almost certainly black-skinned in the beginning, bur moving out of Africa due to global warming (ha!) lighter skins were able to process life-saving vitamins more readily in overcast conditions and evolution ensured that pale skinned people reproduced in Northern climes. By the time Stonehenge was built everyone was white. Brown-skinned people from the Near East and North Africa came to Britain as soldiers in Roman armies and there were a handful of negroes who arrived following the Crusades and there were enough in Tudor times for Queen Elizabeth to order them to be removed! Really though, none of this matters. If black people, brown people and white people are to live together harmoniously telling a load of lies isn't going to help.
    1
  10322. @fab No. Deaths from Covid 19 amount to around ten per cent of daily deaths - which is more or less the same as deaths from respiratory infections which can be expected at this time of year. Covid is getting to old people this year before the flu does, that's all. We can expect the death rate to rise until the New Year, when it will begin to decline until the Spring arrives when far fewer people die of respiratory infections. None of the measures being taken have any effect on this process, other than perhaps to slow it down slightly thus giving some people a few more months of life but ensuring their deaths will be added to totals in the next year or two.
    1
  10323.    We must wait and see. The case against America is closed. Putin's "adventure" may well not turn out to be the disaster we are being told it is. After all, the people who are saying it are the same people who were convinced it would take the Taliban weeks to reach Kabul.
    1
  10324. Loathsome lefties wishing him dead will surely increase his support among decent people.
    1
  10325. They hoped for it.
    1
  10326. Children in Britain would not go hungry if the lower classes stopped spending their dole money on heroin.
    1
  10327. American obsession with "law" has got out of hand. The law is no longer about justice. It is about manipulation of the system for political ends. Trump is right. The law - as interpreted by this judge - is wrong.
    1
  10328. They totally ignored them in the Middle Ages. Why should they behave any differently now?
    1
  10329.  @gilescrawford845  Well, me and my mates are just laughing at you! Trump's approval rating has just shot up following his Middle East trip , by the way. You really shouldn't claim to be be speaking for any other than the TDS sufferers who haunt this channel.
    1
  10330.  @annerigby4400  No. "We " - in your terms - are the people who agree with you. And that is far from everybody. It is - probably- just some of the credulous and semi-educated middles classes of the Western world.
    1
  10331.  @thesmallerhalf1968  Yes, Trump's approval ratings have seen a boost following his Middle East trip. According to a Daily Mail poll, his approval rating rebounded to 50%, up from 45% two weeks ago, with analysts also attributing the rise to successful trade deals and tariff negotiations. Another Insider Advantage poll recorded an even higher jump, showing his approval at 55%, marking an 11-point surge since early May. Personally I don't have much faith in polls - but there we are. As for your predictions, Trump's behaviour is so original that I don't see how anyone can say with any confidence what its eventual outcome will be.
    1
  10332.  @timcastle1844  I am. And it's less pathetic than having your brain fried by propaganda.
    1
  10333.  @longi625  Well, I'm laughing with him!
    1
  10334.  @gerald5175  I believe it. You can't expect people who've been living a certain way of life to give up that way of life when they arrive in an American city. It's a problem you can't ignore. Mass immigration from third world countries will destroy Western civilisation. Haitians eating domestic cats is just a particularly vivid illustration of the problem.
    1
  10335.  @gerald5175  I'm just surprised that you don't think it likely that people who are used to killing and eating birds and animals will continue to do so when arriving in America. MAGA, in my view, is in exact contrast to what you say. For generations America has been ruled by a warmongering elite which looks upon the mass of the population with contempt. Importing large numbers of impoverished people from foreign lands while encouraging the general corruption of existing society will enable them to continue to so rule. That residue of common Christian decency which has imposed a check on their activities is being rapidly eroded by these and other means.. MAGA represents the true spirit of resistance.
    1
  10336.  @acuyra  But these Haitians are assimilated and earlier wave immigrants. Most will probably have arrived legally. As to the eating of cats - people who hungry will eat anything.
    1
  10337.  @acuyra  You sound as though you're an expert!
    1
  10338. Absolutely. Both fought for four years in one of the world's worst wars and hate Jews.
    1
  10339. And a good thing too.
    1
  10340. But it's a kick in the teeth for the Palestinians - which has to be a good thing.
    1
  10341. You're weird.
    1
  10342. @Arfur Fuxxakes Hi Arfur! It's five actually and in all cases with mild, slightly different forms. Not to say it might not be a problem - but it's not likely to be a big one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGUFfhIkA9E&t=668s
    1
  10343. @Arfur Fuxxakes He doesn't actually agree with me in many respects. He is just a useful and objective guide to the official information which has been released and which can be found in the description below the video. Go to the sources if you doubt his analytical competence.
    1
  10344. @Arfur Fuxxakes Peer reviewed reports on what? Official US and UK government statistics?
    1
  10345. Unlike those nice quiet, well behaved people in Antifa.
    1
  10346.  @jaypazole4086  There's a big difference between a lone nutjob and an organised gang of looters and arsonists - to say nothing of the looters and arsonists who attach themselves to BLM marches. Hypocrite, liar and wilfully ignorant yourself!
    1
  10347. Bit this has always been Russia's stated intention. If Ukraine recognises the independence of Donbass and acknowledges the annexation of Crimea the war can be over in an instant.
    1
  10348.  @stagg2158  If that's what it is. The Russians want Mariupol, not Kiev.
    1
  10349.  @johnhorter1859  Information obtained through one of these orders cannot be used in criminal proceedings. If the Scottish legislature is stupid enough to go down this route Trump will either block them in the courts until their hair and teeth fall out or stand back while they relieve him of the financially useless golf courses. He doesn't even HAVE to tell them where the money came from.
    1
  10350.  @johnhorter1859  I'm a great fan of Trump as it happens. His pragmatism was genuinely putting the US back on its feet again. I'm still astounded by how much people are still brainwashed into the Orang Man Bad thing. Even if he is a crook, he's a crook in the private sector - not like Biden who definitely IS a crook and he's been using his position and tax dollars to be a crook for more than 40 years.
    1
  10351.  @johnhorter1859  What childish bilge! A few good ole boys got out of hand because they were pissed at the election being stolen. Attempted takeover the government my ass!
    1
  10352. Brexit party the new Tories, UKIP (plus Tommy Robinson and For Britain) the new Labour? It's a two-party system I could live with.
    1
  10353.  @pauleades9037  That's no kind of answer.
    1
  10354.  @A-se2ur  I think I might possibly agree with you there!
    1
  10355. Another clumsy US-inspired propaganda attempt. The Russians will have come to no harm nor caused any in the short time they have been there.
    1
  10356.  @ednorton47  No, it's only too often the other way around.
    1
  10357.  @alhambrabiker1476  But we first have to decide what constitutes Ukraine.
    1
  10358.  @AndSan-n7q  You sound pretty confused yourself.
    1
  10359.  @paulybeefs8588  The BBC has degenerated into a woke propagandist organisation which has lost all claim to journalistic integrity or objectivity. It is not up to them -or you - to decide what is true or what is "invented in the minds of delusional Trump sycophants." It is up to us, the viewers, to decide.
    1
  10360.  @paulybeefs8588  And the fact that we are not allowed freedom of observation must lead us to the conclusion that we are being deceived.
    1
  10361.  @paulybeefs8588  Alas, for most people a certain amount of encapsulation is needed. Despite all the volume of troubling information provided by these committee hearings, and by the amount of further information provided on sites such as Here is The Evidence, the media message is "Nothing to see here. Move on. All is well." There is no vehicle for opening up the question of the efficiency and fairness of the American electoral system. And there really ought to be.
    1
  10362.  @hoolydooly5799  Well, yes.
    1
  10363.  @HHH906 Paragraph 85.
    1
  10364.  @HHH906  There's no need for this. I have read the report and it is quite clear that while calling upon Israel to continue to exercise restraint the ICJ directly condemns Hamas for its behaviour in capturing civilian hostages. There is a great difference between heavily criticising Hamas for what it HAS done and asking Israel not to do things which it OUGHT not to do. In any case, the ICJ's judgements are fairly irrelevant. This conflict will not be resolved in a courtroom, but on the battlefield. The fact that this battlefield is on territory heavily populated by civilians is the fault of Hamas fanatics, not of civilised Israelis.
    1
  10365.  @HHH906  OK. "War crime" might be a bit loaded, but at the same time the point is that the taking and retention of civilian hostages is something which has actually happened, and which can therefore be considered as such. The "strongly-worded paragraphs" against Israel's actions are, in fact, strongly-worded warnings to Israel not to stray into potentially illegal territory. They do not condemn what Israel has done so far. The difficulty I have encountered is in discovering what is meant by "the group" when the definition of genocide is discussed. It cannot mean enemy combatants. War is not illegal. I assume it means a group defined by ethnicity, and that thereby Israel would be guilty of genocide if it sought to exterminate ALL Arabs instead of just those engaged in attempting to commit genocide against Jews. These may be interesting semantic discussions, and lawyers and bureaucrats will doubtless be deriving substantial incomes from engaging in such disputes. There is blood on the ground, however. Much blood. So much blood that, as I say, these matters can only be decided now by military action. I support Israel. You seem to support the Arabs. I hope that Hamas will be swiftly and permanently defeated and that some semblance of peace will arrive in this troubled region until such times as future generations will recognise the utter nonsense and depravity which has led to this tragedy.
    1
  10366.  @HHH906  Alas, my original reply has been deleted. I must have trodden on the algorithm's toes in some fashion. So, let's have another go. OK. "war crime" is a bit rhetorical. Nonetheless the ICJ is clearly concerned about something which HAS happened, rather than about things which MIGHT happen if Israel goes too far. I have difficulty is deciding what is meant by "the group" when it comes to defining genocide. It cannot mean enemy combatants, since war is not illegal. I assume it means a group defined by ethnicity. I do not believe that Israel wishes to destroy all Arabs, but only those Arabs who wish to e exterminate Jews. However much these semantic arguments may provide gainful employment to lawyers and bureaucrats for years to come they will not, I think, have a great deal of impact on the outcome of this conflict. We are beyond that stage. I support Israel. You, I assume, support the Arabs - or if not are keen, as I am, to find a resolution which limits further bloodshed. Can we at least agree upon this? In my view the total destruction of Hamas and other extremist Islamic groups is an essential prerequisite. Only then will future generations of Jews and Moslems be able to live in peace with each other.
    1
  10367.  @HHH906  I've just noticed that my original reply to your last post has been deleted. This is not an uncommon experience for me, I have to say. So, choosing my words carefully, I will concede that my choice of the term "war crime" may have been somewhat intemperate. All the same, the ICJ's detailed critique of Israel's behaviour seems to me to set out rules which should be adhered to, rather than to directly accuse Israel of actually breaking them. More evidence is needed, they say.
    1
  10368.  @HHH906  I'm responding in sections, since I am not sure which part of my analysis has got the YouTube algorithm clutching its pearls. I confess I cannot decide what is meant by "the group" when the report details the steps which should not be taken against it. It cannot mean enemy combatants since war is not illegal. I think it must mean an ethnic group, genocide being defined as measures taken to entirely eradicate such a group. This is what the Nazis wanted to do to the Jews and it is, I believe, what Hamas and other Islamists want to do to the Jews right now. The Jews, on the other hand, have no such ambitions towards Moslems. They just want to stop Moslems committing genocide against them.
    1
  10369. Mr Smirnoff By way of contrast US Sec of State Henry Kissinger is reported to have supported the EU because it saved on 'phone calls. "I know who to ring when I wanna find out what's going on over there."
    1
  10370. We'll be seeing more of this. The Russians are digging in for the winter.
    1
  10371. The US and Russia are natural allies. All that has stopped a rapprochement so far is left-over cold war paranoia - fuelled by the military and the arms industry, who need it to stay in business.
    1
  10372.  @joshuacampbell1625  So the Liberal media in Georgia is financed by foreign powers then? What a surprise.
    1
  10373.  @joshuacampbell1625  True enough. The government, however, insists that they are being seduced into this view by Western propaganda. It's a conundrum we can only hope will be solved peacefully.
    1
  10374. KM He just sort of dried up. It was horrible. His name was Captain Henry, but I don't think he was named after anyone in particular. My Auntie Ed gave him to me when she went to Canada to be a lumberjack. By the way, I don't think you finished your last sentence. Were the three dots emojis?
    1
  10375. KM What you spoke about is global WARMING. Captain Henry died from climate CHANGE. I expect you have heard about canaries in goldmines? Captain Henry was like that. He was a WARNING.
    1
  10376. KM Thank you for ellipsis. I enjoy adding to my vocabulary. By the way, if my new parrot is a boy parrot do you think it would be all right if I called him Greta just the same or...
    1
  10377. Jeremy Corbyn wears striped pyjamas.
    1
  10378.  Daniel D.  Hitler said exactly the same thing. Just couldn't stand criticism, that guy. Stalin was much the same.
    1
  10379.  @PaulLefebvre  The Tatars are relatively small in number, and many are former refugees from Greece. It was originally their land, certainly, but was ruled by the Turks for many years before being annexed by Russia at the end of the 18th century. The population is majority Russian. I don't see that the Ukrainians enter into the picture much.
    1
  10380.  @PaulLefebvre  Who says so? People have invaded other countries throughout human history, and for a variety of reasons. Russia's reasons are reasonably sound and result largely from all their efforts at a diplomatic solution having been spurned over the years.
    1
  10381.  @jimmyandersson5189  The Ukrainians are far from guiltless in this regard. The Budapest agreement was signed in haste in the midst of the collapse of the Soviet Union and was never fit for purpose. It is responsible for this war in much the same way as the 1919 Versailles Treaty laid the foundations for World War II.
    1
  10382.  @jespermikkelsen7553  It's a tall order.
    1
  10383.  @_alienblood  Not so. The borders have changed continually. Crimea was only added to Ukraine in 1954 for example.
    1
  10384.  @erniebuchinski3614  Putin believes it. Many of the 8 million Russians living in Ukraine believe it. I do too.
    1
  10385. @John Town Laws only exist when they are obeyed. What is international law anyway but a way for America to impose its will on the world.
    1
  10386.  @MarvinWestmaas  What law?
    1
  10387.  @kmichael9787  Transferred to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine from the Soviet Republic of Russia - by Russia in order to administer it more efficiently.
    1
  10388.  @RealHomeboy  Putin does. Many of the 8+ million Russians living in Ukraine do. I do too.
    1
  10389.  @linusa2996  So what? Treaties generally fail sooner or later. It was a bad treaty.
    1
  10390.  @danw918  Clearly it has a different view.
    1
  10391.  @madyogi6164  So you admit that borders change according to circumstance?
    1
  10392.  @synicyst9925  But not by everybody. Many of the 8+ million Russians in Ukraine believe that Crimea and Donbass are either independent or part of Russia.
    1
  10393.  @fractalwalrus5409  For now, Borders continually change according to circumstance. Those of Ukraine are currently in a state of flux.
    1
  10394.  @dandansen571  Correct.
    1
  10395.  @jordansummach4198  I have a mission to undo the brainwashing inflicted upon so many of you.
    1
  10396.  @PaulLefebvre  From what date? And published in what countries? Look at maps of Europe over the centuries, borders fluctuate all the time. They are not set in tablets of stone.
    1
  10397.  @luisekjeldsen1515  Ukraine a democracy? Don't make me laugh.
    1
  10398.  @jimmyandersson5189  Not forced to sign, but it was signed by a drunk and not thought through properly. It simply has not stood the test of time. Russia, perhaps foolishly, did not realise the extent to which America and the EU would try to take Ukraine over.
    1
  10399.  @dandansen571  True. How does that affect the issue though?
    1
  10400.  @cb6667  They're fighting over several things.
    1
  10401.  @keithwoods7735  It is much like Ukraine in this regard.
    1
  10402.  @jordansummach4198  My views are shared by millions. It's just that in your particular bubble you don't get to hear them, or the information upon which they are based. Make broadening your outlook a New Years resolution!
    1
  10403.  @linusa2996  That's entirely true. But that was then, and this is now.
    1
  10404.  @linusa2996  Nobody knows what the majority want, other than that the majority don't want to be in the middle of a bloody war. The immense mineral wealth of Donbass is at the epicentre of this struggle and its inhabitants are caught up in a turf war between two sets of crooks who each want to control it. The best solution is the quickest solution and that, in my opinion, is that originally proposed by Russia in which Luhansk and Donetsk become independent buffer states, trading with Russia rather than with the West.
    1
  10405.  @luisekjeldsen1515  Ho! Ho! Ho!
    1
  10406.  @linusa2996  These figures are very hard to establish - but I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you. It's just that no-one really knows and we are at the stage now when even the pretence of democracy practiced in Ukraine is even less relevant than ever. The guns and the rockets have taken over. Silencing them as quickly as possible is now the priority.
    1
  10407.  @_alienblood  But entirely dominant.
    1
  10408.  @PaulLefebvre  Are you sure? Crimea was Russian until 1954. In any case, borders have to alter as circumstances change. They are not laid down by God. And the changes following the collapse of the USSR are scarcely irrelevant. This dreadful war is in fact a ripple of that momentous event.
    1
  10409.  @PaulLefebvre  The rules based order is simply America's way of imposing its rules and its limitations on the world. It doesn't work. It can never work. You can't overturn thousands of years of human experience with PR and signatures on bits of paper. The idea that this rules based order has led to expansion and advancement etc is not only ludicrous, it is frankly distasteful. Try telling that to the Vietnamese and the Iraqis and the relatives of the millions across the planet who have died as America imposes its "rule based order" on the world.
    1
  10410.  @PaulLefebvre  I didn't assume you were American. Your nationality doesn't affect the issue at all. Your claim to speak for the "vast majority of the world" does, however, reveal a certain imperialistic tendency. Perhaps you have, like so many, had your intellect eroded by constant exposure to American propaganda. You have not responded to my mention of the vast suffering and bloody wars created since 1945 by the pursuit of this sham ideal in which you have such great faith. Why not?
    1
  10411.  @jordansummach4198  And a lotta people also think America is a beacon of freedom and democracy and that God made little green apples. What's your point?
    1
  10412.  @dandansen571  Crimea was ruled by the Turks until the late eighteenth century when Russia annexed it. After the Russian Revolution it was incorporated into the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, not the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. On 1954, owing to communication and administrative difficulties created by the Kerch Strait, it was decided to transfer it to the administration of the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. I hope this is of some help to you.
    1
  10413.  @PaulLefebvre  Not as much as you seem to think.
    1
  10414.  @dandansen571  I fail to see he connection. Are you quite right in the head?
    1
  10415.  @dandansen571  Scarcely independent. It seems increasingly to be yet another American vassal state. And what is a "sovereign" state anyway?
    1
  10416.  @jordansummach4198  Millions of people believe in re-incarnation. Millions believe that God sent his only son to earth to redeem us from our sins. Millions believe that America is a beacon of freedom and democracy. Millions believe that America is the Great Satan. No many people believe the earth is flat. My point is that America has begun a proxy war in Ukraine because it wants to get its hands on that country's immense mineral wealth which Russia, by right of history, currently has a stake in. To do this it has, as usual, tried to con the world that it is performing an act of altruism. That disgusts me. That is the point in me voicing my objections and my concern. To satisfy your curiosity I will tell you that I am English, I am 74 years of age, I left school when I was 16 , travelled the world extensively in my younger days, and that you should say my nom de guerre out loud, surname first, to get some idea of my predatory techniques.
    1
  10417.  @dandansen571  Don't be silly. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the principal republic of the USSR.
    1
  10418.  @dandansen571  But the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic was the largest and most dominant of these republics. Do you really not get it?
    1
  10419.  @dandansen571  Are you being deliberately obtuse? The Soviet Union was run from Moscow, which was the capital of the USSR. Ukraine was a subsidiary Soviet Republic and the Russian SFSR ruled it. After the revolution, Ukrainian Bolsheviks did indeed try to set upon their own but were swiftly defeated. Ukraine, in all its various forms, has been a province of Russia from at least the very beginning of the 18th century. The chief underlying reason for this dreadful war is that Russia, having poured blood, sweat, tears and roubles into its industrial development, feels a mite resentful that America and the EU are scheming to move in and run off with the profits.
    1
  10420.  @donnypaul6262  No,
    1
  10421.  @donnypaul6262  You are missing the point. This isn't a matter of principle, but of harsh economic reality. Russia doesn't want Ukraine back, just those parts with a substantial Russian population and which contain all the mines and factories they created. Russia was happy for these to be Ukrainian so long as Russia got first dibs. Now the US and the EU are muscling in, and Russia doesn't like it. Putin would have been entirely content for Donbass to become two independent buffer states, but the US didn't want that, even though many of the people living there did. It is foolish to always view such matters with a typical "holier than thou" Western attitude. Foolish and dangerous, as current events clearly show. .
    1
  10422.  @donnypaul6262  Russia did not brutally occupy Ukraine, it created it.. It was colonised, sure, but it was mainly inhabited by various wandering tribes of Tatars. There were ,of course, the remnants of the ancient Ros riparian culture, but the people Russia fought were other would-be colonisers, notably the Swedes.. Ukraine suffered under Stalin, worse perhaps than most other parts of the USSR. But Putin is not Stalin and the Russian Federation is nothing like the USSR. As for Kaliningrad, Europe is littered with chunks of territory which used to belong to somebody else - several somebody elses in many cases. And there are no Germans there any more.
    1
  10423.  @donnypaul6262  I think not. In fact by creating such a seismic shift in the balance of world economics he has probably simply advanced something that was inevitable anyway -the end of American hegemony. Russia has simply shrugged off the effects of most sanctions and the efforts it is making to circumvent them will create a whole new system of relationships. Russia, China, India, the Middle East, the Pacific rim and host of other emerging economies will combine to escape entirely the reliance on the dollar. And without Russian gas and oil Europe will collapse.
    1
  10424.  @donnypaul6262  This is Western egotism at its best. As outlined in a previous reply, this war will lead to a major shift in the balance of world power, Russia is only a pariah in the eyes of the decadent, brainwashed "woke" West. To the rest of the world it is a source of energy and a market for products to replace those which the West has so foolishly refused to supply. Who do you imagine will be these new suppliers of oil and gas to Europe, by the way? At the moment it is reliant on Norway and very, very expensive American LPG. Do you really think other countries will refuse to buy Russian? Why should they?
    1
  10425.  @donnypaul6262  I was thinking more of the entire Ukrainian coal and steel industry.
    1
  10426.  @donnypaul6262  I don't see how, The Soviet Union was exporting both to Europe for much of the latter stages of the Cold War, and before that most gas was coal gas. The global warming loonies are going to love that coming back aren't they!? As for oil that comes from Texas or the Middle East mainly - and the Middle East will side with Russia in forming cartels to keep the price high, and even to try to escape US hegemony.
    1
  10427.  @donnypaul6262  Who are you when you are at home?
    1
  10428.  @donnypaul6262  I think your crystal ball is somewhat out of focus! I have just butchered a goat, with all due ceremony, and its liver and intestines tell me that the world will be dependent on fossil fuels for at least a hundred years, by which time both NATO and the EU will have disappeared into that well-known receptacle, the dustbin of history, while Russia, China, India, the Middle East, Brazil, South Africa and other more minor nations will have formed themselves into a loose alliance of mutual economic co-operation from which Europe and America are excluded. America, now populated mainly by refugees , will resemble a Calcutta slum while Europe will return to primeval forest where the few remaining natives are hunted down for sport by Russian oligarchs armed with laser guns.
    1
  10429.  @donnypaul6262  They're quite relaxed about me sacrificing goats too.
    1
  10430.  @donnypaul6262  You seem suspiciously familiar with lunatic asylums. Do you speak from personal experience?
    1
  10431.  @drunkenhobo5039  Those CEO's push the climate crisis agenda as much as anyone. There's money in it, see?
    1
  10432. America under Trump will enable a new era of peaceful alliances and trade to begin. Instead of joining in with warmongering fantasies Britain should embrace this new, bright future.
    1
  10433. Look up "paranoia" in a dictionary, why don't you?
    1
  10434.  @martinabsolom2231  A much misjudged man.
    1
  10435. You don't know that for certain.
    1
  10436.  @mytruecrimelibrary  I'm not for a moment claiming Democrat accountability, but it would be foolish to deny it as a possibility.
    1
  10437.  @dogtown1718  I know plenty of Trump supporters are blaming the Democrats, after all it is the Democrats who would have profited if the assassination had succeeded. But that doesn't mean they were - or that they weren't.
    1
  10438.  @harrietharlow9929  No. Just common sense. Personally I think it very unlikely that Crooks was motivated by anything political, but it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility at this stage.
    1
  10439.  @nelsonperez5289  Do I? Name one.
    1
  10440.  @KuariThunderclaw  On the contrary, teenagers are notorious for rebelling against their parents. We know that Crooks left home when he was 18 after some sort of row. His early beliefs and his parents' beliefs are not relevant. I emphasise that I think his actions were psychologically rather than politically motivated. But that isn't to say they couldn't have been taken advantage of.
    1
  10441.  @Ivy94F  There is much that is disputed and much which remains a mystery. That is why it is foolish to dismiss all but the most unlikely of possibilities. And a political involvement cannot be ruled out at this stage.
    1
  10442.  @KuariThunderclaw  I am simply saying that it would be foolish to entirely dismiss the possibility that this attempt on Trump's life was engineered by parties other than the shooter himself. Already the scenario has gone through numerous stages. New information is appearing all the time and a number of conclusions once reached have had to be abandoned. YOUR conclusion - that the Democrat party in any shape or form was NOT involved-might suffer the same fate. I am not saying it will. But it might.
    1
  10443.  @GOPexorcism-we4mp  What for precisely?
    1
  10444.  @gustavodeugarte9460  We are looking for accountability now, aren't we? What made this young man attempt this extraordinary act? Was he motivated by political beliefs or some personal resentment of the world? Does the availability of powerful weapons enter into it? Does the demonization of Trump (which you seem to have swallowed wholesale) enter into it? Until these questions are answered the question of accountability remains very much open.
    1
  10445.  @Ivy94F  It is. Almost everything in this case is disputed. Things which were firm facts yesterday have been revealed to be erroneous today. And it will go on like this probably for ever.
    1
  10446.  @elizabethbrown5258  Even if that is true -so what? It clearly is a possibility. Perhaps a remote one but a possibility nonetheless.
    1
  10447.  @andrewlacosse2096  Blind acceptance is not common sense. Doubt is.
    1
  10448.  @watchinit6063  Perhaps that's probably true. But perhaps he was not recruited, but simply allowed to proceed unhindered once his intention was known.
    1
  10449.  @bonnieprice9482  That too is a possibility!
    1
  10450.  @cheycheyfriend247  I think the demonization of Trump comes into a category all of its own though.
    1
  10451.  @PerryMarshallScott  I think at this stage a certain amount of forensic caution is required - don't you?
    1
  10452. Folie a deux?
    1
  10453. Box Jabber. The fact that id The God Emperor is the ironic title we British Kekistanis give Trump. He's had his ups and downs in business of course, but he appears to have acqured a certain amount of cunning int he process -a good quality ina leader, I think.
    1
  10454. Box Jabber ..or a President.You just have to add a sense of humour and communication skills to the mix - plus a genuine regard for the welfare of ordinary Americans and a strong sense of patriotism too.
    1
  10455. Box Jabber I get the sense that the people who are against Trump regard him with genuine fear and hatred. It seems almost a class thing, with semi-educated former college students in "soft" occupations such as academia being especially virulent. Those who get their hands dirty or earn their living in an entrepreneurial way regard him highly How far off the mark am I?
    1
  10456. Box Jabber Orange man bad for example? The democrats seem to have no other central idea unless you include the jaw-dropping inanity of the green new deal.
    1
  10457. Anna Lieff-Saxby You've eaten up your breakfast like a good little girl, haven't you dear?
    1
  10458. Anna Lieff- Saxby On the basis that you've eaten up your breakfast like a good girl. i.e swallowed what's been put on the table in front of you by the hysterically ant-Trump MSM in the UK. It's an analogy, geddit?
    1
  10459. Box Jabber And now that's all changed. The Democrats have lost their historic hold on oppressed minorities. In the UK too the Labour Party has lots its hold on OUR oppressed minority - the Northern working class.
    1
  10460. Ukraine did it it - almost certainly Time now to start getting in touch with reality and realising that the US and their puppet Zelensky have been taking us for a ride.
    1
  10461.  @wiamoaw  In this instance the Karens have substance to their complaint. They are being short-changed at the till and the goods are rotten. The Presidency isn't some kind of glorified beauty contest. It's about fair representation of varied interests. Without the electoral college rural and small town America would always have a President elected by the inhabitants of the big conurbations. As long as the Presidency has an executive role this would clearly be wrong and unfair. The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing.
    1
  10462.  @wiamoaw  The founding fathers were men of unusual intelligence, men of the Enlightenment which dragged humanity from the moronic tribalism of the middle ages. It is sad and tragic that so many ignorant people now want to see this progress reversed. The situation is the exact reverse of that which you suggest. Skin colour is irrelevant. Social attitudes are not. The electoral college is necessary because without it those people who live outside large cities would be disenfranchised.
    1
  10463.  @wiamoaw  This must mean you are Scots, and therefore probably quite stubborn. Nonetheless my point remains. The Presidency is the result of the decisions of individual states, rather than of some nationwide popularity poll. Trump won in 2016 by securing sufficient support in sufficient states to gain a majority in the electoral college. The Dems spent four years trying to prove he cheated, judging him as they did by their own standards. They failed because he didn't cheat. In 2020 the Dems have cheated. There is nothing unusual in this. American elections have always been fraudulent to some degree. JFK would probably not have become President if entire graveyards in Chicago had not turned out for him. The only questions now are whether they went too far this time and whether or not they are going to get caught. I hope they do. A Biden administration will led to renewed war in the Middle East and economic disasters which will hasten the imposition of the New World Order planned by the billionaires of the World Economic Forum in unholy alliance with the Chinese Communist Party. One can only hope that four years will be sufficient for the American people to see how and why they have been conned. End of sermon!
    1
  10464.  @wiamoaw  It ain't over until the fat lady sings.
    1
  10465.  @EricaMTB  The SAME bodies? They have lasted well.
    1
  10466. They had little choice.
    1
  10467.  @Kallyman421  If they hadn't invaded Ukraine would have invaded Donbass, thus depriving Russia of trillions of dollars of valuable minerals. You don't HAVE to strike first in order to prevent being attacked, but it is often a good idea.
    1
  10468.  @Kallyman421  You are as wrong about the mineral wealth of Donbass as you are about its ownership. While the coal and iron ore may have been depleted, the unique geology of the area makes it rich source of valuable rare earth minerals such as the half a million tonnes of lithium discovered near Mariupol only shortly before the invasion. The worked coal mines are also a source of potentially very large quantities of shale gas. Experts have estimated the value of the mineral wealth remaining in Donbass at at least $13trillion. First with salt, then with coal and iron ore, and now with gas and rare earth minerals, the area has been worked by Russians using Russian labour and with Russian investment. Like Crimea it was merely appended to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by Moscow as a matter of administrative and logistical convenience. The fact that in the confusion following the collapse of the Soviet Union the area of the SSR became the new country of Ukraine was a huge mistake which Putin has sought to work around or rectify. Were it not for Western agencies having ambitions to syphon this wealth away from Russia and into their own coffers there is every chance Russia and Ukraine could have settled these difficulties between them without the need for war.
    1
  10469.  @Kallyman421  Donbass, like Crimea, was only appended to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by Moscow as a matter of administrative and logistical convenience. Including these territories in the new country of Ukraine following the collapse of the USSR was a huge mistake which Putin has attempted to rectify, firstly through peaceful means and now through the grim necessity of war. While its coal and iron ore may have been depleted the area is rich in rare earth minerals, such as the half a million tonnes of lithium recently discovered near Mariupol, It is also extremely rich in shale gas. There have been several surveys in recent years undertaken by various countries. The value of these resources is estimated at around $13trillion.
    1
  10470.  @Kallyman421  Fair enough - but there is certainly enough down there for people to fight a war over. You don't really think this is about bringing democracy to a benighted nation, or a mad dictator trying to recreate a lost empire, do you?
    1
  10471.  @Kallyman421  No treaty lasts forever. As circumstances change, they become irrelevant, as with Budapest. We are now living in a world in which the Pax Americana is crumbling and things ain't as they are, just because America says so. The difference between what Russia is doing now and your examples citing European colonialism and American ambitions in the Middle East is that Russia is not seeking to colonise foreign territories, but is trying to take back something which was stolen from it by these failed and ill-considered treaties.
    1
  10472.  @Kallyman421  You make the common mistake of trying to impose a spurious morality on the dirty world of Realpolitik. Signatures on bits of paper do not outweigh decades of history. In addition, there is an ill-defined but nonetheless very real statute of limitations on regaining lost territories, I think, but even this ostensibly legal or moral imperative become irrelevant when faced with the practicalities involved. If Britain wanted to take back India and had the resources to do so, it would proceed along those lines. But it hasn't. The same applies to the other examples you mention. In the case of Russia and Donbass and Crimea, however, Russia has both the desire and the resources to return to a previous position. This is what is most important, but it also has an entirely reasonable moral case for doing so, even though such a luxury is unnecessary.
    1
  10473.  @Kallyman421  The Ukraine war is the fault of Western agencies who have sought to divert the economies of Donbass and Crimea away from Russia and into their own pockets. Russia cannot be expected to put up with this. Peaceful solutions, such as allowing autonomy to Donbass, thus allowing it to continue to trade with Russia while the rest of Ukraine joins the EU if it wishes, have been rejected. War is the only alternative to humiliation and considerable loss of income for Russia. Russia is almost certain to win this conflict. The amount the West has decided to allocate towards obtaining military victory for Ukraine is diminishing. The profit is no longer worth the investment and while the US arms industry has obtained substantial gains the ultimate objective, that is to say control of mineral resources, is becoming increasingly unlikely.
    1
  10474.  @Kallyman421  Russia has considerable justification for its actions. To allow Western agencies to take control of the economies of Donbass and Crimea would mean humiliation and substantial loss of income for Russia. Peaceful solutions, such as granting regional autonomy to Donbass, thus allowing it to continue to trade with Russia while the rest of Ukraine joins the EU if it wishes - have been rejected. War is the only real answer. Legality or illegality doesn't come into it. The laws were drawn up to benefit those agencies who are involved in attempting to gain control of the resources. Therefore those laws become irrelevant. A court cannot impose an objective judgement when the court is involved in making a profit from the case it is supposedly passing judgement upon. It is rather like the situation in America in the 19th century when tribe was set against tribe and treaties were signed by tribal chiefs who did not realise that instead of coming as peacemakers, the Americans were simply arranging things for their own eventual benefit. This time, it's not going to work.
    1
  10475.  @Kallyman421  Who are "they"? Why should Putin be constrained by agreements signed by his predecessors? Budapest failed and Minsk was designed to replace it. Minsk has failed too and the only real alternative for Russia is to maintain control of its interests through the grim necessity of war. Legality or legality scarcely enters into it. The laws were drawn up by those who are directly involved in the conflict, and can thus be ignored.
    1
  10476. Biden has learned from his extensive dealings with Ukrainian crooks. There, political opponents are invariably charged with made-up crimes in order to get rid of them.
    1
  10477. Joycee Forbes Everything you have just said proves why this big lie is working. There have always been climate disasters. Now they are being used to brainwash people into a state of fear so they can be manipulated into accepting authoritarian control over their lives. This woman is not a journalist, she is a traitor to journalistic ethics. Channel 4 News is not a news channel, it is a propaganda machine. Rhode Island is not falling into the sea. Its temperature is not increasing to alarming levels. Even the most dedicated climate scientist would tell you that. I was a journalist myself for many years, so I know how this works. Don't worry about climate change. But do worry about how journalism, once a defender of freedom, has now largely become a tool of repression.
    1
  10478. The most sinister thing about was the way he thought it necessary to counterbalance the very real threat of Islamist violence with the totally fictitious threat of violence from "Far Right Groups."
    1
  10479. I find it mysterious how brainless people can be brainwashed. It really is an anomaly.
    1
  10480. He is America's only hope of staving off the inevitable collapse of its empire. And even then it will only be temporary.
    1
  10481.  @MrDavidJMa  He's hung like a horse apparently -although this shouldn't make a difference to any decent woman.
    1
  10482. I'd rather be ruled by billionaires than a bunch of whinging leftie losers.
    1
  10483.  @stc3145  Neither Weeb Union or DPA is pro-Russian. Quite the contrary, if anything. They balance the various sources, discounting those which have a proven record of unreliability, and provide maps which show what is happening, backed by videos taken on the ground, which can be geo-located. Currently, the Russians are advancing across the entire front with occasional Ukrainian counter-attacks. If this situation changes, it will be reported.
    1
  10484. Why?
    1
  10485. He can't be allowed to win. is verdict will provide one of the many excuses for why he didn't.
    1
  10486. This is a no comment comment
    1
  10487. A Russian Crimea? A Russian Donbass? What's so horrible?
    1
  10488. I thought it was in a state of war-torn chaos with a huge hunk of its population having fled abroad and many of his young people dead on the battlefield - but perhaps I live on a different planet.
    1
  10489.  @V01DIORE  Both countries are run by crooks for the benefit of crooks- but have slightly different ways of setting about it. Russia is less hypocritical, but more obviously and crudely corrupt.
    1
  10490. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  10491. She may have won, but it wasn't a debate. It was a piece of political theatre designed to humiliate Trump as much as possible. I think he has gained more in sympathy from people who realise this than Harris has from this egregious exercise in bullying.
    1
  10492. @Arfur Fuxxakes Hi again Arfur! Why don't you ask that question in a year or so, after the sums have all been done?
    1
  10493. @Arfur Fuxxakes How so? The statistics are what they are. Overwhelming evidence says the disease has a very low death rate, and it is predominantly the elderly (usually the very elderly) and those with pre-existing life-threatening conditions who die or become extremely ill. The facts are what they are. The only question is what to do about them. Do we continue living in fear, growing poorer and hungrier by the day on the off chance of serious re-infection or a new "wave" - or do we take our courage in our hands and move forward in the intelligent expectation that for most of us this might mean, at the worst, a headache and a bit of a cough?
    1
  10494. He's right.
    1
  10495. Where are the rocks you're living under?
    1
  10496. There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Islam is a genuinely scary religion. It is a proselytizing religion with long-establish techniques for conversion by by both subtle and violent means. Some of its precepts are utterly foul and unless we wish to see our grandchildren enslaved in Medieval subjugation to a fear of hell, while all the advances of the Enlightenment are thrown aside, we must fight it at every opportunity that is offered.
    1
  10497.  @tomhicks1009  It can be found via the one at the top of this pile. Dr Campbell's analysis should help you through. I've thrown in a couple of other bits and pieces too. I have plenty of other supporting information should you wish to see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro https://c19study.com/ https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/… Peer reviewed study https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeatin…
    1
  10498.  @Thisonegoestoeleven666  Although I can see why you are cautious you must realise that in an emergency situation a full-scale double-blind study is hard to achieve, especially when you are playing with lives of potentially dying patients. Dr Campbell is a hard man to convince and has rejected the HCQ solution several times in the past, which makes his approval of the Belgian study especially welcome. It certainly meets his rigourous standards. It doesn't surprise me that some of the links don't work. YouTube censors are programmed to weed out pro hydrocloroquine material - something else which makes me even more convinced there is something in it. You should take more than a quick look. If it should turn out that thousands of lives have been needlessly lost because of the egregious actions of pharmaceutical companies I'm sure you would wish to have been on the right side.
    1
  10499.  @nigelmcalpine7469  Sorry for the delay. My notifications are all over the place at the moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro
    1
  10500. Fucking sound mate
    1
  10501. Kursk seems little more than a PR stunt. The territory occupied by the Ukrainians is of no great value and the Russians seem to be merely allowing them to run about the countryside until they run out of fuel and ammunition.
    1
  10502. daseteam She is owned by We Don't Have Time, a Swedish investment company posing as an environmentalist organisation. Go to their website.to find out more.
    1
  10503. Peter Weatherley The science which has provided these things is the science which utilises fossil fuels -not the junk science of climate hysteria.
    1
  10504. He was lucky not to have got a crack over the head with a baton. He was clearly using an electronic device to interfere with police communications. His reaction to the shove he got was way over the top but he miscalculated his prattfall and got a busted skull -as well as a whole heap of glory in the eyes of his Commie friends.
    1
  10505. Smith's Law of Declining Virulence states that viruses inevitably tend to become more transmissible and less harmful. Rogue variants occasionally crop up which are generally the result of some environmental change. Such an environmental change has been the ham-fisted attempts to control spread through inadequate and ludicrous measures such as masking and lockdowns. This has, in all probability, resulted in the emergence of the deadlier Delta variant. Evolution has however seen Omicron develop in another species, probably mice, and this has resulted in the virus maintaining its natural progression according to Smith's Law.
    1
  10506.  @markwelch3564  Natural laws, unlike man-made laws, do not require police enforcement.
    1
  10507.  @markwelch3564  I think it's a little more than intermittent. And if it was basically incorrect viruses would have wiped out most mammalian life many millennia ago. Nature seeks balance and symbiosis as a general rule. Even a tiny advantage gives a viral variant a rapid route to dominance. Spreading rapidly while allowing hosts to remain ambulant is surely such an advantage. There are, of course, infections which transcend the principle. The Spanish flu and the several plagues of past history certainly do so. Fortunately, however, it seems that Omicron has put Covid 19 back on track.
    1
  10508. It is quite clear that the vaccines are relatively ineffective. Even if infections are caused by people believing themselves to be immune when in fact they are asymptomatic and spreading the disease, this does not account for these figures. Something else is going on. And it's very, very serious.
    1
  10509.  @PopulismIsForBottomFeeders  So only Russians are dying? Is that what you're saying?
    1
  10510. I disagree. The situation in Crimea was entirely different in that the population is predominantly Russian, and welcomed the Russian "invasion" with open arms. Putin could not possibly have expected the same result in Ukraine as a whole. His objective in this war has been to destroy the US and NATO financed Ukrainian army, created post Minsk. This has now largely been achieved and Russia is advancing to take over those areas of Donbass not yet under its control. The Ukrainian "advances" across the Dnieper in Kherson are a mere sideshow and represent no real threat. Indeed, they are encouraged, since they divert Ukrainian resources away from the Donbass front, where the real war is happening. Sanctions are continuing to have only minimal effect. Russia has a criminal economy and its entrepreneurs delight in finding ways around these restrictions. In fact these measures have driven Russia and other countries, resentful of Western dominance, into new alliances, as typified by the growth of the BRICS group, which may well eventually present a real alternative to US hegemony and thus hasten the collapse of the dollar - or at least undermine its status as the world's reserve currency.
    1
  10511.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  The Fox River, Wisconsin. Just for once her genius filing system must have let her down. Perhaps she just wanted to get the point over how crap the White House press corps dormice are though.
    1
  10512. What a excellent idea.
    1
  10513.  @davidmcintyre8145  If one of you lefty loons uses the word "fascist" again I think I shall scream.
    1
  10514. In the hope that they will overthrow their government. They should.
    1
  10515. Ukraine has given up in all but name. Any future aid will follow much of that which has been donated so far - into the hidden bank accounts of Ukrainian politicians.
    1
  10516. It is Ukrainian fanatics who are putting civilian lives at risk and preventing them from leaving. Civilians are being used as human shields and shot if they try to flee.
    1
  10517.  @Tommy.Shenanigans  But ANTIFA is a terrorist organisation. It seems to impose its will through violence and repression. And getting your team up to scratch is hardly sending people to the gulags, is it? You're going to have to do better than that.
    1
  10518.  @mcarpenter2917  Questioning them, certainly. But Jan 6 was a mere protest at what many people (including myself) appears to have been a concerted attempt to subvert the democratic process. If Trump had been a true autocrat he would have overturned the verdict by force, instead of merely allowing his supporters to demonstrate their outrage.
    1
  10519. moret25 It's not fear, it's distaste.
    1
  10520. Grow up.
    1
  10521.  @davecooper3238  Not in the East.
    1
  10522.  @endygonewild2899  Economics aren't everything. The very fact that the EU has riled Russia by flirting with Ukraine proves, to me at least, that getting your vegetables a bit cheaper isn't worth this kind of aggro.
    1
  10523.  @gordonstrong5232  I didn't vote in 2016, but if I had known then what I know now I would certainly have voted Brexit.
    1
  10524.  @donmab  Ukraine is sovereign only on paper. A considerable proportion of the population of the Eastern provinces wants to break away and align with Russia, not NATO and the EU. The EU's ineptitude, both in 2014 and more recently, has led to a revolution and a war.
    1
  10525.  @obligatoryusername7239  The Eastern provinces have been fighting for eight years at least to secede from Ukraine. Ukraine itself is a Russian creation. The point at issue though is that is extremely dangerous for the EU to become involved in quarrels of this sort, and the UK is well out of it.
    1
  10526. I think you must have missed the news somehow. You now have a Democrat government. Has no-one told you?
    1
  10527. Man-made climate change is a lie. The climate crisis is not a crisis. There is no increase in the number or nature of extreme weather events. Trump is right to ignore the panic and to support the economy. Hell will freeze over before man-made carbon emissions have any significant effect on weather patterns.
    1
  10528. So you have to be well known? There are many scientists, well-known and not, who strongly dispute the junk science of climate alarmism, which has a clear political foundation, brazenly alters data to fit its thesis and blackmails scientists into supporting it by threatening to withdraw grants unless they do so I don't know what you mean about Alaska. It was still there and doing fine last time I looked.
    1
  10529. Erik Humleker - Please congratulate your brother for me. According to eminent physicist and Nobel prizewinner Ivan Giavier everything in my statement is true.
    1
  10530. Erik Humleker - thought it was 97 per cent of the 32 per cent who expressed an opinion? And with all due respect to your brother and his colleagues are they not merely repeating what they have been taught? And if they disagreed with what they had been taught would they not very soon have to stop being climate scientists? When it comes to accusations of cupidity climate scientists are themselves on very shaky ground, I fear - especially when an estimated billion dollars A DAY is being spent on propping up their nonsense.. Your quote from Machiavelli could apply very well to climate scientists - on both counts. They have been deceived and continue to perpetrate the deception. The idea that all scientists who question climate change hysteria are somehow in the pay of evil oil barons and coalmine owners is utterly childish. When NONE of the grim predictions have come true and data is clearly seen to have been manipulated then it is time to start asking serious questions. (Ivan Glavier is not an anecdote by the way - or even an anacdote - he is a real person. Google him if you doubt me.)
    1
  10531. Dave abvntr - Turn them into what?
    1
  10532. Brian If the atmosphere is warming it is warming very slowly and in apparent accord with previous patterns. There were no reliable thermometers in the Middle Ages and in Roman Times, but anecdotal evidence -Romans growing grapes in Scotland, large rivers running dry in the 12th century - plus tree ring and leaf stomata proxy data -strongly indicate that it was warmer at both these times than at present. On the other hand it was much colder in the Little Ice Age -roughly 1350 to 1850. So the atmosphere warms and cools, and warms and cools. What part industrial emissions play in the current situation, if any, is impossible to calculate. Carbon is held to be the villain of the piece for some reason and while atmospheric carbon seems to play a role in retaining the sun's heat on the surface of the planet how significant that role is a matter of dispute when compared with other factors. What troubles me is that this carbonophobic scaremongering has been going on for over thirty years and so far as I can tell none of the computer-generated predictions of doom have come to pass, suggesting to me that the computer models are wrong but the scientist are so up to their necks in this shit they can't get out. What's more they are fiddling their figures quite brazenly, just to keep their heads above the surface.of the mire. It's all either a scam or a cock-up that's got out of control.Probably a bit of both. -
    1
  10533. Andrea Mortimer Alas at 70 I don't have the time and anyway all you scientists seem to disagree with each other so vehemently. All I can do is do as I have done and ask some basic questions and wait for answers.
    1
  10534. Brian -I thought I had
    1
  10535. Andrea Mortimer -I really am disappointed in you! I thought you were going to be the one to steer me through the minefield - instead you have become hysterical as all you alarmists seem to become when your bubble is given a little prod. Tut! Tut! (I did have a look at the consensus thingy, Couldn't really understand it. It seemed to be saying that there's a consensus that there's a consensus - as for the rest of the stuff it was mostly just journalism, wasn't it? I don't anticipate seeing any major changes in the 7 years you say I have left to me. You I presume can anticipate much longer. Best of luck!)
    1
  10536. Brian -Thank you very much for this. I will try to get my head around the science - but will it do more than explain the process whereby CO2 translates solar energy into increased heat, and retains it? I don't understand how the presence of such tiny amounts of carbon in the atmosphere can have such dramatic effects, nor why increased amounts of CO2 apparently follow increases in temperature, rather than precede them, which is what one would expect. Anyway, thanks for your civility. Normally climate change devotees grow quite hysterical when responding to my admittedly provocative comments. This is a fine sport, but not as useful as reasoned discourse.
    1
  10537. Frank Speaking - What's up Frank? Are you on medication? Twenty six minutes ago you sent me a post which seemed, although rather chaotic, to contain one or two graspable insights. Then twenty minutes later you send me this hysterical hodgepodge. I'm trying hard to get into this but the way all you carbonophobic climate crisis folk seem to go batshit crazy at odd times is most disconcerting.
    1
  10538. Shantanu Shinde Thankyou for this. I've had a go at a couple of these posts but with little progress being made. I find it far easier to understand Tony Heller (cross yourself quickly and throw salt over your shoulder.) His video '100 per cent accurate climate change predictions' seems to fit far more closely with observable facts and my rather cynical view of human nature. I see no warming. I see no rise in sea levels. I see no glaciers melting. All I see is an impressive series of classroom models and terrifying graphs which bear no relation to what is going on on the other side of the window. I must be wrong. I'd very much like to hear your response to the above video, could you bear to watch it though.
    1
  10539.  @ADifferentBias  The best mitigation is for as many healthy double-vaccinated people to become infected as quickly as possible.
    1
  10540. The "sanction Russia" campaign gets more and more like Fantasy Football every day. Only people living in the bubble of Western conceit and exceptionalism believe the whole world is against Russia.
    1
  10541. It is already recovering. Donbass is sitting on trillions of dollarsworth of mineral resources and areas now occupied by Russia are being rapidly rebuilt.
    1
  10542. @ Really.
    1
  10543. Phil is so very, very right in particulars but, sadly, very, wrong in principle. Nonetheless. it is voices such as his which should be heard if the Labour Party is ever to provide an effective opposition to the current swing towards cynical "wokeism" in the Conservative ranks.
    1
  10544. Sounds like a plan.
    1
  10545. What democracy?
    1
  10546.  @porecemusnox8805  A manipulated representative democracy.
    1
  10547.  @porecemusnox8805  That would just make things worse.
    1
  10548.  Deborah Hennessey  The phrase Stay Calm and Carry On comes from World War II, not WW1 and was never said by anybody: it was just the wording on a famous poster, Donald Trump holds out the sole hope of the survival of a free Western society against the insanities of home-grown "woke" Marxism and the real threat of Chinese world domination. If you think otherwise, you are part of the problem you poor, brainwashed fool.
    1
  10549.  @Crouchy232323  First they came for......
    1
  10550.  @Anglotourist  Ooh, ain't you posh? But if you are implying that once the left-wing totalitarians get full control the pogroms will start, them I'm afraid I must agree with you.
    1
  10551. @88Gibson LesPaul They wear very different masks, called respirator masks, which fit tightly and are secured behind the head not behind the ears. Air goes through special filters.They also wear face shields these days because coronaviruses are the teeniest, teeniest little germs you can ever get. If a coronavirus was the size of a baseball the gaps in the weave of a normal, everyday facemask would be the size of a barn door. Mine of information, ain't I?
    1
  10552. @88Gibson LesPaul Sure. But not the little blue things you buy in grocery stores. They'll probably tell you on the packaging that they keep out 95% of germs. The 5% they DON'T keep out are those teeny, teeny little coronaviruses. Keep on wearing your mask though. You don't want people to get mad at you.
    1
  10553. @88Gibson LesPaul Hey! I shoot squirrels too! Every tried killing one with a pea-shooter?
    1
  10554. @88Gibson LesPaul I don't do it for sport either. The buggers keep stealing my walnuts so it's them or my walnuts. Odd sequence of mental events you go through when shooting something though, isn't it?
    1
  10555.  @primalconvoy  I should hope so too. We don't want them letting the side down.
    1
  10556. I remember a satirical programme about a TV news station called "Drop the Dead Donkey". Channel 4 News - you are outparodying parody! Even the reporters's voice sounds the same. Can anyone get hold of editions of the show and run it beside this garbage? They've just done another one about Rhode Island in similar vein. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at one of the Channel 4 news conferences. "Go out and find somewhere flat on a coast and get someone to complain about it!" You fucking morons you're a disgrace to what was once a reasonably noble profession.
    1
  10557. The ICC is an utter absurdity. As well as the nonsense allegations against Israel they have given official recognition to the even more ridiculous claims that Putin "kidnaps children."
    1
  10558.  @spir5102  God, you're pathetic.
    1
  10559.  @MariaMartinez-researcher  Doesn't count. Try harder.
    1
  10560.  @harold9394  It is. I started it.
    1
  10561.  @Justthe_facts  I can't be a traitor because I'm not American.
    1
  10562.  @lisal9829  History will show that America was ruled by crooks, charlatans and warmongers, hiding behind puppets - until a shady property developer from New York came along and blew the whole scam wide open. PS I already have four grandchildren.
    1
  10563.  @lisal9829  The history of the collapse of the American Empire, you mean? My grandchildren (already born) will probably be reading it before they reach my age.
    1
  10564.  @TicketyBoo.  The Office of National Statistics.
    1
  10565.  @cockoffgewgle4993  No. You are. I said young women. Over 75% of those dying with covid have been in their eighties and nineties. The number of women under 30 who have died is around 200 and 90% of these had pre-existing life-threatening conditions anyway.
    1
  10566.  @TicketyBoo.  Your father´s death at 62 without any pre-existing morbidity is certainly an anomaly - unless of course he was in a situation where he was subjected to repeated infections. You naturally have my sympathy for your loss. It does, however, have little bearing on the matter at hand. The question remains: how much do we restrain and restrict normal behaviour in order to prevent the occurrence of statistical anomalies? Hardly at all, in my view.
    1
  10567. The history hasn't been written yet. When it is I have a suspicion that Germany's decision will be regarded as an act of sanity which helped halt the war-fever which had gripped the Western world.
    1
  10568. Animal Farm You left out the media. It's really clever how they employ slack-brained journos to peddle the left-wing, climate crisis agenda to keep the pot boiling. Instability means profit for hedge fund managers.
    1
  10569. mariali santander I've just watched Tony Heller's latest. The Australian climate apparatchniks have airbrushed out all records prior to 1910. You can guess why. They show temperatures far, far higher than any since. Newspapers report devastating bush fires too.
    1
  10570. The real fascists are on the Ukrainian side. Google Azov Battalion.
    1
  10571. The real fascists are on the Ukrainian side. Google Azov Battalion
    1
  10572.  @foxpaw1  Ah. You must be one of the millions of ignorant Americans who think Russia is still communist. Sad.
    1
  10573. @Brupe Boring Azov Battalion?
    1
  10574.  @puclopuclik4108  In this instance no-one needed to.
    1
  10575.  @ProcaviaCapensis-ts8ub  It is acting as America's proxy in a concerted campaign to destabilise the Russian Federation and to attack its longstanding commercial interests.
    1
  10576.  @boink800  He also wrote a book outlining his plans to take over the whole of Eastern Europe and to exterminate the Jewish people. Putin hasn't.
    1
  10577.  @puclopuclik4108  I disagree. Russia will fight tooth and nail to retain control of territories left to it after the collapse of the Soviet Union but there is no evidence that it intends to expand its borders beyond this. Ukraine in its present form is itself a creation of the SU and the ambitions of the nationalists to ally it commercially and militarily with the West are obviously unacceptable to Russia. A sensible compromise has been offered but the Zelensky regime, at America's behest, has foolishly rejected it with dire consequences
    1
  10578.  @enigma1000  Since when has defending your county against foreign aggression been psychopathic,?
    1
  10579.  @goldenglobe3880  Clear guidelines do not ensure accountability. Quite the reverse. As I said, they merely supply potential wrongdoers with guidelines on what pitfalls to avoid. Power is already misused - and the system is not trusted, largely because of this.
    1
  10580.  @goldenglobe3880  All I can do is repeat myself - although with the caveat that once an established system is broken it may be replaced by another. This system will itself have to be broken down at some point, because criminals are clever and they WILL find ways around whatever system is installed. It may seem paradoxical, but only through a cycle of repeated chaos can true stability be guaranteed.
    1
  10581.  @goldenglobe3880  I think the mistake you make is in assuming that people are honest. Often they aren't and this means that rigid guidelines need constant policing. And only too often those that do the policing become tainted by dishonesty too. I don't much like analogies but I'll briefly tell you a story about a friend of mine who got a job managing a bar. Pilfering was problem. There were strict guidelines about this, but they were ignored. He bought some packets of little coloured stickers, red green and blue and stuck them arbitrarily on various bottles. The pilfering stopped. He had introduced confusion into the equation - much as Musk is doing now. Stasis leads to corruption. Confusion negates it.
    1
  10582. Starmer take note.
    1
  10583. Ryan Macfarlane Exactly right and very well put. How have you managed to escape the indoctrination?
    1
  10584. Alex Meyer Only in laboratory experiments does increased CO2 lead to increased atmospheric warming to the degree you state. There is increasing evidence that the actual atmosphere does not behave in this way. Go to "A New Look at the Physics of the Earth's Atmosphere" at ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com for interesting research promoting this point of view. In all probability the Earth's surface temperature is governed largely by a combination of proximity to the sun, its behaviour, and atmospheric pressure, as is the case with other planets in the solar system. Atmospheric carbon may purely be part of a regulatory mechanism evolved to maintain thermodynamic stability. The warming and cooling of the Earth seems to follow a fairly regular cyclic pattern. The current warming period is in accord with this pattern, beginning toward the mid 19th century and progressing through relatively minor peaks and troughs thereafter. We may expect temperatures to increase in a similar way for many decades yet before rapid cooling ensues. The sun's own cycles of activity clearly play a major part in all of this. How much effect made-made carbon emissions have is very much open to question, however.
    1
  10585. Ryan MacFarlane Prase be! Another voice of sanity in a world of fools and madmen. Keep up the good work!
    1
  10586. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOLMMqKekck
    1
  10587. If it was Canada she'd have been offered euthanasia.
    1
  10588. The FDA and the CDC - like almost any three-letter acronym in the USA - seem to be notably susceptible to political pressures.
    1
  10589.  @rockrabbit253  They've been behaving on the same way in Donbass for eight years.
    1
  10590.  @rockrabbit253  Hardly. An invasion is when the inhabitants fight off the invaders. When they welcome them, it's an alliance.
    1
  10591.  @rockrabbit253  Absolute nonsense. Donetsk and Lugansk have their own substantial armies and the civilian population has welcomed Russian help against the Ukrainians, whose corruption and incompetence has led to this once-rich industrial area being bled dry by crooks, while the workers wages dropped by 80%. With luck, this war will lead to their salvation. There are more Russians than Ukrainians in Donbass and even the non-Russians know they were better off under the Soviets of all things!
    1
  10592. The tanks will arrive too late to be of any help. The Russian winter campaign is about to start any day now. It stands every chance of success.
    1
  10593. That was then and this is now.
    1
  10594.  @joeordinary209  He hasn't got very far though, has he? All he has done in fact is to attempt to maintain control over satellite countries and prevent them from being taken over either by Western capitalists or Muslim fanatics.
    1
  10595.  @foxbat7288  It didn't have any nukes to give up. They were Soviet (ie Russian ) nukes. The fire codes were all in Moscow.
    1
  10596.  @joeordinary209  Ukraine only became independent in 1991. Before that is was a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Note the term "semi-autonomous". It was ultimately controlled by Moscow. And Crimea, as I say, was only added on 1954. It was Russian before that and is Russian now.
    1
  10597.  @foxbat7288  They weren't Ukrainian nukes, strictly speaking. They were Soviet nukes and the launch key codes were kept in Moscow. They were stationed there to protect the entire Soviet Union, not just Ukraine.
    1
  10598.  @joeordinary209  I think there is probably a statute of limitations on imperial influence! If Mongolians ran Russia's factories and mines and had invested billions of their money in them, then they might well object to them being taken over by America.
    1
  10599.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  I don't think its quite a simple as that! In any case that's hardly the point. The nukes stationed in Ukraine were there not for Ukraine's exclusive benefit, but for the SU as a whole. They were not, therefore, the property of Ukraine.
    1
  10600.  @joeordinary209  And America has taken full advantage by persisting to imagine that Russia wants them back and so extending NATO - to its considerable political and financial gain. Trying to establish NATO in Ukraine, however, is a step too far for the Russians, who believe the two countries have a far closer relationship than it has with other countries.
    1
  10601.  @joeordinary209  I agree with you that this war is primarily about mineral rights, rather than the question of Ukraine joining NATO. That possibility is deeply offensive and troubling to Russia, but it is not sufficient to start a war. What is sufficient cause is the fact that after 2014, under cover of the Minsk Treaties, America and its NATO stooges spent billions on creating a new Ukrainian army which by 2020 was preparing to retake the Donbass republics and Crimea. This was unacceptable to Russia. After the disaster of the Budapest Accords Russia managed to keep some sort of hold on the mining and steelmaking industries it has created in these areas. This compromise was severely threatened by the coup of 2014 and Putin took the decision to retake Crimea and provide support for the Donbass separatists. It is clear that he has throughout hoped to maintain a peaceful solution. It could well be that pragmatists in Kiev would accept Crimea becoming officially part of Russia and for Donbass to become an independent republic, with relations with both Ukraine and Russia. The West, however, with its eyes set on grabbing the estimated $14trillion of gas, oil. coal and rare earth minerals under the soil of the disputed territories, had other ideas and Zelensky was persuaded to go to war. It is a war which Ukraine is likely to lose. At the end of the day Putin will end up with more than he asked for and over half a million people will have died to no purpose.
    1
  10602.  @anglonorse2943  Well we're more than halfway there already.
    1
  10603. More that 50% of adults are already doubly vaccinated and over 80% have had one jab. The good news is that vaccination doesn't prevent infection in all cases, but reduces symptoms considerably. Every day we are turning out 60,000 or so people who are immune at very little cost to their health. This works. Strict lockdowns don't - unless possibly if they are imposed before the virus enters the population to any degree.
    1
  10604.  @anglonorse2943  We're approaching it rapidly though and the current situation as it develops will at least encourage waverers. I tend to subscribe to two heresies here: firstly that the 80%+ immune figure is unnecessary before HIT is reached and secondly that new variants emerge as the result of more infections. I think it just as likely that evolutionary imperatives apply and that minor variations only become successful when circumstances alter sufficiently to bring advantage to such variations. Lockdowns could actually breed variants.
    1
  10605.  @PianoGamer64  Other way round.
    1
  10606.  @PianoGamer64  I follow the independent mapping channels, who favour Ukraine if anything. Both Weeb and DPA clearly show the Ukrainians advancing into practically unoccupied land while the Russians are closing in on their flanks.
    1
  10607.  @georgedorn1022  Get a life.
    1
  10608.  @echobay5040  Define "pathetic."
    1
  10609.  @superhumantrueman  No. The US was defeated. And the withdrawal was an utter shambles, reminiscent of the US withdrawal from Vietnam. Trump knows full well that his country's role as the bullying policeman is well and truly over.
    1
  10610.  @superhumantrueman  No. It was defeat.
    1
  10611.  @georgedorn1022  Oh dear!
    1
  10612. We 've been suckered - and suckered so good we think we got the best of the deal. TDS causes blindness.
    1
  10613. You've got to be either dim or in on the scam to push the climate crisis agenda. In this case dim covers it.
    1
  10614. The only thing Donald Trump is guilty of is being Donald Trump.
    1
  10615.  @ghintz2156  Thankyou Confucius
    1
  10616.  @norbitcleaverhook5040  You have swallowed a chunk of propaganda, cooked up for consumption by simpletons. The truth of the matter is that THE Ukraine was a Russian creation from the days of Peter the Great and right through the time of the Soviet Union. The "country" created in the chaos of the Soviet collapse has no ethnic, economic or political cohesion. It has failed the test of time. The Americans, in their usual insidious, bullying fashion, have sought to take advantage of this. That new would-be world power, the EU, has also tried to get in on the act. In fact, Crimea is Russian and Mariupol and Donbass sufficiently Russian for a substantial number of their inhabitants to fervently wish to escape from the corrupt and incompetent rule of gangster-run Kiev. America and the UK have been training troops and supplying arms to aid Ukraine in its savage and bloodthirsty attempts to subdue the separatists in Donbass. NATO has been grooming Ukraine to qualify it for membership. If achieved, this would enable the US to set up a nuclear missile base within seven minutes flight time of Moscow. This, in turn, leads to the possibility of a pre-emptive strike by the US, crippling Russia before it has time to respond. In addition to this, America's drastic drop in prestige following its chaotic debacle in Afghanistan is more than likely leading Putin to believe he could either himself launch a pre-emptive strike, or even take out an American or NATO city, without evincing a full-blown response. The more he is pressured, the more likely he is to take this risk.
    1
  10617.  @xpusostomos  I fail to grasp the analogy. The developing relationship between China and Russia is certainly the most significant feature of geopolitical change at the moment, along perhaps with the imminent economic and political collapse of the US; but a more pertinent question for you to ask would be if Russia would support a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan in return for Chinese support for its invasion of Ukraine, and its economic war with the West.
    1
  10618.  @xpusostomos  Can an abusive relationship be stopped by an abusive intervention by a third party, though? In any case, many in Crimea and Donbass consider themselves to have been more abused by Kiev than by Moscow since 1991. They were better off under the Soviet Union in many ways, at least in recent years. Secession and partition are the only real answers to this problem.
    1
  10619.  @xpusostomos  Wages in Donbass dropped 80% after Ukraine took over. Their coal and steel were stolen from them by Ukrainian oligarchs. Their currency was replaced. Their children were being taught in Ukrainian, not the Russian they spoke at home (even Ukrainians!) The statues of their heroes were torn down and the names of their streets were altered. Of course Russia sought to take advantage of this discontent, but the discontent was very much there - and it turned to bitter and justified hatred after the Ukrainians started shelling their cities and sending in the Nazi Azov Battalion to rape, torture and murder. What have the Uyghurs to do with Russia?
    1
  10620.  @xpusostomos  Your analogy isn't really worth consideration. Ukraine is a multi cultural, multi ethnic territory. The Russians are Russian because their parents and grand-parents etc were Russian. They have only been "Ukrainian" for thirty years or so. And yes, their eating habits as well as their religious observances, if any, are Russian. They have streets and boulevards named after Engels and Marx and statues of Lenin in town squares. Moscow is their capital and Kiev is the capital of their oppressors. Their antecedents may be somewhat shameful, but that is hardly their fault. Ukraine has treated them very badly and they want out and are prepared to fight for it. The civil war in Donbass has resulted in more than 14,000 deaths and been characterised by the most obscene acts of depravity and torture, begun by the Ukrainians but now matched atrocity for atrocity by the separatists. Your polite ideas of right and morally upright don't enter into it. Nor does Will Smith.
    1
  10621. ​ @DrStrangelove-w9w  Russia is merely trying to stop the US gaining a nuclear base in Ukraine, and to cease training and arming troops who are repressing and murdering separatists in Donbass. How the war is going very much depends upon the propaganda you are subjected to.
    1
  10622. Surely you can see the difference between a contemporary dictator and a minor public figure of 300 years ago?
    1
  10623.  @chrisevans1255  I have had very, very many comments deleted - but never had a warning. How do you explain that? I write swear words on full and they get through, but yesterday everything that contained the name Donald Trump was deleted on several channels. It's madness.
    1
  10624. But we don't necessarily want to keep it at bay. It could be our salvation.
    1
  10625. The sad truth is that many elderly people have such worn-out immune systems that nothing can save them from a novel virus such as this.
    1
  10626.  @cg3560  Which we are not prioritising. It was always possible to isolate many of the vulnerable. Now that so many people have levels of immunity it would be even easier.
    1
  10627.  @cg3560  With large numbers of people now immune through infection (and temporarily and to a lesser degree via vaccination) isolation is not necessary. Instead of passes for nightclubs there should be passes for entering the same room as an elderly or otherwise vulnerable person!
    1
  10628.  @nownotlater888  The population of Crimea is around 70% ethnic Russian, as are the industrial and mining areas of Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  10629.  @michaelmadsen3696  Absolute nonsense. The Russian population of Crimea has been around 70% for decades. There are very few Ukrainians, who are actually outnumbered by Tatars. The Russians were welcomed with open arms in 2014 and very few people indeed felt the need to flee.
    1
  10630.  @michaelmadsen3696  The Russians beat the Germans on their own.
    1
  10631.  @boink800  They are ethnic Russians. Crimea is Russian. The people are direct descendants of Russians with Russian attitudes, Russian religion and Russian customs. They are Russian in the same way that the Scots are Scots and not English.
    1
  10632.  @michaelmadsen3696  Russia did quite well on its own, although much aided by American equipment. They got to Berlin first, don't forget.
    1
  10633.  @boink800  The Syrian veterans are, I believe, fighting in Donetsk right now.
    1
  10634.  @insanebe1  I agree ethnic is not strictly speaking the right word to use, but it is a useful label in this context to emphasise the difference between being Russian and Ukrainian in the sense you mention.
    1
  10635.  @davidbrancaleone3039  Only if it had set by a fool, which is not entirely impossible. You need to explain how my arguments are illogical before you can make such a claim.
    1
  10636.  @davidbrancaleone3039  I am not Russian, so I'm neither winning nor losing but as an outside observer it is clear to me that slowly but surely Russia is achieving its prime military objective, namely conquering and retaining Donbass. To do so it has been necessary to open other theatres of operation in order to attempt to reduce the Ukrainian forces which have been supplied and trained by the West in order to support Western commercial ambitions in the area.
    1
  10637.  @davidbrancaleone3039 Russia is merely trying to retain control of resources to which it is, in my view, morally entitled.
    1
  10638.  @MagpieOz  I was referring more to the 16 million or so American troops who took part in World War II. Perhaps we are at cross-purposes.
    1
  10639.  @paulcarfantan6688  Lots of people are dying in Donetsk. A needless tragedy.
    1
  10640.  @paulcarfantan6688  It was a joint effort, certainly. It's pointless playing the "what if" game with history but I think its pretty silly to suggest that without America Russia would have been conquered by Germany.
    1
  10641.  @insanebe1  We are not in too great a divergence of opinion. The amount of territory ceded to Russia after the conflict is ended will very much depend upon the state of play at that point. What is significant, I feel, is that the longer Ukraine holds out, the more it will lose. I tend to disagree , however, that Putin has any interest in conquering territory purely for the sake of it. The Georgia question is more or less settled and as long as Armenia and Kazakstan stay outside the Western sphere of influence they can continue to operate semi-independently.
    1
  10642.  @davidbrancaleone3039  Fantasy.
    1
  10643.  @davidbrancaleone3039  This sounds like desperation to me. Is this meaningless gibberish supposed to impress us?
    1
  10644.  @bonnie7898  All one can really do in a situation like this is to speculate.
    1
  10645. This could well be true. Navalny's death did not suit Putin in any way. And there is considerable evidence that the man was a CIA asset.
    1
  10646.  @CG-dd9tb  That's exactly what's happening, though. I expect you believe all this old bollocks about Putin being Hitler and brave little Ukraine fighting for freedom and democracy.
    1
  10647.  @CG-dd9tb  Of course not. Putin is Hitler and brave little Ukraine is fighting for freedom and democracy.
    1
  10648. In a children's book, perhaps?
    1
  10649.  @lazytitan9987  If his current gamble on covid pays out he will be a national hero. If not there are plenty of Tories who have far more appeal to the electorate than anyone I can think of on the Labour side.
    1
  10650. The Kabul debacle was the beginning of the end for American world dominance. The failure of its proxy war in Ukraine will be another nail in the coffin.
    1
  10651.  @pneudmatic  They only want 20%. That will come within the next few weeks.
    1
  10652.  @bobmabel8543  Just look in the comments sections of lefty YouTube channels.
    1
  10653.  @bobmabel8543  From the left and other muddle-brained individuals.
    1
  10654. Go online $37.50 a hundred.
    1
  10655. I think the point is that is generally very difficult to access documents once they have been fed into computers. The computerised version is the one you get, and you just have to believe that the original data was fed in unaltered.
    1
  10656.  @minhduong1484  You are missing the point. You could be certain that those records in the dusty warehouse were ones actually taken at the time of the date upon them. Digitized records can be - and are - altered from their original form and there is no way of knowing that this has happened. I don't suppose this applies to birth records, but it certainly does to meteorological ones - and this is freely admitted. It's called homogenization, and it makes me rather uneasy.
    1
  10657.  @minhduong1484  Digitized records are of course easy to access. But how do you know they are an accurate reflection of those original ones in the dusty warehouse - which are now even more difficult to access than once they were?
    1
  10658.  @johnbriggs3916  No! Just homogenised climate data!
    1
  10659.  @minhduong1484  I must have expressed my original point badly if that is how you understood it. As far as climate data is concerned, there was a time when the original readings were set side by side with the revised versions, but generally this is no longer the case. Of course original records can be replaced, but such intentional forgeries are not necessary when all you have to do is work backwards as replace the record with a reading of what it OUGHT to be rather than what it WAS when you come to place it on the computer. And that is what happens in the homogenization process.
    1
  10660.  @Ooze-cl5tx  Yes. And 200 year old ones too.
    1
  10661.  @Ooze-cl5tx  Once again, that isn't the point. If they were indeed scanned in and put alongside the revised measurements there would be no need. But they aren't. And you have to wonder why.
    1
  10662.  @markhackett2302 I cannot find digitised records of early temperature records anywhere. If you can I would be very grateful if you could tell me how and where.
    1
  10663.  @minhduong1484  I have to disagree. All I require is some notification that a) the results published online have been altered from earlier results and b) the opportunity to see those original results. I am, in fact, both mistrustful of and sceptical of the information I am being expected to take as gospel.
    1
  10664. Most of those who have died "with" covid have been very elderly and very frail. They were on their last legs and if hadn't been covid it would have been something else. By far the largest category of people who have died has been those over 90.
    1
  10665.  @swannvictor1388  I wasn't thinking as such; just reporting the facts.
    1
  10666.  @swannvictor1388  Which facts do you dispute then?
    1
  10667. ​ @swannvictor1388 Time you checked ONS statistics, Swann.
    1
  10668. Martin Gugino I do not accept that the change has been upward and rapid. Only doctored data make it appear so.. Solar activity is cyclic as are rises and falls in temperature. The role of atmospheric pressure in the equation can best be explained by referring to Nikolov and Zeller's 2017 paper, published in Environmental Pollution and Climate Change. An undoctored cersion of temperature history can be found on co2science.org/video/confirmed/gope_confirmed.php
    1
  10669. Martin Gugino Better than what? Not with you.
    1
  10670. It was. It did.
    1
  10671.  @richiecooke69  I'm afraid I have other commitments at this time of year!
    1
  10672.  @s0ycapitan  I'm afraid whatever grumbling these actions may cause among the Russian populace they will not be sufficient to spark a rebellion. Zelensky, with his showbiz background, pays too much attention to audience feedback. Putin couldn't care less what people think as long as they behave themselves. And they will.
    1
  10673. I think you're right to suggest that Covid 19 will eventually mutate into just another component of "the common cold." Evolution would seem to dictate that pathogens of this sort should become more transmissible but less deadly in order to maximise reproduction. In which case the draconian measures you seem to be advocating are likely to do more harm than good. The variants come into prominence as a response to altered conditions. The UK variant has almost certainly resulted from a response to lockdowns as a slight degree of improved transmissibility and more efficient cell penetration will allow the variant which possesses these characteristics to prosper in a situation where fewer victims are available. There is even a case to be made for suggesting that without any lockdowns the epidemic in the UK would be over by now - and with very possibly fewer deaths and hospitalisations than has actually been the case.
    1
  10674.  @skindred1888  Your last sentence actually reinforces the point. Things were going relatively well until last month when the UK variant kicked in. The 2020 death rate was 10.2 per 1,000, which is only slightly above the average for recent years. Before 2003 death rates of this magnitude were pretty normal. Even now the death rate is not exceptional. 2000 deaths a day are far from uncommon at this time of year. The only oddity seems to be that so many of them are "with" Covid 19. People seem to be dying of scarcely anything else! I know the idea of doing very little and letting things take their course to a great extent seems totally counter-intuitive, but a case does exist. I am no mathematician, but back in August projections were done by a team with much experience in the field of epidemic mapping which suggested that with an R number of 1.4 herd immunity could have been achieved by October. Those who regard lockdowns as counter-productive on many levels often cite Sweden of course. The death rate and case rate matches ours almost completely. You can more or less superimpose the graphs - until last month when death rates were falling in both countries and ours suddenly our shot up. The Swedish Covid death rate continued in a dramatic plunge and is now in single figures.
    1
  10675.  @highpath4776  Why? It's now little worse than a seasonal influenza in terms of deaths and hospitalisations. We have to learn to live with it - which since it seems currently to be replacing influenza rather than adding to it shouldn't be too difficult.
    1
  10676.  @billcar6805  They're selling them to the highest bidder by all accounts.
    1
  10677. Have you any idea how much wealth lies buried beneath the ground in Donbass? It is virtually uncountable.
    1
  10678.  @IronWolf123  And where will these missiles be coming from, pray?
    1
  10679. It's the route to peace.
    1
  10680. @ NATO is no longer needed.
    1
  10681. @ It's not a question of loyalty, it's a question of mutual economic interests.
    1
  10682. You sound so CERTAIN!
    1
  10683. Which is why Russia isn't using it Ukraine.
    1
  10684.  @charlesflint9048  If Russia wanted to terrorise the population you wouldn't just get a handful of people dying -they'd be hundreds. These incidents are the result of missiles - both Russian and Ukrainian - missing their true targets for one reason or another.
    1
  10685.  @nonameissafer.8457  Why so? This war is a direct result of US meddling in Ukraine.
    1
  10686.  @Yomi4D  He was pushed - by warmongering lunatics in Washington taking advantage of the senile puppet in the White House.
    1
  10687.  @fritterfoof5146  That was then and this is now -you're talking about the Soviet Union - not the Russian Federation. Different critters entirely.
    1
  10688. The Dems are just so horribly cheap and nasty. How Americans call fall for this pathetic drivel just astounds me.
    1
  10689. To Petraeus and his like, war is just a business opportunity. You can be sure all the recommendations he makes are designed to ensure profits for the global investment fund he works for - with little or no regard for anything else.
    1
  10690. The Ukraine conflict is a turf war between two alien kleptocracies. Why should Australia be involved? Because it has its tongue up America's fat arse is all!
    1
  10691. Russia doesn't need nukes. The West is already destroying itself with its ill-considered proxy war in Ukraine.
    1
  10692.  @Viktor-gk5ri  The Russians never wanted the whole of Ukraine. It would be like swallowing a porcupine and result in a lengthy and expensive civil war. If they wanted Kiev why didn't they bombard it before the ground attack instead of after? The invasion is simply about destroying as much of the Ukrainian army as possible in order to prevent it invading existing Russian held territories.
    1
  10693.  @Viktor-gk5ri  I don't think Putin cares much how many men he loses so long as Ukrainians die in the process. Nor do I believe he is stupid or mad. I don't think Putin has a great deal of choice once it became clear that Ukraine was likely to be included in NATO's next tranche of empire building. Russia and Ukraine have a unique relationship and the "westernisation" of Ukraine would be extremely harmful to Russian prestige as well as affecting it economically - the nuclear threat aside. Finland and Sweden joining NATO is neither here nor there to him very much No, this is America's war and poor Ukraine is just being used to advance the policies of American warmongers now they have shoehorned a puppet into the White House.
    1
  10694. @gloomndoom If they wanted to take these cities then why didn't they bombard them first? That's the normal method. Try to get it through your thick skull that the invasion was designed primarily to destroy the Ukrainian army in order to make it too weak to invade Crimea and Donbass. What its strength is now only its top commanders know. The Russians are digging in for the winter. They have unused troops -mercenaries from Chechen and veterans of the war in Syria as well as the armies of the separatists who have been holding off the Ukrainians for eight years. And they've got electricity too.
    1
  10695.  @Viktor-gk5ri  Looking at it from the outside it strikes me that Putin has thrown raw troops and antiquated armour into the first phase of the special military operation. Equally so, he has conscripted reserves and, from what one hears, dissidents have a fair chance of being selected. The real war is about to take place now. Ukraine too has been forced to conscript civilians and they will, in all probability, have to face Russian and Chechen troops who already have considerable battle experience. What is NATO for if not to intimidate Russia and to provide job and wealth opportunities for senior military personnel and arms dealers? It's a con that has been going on since 1945 and, as I said, getting Ukraine on board even15 years hence would be a blow to Russia's pride and sense of itself. Ukraine is Little Russia after all and would not even exist were it not for Russia, which created it. The idea of it becoming a whore of the Great Satan is just too much to bear.
    1
  10696.  @Viktor-gk5ri  I think I had best refer you to Colonel Douglas MacGregor and Professor John Mearsheimer who can both explain the position better than I can. They both have YouTube channels as well as having written extensively on the subject. A far as the history of Ukraine is concerned, while it is true that the Vikings created a civilisation based in Kiev which then spread up through the river system to eventually found Moscow, much of the surrounding area was steppe and forest, peopled by various wandering tribes. The Ukraine we know today was created by the Russian Empire and by the Soviet Union. With regard to your point about NATO membership, I merely point out that while membership by most countries is probably a source of minor irritation to Putin, that of Ukraine would be in another category. My point about "dissidents" is that because the objective of the first stages of the operation is to mop up the Ukrainian army with little regard for its own casualties, getting rid of people likely to oppose the present regime would be killing two birds with one stone.
    1
  10697.  @ad_astra468  True enough.
    1
  10698.  @marilenaganea6578  There are several. No-one doubts it happened but there is, inevitably, some dispute about the number involved.
    1
  10699.  @marilenaganea6578  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rep0eLAHE50
    1
  10700.  @marilenaganea6578  Go Patrick Lancaster's channel to hear the truth from the people or Mariupol themselves The Russians don't need humanitarian convoys from the West they are shipping in tons of food and medical supplies themselves. They believe, with some justification, that the Red Cross and other Western aid groups provide cover for CIA infiltrators and the like. Far more war crimes have ben committed in Mariupol by the Azov Battalion than by Russian troops. They have only held the city by introducing a reign of terror. It is a Russian-speaking, Russian majority city where large numbers of residents wish heartily to be rid of the corrupt Ukrainian nationalist government. They were better off under the Soviets, and that's saying something.
    1
  10701.  @marilenaganea6578  Believe your refugees. Also believe the residents that Lancaster interviews. I'm sure opinion in Mariupol is very divided. As to his sources of income -what relevance do they have? He pushes the separatist agenda, sure, and we in the West need to know more about it. If he relies totally on crowd-funding, or is slipped some roubles by the Kremlin, what matter? He is a damned good journalist as the only one you can rely on to be there on the front line, recording events as they happen.
    1
  10702.  @trident6547  There are many; Here is one: it is from a non Russian source and so minimises the number of those surrendering, but I tend to credit the larger figure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rep0eLAHE50
    1
  10703.  @marilenaganea6578  I don't care whose "side" you're on. This is outstanding journalism, a thousand times better than anything on Western propaganda channels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfTEgC4kIw
    1
  10704.  @trident6547  Mariupol latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfTEgC4kIw
    1
  10705.  @marilenaganea6578  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdCkwHmk8Xw
    1
  10706.  @trident6547  Latest news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHMJMI6QyFk
    1
  10707. This is from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHMJMI6QyFk
    1
  10708.  @marilenaganea6578  From yesterday -these guys are over and above the 1,026 claimed over the past ten days or so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHMJMI6QyFk
    1
  10709. What threats?
    1
  10710.  @MrGatzby  why should I care about Ukraine when my children are hungry and I'm freezing to death?
    1
  10711.  @MrGatzby  I am not responsible for Boris Johnson, thank the Lord!
    1
  10712. Murdoch no longer owns Sky.
    1
  10713.  @MrBahjatt  Murdoch's agenda is making money. End of.
    1
  10714.  @martijnstam6186  No threat to Russia?! What else is NATO for, do you suppose? (Apart from providing a ready market for arms dealers and job opportunities for senior US military of course.)
    1
  10715.  @martijnstam6186  It'll be a bit late then, won't it? Trying to get Ukraine into NATO is what has provoked Russia into taking the action it has. It simply cannot be expected to put up with the idea of having an enemy nuclear missile base seven minutes flying time from Moscow. It is a step too far - and recognised as such even by many Western diplomats and senior military personnel. Do you realise that Russia has tried to join NATO several times? The reason it hasn't been allowed to is because NATO is basically a job creation scheme for the Western military and a goldmine for arms salesmen. The Russian Federation poses no threat to peace in the way the Soviet Union did, but it has to be treated as an enemy because NATO needs an enemy to justify its very profitable existence.
    1
  10716.  @martijnstam6186  Has America given up its nuclear arsenal? I must have missed that.
    1
  10717.  @Lasse65  The UN and the Ukrainians can both be brought round to face reality eventually. The choice will be a peaceful acceptance of Crimea and Donbass becoming Russian or continued war with , at the very least, Odessa under threat.
    1
  10718.  @terjeoseberg990  He and they see reality well enough. It's we in the West who have been conned into believing a bunch of crap.
    1
  10719.  @terjeoseberg990  I think they're well on top of it. It's we in the West who have been conned into believing that this is a moral crusade we are bound to win. It's not. It's a war for resources and markets which Russia is very unlikely to lose.
    1
  10720. They beat the truckers to Washington! Took some doing.
    1
  10721. Matt W I like to transfer the peer-reviewed concept from science to cooking. I give you a recipe for making, say, Beef Wellington. You follow the recipe and make a Beef Wellington. You invite some friends around for dinner. "Mmmm!" they say, "That was SOME Beef Wellington." Congratulations. You have just made a peer-reviewed Beef Wellington.
    1
  10722. That shot Italian silk is a real bugger.
    1
  10723.  @geezerguy  ...because he can't tie it properly?
    1
  10724.  @josephturner7569  I'm telling you! I had an Italian shot silk tie once, and it was like trying to tie wet cannelloni!
    1
  10725.  @josephturner7569  But who would want a Windsor in Italian silk? Urgh!
    1
  10726.  @josephturner7569  I've given up on ties now, but thanks for the advice!
    1
  10727. Well Ukraine became America's useful idiot.
    1
  10728.  @stream2watch  I think the area which sanctions have hit the hardest is in getting hold of spare parts for imported machinery of all kinds. India and China are turning out knock-offs at a reasonable rate and of course suppliers are still getting stuff through via the back door. Aeroplane parts have been especially difficult to replace, however, As for automatic gearboxes, I don't know, but it seems a reasonable way round the problem simply not to use them. Plenty of people prefer manual anyway. I know I do.
    1
  10729.  @stream2watch  You're right, I didn't. Because I didn't. I'm not saying that sanctions have had no effect - what I am saying is that the effects they have had have not been sufficient to seriously hinder people, or affect Russia to such a degree that it loses the will to continue to wage the war in Ukraine. They haven't achieved their objective. They haven't worked.
    1
  10730.  @billy2807  The economy seems to actually be fine from all accounts. I'm not prepared to enter into arguments of the technicalities of economics but there seems to be a strong feeling that Russia is outpacing many other countries in many respects. Just look at some of the comments in this thread and you will see all sorts of figures being bandied about. My opinion mainly comes from watching Russian YouTubers - ordinary people leading their day-to-day lives and suffering hardly at all from the impact of sanctions. And I don't think either that there will be a sudden crash. Russia seems likely to win this war and cement all sorts of relationships with other countries in doing so. It will be America and its allies which will suffer in the long run. It is in the nature of empires to collapse. Russia's has done so. It is America's turn next.
    1
  10731.  @stream2watch  Your understanding of the position is naive in the extreme. The SMO had two main objectives. 1) To destroy the multi-billion dollar army NATO had provided to enable Ukraine to regain control of mineral -rich Donbass and Crimea. 2) To extend Russia's influence to include the whole of Donbass, not just those parts held by the separatists. Both these objectives are now very near completion.
    1
  10732.  @stream2watch  Quite the opposite. Economics is a highly specialised field and I am not equipped to enter into arguments on its technicalities - even though this does not seem to stop other people from doing so.
    1
  10733.  @stream2watch  I know what these things are, but I do not consider they do more than provide rough and often inaccurate guides to reality.
    1
  10734.  @rmdomainer9042  Yes. Here I am.
    1
  10735.  @stream2watch  It's a reasonably accurate term, and one of course used by the Russians to describe their activities. The objectives were as I described them. An invasion implies the desire to overwhelm a country and occupy it. This was not the case. War was not declared and although this is clearly a war it began as a Special Military Operation, which has a nuanced meaning in Russian.
    1
  10736.  @stream2watch  What do you mean "cherry-picked" ? They are as they are. (Your arguments become less and less convincing the more vituperative you become, you realise? I'd watch that if I were you.)
    1
  10737.  @stream2watch  I thought it only polite to use the Russian term for what was, after all, their operation. In fact it is more accurate than either "invasion" or "war" in the terms of what they were trying to achieve, as I have already explained. What I am is someone who has a respect for language, rather than just picking out buzzwords and using them as blunt instruments.
    1
  10738.  @elarpado14  Not at all. Google it. Watch videos. See the evidence of your eyes.
    1
  10739. One of the most extraordinary things about this incident is the way in which it has divided opinion so sharply. It's almost as though the human race has split down the middle. I saw it as bumptious, privileged, hero-worshipped, war-mongering con-artist Zelensky getting a long-deserved come-uppance. Others, I know, feel broadly the same. Yet on this channel and many others the comments sections are full of people practically in tears over the way their hero has been treated. I suppose in the end it comes down how susceptible one is to continuous conditioning by politicians and the media, as opposed to be able to analyse situations for oneself from time to time.
    1
  10740.  @treehugger8846  A quick update: a typical covid patient can expect to host between 1billion and 10 billion covid virions over the course of an illness.
    1
  10741.  @treehugger8846  And I was referring exclusively to the covid 19 coronavirus. The 1 billion to 10 billion per patient number comes from The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA, published on June 22 this year. Multiply that by the number of people who have coronavirus at any one time and that 3 with 23 noughts seems sort of reasonable. Whatever the number is it is so huge that the chances of every viable mutation occurring in what is just a tiny strand of RNA must be so high as to reach inevitability.
    1
  10742.  @davidburke2132  Why not? With everybody who has the virus pumping out a few billion new ones and the mutation rate being what it is the chances of this NOT happening are trillions upon trillions to one, surely? I refer you to the excellent summary provided by GrumpyGrebo elsewhere on this thread.
    1
  10743.  @davidburke2132  I really want to thank you for that. Vast numbers are impossible for me to conceive and if Prof Racaniello says it is so, then it is surely so. Thanks again.
    1
  10744.  @davidburke2132  I just found it myself, I think. YouTube's behaviour on passing on links etc is becoming increasingly bizarre. My difficulty is that my grasp of evolution pre-supposes the idea that a new variant can only come into prominence when circumstances alter to allow it to do so. This is worrying because it implies that new variants achieving prominence do so as a result of new conditions - such as those created by restrictions. I suppose that even if, as the article said, the majority of mutations disappear or are irrelevant, there are plenty left over which can improve transmissibility, duration of viability and so on. The question is: if such a mutation occurs in a host will that strain inevitably become dominant or will it just become buried in the success rate of pre-existing strains - unless conditions alter?
    1
  10745.  @davidburke2132  Thanks again. I still wonder whether or not the delta variant took a hold in middle class suburbs in India initially, simply because gated homes etc are the only places where lockdowns and social distancing are possible in that crowded country. This would have given a more transmissible variant an initial impetus. A fruitless speculation, I suppose. There are just so many unknowns and so many anomalies around to trip us up as we try to assess this situation.
    1
  10746.  @davidburke2132  I wasn't implying volition to the virus of course, but it interesting to wonder how the delta variant was selected by conditions, as you put it. That is to say was its small mutation sufficient for it to overcome restrictions imposed by semi-lockdowns in gated communities and so increase in numbers sufficiently for it to outpace the precious variant when introduced into the wider community? Or would it have outpaced the existing variant anyway if it had first emerged in a slum, say? How much a foothold does a new variant need before it can begin to achieve dominance? Do forgive me for rambling on. I quite enjoy having arguments in these comments sections, but an exchange of ideas can be more rewarding!
    1
  10747. C'mon Nigel! Join the lactose intolerant! Overcome your middle-class fears and realise that by listening to and understanding Tommy Robinson, Carl Benjamin and Gerard Batten you could lead this country out of its current pit of despair!
    1
  10748. I think Dianne Abbott is actually Miriam Margolyes in blackface and a wig. What a jolly fine actress she is!
    1
  10749. Give up then. I shan't mind.
    1
  10750. Such nonsense. Many Conservatives are as genuinely concerned about the disastrous effects of net zero as they were about the slide into European federalism. To suggest the airing of these concerns is merely some sort of trickery in order for the evil Tories to frighten people into voting for them is either naive or -well, some sort of trickery designed to frighten people into NOT voting for them. The "climate crisis" is a scam. It is a very clever con trick designed to entirely alter the balance of world power. The world is warming very gradually entirely in accord with previous patterns. There is no reason to suppose that this change will result in disaster, or that increased carbon emissions will have any marked effect upon it. Renewable energy is both expensive and inefficient and to rely upon it wholly is an act of suicidal folly. The opposition to net zero now being voiced is a direct result of Johnson's extremely insecure position. He has angered a great many Conservatives by his espousal of "green" and other woke causes and he is being allowed to continue in office on the condition that he starts back-pedalling on them pretty damned quickly.
    1
  10751. The proof of the pudding etc... If todays younger "liberals" do get into power anywhere their ignorance and conceit will lead to immediate chaos on a thermonuclear scale, as is already been evinced in US cities where it has already happened. One can only hope the conservative backlash will not be too severe.
    1
  10752.  @dylaanowen  We are talking large scale organised fraud here, as Ilhan Omar's team have been videoed actually doing in Minnesota. They buy postal voting forms from other Muslims or even bully older ones into giving them up for free. Muslims and Marxists alike have no respect for democracy. They consider their point of view to be so correct that they are morally obliged to do everything in their power to to impose it on others, even if this means avoiding democratic process. And the Democrats have become riddled with Marxists, especially at local level. They deliberately take jobs and volunteer for in order to be able to do things like this. The pandemic is a pretty poor excuse. If you're not prepared to undergo some small inconvenience while voting then you don't deserve to vote. Republicans are prepared to take what very small risks there are by attending Trump rallies. Democrats should surely be brave enough to go to the polls.
    1
  10753.  @dylaanowen  BLM is Marxist. Its founders are Marxist and its manifesto is (or was) Marxist. It has new been removed from the Internet and replaced with watered down version but even this calls for the displacement of the nuclear family as a basic unit of society and the overthrow of capitalism. Like Antifa it operates using a system of individual local cells. This system was first devised by Lenin and Trotsky in the lead-up to the Russian revolution to prevent the authorities "cutting of the head of the movement" as Lenin put it. He also described the students and liberal minded bourgeoisie who joined these cells as "useful idiots." Marxism faces great difficulties in the modern world in that its original message was to the proletariat - ie the oppressed workers. Nowadays the workers aren't so oppressed and have rejected the Marxist message, An artificial proletariat has had to be created, and black people fit the bill quite neatly. Islam translates as "obedience." It is a religion which requires unquestioning loyalty. Back in the day catholics did whatever their priests told them, no matter what. It is the same today with religious Muslims and their Imams. If an Imam decides that a candidate is the right candidate then all Muslims will be expected not only to vote for that candidate, but to do absolutely anything to ensure that candidate wins. That's just the way it is. The young men you saw in that video not only got paid, they are assured of a place in heaven. The death rate from Covid cannot be established for certain, but it is certainly considerably less that the figure you mention. It is more like a 99.03 survival rate. Long term ill effects are certainly a problem but this is the case with all viral infections. We have no idea how extensive this is going to be with Covid. In any case it must be remembered that it is not the virus itself which kills and damages people - it is the body's over-reaction to it. This is why it is important to concentrate on prophylactics and early stage viral reproduction inhibition measures rather than drugs which merely stimulate the immune system. It is arguable that much damage is done by ill considered medical intervention. The electoral college is disliked by the Democrats because it gives representation to Republican rural voters. Without it the lives of farmers in Ohio, say, would be constantly ruled by a President exclusively elected by city folks. The founding fathers realised the anomalies of proportional representation and created the electoral college as a result. It is a very good and fair idea.
    1
  10754. Doubt it. Delta seems to be spreading from West to East.
    1
  10755. This channel and its comments section show just how much ignorance exists among the population of the brainwashed West - especially and frighteningly among the young.
    1
  10756. I'm entirely sure this is right. The only question is whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.
    1
  10757. Tory incompetence is piss in the ocean compared to the economic consequences of supporting Ukraine against Russia.
    1
  10758. I suppose the choice then is between total incompetence and sinister design. Are California's leaders just incredibly bad at everything they do, or very good at being incredibly bad?
    1
  10759. Diane Akare Don't be silly. It IS their summit. Environmentalists are just paying guests.
    1
  10760.  @rocketscience4516  I just think it's disgraceful that so few people want to talk about the elephant in the room - the weird way excess deaths are going up and down, and now vastly exceeding the impact of the pandemic itself.
    1
  10761.  @rocketscience4516  You would lose the bet since this is happening in all developed countries, not just the UK. The percentage increases in excess deaths are quite astounding some weeks - and then drop abruptly for a single week before climbing up again, reaching as many as 3,000 in some instances. Something very serious is happening and governments and the media are trying to shove it under the carpet. Since all this fits exactly with the predictions of those opposing lockdowns etc it is a fair bet that these measures (and a certain other procedure) are the causes of this very serious situation.
    1
  10762.  @rocketscience4516  Later rather than sooner I'd imagine. During the pandemic old and sick people were dying a bit early and there was worldwide panic. Now otherwise healthy people, including children, are dropping dead from heart attacks in significant numbers and no-one blinks an eyelid. You just have to wonder why.
    1
  10763.  @rocketscience4516  Just go to the ONS. They have actually expressed concern. A petition calling for an urgent enquiry has also been presented to Parliament - and been buried.
    1
  10764.  @rocketscience4516  They've tried - but with no success. In fact there seems that a potential connection is being established with a Certain Procedure introduced to attempt to end the pandemic, largely because the deaths from heart attacks are proportionately larger than those from cancer. It is possible, I suppose, that other explanations can be found but unwarranted and untested interference with natural processes does seem the likeliest at this stage,
    1
  10765.  @rocketscience4516  This could be true. Death is unavoidable. Deceit, hypocrisy and manipulation can, however, be overcome. It is a worthy cause.
    1
  10766.  @rocketscience4516  This, of course, cannot be ascertained. The virus is highly selective and generally only kills those whose immune systems have been compromised. If such vulnerable people had ben isolated and the virus allowed to "run rampant" then a considerable protective shield of naturally immunised people would have rapidly been built up, allowing the vulnerable to re-enter the community with very little risk. Instead we attempted to isolate EVERYBODY, thus preventing natural protection happening, while in fact offering only minimal protection to the limited pool of those vulnerable to death. Those numbers are beyond computation. The numbers relating to those currently dying are, however, capable of study and analysis. They should be. I can only conclude that this is not happening because investigation would reveal the culpability of politicians and the media in creating the current plague of needless deaths.
    1
  10767. This would be because Putin is not a global threat. Pretending he is a global threat is what has kept this bloke and all the other spooks and warmongers living in luxury for decades.
    1
  10768. You might take some comfort from the fact that the cases in S Africa are so mild the patients are not even hospitalised. The same with our two. The problems are going to come when and if this variant hits the old folk.
    1
  10769.  @davidbarr9343  Well obviously I am. I'm just not wearing blinkers or taking much notice of mainstream media propaganda, that's all.
    1
  10770.  @davidbarr9343  Obviously I am. I just don't believe everything I'm told by the media, much less politicians and warmongering military men.
    1
  10771.  @davidbarr9343  Obviously I am. Obviously you find rational assessments of situations a bit difficult.
    1
  10772.  @Sly_fox379  Yes.
    1
  10773.  @Sly_fox379  hgy fu bro?
    1
  10774.  @Sly_fox379  Sp grg bro?
    1
  10775.  @Sly_fox379  msg dpsht?
    1
  10776.  @richardmeyeroff7397  And it has failed and brought ruin, and Putin knows this. You are living in the past, and the past for you is a world of cheap platitudes and trite nonsense. You are being manipulated. As long as people think like this Western warmongers can continue to make vast profits from playing to your fears - fears which they have encouraged.
    1
  10777.  @richardmeyeroff7397  But no longer. Attempting to control Europe - and indeed the whole world - was one of the main causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation under Putin will not make the same mistake.
    1
  10778. Upper middle-class twits like Selby don't have to look far up the family tree to find the wealth they enjoy comes from slavery. But that's THEIR guilt trip. The rest of us whose ancestors slaved for their ancestors on the land or down mines or in sweatshops are quite entitled to tell them to piss off.
    1
  10779.  Graham Senior  Murdoch by a mile. The BBC is a Communist propaganda machine. Murdoch is just in it for the money.
    1
  10780.  Graham Senior  No. That's why he's moved on to other channels and is at the forefront of the long-awaited UKTV.
    1
  10781.  Graham Senior  I'm not quite sure how to espouse a sad irony, much less recognisee one. Yes, he was old school and old guard which is why he was got rid of. The type of people now in the newsrooms don't appear to be journalists at all. They seem to see themselves more as social engineers. Everything has to go through a woke filter. The obsessions with race and climate change and their open scorn for Trump proves this. They are propagandists.
    1
  10782.  Graham Senior  Woke is directly contrary to objectivity though, isn't it? It is a cult. A creed. It is the product of Marxist ideology and thus suspect in the eyes of many. Including mine. It suppresses contrary views while promoting all sorts of ridiculousness. Should it be allowed? Of course it should but, as I said, people who slant the news to give credence to a cult are not journalists -they are propagandists.
    1
  10783.  Graham Senior  Platitudes don't put food on the table I'm afraid.
    1
  10784.  Graham Senior  You're probably right - but so what? Wokeness is scary and those who espouse it are naive and foolish.
    1
  10785.  Graham Senior  I don't do hatred. Just contempt.
    1
  10786.  Graham Senior  I get by. It's just that I reject the idea that something is essentially good just because it makes sentimental people feel all warm and fluffy inside. Notions need to be examined in the harsh and critical light of reason. Objectivity is a journalist's duty. When he or she deconstructs events and passes them through the false filter of post modernism, or any other of the revisionist tools created by cultural Marxism, they immediately forgo the right to be called journalists. They have taken on the role of instructor - and the creed they seek to teach is one which will bring terrible consequences while disguising itself under a cloak of apparent benevolence.
    1
  10787.  Graham Senior  You really should steer clear of psychological analysis. It isn't your forte. I was watching this below a few minutes ago and it struck me as a good illustration of the evils of woke. Thousands of young girls being systematically raped and sold - and still woke-minded socialists refuse to believe it because the rapists are from an ethnic minority and follow a particular religion. Wokeness is a disease of the mind which provides a ready channel for the dark side of human consciousness to invade society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7gFREPHQew
    1
  10788.  @_alienblood  The Rus was wiped out by the Mongols 600 years ago and Donbass and Crimea were never part of it anyway.
    1
  10789.  @richiecooke69  And Ukraine!
    1
  10790.  @richiecooke69  And Ukraine!
    1
  10791.  @richiecooke69  And Ukraine!
    1
  10792.  @_alienblood  About a thousand years ago.
    1
  10793.  @richiecooke69  Can Mongolia have Ukraine too?
    1
  10794.  @_alienblood  I really don't think it contained Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine though. I just checked. Not that it matters much!
    1
  10795.  @_alienblood  The trouble is that Ukraine has had so many boundary changes and changes of name over the centuries that it's difficult to know where and what it is. It was certainly incorporated into Russia for a long while. In the 19th century if you went to Kiev, you went to Russia. But I genuinely think Putin has a point when he says that the Socialist Soviet Republic of Ukraine, which gave its boundaries to the present country was not Ukraine, as such, because the Soviets tacked chunks of Russia on to it. And now he wants them back.
    1
  10796.  @_alienblood  In Soviet times, certainly, but in the 19th century this was THE Ukraine, which just meant something like the borderlands and was just part of Russia. An Englishman visiting Kiev would be visiting a city in Russia, which was in the province of the Ukraine.
    1
  10797.  @_alienblood  That's certainly true. You could go even further back to when Vikings sailed up the Dneiper and, according to legend, were invited by the local Slavs to rule over them, because they weren't very good at it themselves!
    1
  10798.  @Jay...777  Thanks. Astonishing how people fall for the jingoistic bullshit.
    1
  10799. That just isn't something that's at all likely. And if it is, it will be the West's doing.
    1
  10800. Funnily enough people are still dying to this very day on account of the things that actually WERE done..
    1
  10801.  @californiadreamin8423  It is not WHAT is taught but HOW it is taught which is relevant, I think. There is a fine line between education and indoctrination.
    1
  10802. @Alfred Wedmore Quite right. I was very bad at Latin. At the end of term the Latin master held a quiz in which the best boy selected a team and the worst boy (me)selected a team and we each competed against each other to answer Latin questions. There was much laughter when I selected the worst boys for my team rather than the best ones. My team won hands down. The master and the Latinists hadn't understood how the penalty system he had introduced allowed conceit, folly and bravado to result in inevitable disaster. It is a lesson I have never forgotten.
    1
  10803.  @geraldhewing2076  Wot?
    1
  10804. ​ @geraldhewing2076  Wot? "Proscribing subjects"??? "Spectrum of indoctrination"??? Falling "on"??? If I don't understand you it is not because I am a fool. It is because you are a fool for expressing yourself so badly. Try harder.
    1
  10805.  @geraldhewing2076  Wot? My Latin teacher is now long dead, God rest his soul.
    1
  10806.  @geraldhewing2076  Not at all. He was a nice old geezer. Tempus Fugit.
    1
  10807.  @christianevanherck6023  This is true. I don't know how much effect this is having but this war has certainly shown how effective drones are, both in the air and in the water. I think its safe to say that the whole nature of warfare has been changed.
    1
  10808. @ His plan was to isolate Zelensky. This he has done. He now has a good excuse to negotiate directly with Putin without Zelensky's involvement.
    1
  10809. Has it crossed your mind that views such as yours make Conservatism seem a far healthier alternative?
    1
  10810. This is more of a glorified commando raid than anything. I'm sure the Ukrainian force is superior to the Russians in everything except number but I still can't see what it is hoping to achieve in the long term. Russia meanwhile is continuing to make advances all along her main line of contact where the real war is.
    1
  10811. Are this heirs to oils billions on a guilt trip - or are they just helping to manipulate the energy markets to further the profits of their dynasties?
    1
  10812. Great news. All we need now is a win for Trump and there is hope for the world.
    1
  10813. Never mind Johnson. What about Andrew Bridgen spreading his foul lies and silly old statistics in front of the House? No wonder so many MPs fled with their fingers in their ears muttering "Wibble, wibble, wibble " so as not to hear his heresies! And let us praise God that YouTube and Sky News are so conscientious that we are not even allowed to know what he was talking about!
    1
  10814.  @PaulMathias1  Buffoon.
    1
  10815.  @mg1984  Good luck with that.
    1
  10816. Tod Jones Exactly right. Experiments in enclosed environments on the earth's surface can only have a peripheral relation to what occurs in the actual atmosphere.
    1
  10817. He is a hero. Single-handedly he has reduced the chances of any future BLM protest marches degenerating into violence, arson and theft.
    1
  10818.  @pinkrose5796  Sure thing. Don't it make you feel good? (When was the last time anyone heard anything from the KKK anyhow? Does it still exist?)
    1
  10819.  @TheUnvarnishedTruth-  You are demented. Fascism died with Hitler and Mussolini. What you are referring to is simply the ideas of people whose beliefs do not coincide with the hodge-podge of nonsense inserted into your head by your Marxist teachers - who had those ideas inserted into their heads by the Marxist teachers who taught them. You are confusing White Supremacy with the reactions of the many people are utterly pissed with the mawkish nonsense of the race-baiting left, which is designed to destabilise society, not to unite it. We don't despise black people. We despise you. The case you mention is typical of the idiotic nonsense which has corrupted what little power of reason you may once have possessed. Even if a flicker of racial prejudice exists in the backwoods of Georgia - and I daresay it might - it is of no significance in the affairs of this once great nation. Is this really all you can come up with? Two or three country boys getting hot under the collar and killing a black guy because they thought he was stealing and wouldn't come quietly? What they did was very wrong and they deserve jail - but it is no way indicative of the continued existence of the KKK - or any other racist organisation in any coherent form - much less of either fascism or racism being anything other than buzzwords designed to keep you morons on the plantation.
    1
  10820. @Rick Doran Orc
    1
  10821.  @ADifferentBias  I'm not but this woman is. Do you have time to analyse her interpretation in layman's terms? I'm genuinely trying to get as much specialist opinion as possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWjVYzvTHwM
    1
  10822. I really wish I could work out what is so very wrong with borrowing money from yourself and how this could possibly affect any voting decisions one might make. Can anyone help me understand this?
    1
  10823.  @cykablyat6531  Why is it a scam? It just seems like intelligent use of resources to me. And how can the practice affect Moggie's decisions as an MP or minister?
    1
  10824.  @tomfinney3416  But what's WRONG about it? And how does it affect anyone's judgement on any issue other than that directly affected by its legality or otherwise?
    1
  10825.  @verystripeyzebra  It seems a moot point. Apparently he says he didn't have to, and since there is no possible reason why the information could be of any other than prurient interest it is just as likely that his interpretation is the correct one. And if not it's no big deal.
    1
  10826.  @verystripeyzebra  As it does to be so eager to condemn him.
    1
  10827.  @tomfinney3416  It's not a law.
    1
  10828.  @tomfinney3416  Not really. Why should it be?
    1
  10829. But you must ask why.
    1
  10830.  @Steve_Coates  No. He apparently ignored it - which led directly to the disaster. Trump's plan included various guarantees and constraints which would have meant, among other things, no withdrawal without a signed agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Full military air cover was to be maintained until the withdrawal was complete. A timetable was in place. If Trump hadn't been cheated out of the Presidency US and UK troops and support would have been out of the country by May with none of the horrific scenes we are currently witnessing.
    1
  10831.  @Steve_Coates  This is not the case at all. Trump obtained guarantees from Taliban leaders, as well as the Afghan government, covering how the withdrawal was to be conducted. These guarantees were backed by both carrots and sticks. The carrots were in the form of substantial cash bribes, release of Taliban prisoners and promises of places of safety for senior participants who might end up on the losing side. The sticks were the continued presence of air cover, effectively preventing substantial Taliban movement, and a promise that the US would return with a mighty force if in Trump's own words: "anything bad happens." Apart from the Afghan President fleeing in a helicopter literally crammed with cash, none if this seems to have been followed through by Biden's team. They seem to have spent the entire period of his Presidency utterly destroying this very workable strategy.
    1
  10832.  @atomiccritter6492  Not at all. Much of it is a paraphrase of General Kellogg's interview with Farage. (Apart from the bribes, but you can take that as read.) It certainly fits the facts as they have unfolded.
    1
  10833.  @atomiccritter6492  Why don't you check the interview yourself? His account is certainly backed by others. Even MSNBC was trapped into broadcasting the views of another negotiator who made much the same points. As I say, they certainly fit the facts. Trump, after all, has spent a lifetime negotiating with the likes of the Mafia over building contracts. He knows how these things work. Biden is just a clown an utterly out of his depth. His advisors are equally inept it appears.
    1
  10834. And a good job too. With vaccinations reducing death rates the herd immunity threshold could be reached in a matter of weeks - but the R number needs to go up a bit first.
    1
  10835. Yes. But don't worry too much Ukraine will continue as a separate although slightly smaller state.
    1
  10836. He had a hard decision to make. This entirely fraudulent election was a cleverly stitched-up job and it will take years of intense effort to unpick it. Pence could have had the courage to reject the electoral college results and get that procedure started, but he can't be blamed for not doing so. It would have cost him dear. Trump would have done it, had he the power to do so.
    1
  10837.  @sl1237  I would suggest that democracy has already been seriously undermined by the fraudulent and unconstitutional way in which the election was clearly conducted in some areas! In fact Pence could have declined to certify. What would have happened next is hard to say. It would certainly have held proceedings up and as far as I am aware there is no immediate substitution of procedure, but perhaps I am wrong about this. It would have been a revolutionary act and Pence, unlike Trump, is no revolutionary!
    1
  10838.  @sl1237  I assume you must have followed some of the evidence presented to the subsequent state senate hearings? There are about 70 hours available on the Internet. There is also an excellent site called Here Is The Evidence which collates the many hundreds of hours of evidence of illegal and unconstitutional activity, statistical anomalies and so forth. I can't give you a link because this post would be deleted if I did - further evidence of criminal conspiracy.
    1
  10839.  @sl1237  I have done so in several cases and the "debunking", such as it is, seems less than satisfactory in most instances. I simply can't get over facts such as that while voting in Australia is mandatory, and failure to do so is punishable by hefty fines, their usual turnout is 92% - a figure exceeded in some key counties in the 2020 election. Or even that Dominion voting machines can be hacked so easily. One could think of a number of reasons why vans loaded with ballots should turn up at the backdoors of voting stations in the middle of the night with no apparent chain of custody protocols being observed, but whatever the reason those votes were illegally counted. The list goes on and on and the "debunking" by nervous officials with the sweat standing out on their foreheads does little to impress. Democracy in the USA is an utter sham. The general forensic rule that when motive and opportunity exist a crime will be committed has been very clearly illustrated in the 2020 US Presidential Election.
    1
  10840.  @sl1237  Got some links? Or do I just take your word for it?
    1
  10841.  @sl1237  Thankyou for that -most interesting. I confess I am a little astonished by the consistent very high turnouts in some of the poorer areas of large cities. The residents of these places seem very aware of their democratic rights. Who would have thought more than 80% in some areas would actually vote? I hope they are rewarded for their zeal. I must say the jury's out on Dominion still. There seems to be no doubt that their machines and software can be manipulated very easily and considerable statistical evidences suggests that they were, but it is a complex issue and it must be left to experts to sort out. Nocturnal van movements and evidence from postal workers remain a problem for me though, as do videos of election workers passing USBs about as though they were doing drug deals. Getting dead people to vote seems to be almost a tradition in US elections, as do bribery and intimidation, but it seems that more sophisticated methods are now being used to ensure the desired results are achieved. Not so much fortifying as fiftyfying and sixtyfying, strikes me.
    1
  10842. Reform members have more rights than members of the Labour Party.
    1
  10843. The idiot Ukraine president has brought his country to the verge of ruin. He only got the job so he could present a respectable face to the world, but power went to his head. Now Russia will get much of what it wanted - and a good job too.
    1
  10844. Lovely plumage, the Norwegian Blue.
    1
  10845. It's doing a fine job all on its own.
    1
  10846.  @stevenchilders272  Need who?
    1
  10847. Heard of tactical nukes?
    1
  10848.  @chaoscorsair  So far.
    1
  10849.  @chaoscorsair  So far.
    1
  10850.  @braggski  No it isn't. Do you really think America would risk Armageddon if Russia was to nuke a small specific target in Ukraine?
    1
  10851.  @braggski  So what?
    1
  10852.  @pierrehamel4424  Alright Mr Picky! But you have to admit that in common parlance "America" is synonymous with the good ole US of A.
    1
  10853.  @braggski  I tend to doubt it. The US and NATO will chicken out rather than risk obliteration.
    1
  10854.  @KaiHouston-m6j  Tactical nukes are smaller and designed for battlefield use, as opposed to strategic nukes which are designed to hit large targets from a great distance. There's a huge difference.
    1
  10855.  @KaiHouston-m6j  Then NATO doctrine in this regard is wrong, as it is in many other cases. Can you cope with the idea that Ukraine is not in NATO, by the way?
    1
  10856.  @KaiHouston-m6j  Lack of courage? Is it not utterly cowardly to believe unquestioningly the crap which is being forced down your throat by the media and politicians?
    1
  10857.  @KaiHouston-m6j  Where does lack of courage come into it? If, say, Putin uses a tactical nuke to wipe out an airfield full of F16s and kills several thousand enemies in the process, what is brave about nuking a Russian city in response and risking Armageddon? That wouldn't be brave, it would just be plain foolish.
    1
  10858. Why shouldn't he talk to Putin? Putin is no enemy of America.
    1
  10859.  @pgabrieli  It's a moot point, but the general opinion is that he could pardon himself if re-elected. Equally, it is argued that he could halt any proceedings in which he was still involved. I think you will find these matters are not so cut and dried as you seem to think, dude.
    1
  10860. Russia now has the excuse to escalate the war with raids on cities (which have begun) and the bridge will be fully operational within a couple of weeks. So who's the loser here?
    1
  10861.  @lodoova572  It is entirely reasonable to dictate to other countries what they can or cannot do if this involves forming an alliance with a declared enemy, persecuting you nationals who live in that country, and scheme with that foreign power to reap the rewards of your country's hundreds of years of toil and investment. Russia has stolen nothing. It is merely reclaiming what has been stolen from it.
    1
  10862.  @stc3145  I do wish you people would have the sense to examine what is happening instead of swallowing propaganda wholesale.
    1
  10863.  @barryolaith  I do, as it happens. It is called Britain. And Britain, like every country in Europe, should be extremely careful about backing America in its latest foreign adventure. No good is going to come of this. Western dominance of world affairs is coming to an end, but this foolish war will very much hasten the process.
    1
  10864.  @flummi6966  Look up Putin's treaty proposals put forward in December 2021, and which still stand as the basis for negotiation.
    1
  10865.  @Robolaralobarar  Russia's army is an army of defence, which is why it has to rely on mercenary groups such as Wagner to do its serious fighting. Russia dislikes NATO's presence in these countries, but has grudgingly put up with it. Ukraine was a step too far, however.
    1
  10866.  @dragani2330  Europe will collapse before Russia does - and what treaties has Russia broken that Ukraine, the EU and the USA haven't? Treaties are constantly broken and ignored as their usefulness diminishes. This war is simply the latest American power grab, and once again it is going belly up. Poor bloody Ukraine will be left in the lurch and Russia will keep Crimea and the mineral riches of Donbass, In the meantime it will forge economic alliances with everyone from China and India to Saudi Arabia and Brazil, and the EU's pathetic and ineffective sanctions will achieve nothing other than to bring it economic ruin and probable collapse. The cracks are already showing.
    1
  10867.  @dragani2330  I wouldn't disagree with you, other than that the next pro-Russian dictatorship Russia requires is simply Donbass ,not the whole of Ukraine. And why not? A substantial proportion of he population would be entirely happy with the idea. Russia's downfall is far from guaranteed. NATO and the US seem to be backing off now, and without considerable support Ukraine is likely to lose in the field. As to NATO caring about the potential collapse of the EU, it might well consider that this is likely to presage its own collapse, or at least a very considerable restructuring of its membership.
    1
  10868.  @dragani2330  You have almost everything around the wrong way. Following Minsk, NATO paid for and trained an extremely large Ukrainian army. It was the clear intention of using this army to quash the rebellion in Donbass and to retake Crimea which prompted Russia to take pre-emptive action. This war will merely accelerate a process already begun: the end of Western hegemony and the collapse of the monopolar globalist dream. Russia is riding the sanctions with ease and is forging new relationships with countries which recognise that the world order is changing and that America and the mighty dollar no longer rule. Russia is aligning with Middle Eastern oil producers to set prices with no regard to American-sponsored restrictions. A pipeline to China opens within weeks and a new one is designed and ready for construction which will tap into the fields hitherto used to supply Nordstream. Tankers loaded with crude are landing in India every day. The price is discounted on the surface, but quid pro quo arrangements mean India is supplying Russia with computer chips and other technology formerly obtained from Europe. Russia is winning the war on the ground, and it is winning the economic war too. America, meanwhile is about to default on its debt repayments and inflation in Europe is matching Russia's - which is predicted to drop dramatically within months.
    1
  10869. Climate change is only one factor. Poor management and kow-towing to misguided environmentalist policies are another. It will be a huge and tragic mistake if this is ignored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCgDsY-XvIA
    1
  10870.  @plaugemarine  They weren't. This is just US propaganda. The "draftees" are merely selected from the 2 million reservists. From Wikipedia: The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Russian: Вооружённые Си́лы Росси́йской Федера́ции, tr. Vooruzhonnije Síly Rossíyskoj Federátsii commonly known as the Russian Armed Forces, are the Armed Forces of Russia. They comprise the world's fifth-largest military in terms of active-duty personnel, with at least 2 million reserve personnel.[13][14] Their branches consist of the Ground Forces, Navy, and Aerospace Forces, as well as three independent arms of service: the Strategic Rocket Forces, Airborne Forces, and Special Operations Forces.
    1
  10871.  @dominicalexander737  Everyone's a loser - and the truth is the first casualty of war.
    1
  10872.  @vman9591  All of whom will have served at least a year as conscripts, and very probably been to regular subsequent training camps in order to qualify as reservists. Except the invalids of course, who are merely creations of Western propaganda.
    1
  10873.  @NickMeister77  University students can avoid conscription, it is true. Naturally enough it is these who take part in the protests - something which may cause their exemption to be revoked.
    1
  10874.  @Nouta-j8d  Why should they do this when they have 2 million trained reservists?
    1
  10875.  @cristo6007 It seems Wikipedia is in on the deception. Just check the article on the Russian Armed Forces. Compulsory call-up for the majority and an army of at least 2 million reservists who have to go on refresher courses. You are falling for propaganda.
    1
  10876.  @lassemadsen607  You have a point there. The Russian army is certainly undertrained, under-equipped and poorly led in many instances.
    1
  10877.  @baldyslapnut.  The fight is neither just nor unjust and nor does it have anything to do with us. It is a turf war between two kleptocracies. It just so happens that one gang of crooks is supported by the US and therefore we are subjected to constant ant-Russian propaganda, much of it rather silly. I would remind you that for the past eight years "Ukrainians" of Russian heritage have been fighting a bloody war against the Kiev administration in which many thousands have died, including women and children.
    1
  10878.  @baldyslapnut.  Of course it did. Look it up in Wikipedia and other sources detailing how the Russian military is run. It's similar to the TA in the UK and the National Guard in the US and similar arrangements in other countries. Why should Russia be any different?
    1
  10879.  @plaugemarine  They are. This "untrained civilian" nonsense is just Western propaganda pumped out by the media. With a few exceptions - such as university students - all Russians have to undergo at least one year of military service between the ages of 18 and 26 - unless they can get out of it by bribery or by pretending to be disabled or somesuch. The Russian army is pretty crap. but pretending they are civilians is just plain silly.
    1
  10880.  @Talinthis  As with all conscripted armies, there are plenty of soldiers who far, far rather be elsewhere. Obviously, the degree of training affects how and where they are deployed.
    1
  10881.  @Talinthis  They would say that, wouldn't they? The army is just trying to stop men from skiving off - which is a long-established tradition! Why would the Russians send sick, untrained people to the front when they have an army of 2 million trained reservists to choose from? The Russians are heavily outnumbered and are trying to defend territory previously taken, It's sometimes better to use common sense instead of being suckered by cheap propaganda.
    1
  10882.  @stevenellis2043  The Russians certainly seem to be poorly equipped and are vastly outnumbered. They are also now defending territory, rather than trying to take it.
    1
  10883. @Chris Vee I'm rather flattered by the comparison. Everything I've said can be verified by a simple Google search though. It's all in Wikipedia and is common knowledge -if you could be bothered to check facts instead of believing the crap dished out by this channel and its like.
    1
  10884.  @maninthestreet01  Not difficult. It just doesn't happen to be true,. That nice Mr Putin has no interest whatsoever in me or my family, of that I am entirely sure.
    1
  10885.  @markfoth1226  No. You are. Russian expansionism is a total myth designed to scare us into supporting American economic imperialism, via NATO.
    1
  10886.  @maninthestreet01  Nothing to understand. Putin has no interest in me or my family, of that I am entirely sure.
    1
  10887.  @markfoth1226  The only threat to European security is we Europeans and British being foolish enough to get involved in America's attempts to conquer Russia.
    1
  10888.  @markfoth1226  The only effect it has is putting up our tax bills to support America in its constant proxy wars with Russia.
    1
  10889.  @markfoth1226  It only affects us because we don't ignore it.
    1
  10890. If just one Ukrainian gets killed for every half dozen or so of these reservists Moscow will be happy. They are expendable - as is the territory they are "defending,"
    1
  10891.  @toma2667  Give up tour unhealthy obsession. He is an Indian who set up his account two years before the Russian invasion. He is not a robot. He is not a Russian, more on!
    1
  10892.  @bl4482  And I know a more on when I see one!
    1
  10893.  @Jermilia  That'll teach me not to descend to low abuse. Thanks!
    1
  10894. The truth hurts. And Farage has spoken the unspeakable truth.
    1
  10895. Do you mean venture capitalism?
    1
  10896.  @mbd6054  Here we are. It was in May actually. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/… Peer reviewed study https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeatin… Newsweek article on above
    1
  10897. The effects of long covid appear to have been greatly exaggerated. A current study using 4,500 screened participants and access to 1.2million anonymous GP records shows that just 1.2% of patients in their twenties are suffering debilitating effects three months after infection, rising to 4.8% for the middle-aged.
    1
  10898.  @Bimfirestarter  It's only a word, and while it was certainly used as a term of disparagement in the past, it was also used in a purely descriptive way. Banning words is always a bad idea since it gives them a status and impact they need not possess.
    1
  10899.  @TAP7a  He isn't - unless he's changed his mind quite a bit! He escaped Communist Hungary (as well as Nazi Germany earlier on) and is on record as despising all political creeds. His guiding principle is a thing called "reflexivity" which you will just have to look up. It's very complicated.
    1
  10900.  @fredfredrickson5436  I quite enjoy their films myself. "Duck Soup" was rather good as I recall.
    1
  10901. Is the medical profession working on a cure for TDS?
    1
  10902.  @markwelch3564  You could be right. Every cloud has a silver lining.
    1
  10903.  @Captain-l-12p  It's absolutely true. He had a bit of help from an Arabic scholar with the Koran book but "Enemy of the State" and more recently "Manifesto" are both best-sellers and all his own work.. He has also made several films.
    1
  10904.  @awtistiaeth4699  I know Steve personally, as it happens, though not particularly well. We both have an interest in Kant and medieval history. Perhaps I was wrong to emphasis the quantity of his reading, rather than its nature but he is a very erudite person, and an autodidact like myself. Funnily enough he quite welcomes his prison sentences, since they give him time to catch up with his reading - and of course also to write his books. Much like Hitler, in fact, although the comparison ends there since Steve, like me, is a Zionist.
    1
  10905.  @basit730  But the book exists. And it makes sense.
    1
  10906.  @basit730  His commentary and his thesis very much hold water.
    1
  10907.  @davidkennedy8929  It is a question of being provoked, not being forced.
    1
  10908.  @al28854  I just don't want to see bits of them fly across the living room.
    1
  10909.  @adamrawicz-szczerbo8948  You're wrong about that, which brings your overall judgement into question.
    1
  10910.  @PhilThurston64  English OAP actually.
    1
  10911.  @Kenobi5001  Nobody in your little bubble perhaps. Other more widely-informed people realise the true nature of the game.
    1
  10912.  @jenniferconroy4517  All his overtures to resolve the very real problems on the Ukraine/Russia relationship have been scorned, virtually without discussion.
    1
  10913.  @angrybatarian  What propaganda? I merely state facts.
    1
  10914.  @danieln9226  Have you counted!? Wow! This channel is a rich source of amusement, I have to admit.
    1
  10915.  @Kenobi5001  It's not a question of "support". This isn't a football match where you take sides. Instead of swallowing pro-Zelensky, pro-NATO propaganda wholesale I suggest you examine the background to this conflict more thoroughly. It could have been avoided at far, far less cost than we are paying now. And there's a very real chance that at the end of the day Putin will get what he wants anyway.
    1
  10916.  @gazza595  I'm not entirely sure that these trolls actually exist. I cannot imagine why Russia should pay anyone to propagandises on YouTube comments threads. It's just any easy get-out for people of limited intellect. They believe that anyone who holds any other views than those they themselves have swallowed so unquestioningly must have been paid to do so.
    1
  10917.  @gazza595  Ukraine has committed numerous war crimes against Russians living in Eastern Ukraine. They are detailed in reports from the UN and Amnesty International, amongst others. Even if that wasn't enough provocation, Ukraine was flirting with joining NATO and the EU, both of which would be very much against Russia's interests. Few people seem to realise how much modern Ukraine was created by Russia - especially the mining and industry in the mineral-rich Donbass. Selling the profits off cheap to the US and Europe was more than a little riling for the Russians. Since the US and others refused to let their puppet Zelensky negotiate, Russia invaded. Humiliation and a considerable loss of revenue was the only alternative.
    1
  10918.  @Kenobi5001  Stop playing semantics. The facts are that Russia and Ukraine have a unique relationship which has been upset by foreign interference. Putin has no imperial ambitions. He merely wants to retain what he has managed to salvage from the collapse of the Soviet Union. I fully understand why he has done what he has done, and I sincerely believe that to deny him what he asks will lead to further bloodshed. If that counts as support in your book, then so be it. To my mind it is simply an objective assessment.
    1
  10919.  @DW-indeed  You'd be right! Which rather proves the point.
    1
  10920. Having offered prior escape routes from target areas Putin might well feel entitled to use the weapons - if in fact he has done so. All claims of Russian atrocities have so far have turned out to be fake news propaganda.
    1
  10921. No.
    1
  10922.  @UdumbaraMusic  But Trump advertises his actions BEFORE he takes them, surely?
    1
  10923.  @takenoprisoners-u3x  Could this be possible? Who is telling him?
    1
  10924. I don't watch GB TV News very often - so what exactly is this "hate speech" you all seem so cross about? In my experience the Left seems more into the hating business. The Right generally does contempt and disgust.
    1
  10925. @Coconutsoldier Simple curiosity.
    1
  10926. @ I tend to agree with the GB News guy. He doesn't seem to be doing any hating other than hating pee-doughs. Which if you have to hate anybody.... (Tried several times to make my response more coherent but it such a difficult topic that the YouTube algorithm just clutches its pearls and presses "erase." )
    1
  10927. More drivel from this childish channel and its bedroom-bound "experts". The ceasefire is simply a sign of Russia's commitment to its recently rediscovered Christian identity
    1
  10928. Putin has no wish to "advance across Europe". All he wants is to get back the bits of Russia stolen from it in the 1994 Budapest Accords.
    1
  10929. This clown has destroyed his country
    1
  10930. Omicron takes four times long as Delta to produce four times as many new viruses - and you probably won't notice what's been going on until the last minute. Unless it turns out to hit old folk badly this means lots of people getting immune at very little cost. But here's no money it for Big Pharma - that's what the panic's about!
    1
  10931. Complete with their 97% Russian populations!
    1
  10932. With their more than 90% Russian populations!
    1
  10933.  @wundurra24  Why do you think schoolchildren want to take drugs?
    1
  10934. Is this true? I imagine such deception could be quite easily countered. You have to give your name and email address and then confirm your email. You are then given your geographical location. I don't know if anomalies are weeded out immediately, but it ought, surely, to be relatively easy to do so at a later date?
    1
  10935.  @patrolmanpete  Quite the opposite. At this stage only Putin can be relied upon to achieve a pragmatic approach. A war of succession in Russia will give false hope to Ukraine and they might well continue their madness.
    1
  10936. @manpete No. If Putin goes a war of succession in Russia might encourage the Ukrainians to carry on.
    1
  10937.  @patrolmanpete  Wrong.
    1
  10938. Any thoughts yet on the Muslim, pro-Palestine response which has involved several serious assaults? Justifiable or not?
    1
  10939.  @ADifferentBias  Glad to hear you say so. It is what I would have expected from you. Do you not think, however, that these riots are a social phenomenon rather than a political one? The violence comes from kids who haven't had a political thought in their lives.
    1
  10940.  @verystripeyzebra  Not just fascist. It's a fairly sound political technique all round. BLM and Hamas use it too.
    1
  10941.  @1domcouk  You've counted them personally, have you? There is no evidence that Russia deliberately targets civilians, unlike the Ukrainians and, of course, Islamic extremists.
    1
  10942.  @kugelblitz5812  Bucha was very likely a put-up job, many of the victims appear to have been wearing white armbands, signifying they were Russian sympathisers. These people were probably killed by the Ukrainians in reprisal after the Russians left. The Russians undoubtedly killed and tortured many Ukrainians during their occupation. You will remember that Zelensky called upon civilians to arm themselves at this point, making all civilians potential threats. The corpses littering the streets had clearly been positioned for publicity purposes. They showed no signs of animal predation, despite the fact that the Russians had left several days earlier.
    1
  10943.  @michaellindqvist5288  .. which happened just after Zelensky called upon all civilians to arm themselves against the Russians, making each one of them a potential threat. In any case Bucha shows many signs of being a staged event.
    1
  10944.  @joelturley4847  Take off your blinkers.
    1
  10945.  @boogiewoogie9770  Russia is not a terrorist state. It is merely defending itself against Western military and commercial aggression.
    1
  10946.  @kugelblitz5812  If they were armed, as Zelensky ordered them to be.
    1
  10947.  @michaellindqvist5288  A highly disputable incident.
    1
  10948.  @thomasnyangala2424  If he was opposed to the war, then obviously.
    1
  10949.  @1domcouk  You counted them all yourself, did you?
    1
  10950.  @thomasnyangala2424  Who knows? He was certainly a man of mystery.
    1
  10951.  @Mark13091961  Countless incidents?? In any case the insurmountable objection to these claims is that there would be no advantage to Russia in deliberately killing civilians. As for the hospital in Mariupol it is quite clear that the Ukrainians - like Hamas - deliberately quarter troops and munitions in hospitals etc so that when they are taken out they can make a great fuss about it, and get all the bleeding hearts in the West to believe their BS.
    1
  10952.  @Mark13091961  Why would Russia waste munitions on civilians? And why do certain countries station troops and store armaments in hospitals and schools? Answer these questions before blindly believing propaganda.
    1
  10953.  @michaeljohnston980  These are battle zones. The reason they are flattened is because Ukrainian armed forces were stationed there. All civilians with any sense will have left them.
    1
  10954.  @geelangfordo3272  Careful. Your brainwashing is showing.
    1
  10955.  @michaeljohnston980  I do. I weigh up available information and come to rational conclusions. This is more grown-up than simply believing unquestioningly the propaganda fed to you by clearly biased sources.
    1
  10956.  @michaeljohnston980  Well, both NATO and the Islamists have encroached upon Russia and its interests pretty consistently since the Russian Federation was formed just over 30 years ago. The Islamists tried to take over Chechnya, and NATO and the US are trying to take over Ukraine right now.
    1
  10957.  @boogiewoogie9770  Russia is the victim of Western interests arming Ukraine in order to take over control of the mineral wealth of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. These resources have been exploited by Russia and by Russians for centuries. Putin put forward compromise solutions aimed at preventing Ukrainian oligarchs selling off these resources to foreign, mainly American, companies with the collusion of American and EU governments. Instead of working on these compromises, as outlined in the Minsk agreements of 2015/16, America and other NATO countries spent billions of dollars on creating a new Ukrainian army. Putin believed, with some justification, that this army would attempt to take Crimea and those areas of Eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists. Discussions having failed to bear fruit, he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in order to crush this army and ensure these valuable mineral resources remain under Russian control. In this he appears to be successful. Tragically Ukraine lies in ruins and tens of thousands have needlessly died to achieve a result which was always available through mediation and discussion.
    1
  10958.  @michaeljohnston980  Unfortunately YouTube's biased algorithm prevent me from replying in full. But, yes.
    1
  10959.  @boogiewoogie9770  American imperialist aggression.
    1
  10960.  @boogiewoogie9770  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation has done nothing other than attempt to protect its existing interests. Putin knows only too well the perils of extending them too far. It was, after all, this which ultimately caused the collapse of the SU.
    1
  10961.  @michaeljohnston980  There's no denying that Putin is tough and ruthless. he has to be. Russia is a very difficult country to run at the best of times, and the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union certainly weren't the best of times. His achievements have been remarkable. He has exercised control over the oligarchs who took over power from the Commissars (though in fact many of them WERE the Commissars!) and has transformed his country into something which , for most, is a thoroughly decent place to live in. But he is an Eastern potentate - not some Democratic pen-pusher or front man for unseen forces, as so many Western leaders are. You have merely trotted out cheap propaganda. Most of these stories aren't true, and when they are it is simply that they have been used to dispose of people who are rocking the boat and who, in Putin's expert opinion, are likely to push Mother Russia into the state of anarchy which is an ever-present threat to its well-being. We should just leave Putin alone to get on with it. By what right do we interfere in his affairs?
    1
  10962.  @basserphil  I think the term "if required" covers a great deal of ground.
    1
  10963.  @basserphil  I very, very much doubt it. This was in reply to a question, of course, and not part of the original floating of the plan. Many leaders would have raised their hands in horror and bent over backwards to deny they were thinking of such a thing. But not clever old Trumpy.
    1
  10964.  @basserphil  In answer to a question though. And why shouldn't he?
    1
  10965.  Randomly In accurate  So you're suggesting the measures should continue for ever, are you? Even though there seems little correlation between them and the reduction in deaths? Even though the proportion of deaths is rapidly reducing in relation to the number of cases? There has to come a time when enough is enough and we have to face a new reality. Covid 19 is not the plague we thought it was.. It kills only those due to die shortly anyway, The fact that in July almost 1,500 FEWER people died than in July last year is a clear indication of this.Those people who statistically were due to die couldn't do so because Covid had killed them already. And you can't die twice.
    1
  10966.  @danielwhyatt3278  It's far more likely is that it's because those frail and elderly people due to die in July couldn't do so because they had already been killed by Covid 19. And you can't die twice.
    1
  10967.  @Diggydogsp  It doesn't add up that way. More people are dying as a result of failing to be treated for other diseases because of lockdowns than are being saved because of a reduction in work and traffic accidents. The reason why deaths in July were down must be because those frail and elderly people who were due to die that month can't do so because Covid has killed them already. And you can't die twice. Hospitals being empty has nothing to do with restrictions working. It's because the disease is a) running out of victims and b) mutating into milder forms. The number of positive tests is rising, which is what we are expected to panic about. But why should we? Far, far fewer people are dying and far, far fewer people are being hospitalised. The restrictions are supposed to cut down on the number of infections. Clearly they are not. This must clearly mean that the number of infections is fairly irrelevant, and yet all the propaganda is concentrated upon emphasising this irrelevant fact. Why?
    1
  10968. It really is quite simple. Zelensky was employed by Trump's predecessors to help America get hold of the immense mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine. That effort has failed with the loss of many lives, and Zelensky is now redundant. Throwing a wobbly about Trump expressing this truth in his own inimitable way is rather childish in the circumstances. I'm surprised at Mr Bolt, who usually seems to have his head screwed on.
    1
  10969.  @jurgensplurgen8972  Perhaps we should all wrap ourselves in clingfim every morning. That should do it.
    1
  10970.  @jurgensplurgen8972  Well best ignore it and go on as we've always done then. Strikes me viruses, unlike bacteria, go their own way whatever we do and only cease operations when they run out of non-immune hosts.
    1
  10971. Well, NATO wound him up, that's why.
    1
  10972. Do you mean that the IRS has retained some integrity and refuses to join the FBI ,the CIA and all the other acronyms of state malignancy in their witch-hunt?
    1
  10973. Don't talk about Joe Biden like that. It's most disrespectful.
    1
  10974. Only 65,000 or so.
    1
  10975.  @MichaelSmith-ns8ow  That's just what Google tells me. Shame that Farage won't have Tommy Robinson in his gang, by the way.
    1
  10976.  @derwolfpack3599  But he did attack. And we should ask why.
    1
  10977.  @ericlondon2663  It is attitudes such as yours which constantly draw people into needless wars.
    1
  10978.  @ericlondon2663  It is overly simplistic and not at all accurate to describe Putin as the "architect" of the war. He has increasingly been backed into a corner by NATO expansionism, and the invasion is a defensive measure. He was probably pushed into it by hawks among the military. Like America, Russia has its "war pigs", and if you are looking for a prime cause for the war it is probably the fact that the Biden administration has given the US variety the go ahead to extend the existing civil war in Ukraine.
    1
  10979.  @alexm566  Does that include the US -the biggest bully in the world?
    1
  10980.  @alexm566  Only in a world of cliches.
    1
  10981.  @derwolfpack3599  I don't see the joke. All Russia ever wanted was control over Donbass and Crimea, Ukraine prevented from joining NATO and the EU, and the virtual destruction of Ukraine's armed forces. And that very much looks as though that is exactly what they'll get.
    1
  10982.  @unworthy42  Last time I looked Russia was occupying 20% of Ukraine's alleged territory and had plunged the rest into darkness. Perhaps you live on another planet?
    1
  10983.  @unworthy42  And thousands of Ukrainians too have died. The country's armed forces are utterly depleted and without the influx of Poles and other foreigners and continued re-supplies of weaponry from the West, the war cannot continue. All Russia wants is Donbass and Crimea, and it very much looks as though that is what it will get in the end.
    1
  10984.  @unworthy42  So far everything is up for grabs. IF Russia is defeated in Donbass and IF it loses Crimea then you are right. But these are very big "IFS".
    1
  10985.  @unworthy42  We'll have to see. Russia is notoriously profligate with men and munitions - which is why she tends to put the old stuff and the new recruits in first in order to soak up the enemy while keeping its best troops and equipment in reserve for the final. Bakhmut has been encircled and it looks as though the Wagners and other crack troops are now trying to take those areas of Donbass not yet under Russian control. "Up for grabs" still covers the situation, I think.
    1
  10986.  @unworthy42  I don't think either you or I know what the true situation is at present. It does appear, however, that most of the action so far has involved conscript troops and pretty ancient equipment. The battle-hardened republican armies and Chechen mercenaries were used to take Mariupol and the Wagner Group seems to be in the forefront of the attack on Bakhmut and all points north. If, as many suspect, the entire Russian campaign has been based on a strategy of drawing out the Ukrainians in order to deplete them, then it seems to be working.
    1
  10987.  @unworthy42  Dream on.
    1
  10988. Australia's Covid death numbers seem almost negligible compared to those in many other countries. It is, however, somewhat disconcerting to hear that some "experts" believe that Covid 19, unlike influenza viruses, thrives in hot conditions rather than cold. I really hope not . Summer approaches.
    1
  10989.  VINLAND_777  I think we cannot take seriously any statements made by Putin immediately prior to a military action - or from any other commander, for that matter. He certainly lies and obfuscates, as do all politicians, simply in order to make his actions less predictable. If you have read Putin's essays I am sure you have read the one he wrote immediately prior to the invasion in which he makes it clear that - however regrettably - Ukraine can turn its face to the West if it wishes - but it can't take Donbass and Ukraine with it because Donbass and Ukraine are Russian. (They are also sitting on top of trillions of dollars of oil, gas, coal, iron ore and rare earth minerals too, which probably exercises his mind at least as much as de-Russification!) Weighing things in the balance I do not think that Putin has any desire to take over the whole of Ukraine, much less other parts of Europe. It would be an impossible task and, in the end, simply not worth it. One of the reasons for the collapse of the USSR was its inability to control rebellious outlying provinces, and there is no need for the Russian Federation to make the same mistake.
    1
  10990.  VINLAND_777  I am British, in answer to your question. May I ask what your personal experience of being attacked by Russia might be?
    1
  10991.  VINLAND_777  I think we cannot take seriously any statements made by Putin immediately prior to a military action - or from any other commander, for that matter. He certainly lies and obfuscates, as do all politicians, simply in order to make his actions less predictable.
    1
  10992.  VINLAND_777  If you have read Putin's essays I am sure you have read the one he wrote immediately prior to the invasion in which he makes it clear that - however regrettably - Ukraine can turn its face to the West if it wishes - but it can't take Donbass and Ukraine with it because Donbass and Ukraine are Russian. (They are also sitting on top of trillions of dollars of oil, gas, coal, iron ore and rare earth minerals too, which probably exercises his mind at least as much as de-Russification!)
    1
  10993.  VINLAND_777  Have you read Putin's essay of Ukraine/ Russian relations published a couple of months before the invasion. I'm sure he's genuine in this one.
    1
  10994.  VINLAND_777  Putin, like all politicians - and especially like all military commanders before taking action - lies in order to confuse his opponents. Working out whether or not he's lying is a bit of a job, but it can be done.
    1
  10995.  VINLAND_777  He's in his seventies which is a bit late to be conquering the world. I think Putin just wants to leave Russia no worse off than when he took over. Losing Chechnya, Georgia and now Crimea and Donbass would be blows to his and Russia's prestige.
    1
  10996.  VINLAND_777  YouTube's new incomprehensible fascist algorithm is deleting my replies, hence their somewhat disjointed nature.
    1
  10997.  @klokoloko2114  Fossil fuel companies are large investors in renewable energy and the so-called climate crisis is a scam. Sky Aus is one of the few MSM outlets in the world to maintain standards of journalistic scepticism instead of selling out to the New World Order.
    1
  10998.  @klokoloko2114  I find it hard to imagine how I feel so well having eaten all that lead! To answer your question: sure, fossil fuels must run out eventually and grow more expensive in the process, but to add the bogeyman of atmospheric pollution to the mix is clearly, as I said, an attempt to manipulate prices through the artificial creation of a limited quantity; taking financial advantage of the situation, in other words. Wind power and solar power may just possibly be replacements if the technology can be developed, and we have a good alternative in the form of nuclear energy. But, as I say, the climate crisis narrative is little more than a cynical and opportunistic attempt to restructure society to the advantage of a few very clever megalomaniacs. Don't be taken in by it.
    1
  10999.  @klokoloko2114  I'm so glad you are a climate expert. Can you answer a couple of basic questions I have as a layman - if you have time that is? Have Arrhenius' 1890's experiments been reproduced, and if so where and when? Is there anything to suggest that increased levels of atmospheric carbon set up molecular oscillations which entirely restrict the passage of reflected heat? Or is it possible that the reaction merely regulates the directions in which such heat is disseminated?
    1
  11000. Is rejection of untruths really ignorance?
    1
  11001.  @jsmcguireIII  Not as irrelevant as this pathetic show trial - but the country is going downhill fast - haven't you noticed?
    1
  11002. It was a victory. The tariff threat was a kick up the backside. Without it both Mexico and Canada would still be dithering.
    1
  11003. Actually I'm sure he and all the psychopaths in this comments section genuinely believe all their crap. The installation of Trump Derangement Syndrome in the minds of so many people is one of the most successful psych-ops of all time.
    1
  11004. But there aren't any.
    1
  11005.  @trident6547  I'm sure it could. But will it?
    1
  11006. @ Well of course there are! And different refining processes creating different products at vastly different prices. What's your point?
    1
  11007. @AGerm332 Then I guess it doesn't get bought. This would of course cause untold damage to the Canadian oil producers who would then have to find other and far more expensive means of transporting their product to other customers. Or, more, likely go to the wall.
    1
  11008. @ Which is why American customers will not buy it. And this will affect Canadian supplies far more than American customers.
    1
  11009. @ That's my point exactly. If Canadian oil was made prohibitively expensive in the US and the US then went to other sources these pipelines would be redundant and Canada would have to export its product to other customers by far more expensive means.
    1
  11010.  @harmless6813  Who has no choice? Not quite sure which of my comments you are referring to. Is it perhaps that many US refineries are better suited to processing the heavy crude from Canada than they are the lighter stuff from Texas, say. Is this where you see a problem?
    1
  11011. This is what all the crap about man-made global warming comes down to in the end.
    1
  11012.  @quixotiq  Has it been tested though? After all some people have been wearing masks for hours on end, day in day out and that has never happened before. Mind you long covid doesn't seem any more prevalent than the long term ill effects some people get from some influenzas so....bollocks it probably is.
    1
  11013. Yes you do.
    1
  11014. This has been America's war from the very start and even though only minor objectives have been achieved it makes sense to pull out now - with over half a million dead. Still, they were only a bunch of foreigners.
    1
  11015. It's not actually happening. This is all lies.
    1
  11016. @Jane Doe says: Refugee camps.
    1
  11017. Why?
    1
  11018.  @pieropasset2246  Can you provide me with a list of criminal convictions for fraud or other related charges?
    1
  11019. Which cult? The TDS cult?
    1
  11020. Braverman has merely voiced the opinions of very many frustrated Britons who watch in amazed horror as their country is swamped in a sea of ignorance and prejudice.
    1
  11021. But everyone knows Ukraine isn't going to get Crimea back. It isn't exactly a secret.
    1
  11022. The "cure" is worse than the disease. An early stab at herd immunity would have been painful to endure, but it would have been better than the long agony now faced by literally millions. Lockdowns will prove to have killed many, many times more people than covid. They have created what has justifiably been called the greatest public health disaster in modern times.
    1
  11023. Some time after the Ukrainians realise they are being used as poker chips to further enrich American billionaires, I daresay.
    1
  11024.  @rw4754  What was its name?
    1
  11025.  @Overeasyeggsoee  Can I sell you a bridge?
    1
  11026.  @AnnaCentauri  Rather proves my point. You saddos are so brainwashed you can't understand how an Englishman (which I am) can see through the conditioning. So I have to be a Russian bot!
    1
  11027.  @TheStoicSceptic  Rather proves my point. You saddos are so brainwashed you can't understand how an Englishman (which I am) can see through the conditioning. So I have to be a Russian bot!
    1
  11028.  @christianthurston6933  Rather proves my point. You saddos are so brainwashed you can't understand how an Englishman (which I am) can see through the conditioning. So I have to be a Russian bot!
    1
  11029. A situation soon to change.
    1
  11030.  @brianferguson7840  I think (and hope) that Steve will gradually be rehabilitated in the eyes of the bulk of the population. He is an intelligent and courageous man and much maligned. All it needs is a concerted and well-financed campaign to achieve this. He has a place in mainstream politics, especially since the worldwide trend is now (thank God) increasingly to the Right.
    1
  11031. This is such nonsense. Trump and Johnson have practically nothing in common and Starmer and Lammy merely fell foul of a group of semi-permanent, right-wingish protesters whose major concern is the continuing abuse of young children. Anyone who thinks Johnson could stir up a Jan 6 style protest is mad.
    1
  11032. It doesn't work like that. Her employers know what their part of the market want to hear and she knows how to provide it.
    1
  11033. He got paid a lot more than these guys.
    1
  11034. What sort of infections/hospitalisations ratio is needed to keep the latter manageable?
    1
  11035.  @ronin8926  In what sense?
    1
  11036.  @stevesonnaquesta  I am English. It really does show how weak your arguments are if you believe that only "Russian trolls" can disagree with them. I doubt these creatures even exist.
    1
  11037.  @bonnie7898  I know Russia is a capitalist country. What has THAT got to do with it? Putin is quite right when he says Ukraine has never had true statehood . It is the creation of the Russian empire and latterly the Soviet Empire. But in the essay from which that quote was taken, Putin goes on to say that as romantically desirable as it may be to take modern Ukraine back into the Russian fold, it is not practicable nor even desirable. He concludes, however regretfully, that the country may look now to the West. But it can't take Donbass and Crimea with it. They belong too much to Russia, both in terms of population and the vast about of money invested by Russia in their mining and steel production facilities. There is an estimated $14trillion of oil, gas, coal and rare earth minerals beneath the soil in these areas. Putin believes that it is wrong for Ukrainian oligarchs to hand these over to America and other Western countries, as is planned. He was prepared to offer compromises but these have been rejected in favour of war - a war not of Russia's choosing.
    1
  11038. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  11039.  @porecemusnox8805  If I bought one I would rename it MV Ironical.
    1
  11040.  @AndreS_22246  Apollo Duck is the place to visit. At random we have a cruiser LOA 73,56 m Beam 13,99 m Draft 3,69 m Total passenger capacity 168 with 156 berths a snip at $5.5million US.
    1
  11041.  @AndreS_22246  There are literally thousands of them out there, ranging in price from a couple of million $US to $40 to $50million, depending upon age and size. I've tried to send you a couple of examples picked at random but YouTube won't let me.
    1
  11042.  @AndreS_22246  Just Google second hand liners for sale - happy browsing!
    1
  11043.  @AndreS_22246  YouTube won't let me!! But there are thousands out there, ranging in price from a couple of million dollars to a couple of hundred million.
    1
  11044. This is not a peace plan. It is a child's wish list.
    1
  11045.  @Cannibal_Actual  Ra. Ta, I mean to say!
    1
  11046. It's ok. They're being looked after by the Ghost of Kiev and his North Korean assistants.
    1
  11047. People have just got to get used to the fact that Zelensky is no super-hero, despite having this illusion rammed down their throats for years.
    1
  11048. There's hardly a country in the world where the electoral process isn't a sham. Russia just doesn't make any bones about it.
    1
  11049. I do wish those on the left could stop seeing this phenomenon as some some sort of "cunning plan". It isn't. The oppressed British working class greatly fear that a Labour government will add to their existing woes. In this fear they may well be justified. There is no coherent "far right" movement. Tommy Robinson and - to a lesser extent GB News - merely give voice to these concerns. You can't just shut them up. Attempts to do so just add to the general sense of oppression felt by hundreds of thousands of people living on council estates all across the land. The left in general - and the Labour Party in particular - should get off its high horse and realise that they are only in power by default, and not because any great number of people want them to be there.
    1
  11050.  @ericwinnert If you are referring to the ECHR it is, in itself, an instrument of repression.
    1
  11051. It readjusts the balance. Racism exists, and it can be directed towards white people just as readily as otherwise. To deny this is foolish, and Trump is just taking one more step towards undermining the presumptions which are currently destroying civilisation.
    1
  11052.  @almac9203  I hadn't realised you were being sarcastic. Sorry. The very fact that the government claimed HCQ as ineffective is indicative in itself that people are taking it. This was obviously a response to the recent campaign of lies organised by Big Pharma and now recently exposed as just that. Thankfully the WHO has now resumed official approval, with certain caveats, and clinical trials are continuing of this very useful drug.
    1
  11053.  @natalieturko4808  Most are orphans. Those that are not have been removed for their own safety and to prevent them from being used as human shields. The idea that Russia would bother to indoctrinate them is preposterous. Indoctrinate them into what? They are from Eastern Ukraine and will speak Russian as a first language. Many will be of Russian heritage with relatives in Russia and the streets where they lived might well be named after Russian heroes - or even Karl Marx or Lenin. You talk of propaganda. This whole story is propaganda.
    1
  11054.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  It invaded in order to stop Ukraine invading Donbass and Crimea. And it wouldn't have invaded if Ukraine had agreed to its very reasonable peace proposals.
    1
  11055.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  NATO and the US spent something close to$100 billion on building a Ukrainian army following the 2016 Minsk treaty. Its objective was to invade Crimea and Donbass in order to secure their vast mineral resources for America and its lackeys. Putin's peace proposals were quite clear and it is even possible that Ukraine would have considered them and prevented war - but Western leaders forbad it.
    1
  11056.  @thaliacrafts407  That's ridiculous. Most have been rescued from orphanages and care homes threatened by the war. Some have been rescued from cellars and bomb shelters where they have been held as human shields. Others are in touch with their parents via social media and others have already been re-united with their families.
    1
  11057.  @stevenmartin8828  I have several videos of people being rescued from cellars and bomb shelters in Mariupol where they had been imprisoned for weeks by the Azov Battalion. They were shot by snipers if they tried to get out for food and water. Some were even cemented in. Most of the children now in Russian care are of Russian heritage and origin. Russians make up the majority of the population in Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  11058.  @alanjamey2777  Ukraine hasn't exactly got its timing right then, has it? Careful what you wish for just about covers it.
    1
  11059. Russia doesn't want all of Ukraine, much less anywhere else. Far too much trouble. It just wants the Russian bits of Ukraine.
    1
  11060.  @chirpywiggins5796  No. Greed. Evil doesn't enter into it.
    1
  11061.  @anglonorse2943  What's silly about it? As with the pathological hatred of Donald Trump opponents seem unwilling or incapable of reasoned discourse and just scream for their enemy to be put in prison. To me it shows they HAVE no argument.
    1
  11062.  @anglonorse2943  Not half as silly as the largely unintelligible bollox you've just come out with, if I may say so. When do people on the right in this country call for their opponents to be jailed?
    1
  11063.  @mickmaphari6606  Lawfare.
    1
  11064.  @markwelch3564  Not political opponents quite so much though, I think. This desire to lock up people you disagree with rather than argue with them is pretty medieval.
    1
  11065.  @markwelch3564  Not at all. We tend to keep what is good and discard what no longer works. I believe that a constitutional monarchy is the best system of government ever arrived at. As for the aristocracy, it is a source of bitter regret to me that I was not born among their number, but it is a cross I have learned to bear.
    1
  11066.  @altheogre  No. Genes and old age. I bend my knee to no man.
    1
  11067.  @matts486  How about hearing from a few doctors who are mightly pleased they are saving their patients? Sorry. You can't do that because silicone valley and big pharma won't let you. You'll just have to rely on the "scientific sources" doled out to you by glorified lab technicians who are paid to provide the results their employers require...sigh.
    1
  11068.  @matts486  What are they then? Einsteins? Rutherfords? No. They're just science students who have kept up their grades and got their qualifications by giving the answers expected of them. Which is what they do now.
    1
  11069. So much for doxxing.
    1
  11070. Musk made practically every twist and turn of the body available to man before the so-called "Nazi salute" - which he did with both arms, clearly indicating that he was throwing his heart out to the people, not referencing Adolf Hitler. You guys are getting desperate. It will be good to see you consigned to the dustbin of history where you belong.
    1
  11071. Bring back the hereditaries and sack all the rest!
    1
  11072.  @emm_arr I 'd feel even better if I got someone intelligent to argue with.
    1
  11073.  @emm_arr  It won't be you, that's for sure!
    1
  11074. He's a fantasist, much like Greta Thurnburg but even more dangerous.
    1
  11075.  @joshdavis416  What if I don't have any personal issues? What do I do then? Being self-aware is not being self-centred and nor is being conscious of one's individual identity as a thing separate from one's membership of a group.
    1
  11076.  @joshdavis416  I don't think I'm perfect. Nobody is; but I am at ease with my imperfections and do not consider them to be "personal issues". That's just jargon. By your definition the only people who aren't narcissists are neurotics - which of course a great many Democrats are.
    1
  11077. Have you seen the massive protests in Australia? Have you seen the viral videos of women being attacked and thrown to the ground by police for daring to object to Australia's covid fascism?
    1
  11078.  @finitekosmos  I keep seeing thousands of people taking to the streets in Melbourne and Sydney - and all those videos of the cops acting like thugs. How long is this going to go on for? You can't keep the virus out forever and once it takes a hold it will run through you like wildfire. All the inconvenience and indignity will have been for nothing.
    1
  11079.  @KittenoftheBroccoli  The point is that Australia has the same problems as anywhere. More so in many ways.
    1
  11080.  @pgr3290  Check Weeb Union and DPA. They balance claims from both sides.
    1
  11081. They haven't got a chance. A court has decided he acted in self-defence. Rittenhouse therefore bears no responsibility in law.
    1
  11082.  @stultusvenator3233  Wait and see covers it, I guess - but since the trial has absolved Rittenhouse from any responsibility it will be a very long shot, I think. If they had found him guilty of reckless endangerment or some similar charge there might be some mileage - otherwise he is a blameless citizen exercising his rights to defend himself against potentially murderous attack. The good guy, in other words.
    1
  11083.  @stultusvenator3233  According to the law he is not a murderer. And no-one can tell what the result would have been had he not neutralised his assailants. The only ones going to get rich from this are the lawyers.
    1
  11084.  @stultusvenator3233  I shouldn't think he'll mind. He seems quite confident and articulate. He might make a good politician. A very rich good politician; perhaps part-owning a cable TV station with young Mr Sandmann.
    1
  11085.  @erwinmulder1338  With approximately twice as many covid viruses in the world as there are stars in the observable universe you can be sure that all possible viable variants are out there already - several times over.
    1
  11086.  @PORRRIDGE_GUN  Current statistics, based upon 4,500 screened participants and access to 1.2million anonymous GP records show that 1.2% of patients in their twenties and 4.8% of those in middle age still suffer from debilitating symptoms sufficient to affect their everyday lives three months after first infection. Obviously longer term effects will occur in a percentage of these percentages. This is pretty much in line with severe forms of influenza and if any good comes out of this mess it ought to be that proper research is done into this long-standing problem. Vaccinations, you realise, do not confer total immunity. Currently close on 10,000 vaccinated people a day are testing positive.
    1
  11087. Has news of the Connellys reached your shores yet?This father and son team from The University of Dublin have apparently proved beyond doubt that carbon-fuelled global warming is a load of hooey. You will be astonished to learn that all the models predicting global warming are based themselves on a model created in 1942 by an obscure physicist from Serbia. It appears he was dead wrong and that Albert Einstein, who published a paper in 1917 saying that the Earth's atmosphere is thermodynamically stable and self-stabilizing, was entirely correct. Carbon molecules do not retain heat. They absorb it in one third of a second then spit it out again to go on its merry way. This would go a long way towards explaining why none of the climate alarmists' predictions have yet come to pass and also begs the question as to why figures have been fiddled and multiple lies told by the media to pretend that they have. The Connelly paper is based on a five year study of literally billions of readings from weather balloons from all over the world. It is repeatable by anyone who cares to do so and all necessary information to this end is publicly available. If other scientiists come up with the same conclusions then the whole sick, evil terrifying con-trick of man-made global warming will come crashing down like a house of cards - and not before time. Little Miss Thunberg can go back to Sweden and start a family or do something else useful with her life.
    1
  11088. Unlikely but possibly true. Predictably steps are being taken to quash and sideline their paper but I gather they can be reached on HTTPS://ronanconnollyscience.com. You might end up merely reaching a blog, but scrolling down, I am told, gets to sources for the original and if contacted they will send you the paper as a pdf. Good luck. I assume you are a scientist, which I am not, but these findings seem to confirm my instinct that nature often gets thing right while mere mortal scientists often get things wrong. Horribly wrong in this instance.
    1
  11089. Long duk dong - if the mountains of evidence are based on a falsehood then the mountains will crumble. The man-made climate change models are based on a model created in 1942 by a Serbian physicist whose laboratory experiments incorrectly defined the nature of gases in the atmosphere. Einstein's 1917 paper was based on a theoretical assessment of the nature of these gasses. The empirical evidence gathered from weather balloon data by the Connollys supports Einstein's assessment.
    1
  11090.  @xXxObamaGamingxXx  I'm not on Twitter and have only ever read a Trump tweet in passing on some news item. I tend to consult source material wherever possible. Unfortunately the MSM censors much of this so one has to go to other sources for expert opinion - or even to videos from ordinary people with no axe to grind.
    1
  11091. Ukraine.
    1
  11092. Bucha too is very much in doubt.
    1
  11093. @Previous administrations in the US have been very instrumental in starting this war, partly to attempt to de-stabilise Russia, but mainly so that the immense mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine can be taken from its Russian owners and transferred into Western hands.
    1
  11094. @ The war started in 2014 after America helped start a rebellion to overthrow Ukraine's democratically-elected President.
    1
  11095.  @malcolmgibson5088  All of Ukraine was once Russia, and the mines and industrial facilities in Eastern Ukraine largely remain in the ownership of Russian companies, and the workforce has a very high proportion of Russians. Russia has invaded not to take over these assets, but to prevent them being taken from them and sold to Western companies.
    1
  11096.  @malcolmgibson5088  Defending your country's interests is not aggression. The aggression comes from those seeking constantly to undermine your country's interests.
    1
  11097. He said no such thing. He was asking for clarification and his words were edited out of context. Vile media manipulation.
    1
  11098. Evolution doesn't work like that. It involves a very great amount of death.
    1
  11099. Are paying taxes and playing by the rules actual British values?
    1
  11100. Martin D A Can you point me to the temperature records which show that increased atmospheric carbon precedes increased surface temperature?
    1
  11101.  @caeruleusvm7621  Yet Russia is still managing to export vastly increased amounts of oil to India while India and China are replacing Western countries as suppliers of technology. The West has had its day. American hegemony is creaking to a halt. The dollar will soon cease as reserve currency. The future is BRICS. All this talk of Russia failing economically and losing the war in Ukraine is just panicky wishful thinking.
    1
  11102.  @caeruleusvm7621  Somehow Russia is managing to expert oil to India in increasingly vast quantities and China and India are supplying the technological input provided by the West - although of course many Western companies are finding ways around sanctions to continue profitable relations with Russia. There is, to my mind, an increasing note of desperation in these frequent assertions that Russia is on the brink of economic collapse and is losing the war in Ukraine. It all smacks of wishful thinking and does not stand up to a great deal of scrutiny.
    1
  11103.  @franklin9400  You'd better believe it!
    1
  11104. Plus announcing IN ADVANCE that they MIGHT send Ukraine a highly sophisticated air defence system which takes MONTHS to train people to operate. The Russians will obviously now step up their air attacks in attempts to bring Ukraine to its knees before the Patriots arrive and are up and running.
    1
  11105. Just a handful of attested cases of reinfection in the whole world. What is Hancock talking about? And he is saying its easier to lock everyone down than simply protect the vulnerable? There is no need to look any further than this statement. This whole thing is a deeply sinister con trick.
    1
  11106. jim cherkas Relax. We're not.
    1
  11107. SoDoesMine None of this is true. You've been lied to. Honest.
    1
  11108.  @thanos7753  Try getting Bing or another bot to reword them for you.
    1
  11109. How do you make that out? Russia has defied America and won.
    1
  11110. I've said it before and I'll say it again: making Trump into a demonic figure is just no way of dealing with him. It's unbalanced.
    1
  11111.  @Yeknodathon  Very possibly. But at least I have an open mind.
    1
  11112.  @jounik  Is that why left wingers are so close-minded and paranoid? Afraid their brains might fall out? That explains a lot.
    1
  11113. They are merely following globalist policies. Socialism has not merely been destroyed, it has been commandeered.
    1
  11114. There are apparently only relatively few cases of the new strain, it's been around since September, it is likely to be LESS fatal than previous strains and there have been at least six major mutations and a dozens of minor ones since the pandemic began. So why does Boris open his stupid gob about it? He should stop listening to Twitty and Doodlebrain and the other mad muppets at Sage and start acting like a leader in a difficult situation should act by being calm and playing his cards close to his chest.
    1
  11115. NATO has surely had its day. It has become little more than a glorified protection racket anyway.
    1
  11116. People heard him when he threatened them with a gun and asked them for all their money.
    1
  11117.  @quentinpugh1969  Supersonic says it all. You wouldn't hear it.
    1
  11118.  @peterhernandez7817  I think we're going to have to let you off in that case. Don't go buying any TV stations though, will you?
    1
  11119. Don't police states generally pursue crimes rather than try to ignore them?
    1
  11120.  @vladimirputin4822  What is even sadder is the inability of the left-wing mindset to understand the true nature of democracy.
    1
  11121.  @rocketscience4516  Keep taking the tablets. The pain will soon go! (PS. Great news about the drop in covid cases in the UK, isn't it?)
    1
  11122.  @vladimirputin4822  Exactly. Democracy is about representation. It is not a popularity contest. PR would mean a country consisting of a wide variety of communities with differing interests and priorities being entirely governed by the whims of a largely urban population.
    1
  11123.  @vladimirputin4822  If by best-run you mean the most authoritarian then you may have a point.
    1
  11124.  @rocketscience4516  Certainly the former. The latter are irrelevant to the issue.
    1
  11125.  @rocketscience4516  Funnily enough a survey undertaken by the Royal Society of Medicine in 2015 revealed that 6% of surgeons do not wear facemasks during operations, and of those that did, 20% said they only did so because they thought it was expected of them.
    1
  11126.  @rocketscience4516  Just look up the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, June 17, 2015. (I got the percentage wrong, sorry. Only 4% said they didn't wear masks.) Covid hysteria has meant that everyone who knows which side their bread is buttered on has to follow the official political line. Hence the pronouncement of the esteemed RS President.(It's not still that tosser Paul Nurse, is it?) In any case the point as issue here is that even if masks work in a public setting (which they largely don't) the present situation means that the more vaccinated people who become infected the better, since they are likely to suffer only very mild symptoms but help pave the way to herd immunity. Thus face coverings are doubly useless.
    1
  11127.  @rocketscience4516  Just check their site! I've tried sending the direct link, but the YouTube stasi are blocking it. PS. Personality flaws? Are you a practising psychiatrist?
    1
  11128.  @rocketscience4516  Chicken!
    1
  11129.  @rocketscience4516  Playing golf this afternoon?
    1
  11130.  @Yeknodathon  From the same report: "A contemporary questionnaire-based study, which attempted to assess the attitudes of surgeons, revealed that 96% of responders wore facemasks.1 About equal numbers did so with the primary aim of protecting the patients compared to protecting themselves. However, it was also found that 20% of responding surgeons wore the mask for the sole purpose of respecting tradition. Furthermore, 30% of responding surgeons felt that masks could make surgery more difficult by increasing breath condensation on spectacles, endoscopes and microscopes and thereby obscuring vision." "Examination of the literature revealed much of the published work on the matter to be quite dated and often studies had poorly elucidated methodologies. As a result, we recommend caution in extrapolating their findings to contemporary surgical practice. However, overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination. More rigorous contemporary research is needed to make a definitive comment on the effectiveness of surgical facemasks."
    1
  11131.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  By this logic everyone should wear crucifixes to ward off vampires and tinfoil hats to protect their brains from harmful cosmic rays.
    1
  11132.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  A fair point. How about cannabis oil to prevent cancer? Or walnuts? Or blowing rams' horns at sunset to keep tigers away? In all seriousness though I personally balance the remote possibility that face coverings might reduce the spread of covid against the distinct probability that they are merely used as a politically motivated psychological prop.
    1
  11133.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Do you really not believe that governments use psychological manipulation when dealing with situations such as this? Apart from anything else, face-coverings allow people who question them, or do not wear them, to become objects of vilification - rather than governments which have made such an unholy mess of things.
    1
  11134.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Have you had much luck with yours?
    1
  11135.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  What is a denial issue? Disagreement is not denial. Your apparent rigidity of thought could give you problems, so I advise against any form of reinforcement strategy. You have perhaps fallen under the influence of charlatans and consequently project your insecurities on others as an avoidance measure. If you yourself are actually seeing a therapist at the moment I suggest you consider finding another direction. Your current treatment is clearly doing you no good.
    1
  11136.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  But I've had my first jab, and am lining up for number two! What on earth made you think otherwise?
    1
  11137.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  There was, I admit, an element of bribery. My children insisted, asking me to imagine how they would feel if they gave me the lurgy when I visited, and I died as a result. So, emotional blackmail rather than bribery. I'm not afraid of needles at all, but it was irritating having to wear a mask while I queued up. Sowing doubt is a good thing. I'm not a psychopath but most politicians are to some degree or another and it is a general rule that they will seize upon any situation to extend their authority beyond normal limitations. They have certainly done so in this case, and every step they take has to be questioned.
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  11138.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Not my style at all. All power to him though!
    1
  11139. ... and South America.
    1
  11140. As an observer of US politics from across the pond I wonder if the Democrats actually have any ideas of their own. All they seem to do is lay into Donald Trump. OK you don't like him. I get it. But if I was a US floating voter I'd be getting mighty suspicious.
    1
  11141. War pays soldiers wages. A perpetual threat of war enables them to get paid and advance their careers without actually coming to any harm. This is why our our armchair warmongers have to keep making Russia a threat.
    1
  11142. Bit of a PR stunt. They always figured those woods were the spot. The core sample just proved it.
    1
  11143. Details of Trump's criminal record please?
    1
  11144. Their ghosts can take that up with their lawyers, I guess.
    1
  11145.  @ChrisAlbertH47  It's just journalism.
    1
  11146.  @ChrisAlbertH47  It's just the way journalists work. They are trained to always look for a "local angle". If the aid workers had been from Peru, say, we wouldn't have taken much notice but the Peruvian press would be all over it.
    1
  11147.  @nickpr5964  It's just a question of semantics. They die violently whether you chose to say "killed" or "murdered." From the deceased's point of view there's no difference.
    1
  11148.  @ChrisAlbertH47  They still have the mindset of a local newspaper journalist. If you are an American media outlet then Americans are more important than any other nationality. That's just the way it is.
    1
  11149.  @DicksonMaimouth  Pfizer pays big bucks. Stupidity is free.
    1
  11150. Trump is going to eat him for breakfast.
    1
  11151. Time to call a halt. America has again disgraced itself with its perpetual warmongering. To pretend this has to do with "democracy and freedom" is sickening hypocrisy. It has purely to do who will make a profit from the immense mineral wealth of the Donbass region - Russian crooks or Ukrainian crooks who launder their money in America.
    1
  11152.  @anglonorse2943  Actually very perceptive.
    1
  11153.  @jorgepeterbarton  No Wisconsin ballots. That's all. All the same it shows that Trump was referring to a genuine incident, which is the starting point of this debate, and thus both he and Ms McEnany are exonerated. The issue is a broader one though. The Democrats have got into very bad company lately and the M&Ms (work it out) have no qualms about cheating. I think Trump is right. The election result is tainted before it is announced. The only way out is a massive landslide for either side, and no-one sees that happening.
    1
  11154. Russia has to lose first. And it won't.
    1
  11155. He never said it. It's just a made up thing designed to make fools feel clever.
    1
  11156.  @carrie5490  I have - but far from all of him! The quote sounded a bit glib, even for Russell, and Google told me quite equivocally that it was made-up and unattributable. I've got egg on my face. Don't rub it in!
    1
  11157.  @conall5434  In principle. But with a disease as selective as this in that it only kills the elderly,the infirm or those who have been subject to repeated short term infections, it could be entirely possible.
    1
  11158.  @conall5434  Masks are not a universal panacea by any means. There are many factors affecting the rate of infection and death in many countries. Wearing a mask is but one of them.
    1
  11159.  @ONeill01  No-one can quantify the effectiveness of masks. Their use is more psychological than anything else. And over 65 is more like it. Children seem if not immune then certainly far less likely to suffer severe symptoms.
    1
  11160.  @conall5434  The masks worn by medical professionals when dealing with Covids are of a somewhat different order to the little nappies we wear. Our masks offer no protection to incoming viruses, and only partially prevent us from infecting others if we are unknowingly infected ourselves. Fiddling with your mask is likely to cause you to be infected if you have picked up viruses from hand to surface contact. When you start doing the numbers you start to realise that wearing masks is going to have very little effect on the spread of the disease, the fatal outcomes of which are diminishing rapidly in any case. And there is considerable evidence that children not only suffer very mild symptoms but also pass the disease adults very infrequently. In short we are not doing to little to late, we are doing too much too late. Boris's going into 75 different stages of panic isn't something we should emulate.
    1
  11161.  @conall5434  Can you point me to a peer-reviewed study demonstrating how effective n95's or a bit of pillowcase are in restricting the spread of coronavirus? Some effect, but how much? And what is the statistical likelihood of anyone coming into contact with an unknowingly infected person as the figures stand at the moment? And what are the chances of a fit, healthy person suffering anything other than the equivalent of a dose of flu if they do?
    1
  11162.  @ONeill01  I presume these studies have been repeated with confirmatory results and peer-reviewed papers published in reputable journals? This seems very tendentious to me. Did these percentage rates persist to the point where the growth rate reached zero, or was there a ceiling? Hydroxychloroquine has several studies which demonstrate its efficacy - not in preventing infection but in denying the virus the opportunity to replicate. Other drugs, if taken at the right time, can also vastly reduce symptoms. Overall, swift and effect treatment is a better solution. Otherwise we could be walking around wearing masks for years..
    1
  11163.  @ONeill01  It's not a question of lack of efficacy, it's lack of consensus. All the studies I have seen show that the wearing of masks has an impact on reducing the spread of infection and to widely varying degrees. But in all cases the studies, naturally enough, were conducted in situations where participants washed their hands regularly. I have yet to find a study which demonstrates the efficacy of facemasks by experiment ie using free-floating viruses, viruses in water droplets viruses expelled at various speeds etc etc. If you know of one I would be very pleased indeed to read it.
    1
  11164.  @ONeill01  I meant consensus on the degree of efficacy. Obviously. And the WHO certainly has a political agenda which affects its objectivity.
    1
  11165.  @ONeill01  What evidence do you have otherwise? The mask issue aside, all I am saying is that the WHO, like nearly all UN agencies, is the pocket of China, and this clearly affects its pronouncements.
    1
  11166.  @ONeill01  Both I imagine.
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  11167.  @ONeill01  Must we keep going over this time and time again? It's simply a question of whether or not the degree of efficacy is worth the trouble of wearing them. This a quote from The Journal of Nursing There are of course many other views "Clinicians tend to depend on medical masks or simply cloth masks. But relying on masks alone may deflect them from practicing other basic safety measures and anomalously it would lead to spread more COVID-19 contagion. Otherwise, once a local outbreak starts in community settings general public begins panic-buying face-masks or sardonically, the N-95 respirators leading to a scarcity in the worldwide supply chain, price-hike and shortage for front-line health-care providers (Fen et al., 2020). No available mask exposes them to a bigger threat during patient interaction. Moreover, the improper face-mask use as well as the repetitive use of disposable masks may increase the vulnerability towards the transmission of COVID-19 (Fen et al., 2020)."
    1
  11168.  @ONeill01  It is still not established to what degree masks prevent the spread of the virus. When masks, social distancing, frequent hand-washing and selective isolation are all used in conjunction with each other it is impossible to analyse their separate effects. The inconvenience of masks, along with the probable result of increased hand to face infection must be taken into account. That's what I'm implying.
    1
  11169.  @ONeill01  You could say that about wearing bowler hats. I don't wear a mask because I hate them and regard them as symbols of conformity to an unproven ethic.They also provide a false sense of security and are a badge of faith in authority's ability to deal with this crisis - a faith I do not share.
    1
  11170.  @ONeill01  Masks do not stop you from getting Covid. They may prevent you from passing it on if you unknowingly have it. That's all
    1
  11171.  @ONeill01  I really think we are starting to agree with each other now. I don't think the pros outweigh the cons and you do.That's the big difference. There's no long-term future in keeping this virus out. We have to let it in and kill it before it kills us. Preventing viral replication is, I believe, the best answer and there are several ways of achieving this.
    1
  11172.  @ONeill01  Oh dear I BELIEVE you. I simply refer you to my previous answer. I have scientific justification. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM
    1
  11173. Steady on. It's just the way evolution works and it just happens to be the case that European white people clambered to the top of the pile. Much of what you say is true but things would have been pretty much the same if say, the Chinese or the Zulus get in first with technology and improved organisational skills. What's important is that now the white races realise their responsibilities, enable power to be distributed fairly regardless of anything but ability and cut back on the strongarm tactics. And that, generally speaking is what is happening. Harking back to the past is pointless. OK, some of the unpleasantness of past habits remains, but it is purely residual and evaporating fast. We are not our grandfathers and great grandfathers. We are ourselves.
    1
  11174. This channel is where sufferers from the most extreme and incurable forms of TDS come to die. It's like a glimpse into a parallel universe.
    1
  11175. The only obligations the US and the UK have is to get their hands on the $14trillion of gas,, oil and rare earth minerals lying under the ground in Eastern Ukraine. Everything else is pure flannel.
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  11176. The population replacements have nothing to do with Putin. They were largely carried out by Stalin. Putin has been left with the historical inheritance of this. Certainly he wants the coal and steel of Donbass -but lots of the people there want him to have it too. Apart from their ethnic sympathies, they think Ukraine has run the industry very badly and of course the eight-year civil war has led to the virtual collapse of the coal and steel industries.
    1
  11177.  @buildmotosykletist1987  Pissing off Russia.
    1
  11178.  @johnnylind-n7j  But they generally don't pay in roubles. A side effect of the sanctions is clearly going to be reduction in the use of the dollar in international trade. It is arguable that in the long run America will be harmed more than Russia, since it has more to lose.
    1
  11179.  @dpelpal  And very understandably so - but this has always been the case with dollars used in small internal transactions in countries all over the world as a matter of course. But this is purely due to a general agreement on its safety, as it is the world's reserve currency. That position though is coming under increasing threat. I would imagine you can now buy goods in Russia with Yuan and Rupees if you know where to go.
    1
  11180.  @dpelpal  Not as savings, obviously, But tell me, since you are Russian are these and other currencies never used in black market transactions over there? I really would like to know.
    1
  11181.  @amurry5042  But it supplies vast quantities of fuel and raw materials. And it builds nuclear power stations all over the world. It is self-sufficient in energy and food. And it does make things too.
    1
  11182.  @dpelpal  What is gas costing n Washington at the moment?
    1
  11183.  @amurry5042  What's to understand? You have things other people want. They have things you want. You come to a deal.
    1
  11184.  @boota1979  I sort of know that. It was a trick question.
    1
  11185. Ukraine continues to murder civilians in Donetsk. Suspected collaborators in areas vacated by the Russians have been tortured and killed. Pot. Kettle. Black.
    1
  11186. Bucha was faked.
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  11187. No they're not. They are Russians.
    1
  11188. Not really. Even Russians aren't pro-Russian expansion.
    1
  11189. Civil war is inevitable unless we can find a government capable of getting us out of this mess.
    1
  11190. Have pity on the DOJ and the FBI, they have only got so much time and manpower. Spying on school board meeting to spot deviant racists who object to their toddlers being taught Critical Race Theory has to take priority.
    1
  11191. This war need never have begun. It now needs to be stopped as soon as possible. Like tomorrow.
    1
  11192.  @AndreTheBataShoeSalesman  America started it, in point of fact. And now America has a leader who is not in the pocket of warmongers, America can stop it.
    1
  11193. No. Musk is going to finance TR to set up his own political party.
    1
  11194. No TR will get it - to set up on his own to rival Farage.
    1
  11195. Here's my wish list: Kemi Badenoch to lead the Conservative Party. A merger with Reform and UKIP to include Tommy Robinson. Donald Trump to regain the US Presidency. Ukraine surrenders to Russia. Hamas and Hezbollah utterly defeated by Israel. Worldwide nuclear power and and end to onshore wind farms and solar panels.
    1
  11196. "Cases" up - deaths, down, down, down.. Nearly 1,500 fewer people died this July in the UK than in July 2019. This disease has simply culled the elderly and the frail a few weeks early. And that's about it. Most of these "cases" show few or no symptoms. The trouble is that there has been so much political and financial investment in Covid 19 that it simply cannot be allowed to run its course. Hysteria has taken over.
    1
  11197. Everyone has their own agenda. This video proves something I have always believed: that socialism can provide an effective curb on the excesses of capitalism when in opposition, but should never be allowed to really take over the reins. You guys are just to nice and sweetly innocent to be let out on your own.
    1
  11198. This woman is saying what tens of thousands know to be true-:so called "asylum seekers" are , in fact, often unwanted immigrants who have manipulated the system to enter this country. Many of them are criminals. Many have little or no respect for standards of decency expected in the civilised Western world. It scarcely matters whether this particular court case has been compromised or not. The issue is a far bigger one. This is not a "culture war" as Phil so glibly puts it. It is a war for the survival of a way of life and unless something is quickly done this country will be submerged in chaos and anarchy. I have no doubt that Phil and his supporters on this channel are good, kind people. But your goodness and your kindness are being abused.
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  11199. I think it is perfectly possible that more extreme elements in Ukraine have colluded with ISIS to launch this attack. And Mr Putin has not been in contact with me in order to say so.
    1
  11200. Trump and Putin are both grown-ups. They should be able to rescue this dreadful situation - created largely by the Democrat administration in the US.
    1
  11201.  @teddypicker6969  They're not, I'm afraid. Drones are changing the whole shape of warfare but they are mere pinpricks when compared to an inexorable armoured advance. I don't think Ukraine stands much of a chance, quite frankly - and furthermore I don't see the point of continuing anyway. Putin will be as pleased as anyone to pack it in and will probably settle for something close to the deal he asked for before this madness began. And half a million or so will have died to no purpose. Ah well.
    1
  11202.  @Deathadder90  It's quite sustainable. Russia still has large stocks of vehicles of all kinds. They don't throw anything away, as we do.
    1
  11203.  @teddypicker6969  I don't think they are. Drones have changed the shape of warfare but they are mere pinpricks compared with a steady armoured advance. It really is time to pack it in. Putin will probably settle for little more than he asked for before this madness began.
    1
  11204.  @teddypicker6969  They're not. The Russian armoured advance seems pretty inexorable at the moment.
    1
  11205.  @GreenGoblinDK  I don't think they've got much left to build up units with, quite frankly.
    1
  11206.  @boink800  That's 60km which will be largely undefended.
    1
  11207.  @boink800  So you admit they'll get there in the end?
    1
  11208. @TheRealIdiotIsntHere None of this seems to add up to much though, does it?
    1
  11209.  @2069evertry  I am merely concerned that children who want to make comments on serious political issues should get enough sleep and sustenance.
    1
  11210.  @chrisperrins8082  I prefer a nice cup of cocoa with a dash of Bourbon, since you ask.
    1
  11211. AND got the CDC and the New York Times to verify them. How did he do that?
    1
  11212.  @cann0708  Seems not. Hence the war.
    1
  11213.  @RaduB.  A war was fought over that too!
    1
  11214.  @The_Orgazoid  Are you dim or what?
    1
  11215.  @d.b.2215  I'm talking about BEFORE independence. The coal was discovered at the start of the industrial revolution and the fields were actually developed by a Welshman! The population was already more Russian than Ukrainian, though most were Tatars. It was Russians who dug the mines and after the Revolution and in the Stalin era tens of thousands of Russians were shipped in whose descendants still live there today. Russia - ie the Soviet Union - created Ukraine as we know it today. The economy collapsed after independence and many people in Donbass believed that Kiev was robbing them. They were probably right. Poroshenko, who invaded Donbass with much bloodshed after 2014, actually issued an edict forbidding the purchase of coal from Donbass, then he and he cronies bought it up and sold it in Kiev, pretending it had come from Mexico. They're all a bunch of gangsters, even Zelensky. And the West is crippling itself on their behalf. Madness.
    1
  11216.  @RaduB.  We still had Canada!
    1
  11217.  @RaduB. The French there did.
    1
  11218.  @yoloswaggins7121  These analogies are so foolish and lead nowhere. Rather than applying a moral filter just try to face realities. The European colonial empires are long gone and in any case the territories involved were many hundreds of miles away from the colonising country. The Russian Empire consisted of adjacent territories and ended only thirty years ago. The Russians believe that several details of the arrangements made following that collapse are either impractical, or have not been adhered to by other parties. It doesn't matter what you believe. It doesn't matter what I believe. What matters is what the Russians believe. The compromises offered by Putin were neither harsh nor impractical. Had they been agreed too, if only in part, it would have been far, far better than plunging the world into this dreadful war.
    1
  11219.  @yoloswaggins7121  Little details like the Mediterranean and the Irish sea separate the countries you mention, but as I said, these analogies are foolish and always lead into blind corners. Much of what you say is true, but my point is that a compromise with Russia was always possible and that offered by Putin would have been vastly preferable to the present tragic disaster. I do not believe Russia wants to conquer Eastern Europe. I do not believe it wants Ukraine. It certainly doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO and it doesn't want it to become part of the EU. It feels that its historical relationship with Ukraine and its defence and economic interests entitle it to these views. There have been several treaties proffered by Putin which would go some way to resolving these problems, but all have either been rejected by the West or, like Minsk, used as a shield to allow Ukrainian militarisation. I say the West because Ukraine is little more than a pawn. It is, like Russia, an oligarchy and its people have little choice but to decide which set of oligarchs they want to rule them - the ones who deal with Russia or the ones who deal with America and its lackeys. The last of these treaties was proffered almost exactly a year ago. You can find details easily enough on the Internet. Broadly speaking it requires a cessation of NATO aggrandisement, protection for the ethnic Russians in the Donbass, preferably by allowing independence for the region, and recognition of Crimea as part of the Russian Federation. The tragedy is, of course, is that this could well be pretty close to what actually happens in the end, and could have been arrived at without thousands of deaths and a country lying in smoking ruins.
    1
  11220.  @edp3359  I know. So what? It is part of Russia, who took it from the Turks in 1770 or thereabouts. They stuck it onto the Ukraine People's Republic in 1954 because it was easier to administer and get to that way.
    1
  11221.  @viandengalacticspaceyards5135  Ukraine might not get much choice.
    1
  11222.  @lalos9782  How can you POSSIBLY compare the Syria withdrawal with this shambles? Not only did Trump buy off Taliban leaders by returning their guys but with promises of hard cash. Why has Biden waited all this time? Why has he underestimated the Taliban? Why has air cover been minimised? Why has the Afghan Army not be paid for six months? He and his generals should have seen this coming but they were spending their time worrying about LGBTQ rights instead.
    1
  11223.  @kgan4733  To ensure the army got paid (it hasn't been for months), to maintain air cover until all troops and personnel were withdrawn, to extract promises on treatment of civilians and to come back heavy if "anything bad" happened. (Biden just shot that last negotiating tool down, by the way.)
    1
  11224.  @kgan4733  And he expected something back in return. Would have got it too.
    1
  11225. This just shows the utter insanity of lockdowns. It also shows how the BBC cherry-picks data to suit its agenda of fearmongering. Increase in cases without a concomitant increase in deaths clearly indicates the approach of herd immunity and an end to this politicised pandemic.
    1
  11226. People who disagree with his analysis?
    1
  11227.  @iangriffiths7633  There is much to disagree with. It is an extremely gloomy prognosis which often does not compare like with like and is, understandably, tainted with political prejudice.(I personally am not among your 43, by the way.)
    1
  11228.  @pjbpiano  Who fucking cares?
    1
  11229.  @pjbpiano  Who f*!!ing cares?
    1
  11230.  @pjbpiano  A thoroughly reprehensible ambition.
    1
  11231. Because they are. Especially if you are fully vaccinated apparently.
    1
  11232. Why is that people opposing the climate crisis agenda seem to be working from their backrooms, or in small clearly underfunded groups, while climate crisis propaganda comes with expensive videos, CGI and often highly-paid professional front men? Where is all this fossil fuel money being spent? Using children t push a political agenda is disgraceful behaviour. Any steps taken to prevent it can only be applauded.
    1
  11233. You really, really, really shouldn't use the judicial system as a means to to get rid of a political opponent. It not only stinks, but it is the first step on the slippery slope to autocracy.
    1
  11234. You are utterly dumb not to realise this is a complete stitch up.
    1
  11235. Thank you so much for this very informative video - it's exactly what non-scientists like me need to help us struggle through the man-made climate change nightmare. I'm a bit of a denier because I want it not to be true and because so few of the dire predictions seem to have come true. I can also see all kinds of financial and political reasons for certain people to push the agenda. Anyhow my ignorant little non-scientist's brain has recently come across the work of Drs Michael and Ronan Connolly which has offered me a grain of hope and a sort of explanation of what's going on - if I understand it correctly, which probably I don't. Their site with relatively comprehensible articles is on www.ceres.science.com They have completed a lengthy study of the atmosphere using data from weather balloons and it looks as though the actual atmosphere may be slightly different to the atmospheres we have created in the laboratory for testing purposes. They think it might actually be composed of ideal gasses and be thermodynamically stable. Apparently Einstein suggested this in a theoretical paper published in 1917. If the theory is true we are saved! CO2 is a thermostat not an electric blanket. Their detailed papers have been on display in draft form at https:/oprj.net/ for critical assessment since 2014 and I gather they will be available for peer review quite soon. I also gather you need a pretty good science degree to be able to make any sense of them
    1
  11236.  @sballantine8127  Not really. Think of the repercussions if the Belarus government unilaterally decided to nuke Poland for example. Moscow needs control.
    1
  11237. Children very rarely die with covid. Perhaps that's why.
    1
  11238.  @pwatson5766  How are you defining a child? Throughout the entire pandemic 657 under 18s have died in the US. Most, if not all were suffering from a pre-existing life-threatening condition, particularly obesity. Tragic to each of the families but statistically insignificant.
    1
  11239.  @pwatson5766  Why? I'd define a child, particularly with regards to covid infection, as pre-pubescent which takes out the 16-18year olds out of the equation. Where did you get your 41 figure from by the way?
    1
  11240.  @danyelle6525  Only 657 children have died of covid in the US throughout the entire course of the epidemic. Do you realise what a tiny proportion that is? There has been no significant increase following the delta variant, which has been used by the pharmaceutical industry as a trick to convince people to give children totally unnecessary vaccinations. And we can't beat this. Covid is here to stay. All we can hope for is that it will become manageable -which will only happen when enough people have caught it and recovered from it to enable herd immunity to be reached.
    1
  11241.  @danyelle6525  The only source you really need is the US Center for Disease Control which supplied the figures I gave you. If you need further reassurance there are many articles in the European medical press which explain that, while more transmissible than previous variants, delta is not more harmful -either to adults or children. I will give a link to one such article in a separate post. Being American you will have been subjected to a stream of propaganda financed by the pharmaceutical industry to convince you that you, your children and your household pets should be vaccinated two or three times a day in order to keep covid at bay. I'm exaggerating of course, but you must know what I mean.
    1
  11242.  @danyelle6525  Believe it or not I have tried several times to provide links to articles in the European press which show how delta, while more transmissible than earlier variants, is no more harmful either to children or adults. YouTube blocks them all but I'm a stubborn bugger so I will keep on trying.
    1
  11243. Medical Science News October 11 2021
    1
  11244.  @danyelle6525  Medical Life Sciences News October 11 2021
    1
  11245. The prisons are full of immigrants.
    1
  11246.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  They wouldn't integrate anyway. And Farage and Robinson do not incite hate and xenophobia. They merely draw attention a situation which exists - as I have attempted to do.
    1
  11247.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Sorry, I don't do exams. But I will tell you a story. I used to live near Slough, where there are many Moslems and I would sometimes shop there. In some shops the staff would immediately disappear into the back as soon as I entered. In one shop the assistant wasn't quick enough and I made my purchases. The assistant said the bank had rejected by debit card. I checked at a cashpoint. The card was OK. The assistant just didn't want to business with a kofur. I also wonder why so few Muslim women are seen on the streets and why, when they are, they are done up in terrifying black costumes. I have a friend who was at school in a mixed-race area. The English and the Irish and the West Indians and the others would always play happily together. The Moslems refused and always kept in a separate group.
    1
  11248.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Aside from anecdotes there are such matters as some of the horrific aspects contained in Islamic writings which clearly not only insist upon segregation, but upon enforcing the religion upon others. Other complaints I have will doubtless be rejected by YouTube's generally pro Muslim algorithm.
    1
  11249.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Temper temper!
    1
  11250. A fortress city created to hold back separatist rebels you mean?
    1
  11251. Fascinating tactics by the Ukrainians: use missiles to bombard a train station packed with women and children in order to get more missiles from the West in order to... Well, partially to bombard women and children, as they have been doing in the eastern part of their country for eight years..
    1
  11252. Ukraine attacked Ukraine first in 2014 when the tanks rolled in to Donbass.
    1
  11253. AstrominChina I'm afraid Greta Thunberg's agenda is to serve the financial interests of her employers , We Don't Have Time. an organisation thinly veiled as an environmentalist group, but which is run by people with purely banking and investment backgrounds. The aim is to make large sums of money trading in the carbon futures market, which they are doing with considerable success. Greta's destabalising influence on the world economy is a great help in this. She is an actress who got the job after entering an essay competition organised by WDHT.
    1
  11254.  @obaidaserdar1780  I sincerely hope you are right.
    1
  11255. I doubt that more than a tiny percentage of the rioters have ever voted in their lives.
    1
  11256. Racists! The excellent Dr Immanuel is both a fully trained medical doctor and a pastor. The branch of Christianity she preaches comes from Nigeria, as does she. Christian missionaries used the imagery of the existing voodoo-type religions to get their message across and this has persisted. It is a colourful use of metaphor, and little more. So you are being both racist and culturally ignorant. Would you condemn a Muslim doctor for believing that Mohammed ascended to the sky in a horse with a human head and took a slice out of the moon with a magic sword?
    1
  11257. @Top Turf I have a paraplegic daughter, so your remark is most hurtful. Dr Immanuel is not a witch doctor, she is a highly trained medical professional with an extensive practice in Houston, Texas.
    1
  11258. @Top Turf I was lying about my daughter. Gotcha, creep.
    1
  11259.  @TC8787-yq7og  What war though? He's talking about the threat of war, and that is a fiction unless we foolishly turn it into fact.
    1
  11260. Have you heard of stochastic cognitive dissonance yet?
    1
  11261. Now so many Black Americans have seen through the Democrat con they need to be replaced by further minorities. This party of parasites only survives by perpetuating the myth that they are the side of the poor and oppressed. In fact they need a permanent pool of these unfortunates to keep the plantation running.
    1
  11262.  @janpeterbaark7540  True enough, but it has to be emphasised that the Ukrainian armed forces are highly trained, numerous and well-equipped - as their performance clearly demonstrates.
    1
  11263. A big puzzle of course is why these poorer countries who aren´t getting the vaccines aren´t suffering huge infection and death rates. In fact many of them seem to be doing better. How odd.
    1
  11264. Exactly. This war has been almost exclusively been about getting hold of Ukraine's high quality and easily accessible mineral resources. Bribery and war have resulted in chaos. Realistic deals acknowledging Russia's historic ownership of many of these resources should bring a lasting peace.
    1
  11265.  @fitzstv8506  In this case historic ownership means continuing historic ownership. Most of the mining and manufacturing industries in Eastern Ukraine are owned by Russian companies. A "sovereign UN registered state" is a glib and meaningless phrase when compared with historical and economic realities. Giving the new country of Ukraine the same boundaries as the SSR of Ukraine was a mistake which must be rectified.
    1
  11266.  @fitzstv8506  Countries are created through lengthy processes, not by arbitrary decision. There has never been a country called Ukraine, unless you count the brief and ill-defined People's Republic of 1918/21 or think that Stalin making the SSR of Ukraine a "country" was anything other than a trick to get another seat on the UN. Saying something is so doesn't make it so. Large sections of Eastern Ukraine have large Russia populations and have much of their industry in Russian ownership. This territory was included in the SSR for purely administrative reasons and the anomalies and difficulties resulting from including it the new country of Ukraine are at the root of this present dreadful war - and they won't go away until these territories are wholly or in part restored to Russia.
    1
  11267.  @fitzstv8506  Negotiations failed. They went on for years. Ukraine refused to compromise, believing that the US and NATO countries would protect it. Faced with such intransigence, Russia really had little choice but to invade in 2022 or, in 2014, ensure that Russian interests and Russian people in Crimea and Donbass were protected from Ukraine's depredations.
    1
  11268. You could well be right. On the other hand Johnson will retain the support of the many thousands of people who know - as he knows - that such restrictions are utterly pointless and only imposed to appease the paranoid among us.
    1
  11269.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Not exactly a convincing argument as such, is it? A pop-eyed loon playing the guitar badly and voicing his paranoid instincts is scarcely a substitute for a reason-based risk/ benefit analysis.
    1
  11270.  @errorswillmultiply1697  The overwhelming consilience of expert opinion hasn't exactly stood us in good stead do far, has it? Other experts, not so clearly aligned with official strategies, have differing views which seem more in accord with the facts. I'm busy next Tuesday. Sorry.
    1
  11271.  @errorswillmultiply1697  As stuck as you are in your views you must admit that here is a substantial body of opinion which questions not only the efficacy of many mitigation measures, but which contends that whatever relatively small and temporary reductions in covid spread they may bring, these are far outweighed by their long term social and economic costs - as well as upon public health generally. We are already seeing the effects of these, while the benefits of many of the mitigation strategies are far less readily discernible. I have recently come across the work of risk assessment specialist Professor Norman Fenton to add to my list of experts whose views coincide with my instincts in these matters. Are you familiar with him? He has just done a study of UK covid statistics which is most revealing. I do recommend it for your attention. (P.S. What was the lockdown report you found it so easy to disparage? I'd like to see if it's in my catalogue. It's only too easy to get fooled by scientific papers which seem to say one thing and mean another.)
    1
  11272.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I'm afraid I'm a member of both these clubs too! Both contentions have considerable merit, especially the one about Cummings which has always struck me as an entirely reasonable explanation of his behaviour: far more so than the idea that he was driving from one beauty spot to another simply for recreation. The 2020 election fraud is far more difficult to untangle and I am rather thankful that political developments in the US are overtaking any necessity of proving it, other than for reasons of historical accuracy.
    1
  11273.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Well it is! Anyone with dodgy eyesight knows how important it is to check on it before embarking on a long journey. Making a short journey on uncrowded roads is a good way of doing it. The idea that he was taking his wife for a birthday picnic in a car park is utterly risible.
    1
  11274.  @user-gu1un7pb7k  Is the Ministerial Code the one Moses brought down from the mountain engraved upon stone in neat copperplate handwriting? I think I may have seen it in a museum somewhere.
    1
  11275. Why should they? Is it a competition?
    1
  11276. This obsession with actual numbers has very little to do with a democratic system of governance. Petitions and elections should be - and are - simply ways of testing the water of public opinion. Treating the process as some sort of point-scoring game can only ever result in contention. The election simply showed that after 14 years very many people were sick to death of the Tories. The petition simply shows that very people are sick to death of Labour after 140 days.
    1
  11277. They are entirely correct. This is a proxy war being fought over mineral resources in Donbass and Crimea. It was begun by America. and even if America does not gain access to the gas and oil and rare earth metals it is still turning over a reasonable profit for its arms industry.
    1
  11278.  @davecole7795  That is an a rather silly question. It's not really about the number of deaths as such; more about the number of months or years of meaningful existence. It might perhaps be more pertinent to ask how many black babies is it acceptable to cause to die from malnutrition per extra month of life for an incontinent white 90 year old with dementia? Or even , on a lesser scale, how many British schoolchildren with severe lifelong depressive illnesses can we match to our baseline 90 year old? Or small businesses gone bust? It's a game you can play for hours.
    1
  11279.  @ClarkyGuitar  I'm sure I would have the same attitude. Allowing one's rational judgement to be affected by an individual experience is foolish and weak. If my brother was run over I wouldn't expect cars to be banned.
    1
  11280.  @ClarkyGuitar  People die all the time. People get ill all the time and death is just about the most individual experience there is. Covid 19 is just one of the many things out there ready to do us harm. It's not even the worst, not by a long chalk. I have personal experience of two individuals whose lives have been ruined by influenza but I'm not going to hide in a cupboard because of it. Covid has been magnified out of all proportion and I guess because most developed countries have had it so easy for three or four generations we're howling like babies because of it. It's time to grim up and grow up.
    1
  11281.  @stephencapel5630  As far as I'm concerned the jury's out on the effectiveness of immediate lockdowns prior to the virus taking a real hold. It could well be so - although there are many, many factors and imponderables affecting each country's experience of the disease. But it doesn't matter now. The thieves are in the house with us and locking the doors and windows is pretty pointless. (My clubbing days are long over, by the way. I was into them (or their equivalent) in 1969 and far, far too busy to even NOTICE the Hong Kong flu. It could be like that now. Without media hysteria and weak and obnoxious politicians would you know Covid was among us now? Think about it. How many people do you know of who have died? At the worst without all the hoo-hah you might be vaguely aware there's a nasty bug going around.)
    1
  11282.  @ClarkyGuitar  I'm sorry, I don't quite see your point. Vaccines aren't the be all and all of everything. Quite often a new flu strain appears which a new vaccine has to be created for. We've had it very lucky for the past twenty years or so - which is why there have been so many very elderly and frail people around to die from Covid.
    1
  11283.  @davecole7795  Plenty of people do die at home, though not always quietly. It's not worth wasting resources on the very elderly and very frail. Better to use them for 60 year olds 70 year olds and even fit 80 year olds who statistically have every chance of survival if treated correctly. As to ICU capacity, this is the same old tune every winter, Providing this new variant doesn't send things off the chart hospitals will easily be able to cope as they always do.
    1
  11284.  @davecole7795  You don't send them home to die, they're there already. Moving them and shoving them in ambulances and intubating them is just going to cause incredible distress and will do no good anyway. What figures? If you watch the likes of BBC and Sky you are going to be lied to. And you can be sure that, yes, plenty of doctors are going to be stressed and will say so. But take a step or two back and you will realise that in reality while a few hospitals have 80-90% of ITU capacity used up there will actually be empty beds in nearby wards and even if ventilators etc are not on the premises they can be shipped in swiftly from elsewhere or, if the worst comes to the worst, patients can be taken by ambulance to another hospital where there are empty ITU beds. You must realise that this happens every year at this time. Between 1,500 and 2,000+ people die every day in the winter, between a third and a half of them in a hospital and most of these due to respiratory infections such as Covid 19. At the moment the situation is within those limits and we can just hope it stays that way.
    1
  11285.  @davecole7795 People die when they get old. That's the way it is. With proper care the process can be made as painless as possible. The BBC always lies but there's no need to stage the scenes in the wards. Things can get pretty hairy in there sometimes, even without covid. You are quite right about staff shortages. A major problem at the moment is the high level of absenteeism due to covid fears but since nursing agencies supply a considerable portion of staff there is at least some flexibility. I actually don't see much evidence that things this year have been particularly bad until now but it certainly seems as though a sudden surge of relatively serious cases is pushing the situation further than one would like. The trouble with suddenly fast-moving scenarios is that it is impossible to get hold of the figures fast enough to keep up. Many of the dramatic emergencies we have be told about in the past have turned out to be journalistic and political exaggerations and while this sudden most recent one will probably turn out the same way it would be foolish to assume it. Fingers crossed, eh?
    1
  11286. Musk is a loose cannon and probably only playing games for money. But a loose cannon with billions to chuck around is a force to be reckoned with. I would personally love to see a future in which both the Conservatives and Labour fall by the wayside and the future choice will between two other parties - one led by Nigel Farage and the other by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon!
    1
  11287. The idea that a bunch of commies from Britain are helping Harris can only do good for Trump!
    1
  11288. The BBC lied throughout the George Floyd riots and it lied throughout the pandemic. This will be no different.
    1
  11289.  @susannehartl3067  You must know more than I do. Are there plans for the CPTPP to have its own army, police force and judicial system? Is it likely to attempt to seduce a former Russian ally and bring the world close to nuclear war?
    1
  11290.  @errorswillmultiply1697  No. How was that for you?
    1
  11291.  @errorswillmultiply1697  It didn't matter in the other case all that much. I am not in favour of referendums as a general rule.
    1
  11292.  @errorswillmultiply1697  How do you know I'm not?
    1
  11293.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Fun, isn't it?
    1
  11294.  @verystripeyzebra  As long as they are not attempting moral judgements, that seems okay.
    1
  11295.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I'll take that as a "yes" then.
    1
  11296.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I just like to have the last word, that's all.
    1
  11297.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Thanks awfully.
    1
  11298.  @verystripeyzebra  So be it.
    1
  11299.  @roisinmalone3015 By what twisted logic do you come to that conclusion? The opinions of others are irrelevant to my own opinion. I would have preferred we had left the EU without a referendum - and would very much preferred for it it to have been done far more circumspectly - but my distaste for referendums and my distaste for the EU are entirely different issues.
    1
  11300.  @rogerout8875  It was never a 3 day operation - but there is no doubt that with Western support Ukraine has fought off the Russian attack for much longer than Putin would have wanted or anticipated.
    1
  11301.  @rogerout8875  The 3 day thing was something some commanders told their troops to encourage them. It was then taken up by a couple of TV stations, but neither Putin nor the high command could possibly have thought it possible, and the whole operation was clearly designed to draw the Ukrainian army out. As for having no help, the US and other NATO countries had spent literally billions of dollars on training and equipping the Ukrainian army before the Russian invasion. Attempting to destroy this army was the prime objective of the SMO. (Which is why it was call that, incidentally.)
    1
  11302.  @rogerout8875  Russian TV has about as much connection with reality as Times Radio, I'm afraid.
    1
  11303.  @rogerout8875  This one? Russia is not losing, Now you give me an example of a ridiculous claim by the Russian government.
    1
  11304.  @muadrico  Russia merely protects its borders and its interests. It is America, through NATO, which seeks expansion.
    1
  11305.  @jimbøb-i9q  Russia has changed its mind.
    1
  11306. It might take a week or so.
    1
  11307.  @josephzajac3696  As a sufferer yourself from this embarrassing condition you must be pleased that a fellow sufferer has written a Wikipedia entry.
    1
  11308.  @josephzajac3696 The definition is in no way objective. I agree with you entirely about libs, but I'm not one. I was rather assuming you were.
    1
  11309. Did Dodgy Odgy just call Kyle a murderer? He needs to get lawyered up right away.
    1
  11310. It is far from certain that the Russians did this. The video of the explosion is a proven fake and the noise heard in the night is more consistent with the dam breaking than with the sound of a large explosion. The likeliest explanation is that after weeks of heavy rain the dam burst as a consequence of proven long-term Ukrainian shelling and at least one missile attack.
    1
  11311. So the EU trying to get Ukraine to join didn't trigger this bloody war then?
    1
  11312.  @NO-CASH478  People who arrive uninvited. Should be obvious, really.
    1
  11313.  @verystripeyzebra  Who are the "we" in "our"? The people of Rotherham? Of inner cities all over Britain?
    1
  11314.  @verystripeyzebra  I think you are over extending the concept of an invitation here, as well as what it means to be a host. As far as the results of the election are concerned, I'm fairly convinced that Labour only won by default - because people were so fed up with the Tories. I don't know how long it's going to take Starmer and his merry crew to screw up but on present performance it doesn't look as though it will be very long.
    1
  11315.  @verystripeyzebra  We are descending into a semantic morass here. If what you are saying is correct (and I don't actually believe it is ) then steps must be taken immediately to alter the situation by withdrawing from these agreements.
    1
  11316.  @NO-CASH478  No . This chucking-out time.
    1
  11317.  @rexmundi7811  It's certainly been keeping lawyers in work for a good few years! Time to cut the Gordian Knot now, I rather believe.
    1
  11318.  @carelgoodheir692  Reform has yet to replace Labour or the Lib-Dems in the minds of disaffected Conservatives who are - well -conservative. I have every confidence that Labour will screw up pretty quickly though, and Reform will gain more seats, of only by default.
    1
  11319. @ They pretty much are, you know.
    1
  11320.  @cmorgan2430  All arguments based upon false and idiotic analogies can be discounted, as in this case. Russian is simply reclaiming some of the territory which it has held for centuries, apart from the past thirty years or so, when it was mistakenly included in the newly created country of Ukraine.
    1
  11321. It looks more to me like an Arab cock-up milked for propaganda advantage.
    1
  11322.  @aaronaaronson7600  Why not? He talks quite a lot of sense from time to time and criticising him for his use of language does rather reveal a certain lack of genuine political response.
    1
  11323.  @thenorfolkst  Mmm. Perhaps rural then? It certainly doesn't merit the ghastly middle-class response shown here. But then Labour is so ghastly middle class these days.
    1
  11324.  @davidcolin6519  My father was a housepainter. I had the misfortune to gain a scholarship to a minor public school and I married a countess. I am currently re-reading "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" which certainly puts the current state of the Labour Party into an interesting perspective, and probably occasioned the remark to which you seem to take exception. Does this help at all?
    1
  11325.  @thenorfolkst  On the contrary, this thread has been quite stimulating.
    1
  11326. What are these crimes? All I can find in the lengthy list of court cases he has been involved in are various technical allegations, many of which seem to have been maliciously created for political reasons.
    1
  11327.  @joopterwijn  I have researched this pretty thoroughly and while there is a list of cases against Trump as long as your arm (and probably both legs) they really do all seem to be related to technical breaches pretty much in accord with the activities of someone with a somewhat piratical attitude to business affairs. Even if these cases are prosecutable, prison terms would be most unlikely. Since it is you who is throwing these accusations about, don't you think it should be up to you to provide evidence to the contrary?
    1
  11328. Not true. If it actually was impossible to isolate the vulnerable (and I don't see why this was true) then the vaccination programme is doing the job. Herd immunity is now on the horizon.
    1
  11329. It works ever so well though.
    1
  11330.  @John316OBrian-cm4fj  I genuinely believe that a constitutional monarchy is the best form of government ever arrived at. The populace have a figure and a family to admire or hate as best suits them, but they are stuck with them without the need for the nastiness of elections. The Royal Authority comes directly from God, but you don't even have to believe in God to acknowledge it. Politics is thus cleansed of much which troubles it in other lands where the chief executive is also the Head of State, as in the US.
    1
  11331.  @John316OBrian-cm4fj  It is absurd to say that everyone is born equal. And while I am indeed a subject of my King it is not the man himself to whom I am subject, but to the country he represents.
    1
  11332.  @gilbertmoyes2918  The sad thing is that by supporting hysterical over-reaction to the pandemic people like Phil are just encouraging Big Pharma profits - which involves extending the pandemic for as long as possible.
    1
  11333.  @jim2376  Goat, mostly.
    1
  11334.  @jim2376  I am STRICTLY carnivorous!
    1
  11335.  @jim2376  You are misinformed. We have a constant diet of raw flesh of various kinds.
    1
  11336.  @jim2376  What is zero line, plis?
    1
  11337. Odd how both these approaches centre on an American's God-given right to kill anyone they don't want around.
    1
  11338.  @andreasc.2182  Rubbish. The Russian Empire has collapsed and there is no reason to suppose that it will expand again.
    1
  11339.  @retorenfer8702  Sure, Russia is led by a charismatic orator in his late forties who has declared on paper that he wishes to expand his country in all directions and exterminate the Jews. Russia has just lost a world war and is in a state of extreme poverty, in the grip of a treaty designed by its conquerors. The similarities with Germany at the time of the Sudetenland crisis are quite uncanny
    1
  11340.  @slavcpanigaz846  Does Ukraine have enough troops left to make proper use of them?
    1
  11341.  @slavcpanigaz846  As do the separatists of Donbass.
    1
  11342.  @christianevanherck6023  Even if this is the case, the seed certainly didn't fall on stony ground, did it? The discontent of the Russian people of Donbass is and was very real. From being an industrial heartland, it was becoming a ghetto for second-class citizens. Wages collapsed. there was no investment. They were far, far better off when run by Moscow. If you want further proof of where hearts lie consider that the army and the police went over to the Russians almost to a man and in the present conflict literally millions have escaped not into Ukraine - but to Russia.
    1
  11343.  @christianevanherck6023  Even if this was so, the seed did not exactly fall on stony ground, did it? The Russian population of Donbass was very discontented under rule from Kiev. The army and the police went over to the Russians pretty wholesale and civilians are escaping the war not into Ukraine, but to Russia.
    1
  11344.  @truthseeker6116  I think your predictions are somewhat rosy. Ukraine can only survive with considerable Western support, whereas Russia is far more self-contained and has also built up a considerable black market economy based largely on smuggled oil. It could, I suppose, go either way but I get the feeling that Ukraine may be written off as a bad debt before long.
    1
  11345. Biden is the personification of America - so immersed in conceit and self deceit that he doesn't know that it's time to quit.
    1
  11346. An opponent defeated on the word of a prostitute? What glory.
    1
  11347.  @mistrants2745  Around 2.5 million have done just that - to escape mass murder by the Ukrainians.
    1
  11348.  @Lilitha11  Fleeing conscription and fleeing from brutal reprisals are different things, if both understandable. Russia a fine country to live in if you behave yourself. Many Westerners have settled there, preferring it values of family and community to the increasing moral chaos in their home nations.
    1
  11349.  @mistrants2745  It's still up for grabs, but the West will have to practically bankrupt itself and reduce its arsenals beyond safely limits if Ukraine is to win.
    1
  11350.  @Lilitha11  You don't get arrested for being anti-war, only for making too much fuss about it. All Russian conscripted will have already done between 2-4 years military service.
    1
  11351.  @mistrants2745  I'm not a troll and I'm not wrong. This war will mean the end of US hegemony and the de-Westernisation of the world. Russia and the other BRICS countries will join with other expanding economies to form a bloc which will force NATO, the EU and ultimately America into headlong decline. Russia is self-sufficient in most respects and with gas and oil to swap and gold in its vaults will obtain what it cannot produce itself from those who can. One can never say for certain what the future holds, but I believe it is highly probable that Russia will win both the shooting war and the economic war - and a lot sooner than you might imagine.
    1
  11352.  @SiliconCurtain  Donbass is sitting on trillions of dollarsworth of coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals. The whole mining industry has been developed, staffed and paid for by Russia over the centuries and Putin is not about to see it sold off to foreign interests. Crimea is so Russian, with a largely Russian population and again Russian-developed industries. He want that too and he wants these territories to be acknowledged as Russian. Odessa - yes. But as long as Russia has some control over its export facilities I doubt it will be worth fighting over. And what does Moldova have to offer particularly? No. Donbass, Crimea and a commitment not to join NATO is all Putin asked for before the invasion. I sincerely believe that once he gets them he will stop, as he did in Georgia and Chechen.
    1
  11353.  @SiliconCurtain  Donbass is sitting on trillions of dollars in gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals. It is the prize. Putin already has Crimea. He might want Odessa, but I doubt he thinks it worth fighting over. Yes, he might well want to keep the land south of the Dnieper to provide a land corridor to Crimea, but overall this war is about maintaining Russia's position and interests, not extending them.
    1
  11354.  @SiliconCurtain  Donbass with its trillions of dollars in coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals is the main prize, I think, along with Crimea which is more Russian than Ukrainian, and in fact has very few Ukrainian inhabitants. As long as there is a continued threat of conflict Putin will want to retain the Azov coast in order to provide a land corridor to Crimea. Odessa might be the cherry on the cake, but I see no reason to believe that Putin will expend military resources on taking it. It will be a hard job, but if Ukraine continues to weaken then it might be attempted.
    1
  11355.  @SiliconCurtain  Sadly the insane new YouTube algorithm is refusing to allow me to reply to you, even though I am not saying anything I haven't said before. I might try again later, since the censorship is seemingly quite arbitrary and changes with the wind.
    1
  11356.  @SiliconCurtain  Donbass is sitting on trillions of dollars in coal, gas, oil and rare earth minerals. It is the prize being fought over. There is little chance of Ukraine retaking Crimea, although Russia may well wish to keep the Azov coast in order to have a land bridge to it. Odessa might well be in Putin's sights, but whether it will be worth the trouble of taking it is another matter.
    1
  11357.  @jonknestrick5219  Russia is not in decline. America, on the other hand, is on the verge of sudden collapse.
    1
  11358.  @jonknestrick5219  A disputable statistic - and scarcely relevant when banks are collapsing, the country is $32trillion in debt and the Fed is holding the economy together with sticky tape.
    1
  11359. The American "justice" system will not permit it.
    1
  11360.  @mypillowguy445  There are many hours of evidence presented to State Senate Committees immediately after the election, plus several thousand items of concern collated in various sites on the Internet. None of this apparently meets the criteria necessary for it to be presented to any American court of law.
    1
  11361.  @JoeyBlogs007  None, as far as I can see. Admittedly Putin has done things he said he wouldn't do, but these were not promises, as such. I don't think he's ever not done anything he said he would do.
    1
  11362.  @pevlez  Invading Ukraine was nothing?
    1
  11363.  @pevlez  Failure to implement the Minsk Treaties and seek ways of granting regional autonomy to Donbass. Continuing to attempt to join NATO.
    1
  11364. Is this bloke REALLY ex-military? He sounds more like a woke schoolchild.
    1
  11365. It is perfectly possible for herd immunity to be achieved without any kind of strategy at all. Some countries are nearly there already. This cannot of course be allowed to happen as it will interfere with pharmaceutical companies' financial projections.
    1
  11366.  @Ji_hadJoe  Two reasons I think. Firstly there are few old people. Secondly: malaria. Countries where malaria is endemic show astonishingly low death rates, both in Africa and Southeast Asia. The explanation that springs readily to mind is that hydroxychloroquine is widely used as a prophylactic against malaria. Some people deny this. I don't actually believe them but if it is true it must indicate that a resistance to malaria might well imply a resistance to Covid 19. No-one is investigating this possibility as far as I know. The obsession is :"let's find a vaccine and make lots of money."
    1
  11367. Be honest now. Who would you rather have as PM - Johnson or Sunak? You can't have Starmer or Corbyn - just yet - so a pragmatic Asian financial whizzkid who bends the figures, or a bumbling Old Etonian who doesn't know the difference between a spreadsheet and his laundry list?
    1
  11368.  @jiversteve  Under PR - which many socialists seem to be advocating these days - Nigel Farage could end up as Prime Minister. (Personally, I have no political ambitions!)
    1
  11369. That statement just about sums up how entirely divorced from reality Trump's critics and opponents are.
    1
  11370. It's just that Afghanis are among the best cheats and liars in the world; even better than US Democrats -which is saying something.
    1
  11371.  @Anthonythumb  Buy roubles now. They will quadruple in value at the very least when Russia gains Donbass early next year.
    1
  11372. Nonsense. The after-effects of this war will last for decades.
    1
  11373. That's you, that is.
    1
  11374. There are a couple of deposits in the West which should just about compensate the US for the money it has wasted.
    1
  11375.  @maquacr7014  Of course they can.
    1
  11376.  @maquacr7014  They'd obviously been lying you.
    1
  11377.  @theplenum  Who started the oppressing? The Arabs didn't exactly welcome the Jews with open arms, did they?
    1
  11378.  @theplenum  The Palestinians, of course, greeted the Jews with open arms. Didn't oppress them in the slightest. Didn't threaten to wipe them from the face of the earth, or anything like that, did they?
    1
  11379. Not everyone. Only globalist fools.
    1
  11380. Not everyone. Only globalists and fools.
    1
  11381. @ What from?
    1
  11382. @ If we have a proper trade relationship there will be no need for any conflict. Russia is no different to any other country.
    1
  11383. @ Russia invaded Ukraine primarily to protect long-standing commercial interests which were being threatened by Ukraine's relationship with the EU.
    1
  11384.  @fitzstv8506  Sounds like something out of a self-help book. Is that intentional?
    1
  11385.  @philroberts7238  Your two definitions of globalism are one and the same, I'm afraid. An elite has realised that by manipulating the fine feelings decent people like yourself aspire to, they can control economic processes. You are suckers for fine words to encapsulate your fine feelings. What does "sovereign" even mean? You don't create a country with words on paper. Ukraine is a country in name only. It is on the same footprint as the former SSR of Ukraine, which had large chunks of Russia incorporated into it for administrative purposes. And yes, I have profound doubts about the "climate crisis" . The world is getting warmer, certainly, but how much an increase in carbon emissions contributes towards this is uncertain. What is not uncertain, however, is that by manipulating our perception of this phenomenon vast fortunes can and are being made.
    1
  11386.  @philroberts7238  My reply is in another post which YouTube is trying to conceal from you.
    1
  11387.  @philroberts7238  Your two definitions of globalism are one and the same, I'm afraid. An elite has realised that by manipulating the fine feelings decent people like yourself aspire to, they can control economic processes. You are suckers for fine words to encapsulate your fine feelings. What does "sovereign" even mean? You don't create a country with words on paper. Ukraine is a country in name only. It is on the same footprint as the former SSR of Ukraine, which had large chunks of Russia incorporated into it for administrative purposes. And yes, I have profound doubts about the "climate crisis" . The world is getting warmer, certainly, but how much an increase in carbon emissions contributes towards this is uncertain. What is not uncertain, however, is that by manipulating our perception of this phenomenon vast fortunes can and are being made.
    1
  11388. @ YouTube is part of the globalist elite, which is why it is trying to conceal my reply to you. It has not deleted it. It is still in my history, but the algorithm is refusing to allow it to be shown in this thread -or at least in the thread as I am viewing it. Should you manage to gain access and reply, the algorithm will probably not allow me to see it.
    1
  11389.  AJ K. Lawson  Nuclear energy certainly. And there may even been some forms of renewable energy which are both efficient and cost-effective. But solar panels and hideously ugly and intrusive giant wind-turbines aren't it.
    1
  11390. This so points up how those of a leftist mindset seem only capable of seizing upon the outward appearance of things, instead of things as they actually are.
    1
  11391. The idea that Putin wants to conquer Europe is a myth put into your mind to justify American aggression.
    1
  11392. Wrong yet again. Russia and China are now heading a multinational alliance with the aim of destroying America. They'll very likely do it too.
    1
  11393.  @rogerwilco5918  Economic pressure mainly. They are meeting again in South Africa in August to finalise plans with around twenty other countries to create a new joint currency, based on gold, which is designed to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
    1
  11394.  @emm_arr  See my reply to @Roger Wilco.
    1
  11395.  @emm_arr  Well it's happening. The current bank crisis is a fair indicator that things are going to plan.
    1
  11396.  @rogerwilco5918  It's happening. The current banking crisis is just one step down the road.
    1
  11397. @ No. The Russians are fighting to protect existing interests. The "minerals deal" is just a blind. The readily accessible, high grade minerals are all in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine. The Russians want to keep it that way and Ukraine joining the EU would have meant them losing control.
    1
  11398.  @PlanetaryCitizen  It's perfectly true. Look up The Memorandum of Understanding between Ukraine and the EU in 2021 which set up a system of mutual co-operation over minerals. This agreement sparked the conflict because it would have eventually meant control of the multi-trillion dollar mining industry being snatched from Russian hands. The idea that this war is about morality is what really is a bunch of BS.
    1
  11399.  @Zoltan1412  Pretty much. It was Russian before the Bolsheviks created the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine and stuck bits of Russia onto it for administrative reasons - and of course it remained under Russian control, as did all of Ukraine at that time. Even after Ukraine gained independence in 1991 the mines and industries remained largely in the control of Russian companies and there is a very large Russian population, especially in the industrial areas.
    1
  11400. @ Correct. It was unfortunately included in the new country of Ukraine - something which has led to these enormous problems.
    1
  11401.  @Zoltan1412  No it isn't. It's up to the people who live there and who own the resources to say how their possessions and their lives are to be regulated. And the people of Eastern Ukraine did not want to join the EU. Forcing them to do so is pure tyranny.
    1
  11402.  @achosenman9376  Very many had a change of heart before the Wagner group arrived, thanks to drastic drops in wages and profits and Kiev's attempts to remove the Russian language and culture. It is actually quite impossible to say what percentage of the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine prefer to be ruled from Moscow rather than Kiev. It could be as low as 30%, but not much lower. The main point though is not the wishes of the majority. The majority, I imagine, would prefer almost anything to being in a war zone. What is at the heart of the problem is the fact that the mines and industries are largely owned by Russian companies, and they do no wish them to be subjected to EU rules
    1
  11403.  @achosenman9376  I'm sure Anna has a point - but she cannot speak for all the inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine. She, I presume has fled Westwards. Millions have fled in the other direction, into Russia, which they regard as their true home. Anna's family and her class will certainly have a low opinion of Putin and Russia. Others will not, especially the working class in the industrial areas where there are still streets and squares named after Russian heroes, and even Marx and Lenin.
    1
  11404. Many people in the BBC are suffering from a condition I have identified, and dubbed "melaninomania." This is an unhealthy obsession with skin colour. It is common among upper middle-class people suffering from guilt because they are still spending the money their forbears earned in the slave trade.
    1
  11405. The Church of England has let down Christians in practically every way it is possible for them to be let down. We need a new Reformation.
    1
  11406. You get most things wrong. Why should this be any different?
    1
  11407.  @shahidmiah917  What is the Oxford World in Data platform? According to World in Data and all other reputable statistical surveys the UK is way down the list. (Why the beginning of 2021, anyhow, is covid on some kind of schedule?) As of now, WOD puts Peru at the top with 6,048 deaths per million. The UK is at 28 with 2,153 pm, between Ukraine (2,224)and Tunisia(2,130). Your gross mis-statement calls your other assertions into doubt - which is unfortunate because they are largely true, especially the first one.
    1
  11408.  @STONEWALL148  Even you revised figure is incorrect. In 2020 the UK's death rate was only the 7th in Europe, and so obviously lower than that in many other parts of the world. It's not a competition though, however much you'd like to make it one. As for your other assertions, I wish you could detail the legislation you believe to have had such dire consequences. I am no supporter of the Johnson administration but if you are going to attack it it is as well to do so from an informed standpoint.
    1
  11409. It's more like a householder complaining about a biker gang moving in next door.
    1
  11410.  @DaDansinBear  I'm 75.
    1
  11411.  @rensinclair4218  And you are a pompous ass.
    1
  11412.  @rensinclair4218  And you are just a teeny, teeny bit full of yourself, ain'tcha?
    1
  11413.  @rensinclair4218  And you are somewhat pompous, I feel.
    1
  11414.  @garygalt4146  If it was free and fair don't you think someone should prove it? I'm not just going to take your word.
    1
  11415.  @gordonstrong5232  I think it is you who is being naive. He has right on his side and if what he has done makes him a martyr it is because he IS one.
    1
  11416.  @sfactory8253  That's just silly.
    1
  11417. How delightful that people protesting against immigration should escape punishment because the system is overburdened -because of immigration.
    1
  11418. N Korea is what Russia might be today, were it not for Putin and his immediate predecessors. This alliance is a direct result of the greed and stupidity of US policy-makers who thought they could fight a proxy war in Ukraine and end up rich. Instead they have condemned Ukraine to decades of debt - to say nothing of condemning hundreds of thousands of mostly young men to death.
    1
  11419. Funny how capitalism created democracy then, ain't it?
    1
  11420.  @Anita-md9ze  Both capitalist and slave-owning. The human race has been capitalist since the Sumerians and beyond.
    1
  11421. @Edward Teach And? Greek democracy was created on a feudal, slave-owning basis.
    1
  11422.  @JP-sm4cs  Don't be daft. Capitalism existed from the very moment man started herding goats.
    1
  11423. @Edward Teach No. I am free.
    1
  11424. Bannon is a hero for defying state fascism.
    1
  11425. The BBC is suffering from melaninomania, ie an unwholesome obsession with skin colour. I imagine it is because many of the upper middle class people who run it realise they are still spending the money their forebears earned in the slave trade.
    1
  11426.  @Hankaten  He didn't. How could he? He has no official authority as yet. (Mind you, working behind the scenes he could well set the scene for that dramatic phone call.)
    1
  11427.  @tonyalways7174  I understand that - but this was his actual title. I hope his motives are honest, because he seems a decent bloke - although I gather he himself was subject to some criticism for being involved in a firm which helped secure PPE contracts.
    1
  11428. @Nathan Gautrey What happens when Ukrainian troops commit war crimes -which they do very frequently?
    1
  11429.  @fred-youtube  A bit of a hodge-podge of heresies, but most will be blocked anyway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY Azov shooting Ukraine refugees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fOsIY9ioQQ Russian aid in N UKraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW4vmmDeplA Politico on Z’s crooked deals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0JUpCrdG88 Pandora papers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUPKZkqXfZI Z and Biden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQSYmda0S Lancaster Azov torture clip What US and Ukrainian governments are hiding from the public: https://youtu.be/bMKPz2j2oWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJH4Y8ZTrBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFAU5STk7lI&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1b-RKDHZOo&t=1204s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLl0aGQEPw https://waikanaewatch.org/2022/04/10/evidence-that-ukraine-fired-the-missile-which-killed-dozens-in-kramatorsk/ Kramatorsk missile Lancaster war crimes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbiAGkBQ9HY&t=0s French girl in donbass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJH4Y8ZTrBo Her movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLl0aGQEPw Missile serial no
    1
  11430.  @fred-youtube  As well as Patrick Lancaster, sources include Tom, iEarl Grey, Gonzalo Lira and Waikanae Watch.
    1
  11431.  @lembergnative7731  What's a bot anyway? Ans what's wrong with Patrick Lancaster? He's just about the only journalist actually out there on the ground covering events as they happen. His contribution cannot be ignored. It sickens me when ignorant, brainwashed morons scream "bot" and "troll" when confronted with facts that do not fit the establishment narrative. Grow up.
    1
  11432.  @SmotritelMayaka29  Exactly. I've just watched Patrick Lancaster's latest from Mariupol. Accounts of people being shot by Azov snipers while trying to get water. People executed with their hands tied behind their back. Dreadful. I'd like to see the BBC "fact check" that.
    1
  11433. @Nathan Gautrey There is plenty of proof. There is witness testimony from Mariupol. There is forensic evidence from Kramatorsk clearly linking the model number on the booster rocket with other missiles in the same batch used in previous attacks on Donbass. It clearly came from the southwest, territory occupied by Ukrainians. Several of the victims in Bucha were wearing white armbands. These are given to Ukrainians deemed to be non-combatant by the Russians, but interpreted as badges of collaboration by Ukrainian forces. I have just watched the latest video from Patrick Lancaster in Mariupol just a few hours ago. It's the same story. People being shot while venturing out to fetch water. People shot after having their hands tied behind their backs -shot by Ukrainian militia. Just watch it. Watch it now. It is REAL journalism - not the propaganda churned out by the BBC.
    1
  11434. Russia looks very much like getting all it wants before long. Once we can get over this stupid idea that Putin wants to conquer all of Ukraine - much less Europe - we can start being sensible. He might swap international recognition of new borders with allowing the Ukraine rump to join NATO. Game over.
    1
  11435. Lock 'em up! These sad old acid freaks have lost all touch with reality. The street theatre is great - but theatre is all it is. Lock 'em up until the next ice age begins - which will be some time in the next two or three years according to my calculations.
    1
  11436.  @VeteranfromOz  I haven't seen the CNN take as yet. It was actually Styxenhammer666 who put the idea in my head.
    1
  11437.  @LetsfixAmercia  I never believe a word of it. Oddly enough this would be a good move by Russia though.
    1
  11438.  @oldnutta7611  The damage seems minimal -but plenty of smoke and flames.
    1
  11439.  @VeteranfromOz  Believe me, I place no reliance upon it whatsoever!
    1
  11440.  @oldnutta7611  It is still very much standing.
    1
  11441.  @oldnutta7611  Experience has taught me that if it's in the Guradian it's probably bollocks. Having said that, I've just been checking some Russian sources and one section of carriageway has gone, but all the support pillars seem intact. I'm no engineer, but it looks quite fixable.
    1
  11442. The only trouble I have with this video is that in the thumbnail Javid isn't brown enough. Why?
    1
  11443.  @jiversteve  PS Here is the reply I got to my post. My brain cells aren't up to deciding, although I very much suspect this is from the impersonator. "The calls for an independent Scotland and the breakup of the UK are getting louder." It seems an innocuous enough remark, although entirely irrelevant to my comment. We are living in strange times.
    1
  11444.  @ellied.violet7372  I'm not a fake! I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to set about such things. I have, however, replied to the Steve Green fake, inviting him to clone me so I can have fun denying whatever remarks he may choose to attribute to me.
    1
  11445.  @ChrisBrown-dj1mi  How do you find out about these things? I'm hopeless at all this technical stuff.
    1
  11446.  @ellied.violet7372  As you may have realised, I'm generally up for a bit of a battle. If the worst comes to the worst I could always try to assume a new identity myself I suppose.
    1
  11447.  @ChrisBrown-dj1mi  He could be faking that too. He might be some sad old soul in a bedsit, living out a fantasy.
    1
  11448.  @prout7569  Matt Greek 1066 is much the same. He even says he can remove other people's comments so only they can see them.
    1
  11449. Why are you so keen on locking people up? Farage has never incited racial hatred, he has merely pointed out the dangers of too much immigration.
    1
  11450. Ukrainians wish to de-Russianise their country - some by any means necessary. This is the only potential "genocide" here. Russia has no such ambitions in regard to Ukrainians. If Russia wins this war Western Ukraine will certainly be left more or less to its own devices.
    1
  11451. What's that got to do with the Labour Party sanctioning decades of foul abuse against very young white working class English girls?
    1
  11452. Relax lefty loons. There is no way the US Deep State will allow Trump to win.
    1
  11453. I can't help feeling this is an attempt to undermine the whistle-blower exposing Biden's decades of criminal corruption.
    1
  11454. As opposed to a campaign of rape, pillage and murder such as the good guys?
    1
  11455.  @stevendurrant1724  No. Those facts were always there in the CDC's own records. They have simply been highlighted, that's all.
    1
  11456. So pleased Times Radio is taking an anti-Israel stance. It can only mean Israel will win.
    1
  11457. And they're financing the Ukraine war. Starmer had dinner with their Chief Exec a couple of nights ago, I believe.
    1
  11458.  @DW-indeed  I really don't know who. Ever thought of THINKING about what's going on now instead of making inane references to events in the past?
    1
  11459.  @DW-indeed  Then why the mysterious reference?
    1
  11460. Once again Phil sees the world as he wants to see it. Putin is on the way to victory in Ukraine and the elections in Romania were a total sham with opposition views being suppressed and prevented from securing votes. I love you people. But when will you realise that you are being taken for a complete ride?
    1
  11461.  @anglonorse2943  Only time will tell.
    1
  11462.  @cyberash3000  Nonsense. Look at the freedom on X now compared with the leftoid snottiness of Twitter. Get a life.
    1
  11463.  @davidli9457  At least someone's got it.
    1
  11464.  @ivandemko3360  You don't know what they are.
    1
  11465. The N Koreans are only being used to mop up Ukraine's ridiculous incursion in Kursk.
    1
  11466. The Ukraine war is a con. American is trying to muscle in on its natural resources and the EU is trying to take over its economy, and both are appealing to our bleeding hearts for support, having provoked Russia into violent action. It's time to call their bluff. Putin want Ukraine like he wants a hole in the head. Pay him off and he'll go away.
    1
  11467. The Ukrainians are currently shooting down more missiles than the Russians are actually launching. This is no mean achievement.
    1
  11468.  @rogerout8875  You are obviously deaf to satire but the Ukrainian claims are plainly ridiculous. Go to Scott Ritter for further elucidation.
    1
  11469.  @rogerout8875  No. Both sides lie. You must realise this surely?
    1
  11470.  @rogerout8875  It's just that it's pretty pointless bandying figures about. The number of people who actually KNOW casualty rates, shoot-down rates, target-effective rates etc in war situations like this is minimal. All one can safely say is that, at present, Russia seems entirely capable of inflicting considerable damage on Ukraine's power networks and water supplies.
    1
  11471.  @rogerout8875  Plainly the situation is far from plain?
    1
  11472.  @rogerout8875  Not at all. I do so hate descending into mere semantics, but I think you are probably intelligent enough to realise that I am merely stating the obvious with a garnish of contempt. The Ukrainians are lying. The Russians are lying. The truth lies somewhere in between.
    1
  11473.  @rogerout8875  Who exactly do you think is getting their "ass whipped"? As far as I can see Russia's strategy is going more ore or less according to plan. Ukraine's army has been vastly reduced at the cost of a bunch of antiquated Russian armour and a few thousand dispensable conscript troops. Winter is coming and Russia's elite forces (Syrian veterans, Republican armies, Chechen mercenaries, Wagner Group etc) are hunkered down ready to defend Donbass and Crimea. The Ukrainian hinterlands, meanwhile, are being smashed to pieces with missile attacks, exactly as predicted. I imagine that a front line to the east and south will soon be demarcated which will provide a basis for future peace negotiations.
    1
  11474.  @rogerout8875  I hate to say this -but just Google it!
    1
  11475.  @rogerout8875  I don't think embarrassment comes into the equation, That's for little girls. Russia began this war with more than one and a half million troops in the regular army, plus a further two million in the reserves and a further 600,000 or so mercenaries.
    1
  11476. Does Phil have any ambitions to be an MP? I disagree with almost everything he says, but he says it clearly and honestly and would have a great career in politics. He's wasted on YouTube.
    1
  11477.  @alfresco1950  You can get "experts" to say anything if you pay them enough. There do seem to be a lot of questions hanging over the way the election was conducted in some areas, I have to say. Perhaps the Arizona audit and the Dominion libel cases will get us closer to the truth.
    1
  11478.  @J_Braz_  What treachery though?
    1
  11479.  @Nx2.1  That's a term which should not be bandied about so lightly. I see no evidence whatsoever that either father or son come into this category.
    1
  11480.  @Nx2.1  I really, really, really don't think so! A certain amount of imaginative accounting is about all the Trumps might be accused of, as far as I can see. Mr Biden, on the other hand, doesn't seem averse to any amount of war and bloodshed - as long as it shows a profit of course. And as for Hilary, well....
    1
  11481.  @alfresco1950  How sad. Biden is a crook who has manipulated the political system to personal advantage for half a century. The fact that no court has been found willing to assess the evidence of fraud is in itself very revealing of the corruption inherent in the entire US system of government. Election malpractice has flourished in America for a very long time but the Dem's manipulations of 2020 were quite masterly. The statistical anomalies alone are sufficient to arouse suspicion, and the wealth of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence adds to it greatly. It matters little now, of course. Biden will crash and burn long before any objective judicial enquiry can be arranged and come to a conclusion.
    1
  11482.  @Nx2.1  Dis aliter visum?
    1
  11483.  @alfresco1950  The facts say otherwise. Unemployment the lowest for decades, especially among blacks and latinos; no further involvement in foreign wars, great strides in bringing peace to the Middle East, foreign leaders kept in their places, the restoration of patriotism and decency... And what do we have now? A corrupt warmonger pretending to believe woke insanities while profiteers pull his strings to make him dance their tune. It's touch and go whether America with collapse from within before the Chinese invade.
    1
  11484.  @alfresco1950  Facts supported by evidence. You are the sad victim of brainwashing and propaganda. Trump was the only President EVER to come into the job from the outside without a weight of political debts to pay back. He is his own man, not a front man - unlike Biden who is the classic example of a puppet jobsworth, trotted out for public consumption. Do you really believe he has any say AT ALL in how the country is run, or indeed what words are permitted to come from his mouth?
    1
  11485.  @alfresco1950  And all who sail in him.
    1
  11486.  @Nx2.1  Gezuntheit!
    1
  11487.  @alfresco1950  See what I mean about non-stop obsession?
    1
  11488.  @alfresco1950  Why do channels like this keep going on about him every day then? (That was my original question, by the way.) It's almost as though he's the President in exile.
    1
  11489.  @alfresco1950  I was under the impression that previous Presidents retained the title as a courtesy? Is this no longer the case? Mr Bush and Mr Obama must be told immediately. I am pretty certain in my own mind that the election was indeed "stolen", but it was done by experts. The US secret services, notably the CIA, have considerable experience of fixing elections in other countries and one can detect their hand in November's mysterious events. We shall probably never know and there is a sense in which it doesn't matter much, other than to find ways to prevent such a disgraceful occurrence happening in the future.
    1
  11490.  @alfresco1950  And can you really believe that Biden, whose campaign appearances were so few and poorly attended, received 80 million?
    1
  11491.  @alfresco1950  So the 74 million who voted for Trump are not decent, ordinary people then?
    1
  11492.  @alfresco1950  There was a wonderful story a few months ago about a liberal snowflake, much like yourself, who decided to go to a Trump rally, despite her friends warning her about the hatred and violence she would meet. She was somewhat amazed to find herself surrounded by cheerful, decent, logical God-fearing folk who were united in their contempt for the corrupt political establishment epitomised then by Hilary Clinton and now by Swampy Joe Biden.
    1
  11493. This all seems an absurd proposition, designed to scare other countries into providing more aid for Ukraine. There is no evidence that Putin has any ambitions other than taking back those parts of Ukraine which he feels are Russia's by right - and look what a hard job he's having doing that! This war was total unnecessary. An accommodation could easily have been reached if the West had not set its sights on getting its hands on the vast mineral resources of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  11494. It would be useful to reasoned discourse if this channel gave up its Brexit obsession. The effects of Brexit are as nothing compared with the effects of covid hysteria and the folly of standing up against Russia in its border dispute with Ukraine, but, that aside, the only thing the DOGE strategy has in common with Brexit is the very real desire to rid government of an entrenched professional bureaucracy (the Deep State) - and one with pronounced socialist/globalist leanings. This is an extremely worthy ambition, and we can only hope that Trump and his team of buccaneers have more success than our own wishy-washy crew.
    1
  11495.  @Elmonte65  Have you noticed how often yesterday's conspiracy theory becomes today's fact? And the best way to stop tax dodgers is to stop imposing taxes.
    1
  11496.  @Elmonte65  Conspiracies have a habit of becoming facts. And there are plenty of taxes that deserve to be dodged.
    1
  11497. I think Trump should be thrown into a pond to see whether or not he sinks. This is a clear way of establishing guilt or innocence, and far more trustworthy than the verdict of any American court.
    1
  11498.  @RayMerrell68  Bakhmut is a key position in Ukraine's defence lines against the complete takeover of Donbass. That is why it is so heavily fortified. Russia is in a position to attack anywhere it likes along the front. It has chosen Bakhmut for a reason. Once taken, the border is within reach and with only one remaining line of defence to overcome. The losses Ukraine has suffered in retaining Bakhmut will only further weaken this last of the three lines of defence set up by Ukraine following the the fake ceasefire created by the Minsk agreements.
    1
  11499.  @evaluateanalysis7974  The " damage to Ukraine " applies equally to Russian held Crimea for the most part In addition, Russian entrenchments have been flooded and Ukraine now has an excuse not to launch it's long awaited counter-offensive at this point. I don't know who did it since advantages and disadvantages seem spread out pretty evenly. I'm almost tempted to believe it was an accident caused by previous damage. But I'm not discounting the Russian option any means.
    1
  11500.  @evaluateanalysis7974  Putin cares about civilians no more or less than the Ukrainians do. And Ukraine would be foolish to launch a counter-offensive at a position where they would be very likely to lose large amounts of men and materiel for no great result. All in all the pros and cons involved in this are pretty equal for both sides. It could have been either of them. Or neither.
    1
  11501.  @ccc_the_painful_truth  Hopefully you are right.
    1
  11502. On the contrary, Trump will wipe out a stain by bringing peace to Ukraine and ending a war begun by Obama and Biden.
    1
  11503. This is not a victory plan. It is a blueprint for World War III.
    1
  11504. A typical Mariupol housewife's views on President Zelensky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uUfXjKaho
    1
  11505.  @justiceforall6412  Not so certain though, eh?
    1
  11506.  @laurentdeteix3009  He too knows how to stand up to bullying slimebags.
    1
  11507. And yet millions still fall for their twaddle!
    1
  11508. Garlic Breath You are a true philosopher. Well done again
    1
  11509. Garlic Breath I know good one about a parrot, but you've probably heard it before.
    1
  11510. Garlic Breath No. How does it go?
    1
  11511. Garlic Breath Didn't Ingmar Bergman make a film of this?
    1
  11512. Garlic Breath Must have missed it. Funny though, I have a distinct memory of a gloomily lit black and white film with a chubby blonde guy dressed as a parrot and a skinny little girl who was supposed to be the Angel of Death or something. I must be going mad I suppose.
    1
  11513. Deborah Mahmoudieh Only the ones who voted Labour.
    1
  11514. Garlic Breath I don't think that can have been it. I really only remember the last scene in which the fat blond guy, divested of his parrot costume , is sitting on a beach at nightfall looking out to sea rather enigmatically. There's a fire with a bird on a stick cooking on it: a small bird - supposed to be a parrot I surmise. The Angel of Death is nowhere to be seen. It was as boring as shit actually. Memory plays strange tricks, because now I think about it the fat blond guy looked a lot like Boris Johnson and the Angel of Death was the spitting image of Greta Thunberg.
    1
  11515. A two-state solution can never work. Like it or not, a heavily-defended Greater Israel is the only route to anything like a permanent peace.
    1
  11516. It really doesn't matter if it's true or not. This is just a game between liars: Trump, the FBI and - of course - CNN.
    1
  11517. Trump is creating a new and better America. And that means tearing down the old, rotten one.
    1
  11518.  @Wildlifewatcher69  Well you're wrong about that as I'm sure you're wrong about a great many things.
    1
  11519. I daresay you're right. But it's a good thing.
    1
  11520. Russian businesses already largely own the only viable mineral rights in Ukraine.
    1
  11521. Because Russia is going to win in Ukraine quite soon?
    1
  11522. Easy said, innit?
    1
  11523. The billions of dollars pumped into the Ukraine war machine by the West has probably helped.
    1
  11524. I don't know where you keep getting this from. The formula is quite complicated and it is not a simple sum like this.
    1
  11525.  @rainahrediger267  If it's any comfort I didn't understand this either. I needed a mathematician to explain it to me. Do you know any? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWjVYzvTHwM
    1
  11526. Yup. Near total destruction and a quarter of a million deaths. Right on!
    1
  11527.  @carlossaraiva8213  No, only reputable medical sources. Anything worrying you particularly?
    1
  11528.  @carlossaraiva8213  I scarcely know what Reddit is. My information comes generally from The Office of National Statistics, Public Health England and a variety of medical sources such as ZOE and the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, among others. Once again do you have anything you particularly wish to dispute? I will answer any questions I can.
    1
  11529.  @carlossaraiva8213  The idea that government statistics on covid are somehow altered because if Brexit shows a considerable degree of imagination on your part.
    1
  11530.  @davidwight249  Sadly vaccinations do not protect the extremely vulnerable. They are better at reducing symptoms than preventing infection, but for some very elderly people the slightest symptoms are enough to see them off. There will be a death toll which will lead people to ask what the point was in all the fascist bullying.
    1
  11531.  @anolisa1939  With the benefit of hindsight mistakes have certainly been made by many world leaders. Trump seems to have been going along with the advice he was given . He is certainly an egotist and his leadership skills have been tried to the max by having to constantly deal with the misinformation constantly poured out by the MSM. I'm sure you cannot seriously believe that he ever recommended injecting disinfectant! That piece of manipulated editing has been totally exposed. The jury is still out on a number of potentially alleviating drugs,as well as UVF. My history with Trump is somewhat different to yours, incidentally. I suffered from TDS quite severely at first but I now believe that, for all his faults and shortcomings, he has turned the tide of US politics. Things will never be the same again -which is probably a very good thing.
    1
  11532.  @anolisa1939  The list of Trump's achievements in terms of economic uplift, reduced unemployment, de-regulation etc etc is actually very impressive. Hopefully he will be able to apply the same pragmatic approach to pulling the country out of the present mess. As to the disinfectant debacle - have you see the entire sequence? Trump has difficulties with complex language it is true, and he was caught out by the mangled pronouncements of, I think, the head of Homeland Security or one of his underlings who as well as pointing out how susceptible the coronavirus is to bleach, disinfectant and alcohol also constantly used the word "inject" not to mean stick a needle in your arm but simple to "include" or "insert". Trump was obviously puzzled by this and when he turned his head and asked the guy what he meant he was simply seeking clarification. The two second quote was then gleefully taken out of context by the foul and loathsome creatures of the lamestream media. There are several excellent breakdowns of the way in which you and many others have been conned. I recommend Youtuber The Amazing Lucas for his version.
    1
  11533.  @anolisa1939  He wasn't giving advice, but asking for it. You list of Presidential requirements cannot be faulted although it is difficult to think of anyone who might fulfil them at present. In the meantime (and very probably for the next four years) we will have to make the best of our often bumbling but really rather cunning old drunk teetotal uncle!
    1
  11534. No.
    1
  11535.  @tobiasrietveld3819  Fair point. But he hasn't fallen into the trap of wasting top-notch troops on the job.
    1
  11536.  @Noel-ji8nm  No way. If by the Left you mean old school, Marxist-based socialism as typified by the likes of Corbyn then what little traction it may have had has long petered out.
    1
  11537.  @Dionysos640  It's totally relevant. If volunteer resources are being used to assist in a criminal enterprise we have every right to complain bitterly.
    1
  11538.  @ionnanskilliorus  That's no excuse! (As partially true as it may well be. Don't forget SERCO takes over when the RNLI or Border Force drop the immigrants off!)
    1
  11539.  @Subjagator  Your analogies are inexact. The victims of this crime are predominantly the British people who are having their resources reduced due to excess immigration, and many of the immigrants themselves who are lured here by false promises. We are helping neither by encouraging the trade. The victims of prohibition were largely the gangsters who fought among themselves and the US government, which lost revenue. The victims of prostitution are mainly the prostitutes and those who catch VD. In the present instance the RNLI, the RN, the Coastguard and the Border Patrol are being used in the same way bootleggers and pimps use the police to help their endeavours. The only difference is they aren't getting kickbacks - or at least we hope not, anyway. Not so sure about SERCO which takes over after the immigrants are landed though.
    1
  11540.  @stephanguitar9778  Your powers of reasoning certainly leave something to be desired if you imagine complaining to criminals does any good. No, you complain to the government - which is what the RNLI ought to be doing instead of playing the hero. Acting as an unpaid taxi service for crooks is not what all those donations are supposed to be for.
    1
  11541.  @BIZZIB3ATZ  Since I am doing no such thing I am obviously not a bit as dense as you are.
    1
  11542.  @lellyparker  Yes. But they shouldn't have to go out in the first place.
    1
  11543.  @lellyparker  But the RNLI is providing a free resource which allows the gangsters to cut their costs - and make more money.
    1
  11544.  @lellyparker  Yup.
    1
  11545.  @ionnanskilliorus  What's wrong with offshore bank accounts? They make money. The RNLI, the Navy and the Coastguard and the Border Service use it up. So do illegal immigrants. See the difference?
    1
  11546.  @TheMixCurator  A totally false analogy. What's happening is more like encouraging a shooting war by lining up ambulances outside a crack den.
    1
  11547.  @andrewpittas1016  I didn't blow anyone's home up. And have you got ten grand to spare to take you half-way across the world? No-one is really saying "let them die" you fool. But if they believe the streets of London are paved with gold they can easily be made to believe they might die getting here.
    1
  11548.  @paulhodgers  No-one is REALLY suggesting that, you fool. It would just be very useful if they could be made to think it was true.
    1
  11549.  @stephanguitar9778  Then why are the dinghy people coming in through the front door then?
    1
  11550.  @lellyparker  You are insane and offensive. Is it your time of the month or are you always like this?
    1
  11551.  @MrSpleenboy  A lifeboat can't rescue people if it's still in its shed, can it? And you are wrong about "the first state" too. It has nothing to do with the Geneva Convention as such. In the 1951 UN protocol on refugees it states quite clearly that refugees must arrive DIRECTLY from their country of origin. The government advises would-be immigrants that if they have passed through intervening countries they might not be accepted. It also states that they must also be in fear of harm in their home country - not just fed up with it.
    1
  11552.  @tonyy452  I agree with the first part! If they can pick fruit and veg or drive a lorry, welcome them with open arms! But overpopulation through immigration really is a problem. When plans for services were laid in the 80s and 90s they simply didn't allow for the numbers. Immigration outstripped the projected birth rate several years ago.
    1
  11553.  @ionnanskilliorus  I was waiting for these two to come up. People who are losing arguments usually bring in Krunning Duger or Adolf Hitler before long.
    1
  11554.  @khalidacosta7133  That is scarcely a recommendation, is it? What IQ level do you need to make them?
    1
  11555.  @lellyparker  It does though. Nothing which assists the trade in human beings should be encouraged in any way. The knowledge that the dinghies will be picked up it a plus point in advertising the service provided by the smuggling gangs.
    1
  11556.  @Zakalwe76  I don't think we should actually let them drown. Just letting them think we MIGHT ought to provide some discouragement however.
    1
  11557.  @andrewpittas1016  The sad fact is there have to be limits. There has to be control. At the moment we are in an absurd situation where Afghanis who have acted as interpreters etc for the British and who are in serious danger of losing their lives as the Taliban take over, are being refused permission to come here while others from Syria, sub-Saharan Africa and anywhere in between are getting in illegally and giving no account of whatever danger they may be in, if any. It's a criminal racket, and all those who allow their kind natures to be taken advantage of to support it are sentimental fools.
    1
  11558.  @scot-ei3yy  It's been along while since Britain destroyed a country - or even helped to do so.
    1
  11559.  @lellyparker  The attribution of blame is hardly the point. It is the allocation of resources which is important. According to long-established international protocols priority should be given to persons in danger in their home countries. This is even more pertinent when the danger they face owes itself to services they have performed on our behalf. The channel crossing migrants are not in the same category. Many are not even refugees. They see advertisements in social media which offer them the chance to find a better life in a country with free social services and health care - and so they come. Where they get the money from for the fare often doesn't bear thinking about. They often borrow it at exorbitant rates of interest with their family's entire possessions - and even sometimes their lives - as security. As I am sure you can see the two cases are very different. The Home Office is very unfair in the decisions it takes and its mechanisms are very hard to understand but there is little doubt that a quota system is employed and the current spate of cross-channel chancers is making things more difficult for more deserving cases.
    1
  11560.  @andysimons9226  The UK is under no legal obligation to grant asylum to anyone who has not arrived DIRECTLY from a country where their lives or wellbeing are threatened on account of their, race, religion or political views. Fact.
    1
  11561.  @wolfgangpreier9160  But who in their right mind would want to to North Korea?
    1
  11562.  @wolfgangpreier9160  It is when you are charging them thousands to do it, and making promises you cannot keep and lending them money at exorbitant rates of interest and threatening to kill their families if they don't pay the money back three times over.
    1
  11563.  @molybdomancer195  On the contrary, they are examples of Hereitisism.
    1
  11564.  @mkvk74  Another false analogy. People who buy cars from crooked car salesmen should be warned that it will be their own fault if they crash.
    1
  11565.  @lellyparker  Actually very few do appear to have drowned. The point is that the fear of drowning might prevent these people from attempting the crossing.
    1
  11566.  @lellyparker  The point is that they are being milked out of money and put through danger and by advertising the fact that we will pick them up in the channel we are making a rotten deal look more attractive. And the only way they can legally claim asylum is if they faced persecution in France. Which is not likely.
    1
  11567.  @lellyparker  The trips are advertised on Tik Tok for goodness sake!
    1
  11568.  @paulhodgers  Who cares? If it scares people away from falling for the traffickers' spiel it's a job well done.
    1
  11569.  @MrSpleenboy  Have you got ten grand to emigrate to somewhere you fancy? Or aren't you that fortunate?
    1
  11570.  @stephanguitar9778  What is?
    1
  11571.  @stephanguitar9778  Tax revenue is only one aspect of the contribution made to the economy by the wealthy. Wealthy people - Tory cronies or not - are generally better at distributing wealth than governments are. And the cost of placing increasing pressure on limited resources through immigration is incalculable. If we had a birth rate equivalent to the rate of immigration over the last forty years the situation would be just as bad.
    1
  11572.  @gurkslunga  It's in the introduction to Article 31. I don't know the exact page number I'm afraid. You look it up.
    1
  11573.  @gurkslunga  Blasting terrorists out of caves hardly equates with destroying a country - especially as this instance the RAF was acting on behalf of the government of that country.
    1
  11574.  @MrSpleenboy  Then the cross-channel immigrants are as fortunate as you.
    1
  11575.  @lellyparker  If the passengers were not assured of the fact that they would be picked up and taken to safety, then the traffickers would have to find another more expensive way of getting them across. That is why it is foolish for us to provide this assurance.
    1
  11576.  @TheMixCurator  Surgeons would be justifiably pissed off if people continually took risks knowing that they will be saved by the surgeon's skill.
    1
  11577.  @lellyparker  What do you keep going on about brown for?
    1
  11578.  @sbor2020  How do you think these people get here? They pay large sums of money and the RNLI and other UK services carry out the last stage of the journey for free.
    1
  11579.  @slartibartfast3041  No - the crooks should be paying them!
    1
  11580.  @wolfgangpreier9160  Why do they want to come here then? Any idea?
    1
  11581.  @slartibartfast3041  The French seem to be taking the piss as much as the people traffickers.
    1
  11582.  @Ian_Carolan  I do indeed. It's a great channel which has given me many hours of pleasure to interact with. Reasoned debate is so very important in a free society, don't you think?
    1
  11583.  @lythalls  Far, far less gullible than the other contributors to this thread whose kindly good natures are being severely taken advantage of!
    1
  11584.  @lellyparker  Brexit has caused cancer rates to soar, hair loss in young children, severe flooding in Westmoreland and disturbing changes in the sexual habits of goldfish. It really is the most dreadful thing.
    1
  11585.  @lellyparker  They'd do that for preference I'm sure - but they wouldn't be allowed on without documents and the documents would either have to be forged (expensive) or if they used their own they couldn't be classed as refugees. You'll have to come up with something else if you want to pursue a career as a people-trafficker.
    1
  11586.  @lellyparker  Again this obsession with skin colour.
    1
  11587.  @lythalls  Explaining something to someone who already knows and understands it is not only stupid but patronising. What did you come out with all this guff for?
    1
  11588.  @lythalls  Flattery will get you nowhere.
    1
  11589.  @STONEWALL148  I have no time for Johnson and entirely agree that his government's response to the pandemic has been utterly shameful in a great many regards.
    1
  11590.  @paulsaunders6536  When? Sorry, this thread is getting a little out of hand, as much fun as it is.
    1
  11591.  @adambrickley1119  The point is every effort should be made to prevent these people making this journey. No-one is suggesting that they should be allowed to drown - simply that the idea that they might be should be implanted in their minds. The situation will improve one the pandemic is over. The huge increase in small boat crossings has been fuelled by other routes(ferries, tunnel) being blocked due to restrictions. Another very worrying factor is that families of those asylum applicants already here have been prevented from joining them due to covid concerns, and this has led to a great increase in the number of women and children crossing by dinghy. Hitherto almost all the crossers have been young men. There is no doubt whatsoever that criminal gangs operate this system, and for very large fees. Apart from wives and offspring, a number of the women and children are brought here for sexual purposes, especially from the Far East. Proudly advertising our humanitarianism, as the RNLI is wont to do, is very foolish under the present circumstances.
    1
  11592.  @anglonorse2943  Hardly a basis for reasoned discussion, is it?
    1
  11593.  @anglonorse2943  But you have to say WHY it is wrong, and in what way. You don't get it, do you?
    1
  11594.  @anglonorse2943  Who are you to say whether it is worthy of debate or not? Sounds to me as though you're running scared.
    1
  11595.  @anglonorse2943  But it isn't propaganda. It's a point of view, and one which you seem either too afraid or too incompetent to refute.
    1
  11596.  @anglonorse2943  Chicken or dumb, which is it?
    1
  11597.  @anglonorse2943  My eyesight is good enough to recognise a chicken when I see one.
    1
  11598.  @anglonorse2943  I'm not upset. Just contemptuous.
    1
  11599.  @anglonorse2943  History is what happens in real life - not what is written down.
    1
  11600.  @anglonorse2943  But you have to tell me me WHY. And it seems you can't.
    1
  11601.  @anglonorse2943  I'm not saying you HAVE to, just that it might be a good idea for you to work out why you think the way you do.
    1
  11602.  @anglonorse2943  Oh dear. This is very sad. Aren't you the slightest bit worried that you might have been brainwashed?
    1
  11603. Imogen Gardner Relax. Carbon emissions follow heat increases. The climate changes purely in relation to atmospheric pressure and our position in relation to the sun -as on all planets in the solar system. The global warming crisis has been invented to allow people to make money trading in carbon emission permissions.
    1
  11604.  @joshuacampbell1625  This, however, should be a more permanent state of affairs - as long as the Ukrainians have indeed been crippled militarily.
    1
  11605.  @Afterthoughtbtw  These "routs" seem to me to be more destined to weaken Ukraine, rather than to conquer and hold territory. This is now the real thing. Territory Russia holds now will be on a permanent basis - unless Ukraine in constantly reinforced from the West, of course.
    1
  11606.  @Giorg189  His peace proposals were put forward in December 2021, three months before the invasion. Had they been heeded the war need not have happened, and tens of thousands of lives would not have been lost.
    1
  11607.  @WHS_reviews  And you are a brainwashed waste of space. Try thinking. I know it's hard because you aren't used to it, but TRY!!
    1
  11608.  @sanderdeboer6034  Ukraine on holiday in Donbass https://youtu.be/bMKPz2j2oWA
    1
  11609.  @thornelderfin  Plenty of dead bodies certainly. It's a war after all. But how much evidence is there that people were tortured and executed? Some probably were - but some probably were by the Ukrainians too - suspected collaborationists identified after the Russians left.
    1
  11610.  @jmas1219  But the relative numbers just don't add up. These young, healthy childless people will grow up and get ill and old and have children of their own who will do exactly the same. So all we can do is cover the countryside in cheap homes and somehow forget about the fact that the sewage system and the water supply system and the road system and the healthcare system etc etc are totally inadequate to deal with this level of population. It's a recipe for total disaster.
    1
  11611.  @verystripeyzebra  There's no way in a million years we can create an infrastructure capable of dealing with present levels of population (which are probably far in excess of the official figures.). The only way the demographics are going to "level up" is when disaster strikes and the population rapidly diminishes in one or two of several catastrophic ways.
    1
  11612.  @verystripeyzebra  The only way the demographics are going to level up is when the whole thing collapses and chaos takes over. There is no way a country this size can accommodate a large population other than becoming a coast-to-coast slum.
    1
  11613.  @verystripeyzebra  The only way the demographics are going to level off is when people start dying of malnutrition and disease. This will of course only happen after it has become a coast to coast slum.
    1
  11614.  @verystripeyzebra  The only way the demographics are likely to level off is when people start dying of malnutrition and disease because infrastructure is inadequate. And that will only be after this once-great nation has become a coast-to-coast slum.
    1
  11615.  @verystripeyzebra  The job is too big, and however compassionate and constructive we want to be, continuing along this path can only result in failure.
    1
  11616.  @Notalloldpeople  I can acknowledge that as things stand qualified foreign nationals are needed to take on jobs for which there are no British people available. But this video is just a snapshot of a moment in time. The implications of mass immigration are very serious indeed and it is dangerous to assume that because properly documented and gainfully employed foreigners can be seen to be "paying their way" as it were there should be unrestricted immigration. I don't think Phil is saying this, as such, but in some minds the implication will be there.
    1
  11617.  @dreamygates2461  No-one has got the Covid 19 response right - with the possible exception of Sweden and Asian countries who had experience of the first SARS outbreak, and even there inbuilt immunity due to endemic malarial is probably a major factor. It strikes me as being thoroughly distasteful that Trump's political opponents should use his response to the pandemic as a weapon. Individual states and cities are largely responsible for prevention strategies - many of them Democrat. America's high death rate is almost certainly due to a high incidence of morbid obesity. Trump can't be held responsible for that - unless he chooses to set an example by eating fewer hamburgers!
    1
  11618. I wish him every success.
    1
  11619.  @gregc.5684  George Soros is a different kettle of fish. I fully accept the possibility that Musk may be sticking his oar into politics in order to manipulate currency markets etc - but his interventions are n behalf of MY team , not the destructive woke lefties Soros manipulates.
    1
  11620.  @gregc.5684  Musk might well be manipulating politics for financial gain - but what he is doing is supporting MY views and ideologies while doing so - and is thus a welcome ally. Soros is just the opposite.
    1
  11621.  @gregc.5684  George Soros wrong. Elon Musk right. They both serve Mammon - but from different ends of the political spectrum.
    1
  11622.  @gregc.5684  Elon Musk right. George Soros wrong.
    1
  11623. Do try to keep up. With vaccines reducing symptoms the less we do the better, since the more people catching covid and thus becoming immune the quicker herd immunity is reached.
    1
  11624.  Barry The Despoiler  Fascist!
    1
  11625.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  Explain then, O mighty one.
    1
  11626.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  I do understand this, and I think we are talking about the same thing. The point is that the elderly people who have died will all have had a number of things wrong with them and it is impossible for doctors to say which of these co-morbidities actually sparked off the pneumonia or heart attack or kidney failure or whatever which actually killed them. Even if Covid 19 was the main cause, or trigger if you like, the number of deaths is now statistically insignificant and it seems to be continuing that way.
    1
  11627.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  The reasons behind individual country's performances are varied and uncertain. Even if NZ has been saved by swift and decisive action (which I doubt) that can no longer apply in the UK where the disease has taken a serious hold and will only be eliminated on its own terms. Death and illness are horrible. I do not deny that thousands have suffered and died and hundreds are suffering and dying at the moment - so direct experience of suffering cannot affect my judgement in any way.
    1
  11628.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  Sweden has a certain amount in common with the UK, as well as many differences. What we have shared is a considerable population of the frail elderly who have survived two or three years of very mild flu seasons but who have no resistance to Covid 19. The vast bulk of the dead in both countries comes from people in this category. Sweden of course now has a pretty non-existent death rate created by building up natural immunity through infection. Our insane hodge-podge of "measures" has left us in a situation whereby large numbers of people have been dumped into situations where they infect the most vulnerable. That is happening right now in multi-generational Asian families where no steps are being taken to protect the frail elderly, while at the same time the wage-earners cannot earn a living because their businesses are closed down.
    1
  11629.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  I see no contradictions. I have simply made some observations. The very significant common factor shared by the UK and Sweden is (or was) a large population of survivor frail elderly who have, in both cases, provided the bulk of Covid 19's victims. The differences are that Sweden simply applied the usual hygienic measures in dealing with an epidemic instead of succumbing to covoihysteria. The result has been broadly similar patterns of death and serious outcomes but with minimal economic and social damage for Sweden, plus a near zero death rate, while the UK has committed economic suicide and now faces a further round of deaths and hospitalisations because there are still carriers about and nothing has been done to isolate the vulnerable.
    1
  11630.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  Again: what contradictions? What do you mean by "survivor bias analysis?" What statistics do you select to contradict the statistics I have selected?
    1
  11631.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  You didn't. You misinterpret my placing separate facts side by side as contradictions. I have said nothing contradictory.
    1
  11632.  @susuabc  President with morals? When?
    1
  11633.  @lynnegackstetter2779  Well, he'll have to be careful how he sets about it. He cannot behave unconstitutionally. His actions may be overturned, but he won't be prosecuted for them. Bit of a minefield, really.
    1
  11634. We have to allow them in as they are in danger at sea. We don't have to keep them. They can be deported.
    1
  11635. It is now an established fact that children only suffer very mildly if they get covid and it is becoming increasingly clear that they infect others only rarely. This is because the immune systems in their noses and throats are robust enough to deal with infection before it reaches the lungs, where the real damage occurs. This also means that viral output is low and, more to the point, droplets containing virus are not expelled. They actually HAVE herd immunity in a very real sense, and are not agents of infection. The way our children have been treated is utterly shameful. Much of the scientific advice put to the government by the "experts" on the payroll whom you so admire is of highly disputable value. The WHO condemns lockdowns, for example, and the increase in world poverty and consequent deaths of children can be laid firmly at the door of governments which persist with this strategy.
    1
  11636. More to the point, what does it say about NATO which has conned a nation into sacrificing tens of thousands of men and destroying itself on its behalf?
    1
  11637.  @Mulberry2000  NATO countries have spent billions on rearming and training the Ukrainian army since 2014. It is an act of supreme cowardice to persuade another nation to fight and die on your behalf.
    1
  11638. He doesn't really need a social media app when this and other left-wing channels put his face onscreen each and every day.
    1
  11639. And what the hell is going to happen when Australia DOES open up? There will be an epidemic, that's what. It's inevitable. What's more babies will suffer from OTHER deadly infections against which they have not be allowed to build up an immunity.
    1
  11640. How come Australia is run by power-mad paranoia junkies? Don't they know that lockdowns are killing millions across the globe?
    1
  11641. Labour in pursuit of the oppressed rural classes?
    1
  11642.  @BruceWayne1958  The majority is not always right. In fact, it seldom is.
    1
  11643.  @boink800  Remind me again who was President - and why he was no longer President after 2014? Lost the election did he?
    1
  11644.  @Hoophey  Replaced by a pro-American Washington puppet following a bloody revolution in which dozens were killed.
    1
  11645.  @Hoophey  Replaced by a pro-American Washington puppet.
    1
  11646.  @Hoophey  Replaced by a duly elected, whiter than white, totally non bribetaking, totally impartial species of superman who had no connections whatsoever with the US oil industry.
    1
  11647.  @Hoophey  Replaced by....?
    1
  11648. But this a very truthful and pertinent answer. Has the Independent finally lost all touch with reality?
    1
  11649. He didn't lie, certainly. He just talked utter bollocks.
    1
  11650. These people are perpetual adolescents. They have only come to power because the grown-ups took their eye off the ball.
    1
  11651. There's enough energy in the bogey up your nose to create a nationwide power grid. You've just got to dig it out.
    1
  11652.  @cognitivedissident9825  Now you're just being picky
    1
  11653.  @cognitivedissident9825  That's snot what I meant.
    1
  11654.  @cognitivedissident9825  Silliness aside, what reservations do you actually have as to nuclear power being the only real way ahead for humanity's energy needs?
    1
  11655. As Brexit proved.
    1
  11656. Russia had very good reasons for invading. That's what tends to get left out.
    1
  11657. The very first statement in this video was a blatant lie. No need to watch any further. Damage to GDP and loss of human life due to natural disasters is at an all time low. If you have some need to promote the climate crisis agenda then at least make your propaganda credible.
    1
  11658. Lucas Louzada The financial impetus behind the climate crisis narrative is becoming increasingly apparent, The carbon futures market must be such a goldmine that the pressure to demonise carbon is irresistible. Don't stop watching though. Know thine enemy.
    1
  11659.  @CrazyShores  No you. And stop being so loud.
    1
  11660.  @T5Zplayer  Georgia, Chechnya and Ukraine are all the result of Russia attempting to maintain its existing interests, not to extend them. America, on the other, hand hiding behind the cloak of "bringing democracy" invades and foments rebellions in order to find new markets for its products and access to materials. Russia has done with empire building. Very soon America will be forced to follow suit.
    1
  11661.  @T5Zplayer  Somewhat different to Russia in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine where it has been merely protecting existing interests, not seeking to extend them. Unlike America.
    1
  11662.  @T5Zplayer  Russia invaded Ukraine because America and NATO had supplied it with a multi-billion $$ army with which to retake Crimea and Donbass. Russia considers (with considerable justification) that both these areas are Russian and handed over mistakenly to the new country of Ukraine in 1991. This disagreement could have been settled peacefully, and was on the verge of doing so, before America and NATO ordered Zelensky to resist with force. If America and NATO had stayed out there would be no war. The tragedy is that Russia will in all probability now achieve what it originally asked for peacefully (and more) and tens of thousands will have died to no purpose. I do hope this wasn't too complicated for you.
    1
  11663.  @saba1030  That should change. It brings us no benefit and in fact is potentially harmful to our security.
    1
  11664. Biden, Johnson and Macron are all weaklings whose regimes are in danger of toppling. Putin is a strong leader who is demonstrating his strength in order to prevent Ukraine becoming an outpost of NATO, and thereby of Washington hawks who need a constant threat of war to maintain their career paths.
    1
  11665.  VINLAND_777  I think he might be a little vain - as small people often are. But that's not the point.
    1
  11666.  @goodguy2627  But I doubt he loses much sleep over what Times Radio thinks of him!
    1
  11667.  @kenpachi1989  I really don't think so.
    1
  11668. Wagner will now leave, having done its job. The Ukrainians have a a good chance of retaking it from the probably incompetent troops which will replace them - but this won't matter a damn to Putin since his sole objective is to destroy the Ukrainian army as an effective fighting force. Which he probably will in the end.
    1
  11669. A bunch of glorified doormen who failed acting school.
    1
  11670. Is there ANYONE you don't want to see banged up?
    1
  11671. Why do you want to send so many people to prison?
    1
  11672. This happened back in the 1920's. Then though it wasn't a disaster but an opportunity for expansion. The Soviet government planned roads and railways and infrastructure. But Siberia froze over again before they had a chance to do more than preliminary surveys. Funny that.
    1
  11673. @ No. New blood is always welcomed!
    1
  11674. @ Fascism is just fascism. A good cigar is a smoke.
    1
  11675. I don't suppose Putin cares very much what people think. He's fighting to win, not to gain approval.
    1
  11676.  @garethmurray5901  You really mustn't believe everything the BBC tells you. Westernised "intellectuals" in big cities may be against the war, but for the bulk of ordinary people Putin is a great leader, fighting for Russia's honour.
    1
  11677. At the very least the powers of the Speaker will be much diminished - which is a very good thing. Events of recent years have showed what an utter farce democracy is in America.
    1
  11678.  @maryisaac9439  But it can - and does - alter at quite a rate. It just strikes me that in an environment where there are fewer hosts to target, a variant which can into cells more quickly and spread more quickly is going to succeed more than others. Such characteristics would not be so important where there are plenty of hosts. Just a thought.
    1
  11679.  @ADifferentBias  Heard the latest? If Trumpist Republicans gain the House and Senate this year they could actually make Trump Speaker of the House. They could then impeach Biden and Harris while Trump, being third in line, would automatically become President. Under the constitution the Speaker doesn't have to be an elected representative. He can be anyone Congress chooses. Trump 2023!
    1
  11680. I am against any form of censorship and thoroughly disapprove of Joe Blogs getting the push - even though he does talk the most immense bollocks and is probably a low grade CIA operative.
    1
  11681. andybycz Sorry, I'm all out of gold bricks for the moment. I do have some magic beans though.. If you plant them and wait long enough they grow into giant beanstalks which you will be able to climb and see reality from a whole new perspective. Hurry! This offer is for a limited period only!
    1
  11682.  @moneymay6324  Because Ukraine in not a sovereign country except in name and because Ukraine - or at least the Eastern parts of it - are an extension of Russian and not a far-off colony.
    1
  11683.  @swankywill  If you take the trouble to investigate the historical background to this conflict you will realise that it is far, far from simple.
    1
  11684.  @moneymay6324  Is anywhere? It's just a modern buzzword.
    1
  11685.  @moneymay6324  Strictly speaking a country is only a sovereign country when ruled by monarch whose authority is held through military power. The new usage is a trick designed to get everyone to accept America's divisions of the world as binding.
    1
  11686.  @ragingmonk6080  And the wise derive amusement from the posturing of fools.
    1
  11687. The Russians are home.
    1
  11688. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCgDsY-XvIA The bushfire crisis is indeed man-made.
    1
  11689. There is. Catching it.
    1
  11690. So good to see a judge who has respect for the truth. These "new evidence" photographs are fakes. The FBI turned off the security cameras and planted the documents. The FBI is a disgrace to America and should be disbanded.
    1
  11691. My local Conservative branch has taken to marching through the streets in black uniforms and beating up Jews.
    1
  11692.  @simonkapadia7582  But why did you do it? And does Israel not have similar reasons?
    1
  11693.  @aidanknox122  You make some interesting points. I maintain there is a considerable difference between Christian extremism and Muslim extremism. The first is concerned with maintaining what its proponents believe to be God's will on Earth while the second, although acknowledging this principle, is also very much concerned with preparing its adherents for death. This used to be the case with Christianity too but following the Enlightenment it is something which has very much taken second place and really only persists in more intense RC circles. It is an insidious obsession in my view. If religion has any function at all it is to provide comfort for the living. Structuring behaviour around the idea of qualifying for entry into a probably fictitious Paradise is a procedure fraught with danger. As is the case in the Muslim world - though no longer in the Christian one -it allows psychopathic individuals to exercise control over the fearful and manipulate their congregations to fulfil their own political objectives which, paradoxically enough, are generally concerned with gaining power on Earth. Suicide bombers and Hamas soldiers really do genuinely believe that when they are killed they will go immediately to Paradise which, for many of them, appears to be no more than an opportunity to indulge in adolescent fantasies for all infinity. Evangelical Christians have no such credo. They wish to impose their will on the rest of us, certainly, but those of them who arm themselves do so merely as a defensive measure. Nutjobs wielding automatic weapons are a far cry from nation states providing billions of $$ of rockets and bombs in order to bring about the Caliphate. As for Woke; I know what it is, but I find it hard to define. I think it is probably a kind of awful self-satisfaction which awfully self-righteous people have in imposing their wishy-washy views on the rest of us. It's about cancel culture and enforced pronouns, micro-aggressions and safe spaces and other such nonsense. It really gets on my goat - so it must exist!
    1
  11694.  @aidanknox122  You make some interesting points and I have tried to post a reply in response. Unfortunately YouTube's new ultra-fascist algorithm has decided that my heresies are not fit for public consumption and so, being Woke as well as pro-Muslim, it has deleted it. I would I think enjoy having a conversation with you but in the current climate of censorship and mind-control it seems this will sadly be impossible.
    1
  11695.  @AaronOkeanos  You must be a member of the Labour Party.
    1
  11696. Didn't you just get over a big surge? How did that happen?
    1
  11697.  @freedomfighter22222  The question remains unanswered. What people SAY they will do and what they actually will do may well be two entirely different things. I think it entirely possible that should that strike occur, then the West will fold in a moment and beg for peace. What is more to the point, I believe it entirely possible that Putin thinks so too.
    1
  11698.  @jdsimonfpv5867  You say they were wrong. I say they were right. And no-one ought to have been shot, even Ashli Babbitt.
    1
  11699.  @jas632  Russia isn't a communist state, you idiot.
    1
  11700. We've actually given up, but we don't want anyone to know that yet.
    1
  11701. Is America a Democracy though?
    1
  11702.  @adrianthoroughgood1191  Look up "fascist autocracy"
    1
  11703.  @richardm4825  I'm afraid the fiction is what you have been led to believe. Can you give me one good reason why Russia should abduct children?
    1
  11704. @ Apart from children sent to Russia - many to stay with relatives there - others were removed from orphanages by the advancing Russian troops. You should read the 2015 report by Disability Rights International entitled "No Way Home - exploitation and abuse of children in Ukraine's orphanages." It is not a work of fiction.
    1
  11705.  @Alicja1Fenigsen  I suppose many would consider being "deeply traumatised" preferable to being killed or maimed.
    1
  11706.  @marcopalazzo9349  A joke which is winning a war and which will definitely wipe you from the face of the earth if you do any more to try to stop it. (Where do these red lines come from, anyway? Who invents them? Putin certainly didn't)
    1
  11707.  @Aaronsmith-cu8ii  Apart from over-running Ukraine's defence lines and proving how useless our new weapons generally are, you mean?
    1
  11708. I think he is on the side of peace.
    1
  11709.  @fred166  Are you a total prat, or just pretending?
    1
  11710. @peterholden3672 But no new wars were begun and efforts were made to stop wars begun by his predecessors. The American economy is addicted to perpetual war. Trump wants to break the habit.
    1
  11711. @peterholden3672 But no new wars, and serious efforts made to end the wars begun by his predecessors. Sadly the American economy is addicted to perpetual warfare. I believe Trump genuinely believes this to be wrong, both morally and economically.
    1
  11712. @peterholden3672 I did mean to say new wars. My bad. I think Trump, unlike many American politicians, does not believe war to be helpful to the economy.
    1
  11713.  @knightsnight5929  The BS is on you. Judge by results. The stand-off with NK massively reduced the threat from that country and the Taliban deal only failed because the Biden administration, unlike Trump, completely underestimated Taliban capabilities.
    1
  11714.  @knightsnight5929  The two are not necessarily exclusive.
    1
  11715.  @boota1979  True. I meant to say that Trump didn't start any new wars, but expressed myself carelessly.
    1
  11716.  @knightsnight5929  The standoff with NK curbed that country's ambitions, and the deal with the Taliban was not the cause of America's defeat, the incompetence of the Biden administration was.
    1
  11717.  @knightsnight5929  The standoff with NK ensured peace, and America's defeat in Afghanistan was due to the Biden administration's incompetence. The deal with the Taliban was designed to facilitate an ordered withdrawal. Mismanagement turned it into a near rout.
    1
  11718.  @knightsnight5929  And this is apologist BS. By taking things to the edge Trump called the bluff of potential aggressors, including NK. As for the debacle in Afghanistan, the peace plan was designed for an ordered withdrawal. Mismanagement on the ground turned it into a rout.
    1
  11719.  @knightsnight5929  His brinkmanship paid off in every instance. As for the rout in Afghanistan, if the plan had been followed correctly it would have meant an ordered withdrawal, instead of the disaster which actually occurred.
    1
  11720. This is financing war through theft. Utterly shameful
    1
  11721. Russia's proposals for peace have always been on the table - but they don't suit America's neocon warmongers who want to lay their greedy hands on the $14trillion of gas, oil, coal and rare earth minerals lying beneath the soil of Russian Ukraine.
    1
  11722. Smacking your child s a sign of weakness. But that's all it is. I can proudly say that I never struck any of my children - but God I was sorely tempted on many an occasion!
    1
  11723. It will be shared. I think he's addressing troops and commanders in the regular army to convince them that they need to back him fully.
    1
  11724.  @luisekjeldsen1515  Not according to the people providing them There are a load of fake videos on the Internet. I expect you've been seeing those.
    1
  11725.  @TheTruthHz  Russia created Ukraine in its modern form. That said, it is willing to let the Western part of it look to the West if it wants to - but it can't have the bits where lots of Russians live and where there are immense riches lying beneath the soil. Peaceful solutions have been tried for thirty years, but Ukraine has pushed things too far in Russian eyes by doing a deal with the US to hive off the mineral wealth to the West. They have also allowed themselves to be used in a proxy war. Their US/NATO-funded army was due to invade Donbass, so Russia took the fight to them first. So it is Ukraine which is being destroyed - not the separatist parts of Donbass.
    1
  11726.  @meatrealwishes  Did I say Bradleys? I meant the Abrams of course. As far as Russian forces are concerned they had a standing army of a million and a couple of million reservists before the war. How many have now been called up is very much in dispute. Half a million is a reasonable figure, and one much bandied about. It certainly seems reasonable, though how many will be needed remains very much to be seen.
    1
  11727.  mark Mierzejewski  You sound remarkably certain. The object of the SMO was not to take territory, other than the heavily fortified parts of Donbass still in Ukrainian hands, and that is what is happening now. The only way this can be prevented is if the West steps up the supply of arms more than it seems inclined to do at present.
    1
  11728.  mark Mierzejewski  I have tremendous respect for the Ukrainians. It is a pity that they have been forced into this position. If they had heeded Putin's peace proposals put forward in the December before the invasion their county would not be in the state it is in, and tens of thousands of them would still be alive. In fact it seems they WERE ready to sit down and talk, but heeded the honeyed words of Western leaders and decided to take Russia on in the battlefield. This was a mistake. All Putin asked for was a promise not to join NATO, recognition of Crimea as Russian (which it is) and regional autonomy for Donbass, as per the Minsk accords. This would have more or less suited everybody concerned - except for the Americans and their allies who sights are set on the trillions of dollars of gas, oil, coal and rare earth minerals in Donbass. Their "Great Patriotic War " is the "Make America Rich" war, did they but know it. What is more they are set to lose it. Russia has achieved its objective of dismantling their army on its own territory as is now on the path to secure Donbass. This has been the plan all along and unless the West pumps out even more billions to support Ukraine they will probably achieve it - and perhaps even more. That December deal doesn't look so bad after all now, does it?
    1
  11729. Of course he understands financial markets and how to manipulate them. It's called "reflexivity" and that's what he's doing right now.
    1
  11730. Most of this was done by wannabees trying to make a name for themselves in the media big-time. Editors and higher-ups turned a blind eye. They stopped that a while ago, after the News of the Screws went down the tubes.
    1
  11731. It is becoming quite clear that Russia's casualties are grossly exaggerated, while Ukraine's are minimised. The West is losing the propaganda war , as well as the war on the ground.
    1
  11732. It actually IS the West's fault, but Farage was clever enough not to say so directly.
    1
  11733. Why are you lefties so obsessed with locking up people you disagree with and banning things you don't like? To my mind it betrays a troubling inner inadequacy.
    1
  11734. Is this her? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDj723_jbtA&t=40s
    1
  11735. Oooh dear! From my point of view from across the pond it seems you guys are getting a bit panicky! Could it possibly be that the Maricopa audit will unpick just exactly how the conjuring trick was done?
    1
  11736.  @Raydensheraj  But weren't Republican observers banned from the count? And what insurrection? And I'd be a mite cautious talking about diapers considering poor old Joe's leakage problems.
    1
  11737.  @Traitorman.Con.14th.Sec3  You wouldn't know a fascist if one bit you on the arse.
    1
  11738.  @Pikaling3408  So you believe that people should not be allowed to express their opinions then? You believe in suppression? And people like you have the cheek to accuse others of being "fascist.".
    1
  11739.  @JohnPark-xf2gq  The only responsibility comes with power. And this poor woman had none.
    1
  11740.  @wolfen210959  And what were the consequences precisely? Do you genuinely believe that ANYONE who took part in the riots was motivated to do so purely by reading this woman's post? She is a sacrificial victim. Practically a martyr.
    1
  11741.  @markwalsham7115  You have a misconception of what an MP's prime duties are. Parochial matters - the drains, dog poo on the street, quarrels over planning applications et etc are handled by local authorities. An MP represent a constituency in a much broader sense. His job is to represent their views in the national and international arena. Constituency surgeries are pretty much a waste of time and are really only useful to the MP, not those who call in to them since the issues raised are generally parochial.
    1
  11742.  @barrybrodin7085  Name one.
    1
  11743.  @barrybrodin7085  Name one lie.
    1
  11744. @ Could you perhaps name one?
    1
  11745.  @rocketscience4516  Its methods of expansion are very modern, I agree, but not unique in history. Many empires have expanded their territories by offering bribes and sweet promises.
    1
  11746.  @Fast_Ultralight  Until now it has invaded by promising economic advancement. That's fair enough. Now though it wants an army and it wants to be a world power, not just a trading bloc. This is most inappropriate and very dangerous. It really does mean war: a war which like most wars begins with slogans and flag waving and all kinds of good intentions, but which will end in bloodshed and misery.
    1
  11747.  @rocketscience4516  Not necessarily sinister, but certainly insidious. And very foolish. It is political ambition and gung-ho flag-waving, such as we are currently witnessing, which inevitably leads to war. Some of the comments I have been reading have uncanny echoes of Hitler's pre-war speeches, Marching united into a bright future etc etc. This rabble-rousing is very easy to do when you have an excitable, largely ill-informed population to hand.
    1
  11748.  @Fast_Ultralight  Not at all. Just someone with the time to go into things in detail. Putin has every right to behave as he has. Whether he should have exercised that right is another matter. But the right is there.
    1
  11749.  @rocketscience4516  Off you go again! Why don't you start thinking with your brain instead of with your stomach?
    1
  11750.  @fredplat467  And yet your "project" is sold to the public purely in terms of its economic advantages. People do not generally realise that their grocer is committed to interfering with every aspect of their lives. The Treaty of Rome, by the way bears some uncanny resemblances to documents produced by Hitler's economic advisers detailing how Europe should be run after he won the War. The current enthusiasm for military might also very much reflects the spirit of fervent patriotism which featured in Germany in the 1930s.
    1
  11751.  @jounik  To most people in the UK, as ill-informed as we often are, the EU is a matter of cheaper groceries rather than geopolitics. Nearly all the arguments surrounding Brexit have concentrated exclusively on the cost of things, reductions/improvements in services etc. Until now the Remoaners have berated us with empty shelves, transport queues and farming and fishing disasters etc. This is probably the first time that most British people have been told that the EU wants to be an armed super-power ready, willing and able to take on the might of the Russian Federation. Most of us will heave signs of relief that we managed to get out in time.
    1
  11752. They seem to me to be doing everything they can to AVOID herd immunity. If they had done next to nothing at all herd immunity would probably have been achieved by now.
    1
  11753.  @popscratchie3985  One of the main reasons , but NATO presence and even persecutions of Russians in Ukraine play their part too.
    1
  11754.  @popscratchie3985  A NATO presence was very much on the cards. As for a Russian win being a Phyrric victory, this makes no sense at all since, apart from retaining access to the trillions of-$$$$ of minerals in Donbass and Crimea, this will almost certainly mean the establishment of a new economic world order in which Russia will play a significant part.
    1
  11755.  @janstapaj9689  It isn't Ukrainian wealth it's Russian wealth created through Russian investment, Russian blood and Russian sweat.
    1
  11756.  @janstapaj9689  Russia will blast it to smithereens first.
    1
  11757.  @damianeadie510  The Budapest treaty is dead in the water. No treaty lasts forever and the Russia of today is not the Russia of 1994. Circumstances have altered radically following NATO aggression and US commercial imperialism in Ukraine. More recent a nd reasonable solutions , such as the Minsk accords, have failed to resolve the difficulties and this war is the sad and inevitable result.
    1
  11758.  @damianeadie510  Ever heard of the Treaty of Westphalia? That's dead in the water too as are hundreds and hundreds of other treaties. . The world changes and treaties cannot keep up. That's just the way it is. Ideally new treaties are found to meet the new circumstances - but if they cannot be agreed then the old-fashioned way of settling things comes into play. War.
    1
  11759.  @popscratchie3985  No. You do. Donbass and most of modern Ukraine East of the Dnieper were once called Little Russia because of all the Russians who had gone there to mine the coal and iron found there. The population was up to 80%Russian and remained so in industrial areas until the start of the war. Ukrainians, generally speaking, are farmers and traders and most arrived later.The original inhabitants were Tatars.
    1
  11760.  @popscratchie3985  It did once, but that was a long time ago. Russia created Ukraine. It can't really be blamed for wanting to keep hold of the bits where so many Russians have lived and laboured for generations - especially since it's such a money-earner!
    1
  11761.  @damianeadie510  Probably. The answer must lie in Putin 's excellent essay on Russia/Ukraine relations published in - I think - 2021. It is really essential reading for a true understanding of the present situation.
    1
  11762.  @damianeadie510  Sorry, but your queries have not been coming through for some reason. As to the map situation it is very complicated since numerous countries have invaded and fought over Ukraine in the past and , naturally enough, have produced maps stating their various claims. The one you refer to was-a French production, I believe. Poland, Sweden, Lithuania-anf of course Russia will have produced maps telling different stories
    1
  11763.  @teebodk3917  No the fact that NATO wants to set up bases in Ukraine -and that corporate America wants to to lay its mitts on all the trillions of -$$ of minerals in Donbass and Crimea which Russians have laboured for generations to develop.
    1
  11764.  @damianeadie510  Are we up to speed yet? Have I missed anything?
    1
  11765.  @damianeadie510  I think I've already answered these questions. But to paraphrase. 1) No treaty lasts forever. Budapest is no exception. 2) In 1994 the Russian Federation was finding its feet and suffering an identity crisis. With Putin it has found the strong leader needed to stand up to America. His essay, incidentally, in not propaganda but a considered document intended for an informed audience. 3)In the years since 1994 America has encouraged the spread of NATO to Russia's borders , despite verbal assurances that this would not occur. Over the same period it has also fomented rebellions in Georgia and Ukraine as well as providing assistance to Islamist enemies in Chechnya and Syria. These acts alone entirely undermine the principles of mutual non-aggression upon which Budapest was broadly based. 4)As to the intertwined histories of the two countries these are covered extensively and accurately in Putin's essay. The essential detail, however, is that the disputed territories do not form part of this history. They were steppe inhabited by wandering tribes of Tatars and Don Cossacks and if little interest to anyone until coal in great quantities was found there at the start of the industrial revolution. Tatars and Cossacks not being amenable to working in mines and factories large numbers of Russians arrived to do the work. Ukrainians did not. Russians still makeup the majority of the population in areas of industrial concentration. The transfer of power to Kiev was a disastrous to the local economy with catastrophic drops in profits and wages. The desire among many to reestablish rations with Russia is strong and made all the stronger following Poroshenko's savage repression of the rebellion post-Maidan. To summarise, I would suggest you are the victim of a series of myths perpetrated by Western entities in which under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy their commercial interests are extended. These tactics require to existence of a dangerous enemy and are concealed beneath a spurious legality. The Americans perfected this technique when dealing with the inhabitants of the lands they has occupied and apply many of the same principles today. If you want to talk about broken treaties just look up America's treatment of the Indians.
    1
  11766.  @rabbitt-ee4yu  It isn't theft. It's taking back something which was stolen. Peaceful solutions were offered but rejected and the violence is a result. Ukraine was gearing up to be violent too, having accepted billions from the US and NATO to create a new army.
    1
  11767.  @damianeadie510  I must disagree. I have answered all your questions but I do not give you permission to frame our discourse in your own terms. I am not a student lining up to pass an examination by supplying the answers provided to me. You have had enough of that in your life. I suspect. Yes Putin says one thing one day and another thing the next. It's called politics and as I explained in my previous answer trying to restrict this process through a complex system of regulation is a technique much beloved by Americans. As situations change responses to them must change. If these changes are mutually accepted then fine. If not matters must be settled in more direct ways. Wars happen when moral judgements fail. You can argue that Ukraine and the West occupy the moral highground and have international law on their side. All I can do is point out how Russia has a moral position also and how international law is a Western construct, created after the Second World War to bring advantage to the West. Neither viewpoint now matters. The dispute will have to be settled by force of arms.
    1
  11768.  @popscratchie3985  Absurd. Putin lies no more or less than many politicians. He is a lawyer. What do you expect?
    1
  11769.  @popscratchie3985  International law established by the Romans benefits the Romans. International law established by the Americans benefits the Americans Simple really.
    1
  11770.  @damianeadie510  In this instance your dog died of natural causes - as all dogs must.
    1
  11771. As a schoolteacher I'm sure Phil must be pleased to know that his profession has suffered the least loss of life from covid than any other occupation in the country.
    1
  11772.  @marcopalazzo9349  It wasn't capitulation. It was a compromise.
    1
  11773.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  The compromise was contained in the Minsk treaties, namely that Donbass should become independent and thus not be included in any future treaties between Ukraine and Europe and the US.
    1
  11774.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  The Minsk treaties were drawn up with the express purpose of allowing Ukraine time to find ways of granting regional autonomy to the two Donbass oblasts. This Ukraine failed to do and instead used the time to re-arm itself, with NATO help. Russia's response under these circumstances was completely understandable.
    1
  11775.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  I don't think "we" know that at all. Russia's aim throughout has been to retain economic control over resources which it has developed and invested in over many decades. Autonomy for Donbass would have achieved this. As it is actual occupation and inclusion of the territory in the Russian Federation has become the alternative.
    1
  11776.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  How can Russia have ignored Minsk? The ball was in Ukraine's court. It was Ukraine which built up its army, using billion dollar investments from NATO, as has now been freely admitted. Russia has had little choice but to exercise a military option, diplomatic solutions having been rejected. It had no need to prepare for a second offensive, as you call it. The SMO was a pre-emptive strike utilising existing resources.
    1
  11777.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  This is nonsense. An absurd historical analogy. Russia has no wish to expand its territories, only to continue to maintain its borders and retain economic benefits accrued over many years. Strictly speaking Russia did not occupy Ukrainian territory. Wagner was created in order to unify and support Donbass separatists and is not an arm of the Russian state, but a private company. Russia would have been quite content for Donbass to become an autonomous buffer state and continue to supply Russia with minerals. Ukraine, however, had entered into deals with Western agencies to transfer these resources to them. That really is all this war is about. The tragedy is that it now looks quite likely that Russia will continue to control Donbass and many thousands of people will have died to no purpose.
    1
  11778.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304 It's not so much about expanding its territories, but getting territories back. Ukraine is largely a Russian creation. Giving the new country of Ukraine the same boundaries as the SSR of Ukraine was a huge mistake. As long as the new country maintained close relations with Russia though, all was well. But joining the EU and NATO would not only put it into the enemy camp but deprive Russia of vast mineral resources in these areas. These resources were developed by Russia, and are largely worked with Russian labour. Russia can hardly be blamed for not wanting them to be stolen from under its nose.
    1
  11779. This madness must end. We are digging ourselves even deeper into a hole and our children's futures will suffer irreparable damage. Please join the groundswell of informed scientific opinion which urges the de-politicisation of the Covid 19 pandemic and a return to sanity. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  11780. No. Russia is winning. It will be over soon.
    1
  11781.  @christianevanherck6023  Neither of these statements is remotely true.
    1
  11782.  @christianevanherck6023  If Russia was prioritising civilian targets deaths would run into thousands, not the handfuls that we see on the news. They are targeting infrastructure in order to inhibit military progress. Armies needs lots of electricity and railways that work. As for losing the war, look at any map-based analysis of the situation on the southern front and you will see that Russia is steamrollering northwards as the Ukrainians, short of ammunition and troops , retreat ahead of them. It will all be over soon, believe me.
    1
  11783. Think of all the spies who haven't been so honest and who are now ruining the country.
    1
  11784. Bribery works pretty well.
    1
  11785.  @geraldhewing2076  With everybody, really - but more especially foreigners
    1
  11786. More nit-picking and barrel-scraping! Trump is doing just great and has millions behind him. There'll be millions more when the fruit of his labours become apparent.
    1
  11787. Don't worry. The fascists of America are on your side and they will see to it that Trump is defeated - by fair means or foul.
    1
  11788.  @emm_arr  Not really. To suggest there was a free and fair election in a country considered at the time to be one of the most corrupt in the world is optimistic- to say the least.
    1
  11789.  @Hochspitz  My point is that Crimea is largely occupied by Russians, was created in its modern form by Russia and has only a recent and tenuous relationship with Ukraine.
    1
  11790.  @APW554  That's America you're talking about.
    1
  11791. ​ @douglasansah435 Amen to that.
    1
  11792. Biden will win, there can be little doubt of that. The people who have ruled America from behind the scenes for generations will see to it.
    1
  11793.  @I_am_Toro  It certainly withdraws one objection.
    1
  11794.  @jlambe19  I just can't. Far too busy.
    1
  11795.  @jamesstreet228  Who's "we" ? What stupidity? Explain.
    1
  11796.  @2greenify  This is a list of American invasions over approximately that period. What ownership or influence America still exercises over them I leave you to judge for yourself. (Go back another 100 years and you could argue that America stole all the land it now occupies!( 1914-1918 - a series of invasions of Mexico. 1914-1934 - Haiti. After numerous uprisings, America brings in its troops, the occupation continues for 19 years. 1916-1924 - 8-year occupation of the Dominican Republic. 1917-1933 - military occupation of Cuba, economic protectorate. 1917-1918 - participation in the 1st World War. 1918-1922 - intervention in Russia. In total, 14 states participated in it. Active support was provided to the territories that separated from Russia - Kolchakia and the Far Eastern Republic. 1918-1920 - Panama. After the elections, troops are brought in to quell the riots. 1919 - COSTA RICA. ... The landing of US troops to "protect American interests." 1919 - American troops fight on the side of Italy against the Serbs in Dolmatia. 1919 - American troops enter Honduras during elections. 1920 - Guatemala. 2-week intervention. 1921 - American support for militants fighting to overthrow Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera for the benefit of the United Fruit Company. 1922 - intervention in Turkey. 1922-1927 - American troops in China during the popular uprising. 1924-1925 - Honduras. Troops invade the country during elections. 1925 - Panama. US troops break up a general strike. 1926 - Nicaragua. Invasion. 1927-1934 - American troops stationed throughout China. 1932 - invasion of El Salvador from the sea. There was an uprising at that time. 1937 - Nicaragua. With the help of American troops, the dictator Somoza comes to power, having removed the legitimate government of H. Sakasa. 1939 - the introduction of troops into China. 1947-1949 - Greece. American troops are involved in the civil war, supporting the Nazis. 1948-1953 - military operations in the Philippines. 1950 - Uprising in Puerto Rico is suppressed by American troops. 1950-1953 - armed intervention in Korea about a million American soldiers. 1958 - Lebanon. The occupation of the country, the fight against the rebels. 1958 - confrontation with Panama. 1959 - America sends troops to Laos, the first clashes of American troops in Vietnam begin. 1959 - Haiti. The suppression of a popular uprising against the pro-American government. 1960 - after José Maria Velasco was elected president of Ecuador and refused to comply with US demands to break off relations with Cuba, the Americans carried out several military operations and organized a coup. 1960 - US troops enter Guatemala to prevent the removal of a US puppet from power. 1965-1973 - military aggression against Vietnam. 1966 - Guatemala. ... US troops entered the country, massacres of Indians were arranged, who were considered potential rebels. 1966 - military assistance to the pro-American governments of Indonesia and the Philippines. ... (60,000 people were arrested for political reasons, 88 torture specialists officially worked under the government). 1971-1973 - bombing of Laos. 1972 - Nicaragua. American troops are brought in to support the government, beneficial to Washington. 1983 - military intervention in Grenada, about 2 thousand marines. 1986 - attack on Libya. Bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. 1988 - US invasion of Honduras 1988 - The USS Vincennes, which was in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian plane with 290 passengers on board, including 57 children. 1989 - US troops quell riots in the Virgin Islands. 1991 - large-scale military action against Iraq 1992-1994 - occupation of Somalia. Armed violence against civilians, killings of civilians. 1998 - Sudan. The Americans destroy a pharmaceutical plant with missiles, claiming that it produces nerve gas. 1999 - ignoring the norms of international law, bypassing the UN and the Security Council, the United States launched a 78-day air bombardment campaign by NATO forces against the sovereign state of Yugoslavia. 2001 - invasion of Afghanistan. 2003 - bombing of Iraq. 2011 - Libya. 2014 Syria US and allied invasion of Syria 2015 Yemen US missile strikes on Yemeni Houthi rebel positions and active support for the intervention of Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen 2015 Cameroon US military operation in Cameroon 2015 Libya Second intervention in Libya
    1
  11797. You are fretting over nothing. Russia's territorial ambitions consist solely in keeping the mineral resources of Crimea and Donbass out of Western hands.
    1
  11798.  @ericwillis777  I am quite imaginative, but I still can't imagine any reason whatsoever why Russia would want to attack Britain - other than if we were to follow war-crazed nations such as America in continuing to provoke Russia beyond endurance.
    1
  11799. waxed link The Conservatives under Boris Johnson have made dealing with the climate crisis a top priority, pledging to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. Britain is leading the world in this area. Which is a pity really because it's all a load of complete bollocks.
    1
  11800. waxed link This worries me somewhat. It is in the Tory manifesto of course and very high in the list of priorities. They might genuinely believe it, they might just see it as a vote-winner or, like me, they might see it as a hedge fund scam to make money by manipulating the carbon futures market. They, unlike me, have enough working capital to profit from this astounding piece of chicanery - hence the support.
    1
  11801.  @dmgg658  It isn't actually robbery. Russia is getting back what he owned for a very long time.
    1
  11802. There is no doubt that the human race is doomed if things go on as they are.. Even if ALL the recommendations in the current IPCC report are implemented (which they will not be) then temperatures are set to increase to fatal levels before the end of the century. All right-thinking people must now consider the possibility of mass suicide as the only viable solution. If enough of us kill ourselves then there is a faint chance that those who remain will survive to continue the species. He procedure must be properly organised of course. The UN instead of issuing meaningless warnings, should undertake to oversee the process. We must all die sometime. If enough of us undertake to do so en masse now then future generations (if any) will remember us as heroes (and heroines of course.)
    1
  11803. In this war Zelensky is just the organ-grinder's monkey. Now there's a new organ-grinder.
    1
  11804. People must realise soon how much they have been conned. Ukraine is not fighting for "freedom and democracy". It is fighting to allow American and European interests to take over its oil and mining industry.
    1
  11805. There is considerable evidence that the 2020 Presidential election was fraudulently and improperly conducted. The very fact that this evidence is being suppressed by Communist propaganda outlets such as the BBC can only give credibility to this assertion.
    1
  11806. If we didn't support Ukraine, they wouldn't have done it.
    1
  11807.  @davidmacdonald1695  So not an act of war then? More of a sort of hobby?
    1
  11808.  @petegreenway8953  I have no idea. But I guess it wasn't an act of war.
    1
  11809. Restored the economy, created nearly full employment, brokered peace in the Middle East, withdrew American troops from various countries (without leaving their armaments for the enemy), nullified threats from North Korea... lots of little things like that. Scarcely anything at all really. Sorry I mentioned it.
    1
  11810. I do hope this will prove that man-made global warming is a bunch of bollocks.
    1
  11811. So what if they do? Trump has won in the eyes of the electorate.
    1
  11812. You mustn't believe everything youre' told.
    1
  11813.  @HuskyOwner-bl1jf  I don't!
    1
  11814.  @lorelange  Er, I don't see how racism comes into it. Honest.
    1
  11815. It would be worth a riot. Weasley Democrats weaponizing the judicial system are a disgrace.
    1
  11816. They didn't. They ignored it.
    1
  11817.  @mhskou  The Zoe guys know which side their bread is buttered on.
    1
  11818.  @petyrkowalski9887  No. The Tories are in their early twenties.
    1
  11819.  @michaelsmedley7519  You're easily amused!
    1
  11820.  @weswheel4834  They do have a sense of humour sometimes.
    1
  11821. It seems you can't even mention race or religion these days without some screaming insults at you.
    1
  11822. And they are so crazy that they will not allow Tump the glamour of being stuck by a bullet, but insist that it was a bit broken glass and this all a fuss over nothing.
    1
  11823. It's just about destroying the Ukrainian army. That's all this war is actually about.
    1
  11824. It doesn't much matter if it's Biden or some other sock-puppet. The Deep State will ensure their candidate wins.
    1
  11825. It is paranoid nonsense to suggest that Putin is embarked on a campaign of genocide in Ukraine He doesn't want Ukraine and never did. He wants Donbass and Crimea, where the largely Russian or Russian sympathising populations have been treated like shit by a shitty, corrupt, gangster-ruled government which is easily as bad as Putin's. The blessed Saint Zelensky is a crook who got the job by passing an audition. His boss, Ifor Kolomoisky, noticing Trump's success in the US, decided that the best way to put a puppet in power was to start him up in his own TV show. To see Ukraine as representing a shining light of democracy and freedom, and Russia as the embodiment of darkness and evil is typical of the childish black and white attitude to politics sadly so often prevalent on this channel.
    1
  11826. @bj mac How many though? Just NATO, the Anglosphere and a couple of American slave states, that's all.
    1
  11827.  @DAFLIDMAN  If he is he is telling the absolute historical truth.
    1
  11828. The "orange man bad" nutjobs are really handing Trump a 2024 victory. Good!
    1
  11829.  @gw6496  No. One very, very good the other very, very, very bad. Trump stops wars. Johnson starts them.
    1
  11830. Biden will undoubtedly win. The FBI and the CIA will see to that.
    1
  11831. Putin's great achievement has been to prevent his country from becoming yet another US vassal - unlike Britain and many other countries in the world.
    1
  11832. The war will only be over when either Hamas or the State of Israel cease to exist.
    1
  11833. No matter the number, they have all died to no purpose- on both sides. It looks very much now as though Russia will have gained by war that which it was once prepared to accept through peaceful negotiation.
    1
  11834.  @geofflepper3207  You don't do well with history and politics do you? Much less irony.
    1
  11835. There can no longer be much doubt that "democracy" in the US is an utter sham. The electoral system is so susceptible to fraud and manipulation as to make any results almost meaningless.
    1
  11836.  A Jay  What does the "A" stand for? Arsehole?
    1
  11837.  @gregc.5684  Lol as much as you like. That's what has happened.
    1
  11838.  @LR1234-v4r  Not yet. But he's getting Zelensky to cough of some of the trillions in rare earth minerals lying around Ukraine. Tariffs are a threat strategy and little more. Trump just beefs them up to make the threat more effective.
    1
  11839. @ I have done. The tariff threats have forced Mexico and Canada to immediately implement strategies which were mainly purely at the discussion stage. Without those threats we'd still be faffing around a year from now, if not longer.
    1
  11840.  @handarokadath1515  In the same way a cop backs down when he puts his gun back in his holster after a suspect surrenders?
    1
  11841. @ After he'd got what he wanted.
    1
  11842.  @69SixNineFourTwenty420  Pretty much. He co-ordinated the separatist rebels in Donbass and is now heading phase two of the Russian campaign - and is fighting Russia's incompetent generals at the same time.
    1
  11843.  @jonknestrick5219  Too late!
    1
  11844.  Tim Flipkens  There have been many hours of evidence at the various state senate hearings in recent weeks. They didn't get much news coverage, strangely enough.
    1
  11845. When was Russia ever given part of Ukraine??? It walked into Crimea unhindered and supported the separatists in Donbass. If its very reasonable demands to ratify this situation had been met there would be no war.
    1
  11846.  @JoeZorzin  Exactly
    1
  11847. It can if it ignores the treaty.
    1
  11848. It astonishes me that anyone believes that American elections are fair and properly conducted. America gets the President the people who actually run the country want them to have - or at least until Trump broke the mould. Unless he's been very, very clever indeed he's not going to get the chance again.
    1
  11849. If the US and its NATO stooges had kept their noses out of this quarrel then this would have been the way things were settled.
    1
  11850.  @adam346  It is entirely fraudulent to group all cases of child abuse under one category. The sad lonely kiddy-fiddler, or the family with a long tradition of incest, have been with us since time immemorial. The political and religious aspects of the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs make this ugly phenomenon something new and different.
    1
  11851. Has it ever crossed your mind that they both might be intelligent, thoughtful men who want to save the world from the disasters that people like you will bring about due to to your unintelligent and thoughtless support for the forces of evil?
    1
  11852. Waking up and realising it was all a dream?
    1
  11853. Something I've often wondered is if BBC news announcers have to go on a special course to acquire that sanctimonious, holier-than-thou look they all seem to have.
    1
  11854.  @ange6580  Why would he? It would mean an endless civil war. He just wants the bits with large Russian populations which incidentally sit on all the mineral resources. Around 15 trillion dollars worth by all accounts.
    1
  11855.  @albatros12  I'm a free man.
    1
  11856.  @Intentspunk19  In their dreams possibly. But Putin has said time and time again that it would be impossible and really not all that desirable. I believe he is sincere in this. It would make no sense.
    1
  11857.  @corneliusantonius3108  How likely does that sound? They want to keep Crimea and Donbass and will spend years on this if necessary. Stop believing the crap on TV.
    1
  11858.  @aristophanesghost3839  They can try.
    1
  11859.  @ghazanfaryaq6776  I don't think so.
    1
  11860.  @foilhat1138  Kherson is really only needed to protect the land route between the Russian mainland and Crimea. If Crimea was officially recognised as part of Russia, as Putin requested, it could have remained Ukrainian. This is now no longer the case.
    1
  11861.  @ramadankadriu5336  Never. There will be nuclear holocaust if the West pushes Russia much further.
    1
  11862.  @josemonteiro5988  So that the war could be fought in the main part of Ukraine, rather than the part occupied by Russia.
    1
  11863.  @foilhat1138  Sham referendums are a tradition in both Russia and Ukraine.They mean very little. For practical purposes the parts of the Kherson oblast to the south of the Dnieper are all that is needed to protect the land route to Crimea. Russia decided it wasn't worth losing men and equipment to hold the rest. Depending upon how the war proceeds my guess is that Kherson will either be lost entirely, conquered entirely or used as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations..
    1
  11864.  @foilhat1138  At this stage I don't think Russia is at all bothered about gaining territory. It just wants to grind Ukraine down sufficiently to guarantee possession of what it already has. Putin 's original peace proposals were simply autonomy for Donbass, recognition of Crimea as Russian and a commitment for Ukraine to stay out of NATO. The war has forced him to extend these demands but this is doubtless his default position. As far as I can judge he is on his way to success. His army is crap and he knows it. He has to rely on Wagner, the Chechen mercenaries, the Donbass patriots and afew battle-hardened units from the Syria conflict to do te real fighting. The rest are just blotting paper. As long as he can repel any Ukrainian advances into Crimea and the rebel-held major part of Donbass he is on a winner. Clearly he hopes that the West will run out of willingness to continue supplying Ukraine and that Ukraine will run out of effective manpower. In this he could well be right. It's jsta question of hanging on - and traditionally Russia has always been rather good at that.
    1
  11865.  @michaeljohnston980  They didn't "go for Kiev". They went into Ukraine simply to draw the Ukrainians into battle and to destroy its multi-million dollar US and NATO financed army. Which they have done.
    1
  11866.  @alexko2877  They know exactly what they want - or rather Putin knows exactly what he wants. I suggest you read his 2021 essay on Russia/Ukraine relations for clarifications.
    1
  11867.  @alexko2877  Mein Kampf is exceptionally silly and disgusting. Putin's essay is neither. You really can't understand this war without reading it, even if you have to skip some of the detailed history
    1
  11868.  @joemagarac405  The more you pay attention to CNN the less informed you will be.
    1
  11869.  @prrrromotiongiven1075  In this it will be unique in the world.
    1
  11870.  @st-ex8506  I think it's safe to say that their propaganda found many receptive ears. And Poroshenko and the Azovs were fine recruiting officers too. Fait accompli?
    1
  11871.  @st-ex8506  The Azov Battalion distinguished itself through random killings and tortures during the early years of the separatist rebellion. These are documented in both UN and Amnesty International reports, although it is fair to say that the separatists have since repaid them threefold in their treatment of people they believe are allied with the Ukrainian military. More recently, during the siege of Mariupol, Azov snipers shot civilians trying to flee. They also kept civilians in cellars and shelters to use as human shields. I have seen the videos - and if they are fakes then there are some very fine directors and actors involved. As for Poroshenko I have seen another video of a hysterical woman cursing his very name as she stands in front of her burning home which his troops have just destroyed. You realise, of course, that when he came to power he banned the export of coal from Donbass, then he and his cronies bought it on the black market and sold it to Kiev, pretending it had come from Mexico. He was being charged with high treason in respect of this escapade before he came back to Ukraine and began to play the flak-jacketed hero you so admire.
    1
  11872.  @UkrainianPaulie  He's not a pop star for chrissake!
    1
  11873.  @LasseEklof  There are sins committed on both sides, I'm sure. To portray Ukrainian soldiers as knights in shining armour and Russians as sadistic monsters (Orcs!) is plainly ridiculous. I must say I have only seen videos of civilians asserting they were shot at by Azov, and none saying the Russians did it. I'm sure the Russians have killed and tortured civilians they suspected of armed resistance, and I am equally sure the Ukrainians have done the same to those suspected of collaborating with the invaders.
    1
  11874.  @DarkRoomAmbience  All treaties have been violated by both sides to some degree or another. As for Minsk, Angela Merkel has admitted it was designed to stave off the Russians long enough for NATO to rebuild the Ukrainian army. It is clear that Russia believes, probably rightly, that Zelensky, on orders from Washington, was planning to attempt to retake Crimea and crush the rebellion in Donbass as well as joining both NATO and the EU. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this it was clearly a severe miscalculation, sine it has resulted in a painful, bloody and needless war which will bring no benefit to anyone.
    1
  11875. It's about time to stick two fingers up to this over-played, over-dramatised and now nearly over health scare. The more reasonably fit people who get it the better. Trump, as usual, is the man of the moment. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  11876. Until I put my glasses on I thought I was looking at an image of coronaviruses passing through the weave of a facemask. The scale was more or less exact.
    1
  11877.  @themissinglink2163  Having a titular figurehead with no power is very useful in many ways.
    1
  11878. The Russians don't like the Red Cross, believing it to be used for infiltration purposes by the CIA and other Western spy agencies. They are, on the other hand, pouring in tons of food and medical supplies into Mariupol without any need for this help.
    1
  11879. @ Ukraine is in a different category. In its present form it was created by Russia, not conquered by it. And Putin doesn't even want it all back - just those bits in the east with large Russian populations and with mines and factories still owned by Russian companies.
    1
  11880. @ That is plain silly. Putin has said many times that while he recognises the romantic appeal of a Russian empire it is impossible and not even desirable to actually achieve. Over-extension helped destroy the Soviet Union. Putin doesn't want the same thing to happen to the Russian Federation.
    1
  11881.  @KathrynKings  No. It is a historical fact. THE Ukraine was the name given to an area of land to the West of Russia which had been conquered by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. Before that the area was split into various princedoms and outposts of various empires, predominantly the Polish Lithuanian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. During the 19th century a romantic notion grew up harking back to the Kievan Rus, which was a Viking empire covering much (but not all) of the area of present day Ukraine. It was completely destroyed by the Mongol invasions of the 15th and 16th centuries. Following the Russian Revolution an attempt was made to create a country called Ukraine out of this mish-mash, but the Russian Bolsheviks stepped in and created the Russian-run Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine which has shaped Ukraine in its modern form.
    1
  11882. @ This simply isn't true, as much as I am sure you would like it to be. Present day Ukrainian speakers are the descendants of people who came to the area after the Mongol Empire collapsed. The origin of the language and the people is largely Polish/Lithuanian. Ruthenia, even more than Ukraine, is a country which exists largely in the romantic imagination. Some people today use it to refer to a part of Carpathia, and before that it was one of the many cross-border states I mentioned in my original reply to you, and which disappeared following Russian conquest. It did not have anything like the same geographical boundaries as present-day Ukraine.
    1
  11883. @ I hesitate to undermine your romantic illusions, but this simply isn't so. Even if you conflate Ruthenia with the Kievan Russ (which is inaccurate) even at its height in the11th century this state did not include any land east of the Dnieper. Carpathian Ruthenia, also known as Transcarpathia, is located in the easternmost part of the Carpathian Mountains, mostly within present-day western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast. It was part of the Kingdom of Hungary until the end of World War I, then became part of Czechoslovakia, and was later annexed by Hungary again during World War II1. After the war, it was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
    1
  11884.  @KathrynKings  "Romantacism" ? But let us not descend to that level. My keybpard has hicccups.
    1
  11885.  @lynnlovattjones4171  Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt. I'm 76 and I despise everything this channel stands for.
    1
  11886. The fact is if she had been a white male she wouldn't be where she is today. This is not to say she doesn't have abilities, however well hidden they seem to be.
    1
  11887. The simple fact of the matter is that there has been a violent civil war going on in Ukraine for almost a decade in which thousands have died and many made homeless. This invasion is just the latest phase of that war and is designed, as much as anything, to bring it to an end.
    1
  11888.  @johnpeterdean1653  The population of the Donbass region is predominantly Russian and many wish to become independent from Ukraine. That's what makes it a civil war. Hitherto help from Russia has been fairly muted but the current invasion is designed to settle the matter once and for all.
    1
  11889.  @charles3dart683  It's a mute point. He may well wish to go on, but I tend to doubt it. Many Russians, and indeed quite a few "Ukrainians", still regard it as being part of Russia.
    1
  11890.  @scrapmetal4429  The majority of inhabitants in the Donbass region are of Russian descent and heritage. They have their own breakaway armies, and demand independence. Around 2,000 people have been killed so far and the area is devastated. Google Donbass. Also Google Azov Battalion.
    1
  11891. A deal has already been reached on the supply of aluminium and doubtless negotiations will continue over access to rare earth minerals, particularly lithium. And a very good thing too. Don't you think mutual trade is better than war?
    1
  11892. Covering up a report of the mass rape of tens of thousands of underage girls? The Royal Navy and HM Border Force assisting gangsters in running a slave trade across the Channel? Marxist civil servants trying to fix up a deal with the EU to extend Brexit negotiations while the PM and Cummings were ill with Covid?
    1
  11893.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  Donbass is the prize in this war. Both sides will destroy towns and cities in pursuit of its mineral wealth. Ukraine should have done a deal with Russia to grant autonomy to Donbass, then none of this would have happened.
    1
  11894. @Peoples Republic of Ninj Why would the separatists shell towns and villages they already occupy?
    1
  11895. ​ @puraLusa  No, only the Donbass republics. And more acceptable than a bloody war, I would have thought. After all, it was always just a question of which particular oligarchs should rule Donbass - Russians or Ukrainians. Financially Donbass would probably be better off with the Russkies in charge. And Putin has never said he wants all of Ukraine, just the Russian bits and not even all of them.
    1
  11896.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  What point are you trying to make? There is rhetoric on both sides, but is the wealth buried in the ground of Donbass is what the war is over. There are still statues of Lenin and Stalin in Donbass, by the way, and several Karl Marx Avenues, as well as war memorials to those who have been killed by Ukraine since 2014. The Alley of Angels in Donetsk commemorates the children who have died.
    1
  11897.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  It's a question of who owns what, and who has the right to it. The mineral wealth of Donbass was developed with Russian money and Russian labour and Russia doesn't want it snatched away and sold to America and Europe. The Russians living in the area tend to agree. Since Ukraine became a country in 1991 Kiev has syphoned off much of the area's wealth, resulting in lower wages and lower profits for the locals. They have been fighting to get their land back since 2014.
    1
  11898.  @sunlesscloud3810  Tell me something new. It's a warzone, what do you expect?
    1
  11899.  @kestutisi  No. By the Ukrainian army.
    1
  11900.  @savelysavely2483  The only reason to build such an army would be to try to take back Crimea and Donbass, wouldn't it? What word would you use for the events of 2014/15 when Poroshenko sent in tanks to shell towns and villages, and the Azov Battalion to murder, rape and torture anyone they caught speaking Russian? Liberation? Crimea is Russian and always has been and the industrial and mining regions of Donbass are Russian too, and always have been. You can't overturn 300 years of history with signatures on buts of paper and lines on maps.
    1
  11901.  @GoreTexTillEndEx  What relevance does any of this have? The build up COULD have remained an exercise if Zelensky had showed some sense and sat down to talk, and Russia's retirement age is still lower than most of Europe's.
    1
  11902.  @kestutisi  It depends where they live, I suppose.
    1
  11903.  @supersaiyan8834  I really don't think these engendered opinions will have a great deal of effect on Russia's future though. This isn't a popularity contest.
    1
  11904.  @bonnie7898  It appears you can. Sending in tanks and torturers to kill and intimidate an entire population is as good a definition of "invasion" as I can think of.
    1
  11905.  @fatmaramadan6928  On what charges exactly?
    1
  11906.  @ivareskesner2019  I simply disagree that the increase in atmospheric carbon due to human activity is sufficient to produce anything like the dramatic effects predicted. This has certainly been the case so far and it seems to me that AGW can only persist as a theory when supported by the egregious alteration of data and scare stories about polar bears and puffins. Conditions on the earth seem to depend largely on its position in relation to the sun and the other planets. This position is constantly changing over cyclic periods of time and this results in wavelike changes in temperature. Each one of these waves has waves within it, with the effects of the solar system's circuit of the galaxy at one extreme and the revolution of the earth on its axis at the other. The composition of the atmosphere, while of obvious importance, is of very secondary significance to the complexities of these movements and the environments in which they take place, and since there is no empirical evidence that increased atmospheric carbon leads to increased surface temperature it seems utterly absurd to base a worldwide economic strategy upon it.
    1
  11907.  @ivareskesner2019  I agree very much with your last statement. The difficulty lies in establishing what the facts are. For instance the stories about low-lying islands "drowning" are not facts. These islands get swept by hurricanes, as ever, but water levels are not rising. Beachfront hotels continue to be built. This is typical of the problems we "deniers" face. There is very little evidence of sea-level rises or increased temperatures, and those that there are can easily be explained by natural cycles. In the middle of the 19th century the earth as as cold as it had been for more than 10,000 years. Since then the temperature has begun to rise in the usual "three steps forward two steps back" fashion dictated by the progress of those "macro" progressions you dismiss so lightly. It is clear these progressions are mathematical and rise and fall according to processes we do not understand. The solar system has a heartbeat, in other words. There is nothing in any way remarkable about the gradual increase in temperature we are currently experiencing. What is very remarkable is the way in which this rise has been manipulated by NASA, NOAA et al to make it appear to coincide with increased atmospheric carbon levels when in fact it does not. It was generally hotter in the 1890's and the 1930's than it is today. The very fact that the proponents of AGW have dismissed such information on the basis that equipment was unreliable is acceptable, I suppose. What is not acceptable is they have replaced the numbers with estimates working back from the theory. Deaths from heat, flood hurricanes and other natural disaster were much, much higher in the past but this has been conveniently overlooked. Not all scientists believe the falsehoods upon which the theory is based. There are 200 to 500 papers published each year calling the theory into question. One of the latest for instance, seems to once again knock holes in the interpretation of the Vostok ice core samples which sparked off the whole mess. (PS don't bother with the NASA paper. I gave up believing anything from that source years ago.)
    1
  11908. Sounds like a suicide pact.
    1
  11909. But the numbers are tiny. And it's reckoned that just about all of the kids who died had pre-existing conditions. And every unnecessary vaccine given is one less that could go to a vulnerable person in a poor country who really needs it. And we still don't know the long-term effects either.
    1
  11910. Trump has no need to turn America into a fascist dictatorship. It already is one. But the dictator is a committee and you don't know their names.
    1
  11911. And so predictable. The UK, the US and the BBC have shockingly low standards when it comes to convincing propaganda.
    1
  11912. Democracy is a delicate plant. It needs light to survive. I firmly believe that the Marxist left, who despise democracy as an obstacle to their ideals, have infiltrated the already corrupt Democrat party to such an extent that democracy is now dead. Anarchy will now ensue.
    1
  11913. I'm rather wondering what the British Government's attitude might have been if, by some miracle, Corbyn had won the election.
    1
  11914. Surely Ukraine must be beginning to wonder if was such a good idea stepping out with that sexy Yank with all his promises? Has Zelensky got his escape plan worked out yet?
    1
  11915. Poland has a chance to vastly increase its world stature by attempting to broker peace in Ukraine. Blind allegiance to NATO imperialism will do it no good in the long run. It will remain just another American lackey.
    1
  11916. This must be the ultimate conceit. To suggest that Putin is not behaving as they predicted can only mean that he is being ill-informed by his own people shows a lack of self-awareness that verges on the psychotic.
    1
  11917. And how many more are going to die now that America is giving them more weapons to continue their pointless fight?
    1
  11918. One wonders what Australia's long term plan is. Since vaccines only provide very partial immunity, and apparently hardly any at all to the frail elderly, and since there is no natural immunity present, Australia has to either stay in lockdown forever or accept the fact that there will be an inevitable wave of illness and deaths. Since the police are brutalising the populace with pepper-spray, rubber bullets and tear gas when they venture to question the official strategy, this outcome is going to be quite hard for the politicians to handle, I would have thought.
    1
  11919. I was utterly uplifted. These people had had enough of cheating, lying politicians which is why they voted for a TV star instead. Now the cheating lying politicians have really outdone themselves to get rid of Trump they are going to get real mad. You ain't seen nothing yet.
    1
  11920.  @laimabalciuniene9629  You'd better be. It has used up only a fraction of its military capability in Ukraine - even without nuclear weapons.
    1
  11921.  @larsrons7937  I don't think "horrible things" are on the cards. Russia just wants to get Donbass back.
    1
  11922. Being offensive is fun.
    1
  11923. Braddon Schultze I hope you never get left any then. What would it say about the people who left it to you?
    1
  11924. Braddon Schulze They keep the world going. You're just jealous you're not one. I expect you think they spend their money on caviare and cigars. They don't. They invest it in projects that provide goods and services people require. This creates more jobs and improves living conditions all round. There are plenty of billionaires further up your food chain sunshine, without whom you'd be starving in the gutter.
    1
  11925. Braddon Schultze You want a revolution? With real blood? Reciprocal arrangements between employers and the employed are not slavery.
    1
  11926. Everyone knew that a Biden administration would mean a big war somewhere in the world. Who knew it would be this bad?
    1
  11927. To many on the right Farage and Reform are not the solution to the country's problems, merely part of the process of solving them.
    1
  11928.  @marclagalle1486  Climate change isn't a science, so any academic qualification in it is utterly worthless.
    1
  11929.  @marclagalle1486  No, by armies of highly-trained scientists. Scientists who have spent their entire careers learning that in order to succeed they must produce the results required of them.
    1
  11930.  @marclagalle1486  Not any more. No scientists in the field of climatology would dare consider advancing ideas which contradict established doctrine to any great degree. To do so means an end to career advancement, higher salaries or research dollars. Equally well, in climatology peer review has become bastardised into a mere system of ensuring compliance.
    1
  11931.  @marclagalle1486  I'd really, really love to see it! But I don't think science works like that any more. Your scientist will be lucky to find a journal to publish in - and his paper will join all the others casting doubts in largely unheeded pre-print. Climate change is an industry, with too many financial and political interests involved for it to be undermined so easily.
    1
  11932.  @edricaldones9639  I quite agree! I would be delighted to have my children and grandchildren married into such families.
    1
  11933.  @scottmcmaster4927  The free world? You mean America and its lackeys?
    1
  11934.  @nickantonakos7702  Why?
    1
  11935.  @nickantonakos7702  You left out the decimal point.
    1
  11936.  @nickantonakos7702 What's your excuse?
    1
  11937. Using Ladas and donkeys is not as sign of losing. It's a sign of lateral thinking on the battlefield.
    1
  11938.  @timothykrause2327  But they an go places machines can't go. And carry things.
    1
  11939. @ Saves on gas though.
    1
  11940. But we do know already requires a different approach. It might be even more different when we know more.
    1
  11941. Here is a brief history of cyclone damage in the area in the 16th century when man-made carbon emissions were non-existent. Before 18th century 1582 – A tropical cyclone impacted the Sundarbans and West Bengal which killed 200,000 people. According to Banglapedia, a five-hour hurricane and thunderstorm destroyed houses and boats in the coast near Bakerganj (presently in Barisal and Patuakhali). Only Hindu temples with a strong foundation were spared.[1] 1584 – A tropical cyclone impacted Bangladesh and killed 200,000 people.[2] 1688 – A tropical cyclone impacted the Sundarbans and West Bengal.[citation needed] 1699 – A tropical cyclone impacted Kolkata and killed 60,000 people.[citation needed]
    1
  11942. nemian618 - and the only country not have suffered the self-inflicted economic wounds of climate hysteria.
    1
  11943. It seems to me the invasion is going exactly according to plan. The Ukrainians have been softened up, their airfields destroyed and further targets identified by hit-and-run advance parties of specialist troops. Now comes the main assault. The only miscalculation Putin may have made is to underestimate the seemingly infinite amount of sanctimonious hypocrisy which exists in the Western world.
    1
  11944. Odd how things were so much better when Trump was in power though.
    1
  11945.  @emm_arr  Economic stability? No wars?
    1
  11946. Like NATO, the UN is becoming less and less relevant.
    1
  11947.  @tomservo5007  It will.
    1
  11948. Yep. fascism is really so simple. I can' think why it isn't more popular.
    1
  11949. It really is time for the West to pack it in. Despite all the fear-mongering Russia is NOT going on some military rampage. It just wants to feel safe. Give it Crimea and Donbass and the bloodshed will stop.
    1
  11950. Putin is too wise a bird to get drawn into this. His forces are crushing Ukraine further south where the real war is and he won't risk losing troops to regain fields and hamlets from temporary Ukraine occupation.
    1
  11951.  @boink800  Well, if I can't educate them I can at least enjoy their impotent rage.
    1
  11952.  @boink800  Well you clearly don't. But I'm more than half convinced you work for the CIA anyway.
    1
  11953. And is he really the natural son of Fidel Castro? His appearance, his mother's proclivities and the timescale certainly indicate that this could well be so. Does it matter either way? Hmm... apples falling close to the tree etc etc...
    1
  11954. I have some very fetching tinfoil hats for sale. Interested?
    1
  11955. One would have thought the powers-that-be would have realised by now that the virus will inevitably find a way around every obstacle they put in its path.
    1
  11956. It's a globalist con trick, and a not very successful one either.
    1
  11957. Rick White The damage is mostly the result of poor management by Green local authorities who have restricted traditional methods of bushfire control, usually to protect rare plants, insects, birds and animals. Those plants, insects, birds and animals are now mostly burned to a crisp. I can't help thinking there's a lesson here somewhere.
    1
  11958. Rick White You are pompous, patronising and misguided as well as being incredibly thick. In what universe would a civilisation build cities inland because they were worried that someone in the future would come up with the crackpot theory that sea levels are going to rise? The climate is changing, as it has always done. There is no crisis. Temperatures will almost certainly increase in coming years but to nothing like the extent predicted in the alarmist computer models which consistently run too hot. This charade has been going on for more than thirty years and not one of the dire predictions has come to pass. Not one.
    1
  11959. SpectatorAlius You are delusional. Name one island nation that has been forced to "flee its lands" Give one scrap of real evidence that sea level rises have been any other than minimal. Name a single extinction event that has been caused by increased atmospheric carbon. Name one period in history when carbon increases have preceded increased temperatures rather than the other way around. The whole concept of AGW is based on false premises, exacerbated by misuse of computer programming. No-one disputes that the Earth's climate is warming; what is very much in dispute is how much increased levels of atmospheric carbon contribute to this.
    1
  11960. Rick White Just a bit. Were you trying to be ironical at some point? I must have taken it at face value since it was seemingly indistinguishable from your presumably non-ironical nonsense.
    1
  11961. Rick White Sorry. Were you being ironical?
    1
  11962. Rick White You missed who I was talking to - your buddy Spectator Alius who did indeed make such a a claim (Sigh! Here we go again.) Miami Beach is sinking;the ocean is not rising. London does not flood and nor do Paris and New York as far as I'm aware. I'm really beginning to think you're taking the piss. Nobody could really be as conceited and ill-informed as you seem to be.
    1
  11963. Rick White Perhaps you might care to take this on board https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  11964. The simple fact is that if Putin uses tactical nukes in Ukraine America has no legal right to do anything about it.
    1
  11965.  @grahvis  You're quite right - but we don't yet know what a proportion of patients suffer long-term ill-effects. All viral infections create such problems to a certain degree - which is one of the reasons why prophylactics and viral reproduction inhibitors are a better choice than antibody stimulators such as vaccines - or so it might seem.
    1
  11966.  @grahvis  Thanks for that. There seems little to be done about this, apart from eliminating cases which may have been created by medical intervention. I suspect that research will throw up the fact that viral infections of all sorts have long-term consequences of which we may have been unaware.
    1
  11967. No they're not.
    1
  11968.  @Asher_Tye  What conspiracy theory? The organisers of the World Economic Forum , which meets with world leaders every year in Davos, Switzerland,, has a long-standing strategy called The Great Reset which aims to restructure capitalism. It is defined as The New World Order. They re quite open about this. Nobody's denying it. It is not a myth. Look it up. It exists and you can either be happy with it or not. I'm not.
    1
  11969.  @merrilouneigenfind104  Do you realise how totally immature and idiotic that makes you sound? Like a parrot, but not as interesting.
    1
  11970.  @Asher_Tye  But the Great Reset is actually under way -unlike the other nonsense you mention. Just look up The World Economic Forum and you will see what I mean. Some very, very intelligent people have decided that the world needs to be restructured and have set about doing so. You might think this is a good thing, personally I don't.
    1
  11971.  @mimsyborogove3906  You really have swallowed all that crap hook, line and sinker, haven't you? Trump is just a pretty ordinary type guy who happened to be born into a heap of money and did what many other ordinary -type guys would like to have done. He is neither evil not nuts and bears no resemblance whatsoever to either Hitler or Mussolini in any shape, degree or form.
    1
  11972.  @mimsyborogove3906  Oddly enough I came to have what respect I have for the man through gradually seeing through all the lies told about him. For the first two years of his Presidency I swallowed the nonsense spewed out by CNN and TYT and so on and, after a while, it rang hollow in my ears. There had to be a reason for this constant stream of insane malice I thought. And there is. Trump didn't climb the greasy political pole. He came to the White House with no political debts to pay off. Every other President has been controlled to some degree. Trump though is his own man. He cannot be controlled or manipulated except through lies. Whatever character faults he may have are vastly outweighed by this simple fact. And he was a good President. And the evidence of fraud and malpractice resulting in his defeat is considerable.
    1
  11973.  @bikerhighmiler8998  You don't know what fascism is. That little dust-up at the Capitol was just a demo that went wrong. God, you people are so GULLIBLE!
    1
  11974.  @billheuber5884  Trump is an unlikely hero, but he represents the interests of the American people as opposed to the interests of globalists. The world needs nationalistic, populist leaders right now otherwise the human race will be turned into a giant ant colony, ruled by a small elite. You will not own anything, but you will be happy. Your entire life will be ruled by the apps on your smartphone. You will do as you are told without question.
    1
  11975.  @bikerhighmiler8998  You are, believe me, utterly wrong in all you say. You are merely regurgitating propaganda of the most simplistic kind. Fascism had a brief existence in Europe in the first half of the 20th century as a direct consequence of the First World War. Now it is just a bogey-word the left use to apply indiscriminately to people who see through their bullshit.
    1
  11976.  @merrilouneigenfind104  Biden read the eulogy at the funeral of a member of the KKK. We could go on like this all day.
    1
  11977. @MIKAEL S1 You started it! But OK.
    1
  11978. @MIKAEL S1 What hate, division, bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny? I hope that in time you will realise how much you have been brainwashed into believing such nonsense. The political left merely levels such charges against the right because it relies upon hatred and resentment to succeed. The right represents freedom and generally doesn't care a damn about what other people think and do, unless it creates disharmony. The left, on the other hand, demands obedience and reinforces its demands with several well-established psychological tricks, one of which is to ritually demonise its opponents.
    1
  11979.  @merrilouneigenfind104  I am not sure what point you are trying to make. In point of fact I have several daughters and several grand-daughters as well.
    1
  11980. @MIKAEL S1 Have they moved to luxury mansions in the Hollywood Hills perhaps?
    1
  11981.  @merrilouneigenfind104  Your sympathy is misplaced. They are all doing well and are happy.
    1
  11982. @MIKAEL S1 Some conspiracies are real conspiracies, you realise.
    1
  11983. How utterly stupid. It is already clear that vaccinations are of even less use against Omicron that they are against previous strains. This could be the biggest mistake Germany has made since Hitler invaded Russia!
    1
  11984. @Dmon ! Wrong again. As far as Omicron is concerned it is hopeful that it could be following Smith's Law of Declining Virulence which postulates gradually increasing transmissibility with gradually decreasing virulence. The bad news is that it is apparently successful in evading not only vaccines but natural immunity through infection. What is even more troubling is that it appears to be capable of evading natural immunity in pre-pubescent children, which no previous variant has succeeded in doing. We just have to hope that the second part of Smith's Law holds true in this instance.
    1
  11985. @Dmon ! I have noticed you constantly use the word "spewing." Do you suffer from deep feelings of inner disgust by any chance?
    1
  11986. @Dmon ! Still spewing, huh? If you had managed to understand Proff Fenton's analysis you would realise the probability that despite the considerable numbers of lives saved by vaccinations, long-term reliance upon them can only result in extending the pandemic, thus resulting in a greater loss of life in the long run. This is aside from any potential damage caused by severe individual reactions. Fingers crossed that Mother Nature, in the shape of the Omicron variant, will be able to rescue us from the self-inflicted damage created by GOF research and exacerbated by a vaccination programme tailored to fit the financial ambitions of drug companies.
    1
  11987. Opinions based on jealousy and paranoia. How disappointing.
    1
  11988.  @Nonexistent_Hero  It is pretty self-explanatory.
    1
  11989.  @BarmyDeer  All elections in Ukraine and Russia are corrupt and the results are faked, one way or another. And the UN ceased to provide anything resembling an objective analysis of anything decades ago. There have been many independent videos and blogs made in Crimea since the annexation. All seem to report that the majority of the population are generally happy to be back in Russia, despite the unfair sanctions placed upon it by the West. This is unsurprising since, as in Donbass, Kiev has pursued a policy of enforced de-Russification in these predominantly Russian provinces which have also suffered major economic downturns under Ukrainian rule.
    1
  11990. Very well said. It's refreshing to see an intelligent and informed comment in this channel for once.
    1
  11991.  @emm_arr  You've got trolls on the brain!
    1
  11992. And last week they hated each other.A semi-senile racist and sex offender (#metoo) and a woman who has sent thousands of black Americans to jail for marijuana possession. A dream ticket - for Donald Trump.
    1
  11993. Donald Trump's power lies in the fact that he has access to the hearts and minds of millions upon millions of ordinary Americans. That's because he's basically just an ordinary Joe who happens to have born into big money and is possessed of a certain amount of animal cunning. He has done more or less what most of those ordinary Americans would have done in his shoes, and that's why they love him. And will continue to do so. And to vote for him, or whoever he nominates to succeed him.
    1
  11994.  @Normskiblue  Well America does.
    1
  11995. Right now that's called the Labour Party.
    1
  11996. In the short term. But disaster will strike before the next election and Farage will pick up the pieces.
    1
  11997. and even then......
    1
  11998. Are they spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise? I'd dearly love to know.
    1
  11999. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Wf8i7ztyA
    1
  12000. The Ukraine war has thrown America's many enemies together. It was heading for a crash anyway but now it is closer and will be very, very severe. America has, quite simply, just got too big for its boots.
    1
  12001.  @Jack-zf3rz  Five countries plus the 20 or so lining up to join, including the Gulf States, Egypt. Algeria etc etc. Its going to be the rest of the world vs America and Europe - plus perhaps Japan, Canada and a few other odds and ends. Even Japan might jump ship.
    1
  12002. Russia, America and the UK are natural allies, now that the taint of Communism has finally been removed.
    1
  12003.  @hylkeheidstra2274  Through lowering energy costs, primarily. Abandoning net zero nonsense and renewables and returning to fossil fuels - plus nuclear - should show rapid results in this area, enabling American manufacturers to compete with foreign competition more readily.
    1
  12004. I haven't heard of Heard Immunity, but we are heading for Herd Immunity right now.
    1
  12005. There seems to be no tribunal whose remit extends to dealing with these allegations. Even if there were no judge would risk destroying his/her career by accepting such dangerous cases. If there was extensive chicanery (and I believe there was) it was very professionally done and it would be remarkable if the perpetrators had not covered their tracks equally expertly.
    1
  12006. Russia has no imperialist ambitions. Been there, done that. Got the tee-shirt.
    1
  12007. This could work both ways - but the fact is that USAID takes money from private sources as well the taxpayer. A major contributor is George Soros, through his foundations.
    1
  12008. So very well done! As a man of 70 wondering desperately what kind of world his grandchildren are going to find themselves in, your clear analysis of current affairs is a great help. Since it seems likely that by the time they are my age this country will be majority Muslim it would be interesting to find out what shape that religion is likely to be in by the end of the present century. Anyone have any ideas?
    1
  12009. It was a demo! A sit-in!
    1
  12010. They want to BUY them, not invade them!
    1
  12011. The establishment simply won't LET Trump win! All they are doing now is building up a set of excuses for the jaw-dropping fact of the re-election of their senile glove-puppet.
    1
  12012. Again, Phil is betraying his political innocence. Trump is trolling, but like all good trolls, there is a hard grain of truth in his comments. The fact that he has not "ruled out" military intervention leads you to concentrate on this fearsome prospect, whereas, in reality, Trump is manipulating opinion in order that the very real and quite attractive prospect of Greenland, Canada and Panama coming under US control by peaceful and financially beneficial means will seem a better option.
    1
  12013.  @Pikaling3408  I am positively quivering in fear.
    1
  12014.  @Pikaling3408  I really don't quite see that. Care to elaborate?
    1
  12015. Racism is perfectly natural. It is a deeply ingrained survival technique. Virtue signalling is similar.
    1
  12016.  @melon-cl  That was then and this is now. The situation has changed and no treaty last forever. In fact 30 years is a pretty good run.
    1
  12017.  @mikedon5205  Far less than the Ukrainians and their chums did. Instead of using them as a basis for peace they simply bought time for NATO to spend billions of dollars on arming Ukraine. They completely ignored the provisions intended to allow regional autonomy to the Donbass republics. Russia helped the separatists certainly, but not officially. It was how the Wagner Group was formed.
    1
  12018.  @mikedon5205  I'm afraid it is you who are clueless. NATO archives and US Department of State archives have details of the many billions of dollars spent on arming and training the Ukrainians after 2016. It's no secret. It is not in dispute. As I said, Minsk failed, but it failed because of bad faith by the Ukrainians and their allies. Russia responded by forming a private army to defend the Russians living in Donbass from the Azov Brigades and the like, but the treaty had already been broken by the other side.
    1
  12019.  @melon-cl  It certainly did. The amounts involved are a matter of public record and amount to a sum exceeding $25billion.
    1
  12020.  @mikedon5205  I'm afraid it is you who don't have much of a clue, which is hardly surprising since America and its NATO allies aren't all that keen on publicising the fact that between them they spent something over $25billion on arming Ukraine after 2014. Nonetheless the sums involved are, for the most part, a matter of public record and can be found on both NATO and US State Department websites.
    1
  12021.  @melon-cl  Who says what constitutes a Sovereign State? What does the term even MEAN?
    1
  12022.  @melon-cl  Now you are being merely obtuse. NATO and America facilitated the colossal growth of the Ukrainian army post 2014. The billions passed over to their chums in the arms trade came from American and European coffers. What arrangements were made for Ukraine to pay the money back I don't know, but since Russia now seems set to keep control of the vast mineral wealth of Crimea and Donbass the chances are they won't be getting it anytime soon. Damned good job too, say I.
    1
  12023.  @melon-cl  NATO countries, predominantly America, facilitated the re-armament of Ukraine either by lending its government money, or by donating equipment and training . None of this was done for nothing. I don't know what arrangements were made for reimbursement, but since the Russians now seem likely to retain a hold on the mineral riches of Donbass and Crimea I doubt that the debt will be repaid any time soon. Good job too.
    1
  12024.  @mikedon5205  I don't see it as propaganda as such. I merely think it is important that people should be aware of the full dimensions of the situation instead of unquestioningly believing the genuine propaganda served up by the Western media. Russia has a genuine grievance and genuine reasons for taking the actions it has, whether you agree with them or not.
    1
  12025. So the plan is to to impoverish Trump my manipulating the very wonderful and corrupt judicial system, and then accuse him of being corrupt because he is poor? How very cunning, I don't think.
    1
  12026.  @bangbangcan2  Which one? I guess the silly old YouTube censorship algorithm has deleted whatever it was you expected me to respond to. Try again?!
    1
  12027.  @kingflynxi9420  You have a point, actually. But it is still NATO's fault.
    1
  12028.  @georgedorn1022  Neither. It is you who is misinformed.
    1
  12029. Keep chewing the cornstalks.
    1
  12030.  @mindfuleats4517  Not only are we being conned, we're having our faces rubbed in it. People are so stupid and gullible. Make them angry, make them afraid and then make them feel all warm and virtuous inside and they lose all reason. You can do anything with them. The Nazis knew it and the Marxists still know it.
    1
  12031.  @shannonwasserman3653  Grow up. Or see a doctor.
    1
  12032. Then the governing elites of Britain have done their job well.
    1
  12033.  @dragonade85  PS. This was just released this morning. It is real history, not sly propaganda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep-OJ3L1Phk
    1
  12034.  @ry1023.3  Do you really imagine Russia would be bothered to risk lives and face the consequences of trying to control the UK population? What single scrap of evidence is there for such a fantasy?
    1
  12035. @ No. And there has nothing happened in the last 20 years which offers to slightest scrap of evidence for Russia wanting to do anything more than secure its borders and existing economic interests. Zero. Nothing. Zilch.
    1
  12036. @ No he isn't . He's trying to stop the West stealing Russia's mineral interests in the east.
    1
  12037.  @T5Zplayer  What evidence is there that Russia has either the desire or the capability of going to war with Britain?
    1
  12038.  @ry1023.3  Nonsense. Russia wants Britain like a hole in the head.
    1
  12039.  @davecooper3238  He's not.
    1
  12040. @ Which of these events has indicated in any way that Russia wants to invade or go to war with Britain?
    1
  12041. @ Face the truth. You irrational fears are being played.
    1
  12042. I suppose that's why they keep getting voted back in, is it?
    1
  12043. My gut instinct tells me that the Deep State will steal the election from Trump and this will result in civil war.
    1
  12044.  @AngelaH2222  The American Dream died long ago.
    1
  12045.  @swanvictor887  Stuff your pity.
    1
  12046.  @AngelaH2222  I think it's going to be great. Epic.
    1
  12047.  @swanvictor887  Keep your pity.
    1
  12048.  @swanvictor887  The feeling is mutual.
    1
  12049.  @swanvictor887  And a Happy New Year to you too.
    1
  12050.  @jeremymanson1781  We shall see.
    1
  12051. It's what your right arm's for.
    1
  12052. I was jubilant this morning, Now I'm a little sad to see how these decent people have all been so badly let down by their party. I think the truth is that the Conservative party has adapted to a changing world, while Labour has not, It has outlived its usefulness. and must be replaced by a more pragmatic, dogma-free organisation if democracy is to survive in this country.
    1
  12053. Rene Moncayo Pretty much, yes. Go for evolved solutions. Adapt. Stop believing you have all the answers. Stop thinking something is right because it gives you a nice fuzzy feeling inside. That sort of thing.
    1
  12054. It is as yet by no means certain that Russia will lose its bases in Syria. Yet again our armchair warmongers are stirring up the trouble that pays their wages.
    1
  12055.  @Blanka1100  Is it greedy to try to keep hold of something being taken away from you?
    1
  12056.  @marktrotter8971  That's not going to happen. Who is entitled to say what those borders are, anyway?
    1
  12057.  @Sidicas  They weren't Ukraine's nukes. They were Soviet (ie Russian) nukes that were simply stationed there.
    1
  12058.  @Blanka1100  Ukraine is not even Ukraine. It is a mish-mash. Russia created the present borders for Russia's convenience back in Soviet days. Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine as it is today have far greater economic and social ties to Moscow than they do to Kiev. The Russian Federation is not the USSR and has no territorial ambitions other than to maintain the security of its borders and its existing commercial and economic interests. It has refused to allow itself to be subjected to US dominance following the collapse of the USSR and it is a great tragedy that this refusal should have led to the present dire situation.
    1
  12059.  @Blanka1100  What crime? And Russia considers Crimea and Donbass to be Russian, and therefore to have been stolen from it first via a treaty and secondly through armed opposition to the separatist movement.
    1
  12060.  @Blanka1100  The Budapest Memorandum was a flawed treaty which ceased to have relevance practically before the ink had dried. It is, in effect, the cause of the present troubles. I don't know what you mean by the "victim card." Russia is certainly the victim of many deliberate misunderstandings. The fact is that instead of welcoming the Russian Federation after the collapse of the USSR America insisted on treating it with enmity - because the US war machine needs a permanent enemy in order to justify its existence.
    1
  12061.  @unclescipio3136  I meant aggressor in terms of international law. At the same time more than ten thousand people have been killed by Ukrainian armed forces in Donbass over the past eight years. Seems pretty aggressive to me.
    1
  12062.  @wojteks4712  Russia can now argue in terms of international law that Ukraine is the aggressor in this conflict. The bridge is Russian as are the provinces currently being invaded/liberated by the Ukrainians. They have already killed around ten thousand people there, even before the Russian annexation.
    1
  12063.  @cameron6770  Or maybe not.
    1
  12064.  @parabeiium7075  What's logical about escalating a war when there are diplomatic solutions available? Unless you are an arms dealer or a politician in the pay of oligarchs, of course.
    1
  12065.  @norsenomad  A pathetic loser who is within a hairsbreadth of achieving all his military objectives in Ukraine, while NATO can't even tie its own shoelaces.
    1
  12066.  @thehurricane4047  I really do think reports of Vlad's death might be a bit exaggerated!
    1
  12067. It's what Biden's buffoons in the Pentagon want. Putin is only responding to US colonisation of Ukraine.
    1
  12068. Everyone in their right mind knows that the invasion was caused by Putin being insane and Zelensky being a saint who wants nothing more than to bring freedom and democracy to his country!
    1
  12069. The woke Democrats have created a world of utter fantasy. The lies and manipulation must surely soon be obvious to all. They must die and their media accomplices must die with them. Hasten the day!
    1
  12070. No. Quite right. It's due to it being revealed as a mere conduit of globalist elitism.
    1
  12071. There will be food and fuel shortages this winter, perhaps unprecedented since World War II. But the effects of Brexit play only a relatively small part. The chaos caused by the war in Ukraine and the hysterical over-reaction to the covid "pandemic" are really the major factors, along with the equally hysterical response to the so-called "climate crisis."
    1
  12072. Britain jailed people for opposing our two wars with Germany you know.
    1
  12073. Does Putin really care what other countries think? He knows he's winning the long game and that Kursk is just an irritating diversion by the Ukrainians - who really DO care what other countries think.
    1
  12074. At last. A sane and informed voice.
    1
  12075. Except in the East where the mining already takes place and which, of course, is done by Russians.
    1
  12076. Islamism has replaced Communism as the West's greatest enemy.
    1
  12077. If you kill chickens, you don't get eggs. This is a simple economic truth.
    1
  12078.  @smellslikethinice1107  The only power I have is trying to convince my MP to help have him replaced as soon as possible. We thought we were getting a proper Tory who would stand up to alarmist, destructive left-wing idiocies. Instead we got Jeremy Corbyn in a fat suit.
    1
  12079.  @smellslikethinice1107  I am retired so it didn't apply. PS. Try "rail" instead of "rally" . I think it was probably the word you were looking for.
    1
  12080.  @smellslikethinice1107  It wasn't so much spelling as picking a word that sounded similar to the one you really wanted. I was only trying to be helpful. Standards of education are so poor among the working classes these days, so it's hardly your fault. I grew up in the Days of Wilson and Heath, and Wilson was the better man. It was of course Mrs Thatcher who opened the doors of home ownership to the working classes by allowing them to buy their council houses dirt cheap. And a jolly good thing too. Education has been ravaged by Marxist ideology infecting Universities and teacher training colleges. I can't comment on health benefits since I go private and am seldom ill, but I daresay you're right. Tories can be some right mean bastards sometimes.
    1
  12081.  @smellslikethinice1107  How did "right to buy" shaft the housing market? I'm not saying it did or it didn't but I'd like to know how. It certainly gave a great many people a sense of responsibility and taught them about pride of ownership.
    1
  12082.  @smellslikethinice1107  I see your point here to a certain extent. It is certainly true that renting property was far more commonplace back in the last century, but whether this was due to tenants' rights or a host of economic factors I cannot rightly say. It strikes me that this comparatively recent habit of people of relatively modest means buying one or two properties in order to rent them out while waiting for a housing boom before selling them on is quite problematic. Owning property for rent is a tremendous responsibility, and not very profitable. People who are in a poor debt situation should not do it. I think you will find that larger owners of rentable domestic properties, to say nothing of Housing Associations, are far more likely to give tenants leeway in times of financial difficulty such as at present. On the whole though I think you are correct. The legislation needs review.
    1
  12083.  @smellslikethinice1107  And very much the same to you. (Capitalism isn't so bad actually, once you get the hang of it. It's some of the buggers who are capitalists who are the problem!}
    1
  12084. Only in the better areas.
    1
  12085. The scientific studies you mention are all fixed by Big Pharma because hydroxychloroquine is incredbly cheap and seems to work in the field if used properly. If introduced they will lose vast sums. The "scientific studies" use insanely huge doses administered far too frequently on patients too far advanced in the illness for the drug to be effective.
    1
  12086.  @MrThingstodotoday  Just go to any of the studies published on the internet. There are many. You will find that they are carried out on hospital patients already in a relatively advanced stage where HCO, essentially a preventative, is of no use. Dosage, based on a formula related to bodyweight, is usually given twice a day. Doctors in the field use extremely small doses, combined with zinc and an antibiotic given twice A WEEK. It has to be done either before symptoms appear or within the first two days. It denies territory to the virus, preventing them from attacking cells, particularly in the lungs. This has all been explained in the several videos published on Saturday and now banned by all social media outlets. I will try to get one through to you but on a following post. We might as well be living in Soviet Russia, All attempts to spread this wonderful news are being suppressed by sinister forces. Perhaps you will let me know if it gets through.
    1
  12087.  @MrThingstodotoday  As promised,the opposing view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYkIK6-TNok
    1
  12088.  @MrThingstodotoday  Er, Google hydroxychloroquine studies?
    1
  12089. The "experts" in the West have got just about everything wrong that could be got wrong. This does not bode well.
    1
  12090. The criteria for "covid death" vary all over the country. The only way to get a handle on the true impact of covid is to match the projected death rate for 2020 against the actual death rate .Even then you can be sure that many of the extra deaths were due to lockdowns, rather than the disease itself. It was supposed to be 9.4 per 1,000. It turned out to be 10.2. By far the largest amount of covid-related deaths occurred in people over 90.
    1
  12091. I.m only surprised they didn't mention the shocking lack of mask-wearing and social distancing. The lefty presenter looked as though he was chewing feathers.
    1
  12092. Russia leads the world in nuclear reactor rechnology. There is nothing to fear
    1
  12093.  @emm_arr  No. It's a simple fact. Russia is the go-to country for building and maintaining nuclear reactors . They are all over the world with Turkey and Hungary being the latest customers.
    1
  12094.  @emm_arr  Just check it.
    1
  12095.  @clarecrawford9677  I don't think it matters. I expect they are benign and decent and, like the policies of the other parties, very unlikely to come to fruition.
    1
  12096. Yes. And it was one of the main factors in starting this war. The 2021 deal made Russia's position impossible.
    1
  12097. @ It's not propaganda though. It is merely the correction of several widely-held misapprehensions.
    1
  12098. @ Yup.
    1
  12099.  @iandennis7836  Who's Noel?
    1
  12100.  @jlcTTT  But from where else other than the rich are the poor to gain their sustenance?
    1
  12101.  @shiftymcgee9359  I don't think Ukraine will be joining NATO any time soon. And Putin holds Donbass, which is the major prize.
    1
  12102.  @Filmstudent3663  While "Ukrainising" the large Russian population, selling off oil, coal and steel to the US, killing at least five thousand ethnic Russians and cosying up to NATO.
    1
  12103.  @sebcw1204  Crimea is Russian.
    1
  12104.  @rossguidice4439  No. I just know more history than you do.
    1
  12105.  @deborahfreedman333  It doesn't. It just wants to keep its borders secure from NATO aggression.
    1
  12106.  @cteal2018  Ukraine had built up a large army, paid for and trained by NATO, and was planning to retake Crimea and quell the Russian-backed uprisings in Donbass, as well as flirting with NATO. To Russia, that's provocation.
    1
  12107.  @Filmstudent3663  If only it was that simple. Ukraine's large mineral resources were developed and financed by Russia, and it was mainly Russians who worked in the mines and factories, and still do. So long as Ukraine remained in Russia's sphere of influence, and channelled its product through Russia, all was well. But the Ukrainians were in the process of transferring their allegiance - and their gas, coal, oil and steel etc, to the West, mostly the US. To add insult to injury it was hoping to join NATO, Russia's biggest enemy. This made Russia very unhappy. The civil war in Donbass is well-documented in any number of independent sources. It began after the Maidan riots in 2014 when the Russian-leaning premier was deposed. The total number of deaths up until now was generally held to be some 14,000 but this includes Ukrainian and separatist fighters, not just civilians. The new premier, Poroshenko, initiated a savage campaign, shelling towns and villages at letting the fanatically anti Russian Azov Brigade loose in an orgy of murder, rape and torture. This is all documented in official reports by the UN, Amnesty International and other bodies.
    1
  12108.  @karinjohansson7262  Crimea is Russian. Open a history book.
    1
  12109.  @natalieturko4808  What makes you think the standard of living in Ukraine is better?
    1
  12110.  @Thulgore  The Russian Federation has escaped the USSR. Both sides have broken treaties. Difference is Budapest was flawed, Mink was engineered to fail.
    1
  12111.  @tatumsh9  It would take several paragraphs. Do you have the necessary reading ability?
    1
  12112.  @rossguidice4439  I'm 74.
    1
  12113. First they came for the illegal immigrant drug dealers, Then they came for the Communist agitators. Then they came for the anti- Semites, Then they came for the over-privileged supporters of violence, Then they came for me ..but I had done nothing wrong, so they let me go.
    1
  12114.  @SianaGearz  Oil and gas will be providing energy till oil and gas run out is a few hundred years time. Sanctions are no match for market forces either. But it is of course rare earth minerals, particularly lithium, which is at the heart of this conflict. Donbass has tonnes of it and everyone wants it. You appear to have fallen for some airy-fairy notions about economics which sound just dandy in the classroom, but which disappear in a puff of smoke when they meet the world of reality.
    1
  12115.  @SonsOfLorgar  Belated thanks for that info. I wonder how well-guarded these facilities are.
    1
  12116.  @adamnevraumont4027  Here's a prediction for you: some time in the next 20/30 years, or perhaps even sooner, it will gradually be discovered that increased atmospheric carbon does not, in fact, cause increased global warming but merely acts as filtering system. Shock! Horror! AGW is a scam, designed to place artificial value on a product, thus enabling its price to be manipulated. Like any Ponzi scheme the time will come when it will have to crash, but this clever get-out will enable its perpetrators to simply move on to the next con-trick.
    1
  12117. Do you realise that Poroshenko is entirely culpable in the making of this war? His assault on the civilians of Donbass is a prime cause of it and he himself is suspected of making millions by banning the import of coal from the region, buying it up cheap himself, and then selling it on by pretending it came from South Africa!
    1
  12118. There is no Republican Party. There us no Democrat Party. There is just the Uniparty which divvies up the cake and swaps jobs from time to time . The only opposition comes from MAGA's Freedom Caucus, which has just won a great victory in its bid to return America to something resembling a free democracy.
    1
  12119. Especially when they're actually doing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY&t=
    1
  12120. Ukrainian lies have fuelled this war from the outset.
    1
  12121. He doesn't drink.
    1
  12122. There is even the horrible possibility that Big Pharma actually commissions poorly conducted studies into cheap alternatives to its products. In this way they can later be exposed to criticism, and thus undermine the credibility of genuine research.
    1
  12123. Wrong. Ukraine has chosen hypocrisy, not democracy,
    1
  12124.  @khiem1939  One or two Ukrainians as well.
    1
  12125. This new type of the virus has probably only come about because of government shilly-shallying. There's every chance there's an even more infectious strain already here which will now take prime position.
    1
  12126. NATO is an anomaly. It was created to protect the West from the Soviet Union - but the Soviet Union no longer exists.
    1
  12127.  @DacianRider  The Russian Federation is an entirely different country to the Soviet Union. Why would it wish to repeat the mistakes of its predecessor? It has shown no signs of wanting to do so.
    1
  12128. Adaptability is the key.
    1
  12129. Grey Wolf How does one get to be an oligarch I wonder?
    1
  12130. Jared Garbo But there must bec a lot of work involved. Being an oligarch must be pretty stressful and time-consuming. Why don't they just play golf and stuff?
    1
  12131. Grey Wolf Then no nice, warm-hearted cuddly oligarchs then?
    1
  12132.  @techtipsuk  I'll send you some on a separate post. They might well get blocked though. I would be VERY grateful if you could get back to me telling me whether or not you have received them. YouTube (or whoever) has seemed to have stopped actually deleting these links, but shadow-banning them, which is extremely frustrating.
    1
  12133.  @techtipsuk  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lsoV_6ZCZc&t=70s Old ladies cemented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfTEgC4kIw&t=32s Lancaster shelter rescue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY Azov shoots refugees
    1
  12134.  @techtipsuk  Did you get them?
    1
  12135.  @boink800  Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha
    1
  12136. Little Goody Twoshoes!
    1
  12137. Nobody should care much. To a kid covid just means a runny nose.
    1
  12138.  @boink800  I really think Ukraine are admitting they can't keep it, which is why they are doing this silly thing in Kursk.
    1
  12139.  @boink800  Well it doesn't seem to have done a great deal of harm.
    1
  12140.  @WolfAngelRock  Most intelligent people do.
    1
  12141.  @WolfAngelRock  I'm afraid it is you who is the victim of propaganda. Russia cannot control Ukraine, only the mineral rich parts where there is a substantial Russian population. As to the progress of the war, Ukraine has fought brilliantly and bravely but it cannot expect to resist the Russian advance forever.
    1
  12142. America's bitch. (ie the UK)
    1
  12143.  @clarecrawford9677  I can't find it either! The changes are certainly incorporated in the party's current constitution. My guess would be they are waiting for the AGM in January to formally register the change?
    1
  12144. Gary Sarela We are inside the sun. That big yellow thing in the sky is merely the nucleus of the organism we inhabit. Regular waves of incomprehensible energies sweep across the planet in accord with celestial rhythms of incomprehensible antiquity. The climate scientists you regard so highly are trapped inside Plato's cave, earnestly measuring the flickering shadows on the wall.
    1
  12145. Me Miami is on a sinking sandbar and I know of no town in the UK which is being "decommissioned", whatever that means. I live here so I should have been told. Are you spreading idiotic alarmist propaganda or just a victim of it?
    1
  12146. Me Just Google the geology.
    1
  12147. Me I haven't mentioned Australia. Looking forward to finding out about the English town though.
    1
  12148. Me Fairbourne is in Wales, not England. It is not the victim of rising sea levels, because sea levels are only rising by fractions of a centimetre. This small fishing village was built on land subject to both erosion and subsidence. It has a large sea wall to protect it. This wall was built many years ago, long before atmospheric C02 began to rise. The idiotic scare story about it being drowned by climate warming is typical of the ridiculous propaganda put out to support alarmist lies. You have to be as thick as shit to believe it. Fairbourne has no tide gauge but gauges in towns and villages up and down the nearby coast show little or no appreciable rises in sea levels.
    1
  12149. Me Which residents?
    1
  12150. Me Which residents? What coal?
    1
  12151. Me Just Google it. Fairbourne. Miami sandbar. Easy. You'll find that the local council ar Fairbourne is worried by the alarmists' insane predictions about sea rise. The village is already below sea level, protected by the sea-wall built in 1865. The council has fallen for the story that sea levels will rise high enough in 50 years time to top the wall. Residents are deeply puzzled, and rather annoyed by the effect this nonsense has had on house prices. Their chief concern is that the council is using this as an excuse not to maintain and repair the sea-wall. If it breaks the village will indeed be flooded. The sand bar at Miami is a prime tourist attraction. It stretches far inland and extensive building projects have caused the sand to compress, giving the illusion that sea levels are rising. Hotel building work is being carried out on the ocean front even now. Try Google earth for a picture of all the cranes. I still don't understand what you are blathering about on the subject of coal. PS articles in newspapers or TV segments don't count as evidence by the way. I used to be a journalist, so I know.
    1
  12152. Me Apologies likewise, and yours accepted. I have no other sources other than what little common sense I possess.I would imagine that increased flooding is due to increased building work and increased pressure on the complex land drainage system. These occurrences are usually man-made -and I don't mean by man-made carbon emissions! In the Mississippi Delta, for example, land loss has been blamed on global warming. A simple examination of the facts proves it is clearly due to the inadequacies of the system of levees there. Over in Africa AGW is blamed for the dramatic shrinking of Lake Chad whereas it has been caused by badly designed and managed dams.The list goes on and on. I am deeply suspicious of the whole AGW bandwagon. There are political and financial motives at work here. I am beginning to see why scientists believe what they believe, and they are mostly honest folk, but they are being manipulated as much as the rest of us.
    1
  12153. Me Good luck with your researches. One thing you might want to bear in mind is that if the flooding in Miami is due to poorly designed and constructed building developments, then the developers could be faced with huge insurance claims. Blaming rising sea levels will get them off the hook. And they will be able to dig up any amount of "expert" opinion saying this is the case.
    1
  12154. Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CffMifh73ZE&t=914s I'm afraid you may have to bathe yourself in holy water before watching this video, because it is the work of the Devil himself. Try to see it through though. You might get some idea of the tricks NOAA and NASA get up to in producing the "evidence" you have just discovered.
    1
  12155.  @luisekjeldsen1515  You've been propagandised. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are Russian, and only included in Ukraine because Russia had appended them on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for administrative reasons. Russia has tried for twenty years to peacefully resolve the anomalies but Zelensky - a Western puppet - has instead been told to lead his country into a bloody and needless war - in pursuit of profit for Western agencies to which he is indebted.
    1
  12156.  @luisekjeldsen1515  Russia has tried for more than twenty years to peacefully resolve the territorial anomalies resulting from the creation of the new country of Ukraine, much of the Eastern part of which is essentially Russian, and Ukrainian in name only. Putin has been forced into the grim necessity of war because instead of continuing to trade the vast mineral resources of these areas with Russia, Zelensky has been "persuaded" to sign them over to the West, despite the fact that they have been developed by Russia and worked by Russians for hundreds of years.
    1
  12157.  @wlhjr77  But where is Ukraine? The Eastern parts and Crimea are essentially Russian and Ukrainian in name only, and then only because they were included in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine - at Russia's behest and for purely logistical and administrative reasons. So tell Ukraine to give Russia back what belongs to Russia.
    1
  12158.  @wlhjr77  If Ukraine uses NATO technology to launch missiles into Russia then that is a declaration of war with Russia. Russia will respond. We cannot say how but it could be something very terrible indeed.
    1
  12159.  @albertopendola2201  I firmly predict that it will be proved than the wearing of facemasks during the pandemic will, in the long run, have killed more people than were saved. Take that seriously.
    1
  12160.  @albertopendola2201  In many country excess deaths are now higher than they were during the pandemic. Lockdowns, isolation AND FACE NAPPIES have interfered with the usual process by which people catch illnesses in a mild form, and so develop immunity. This means than more virulent pathogens will come to the fore. Very severe influenzas will ravage us, and other nasties such as strep and scarlet fever will (and already are) killing our children in unprecedented numbers.
    1
  12161.  @akylrysgal6242  Oh yes.
    1
  12162. You are confusing territorial gains with strategic advantage.
    1
  12163.  @AD-gt6zh  I was actually referring to the battlefield situation, but to answer your questions: Turkey is blocking these bids, but even if they go through it won't matter to Russia, since Russia has no territorial ambitions in this direction. Europe will have to largely fall back on highly expensive, tanker- transported oil and LRPG, thus fuelling inflation and inevitable economic decline. Russia will sell its products to new markets such as China, India and Pacific rim countries. further eroding Western dominance of world economics.
    1
  12164.  @AD-gt6zh  Russia wants Crimea to be recognised as part of Russia - which it historically is - and to continue to benefit from the mineral resources of Donbass, which Russia and Russians have developed. I doubt Russia will ever become a vassal state of China, but a useful partnership is likely. China has considerable manufacturing capacity, but needs gas and oil. Far from weakening Russia, there is every chance the war will strengthen it. It will benefit from new economic ties while America, $31 trillion in debt and likely to default on its debt repayments soon, is heading for a major financial burn-out which will spread to all its allies and ITS vassals. The proxy war in Ukraine can now be seen as just another military failure also.
    1
  12165. There is every chance that Russia will retain control of its bases in Syria.
    1
  12166. Quite apart from the fact that one of the Tories' biggest donors is very patriotic Ukrainian, I think we over-estimate the influence the "oligarchs" have on Putin's policies, or his nation's wealth. They mostly hate his guts and he'll still get his cut whatever minor inconveniences we put them to.
    1
  12167. The conceit, greed and incompetence of the US military intelligence network have led directly to this dreadful situation. The only way Ukraine can come even close to winning is if America and its allies continue to pour further wasted billions down its throat.
    1
  12168. Amused contempt is even harder.
    1
  12169. I do.
    1
  12170. I bet these were arm and shoulder shots, intended to disable. Seven head or body shots at that range would almost certainly have killed him.
    1
  12171. Then Putin moves on to Odessa.
    1
  12172. writercnsidered Have you visited the We Don't Have Time website? They are environmentalists who also have a neat way of making money.
    1
  12173. @ US and NATO aggression for more than thirty years.
    1
  12174. @ The West. Which has consistently sought to undermine the Russian Federation ever since its creation, and has been instrumental in engineering discontent in neighbouring countries.
    1
  12175.  @Paul-md8de  Us. From more than thirty years of Western agencies trying to undermine Russia's stability and sow dissent among neighbouring countries.
    1
  12176.  @bluemarlin8138  This territory was mistakenly given to Ukraine when the country was formed in 1991. Russia wants it back - and the many Russians living there want to go back too.
    1
  12177. @ Us. The US and its NATO stooges.
    1
  12178. @ From us. From the US and NATO which have consistently attempted to undermine Russia and sow discord among neighbouring countries.
    1
  12179. @ And you have to be at special level of obtuseness not to see it. The whole of Ukraine was Russian until comparatively recently and Russian companies still own many of its resources, which are staffed by Russians. Kiev's treatment of these resources and people have led Russia to reclaim them.
    1
  12180.  @pavelhromadka658  But Ukraine is not a proper country. It is a cobbled together mishmash with great chunks of Russia in it.
    1
  12181.  @petefrys545  It signed a deal with the EU in 2021.
    1
  12182.  @petefrys545  Both sides have committed war crimes. It is foolish to believe that Ukrainians and all saints and Russians are all monsters.
    1
  12183. ​ @petefrys545  The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the European Union and Ukraine on a Strategic Partnership on Raw Materials. It was signed on 13 July 2021. This partnership aims to enhance cooperation in the field of raw materials and batteries, focusing on sustainable mining practices, integration of critical raw materials and battery value chains, and closer collaboration in research and innovation.
    1
  12184. @ But the SSR was not a country - except to get Stalin another seat at the UN.
    1
  12185. @ The Ukrainian National Republic was an idea more than a country. The Bolsheviks actually altered its claimed boundaries slightly when they took over, but that is hardly the point. There is no history of prolonged unity, other than that imposed by the SU, in the history of the country called Ukraine.
    1
  12186. @ The Memorandum of Understanding, a strategic partnership covering mineral extraction and battery production.
    1
  12187. This justn't stand up at all. There is no provision for criminal prosecution under the Presidential Records Act and to simply try to apply the 1917 Espionage Act instead is so clearly an act of political chicanery that if defies belief.
    1
  12188. This will bring NATO to an end. Good job too.
    1
  12189. You'd be a fool to trust ANY modern media - no matter what party you support. All MSM has now be sold out to commercial interests which have no moral or political compass whatsoever. The manipulation of public opinion for commercial advantage is generally the sole criterion.
    1
  12190. Lamb chops? Sex? No contest.
    1
  12191.  @neosapienz7885  Absolutely. Putin didn't invade out of the blue. He is not mad. He has no notion of "recreating the Soviet Empire". He is involved a border war with Ukraine over Crimea and Donbass, both of which have substantial Russian populations. Zelensky, shoehorned in by the US and with an army largely paid for by the US, was told to try to recapture Crimea and Donbass. He was setting about doing so when Putin decided to get in first.
    1
  12192.  @zipperpillow  Zelensky, ordered by Washington, was ordered to recapture Crimea and Donbass. Putin no like this.
    1
  12193.  @spelunkerd  They shouldn't have invaded Donbass.
    1
  12194.  @Backtotheshadowsagain  They started the war by threatening to retake Crimea and Donbass and to join NATO and the EU. This war didn't start eight months ago, it started eight years ago, and the Ukrainians had killed thousand before the Russians invaded in February. But you're not supposed to know that.
    1
  12195.  @ericconnor8419  What naughty fibbers they are.
    1
  12196.  @neosapienz7885  This has stopped being about moral rights and wrongs. It's about stopping a war which didn't need to start in the first place and the after-effects of which will be with us possibly for centuries. Ans as far as I am aware the Russian populations of the Baltic states have not been fighting a bloody war with their national governments for eight years and nor have they (yet) agreed to be a launch pad for US nuclear missiles.
    1
  12197.  @zipperpillow  It doesn't matter who wins. We will all be losers after this. Ukraine should have negotiated.
    1
  12198.  @s.d.7595  America started this war by using the idiot Zelensky to provoke Russia.
    1
  12199.  @neosapienz7885  Appeasement usually works. Without appeasement the human race would be in a state of permanent bloody conflict. The trouble is that the history of Nazi Germany is, for some reason, just about the only history taught in schools these days and that was a case when appeasement didn't work. Putin is not Hitler, and the circumstances are entirely different. The very fact that you and many like you think that this war is about picking sides and treating it as some sort of game is at the heart of the problem. Russia's demands are entirely reasonable and could provide the basis for negotiation. Instead Ukraine has been pushed by America into provoking Putin to such a degree that he has decided to invade.
    1
  12200.  @zipperpillow  You may be right in much of your analysis, but I do not believe that Putin threatens Ukraine's existence. He wants Crimea to be acknowledged as part of the Russian Federation and for Donbass to be independent. He also demands that Ukraine should not join NATO. These are entirely pragmatic and reasonable solutions to current problems. Nobody gets hurt and we can all tick along quite nicely. But America won't have it. The warmongers of Washington have their senile puppet in the White House and an oligarch's yapping lapdog as president of Ukraine. This is going to be another Vietnam or another Iraq but much, much worse.
    1
  12201.  @Backtotheshadowsagain  Russia is not targeting civilians, although some may well be killed as civilian infrastructure is destroyed. As for the EU this whole thing kicked off when attempts were made to join it in 2014. NATO and the US are pretty synonymous. The other nations are really just the lapdogs of the US military/industrial complex.
    1
  12202.  @neosapienz7885  Appeasement is an important feature of compromise and, in any case, it is by no means certain who is the aggressor here. America gave Zelensky the go-ahead to rattle a stick along Putin's back fence and Putin jumped over and whopped him one. The relationships between Russia and Ukraine, Russia and Moldova, Russia and Belarus or anywhere else for that matter have nothing to do with anyone else. This war, like practically every war in the past eighty years or so is the result of interference by ham-fisted Washington warmongers. We don't have any obligation to pick sides. Picking sides means supplying weapons and the sooner Ukraine runs out of them the better.
    1
  12203.  @zipperpillow  Crimea was tacked on the Ukraine because the Kerch strait made infrastructure and administration difficult for Russia. Since they were both Soviet Russia anyway it didn't matter. I am fascinated by your idea that Ukraine has been fighting with one hand behind its back. Only a couple of minutes ago I was listening to Gen Douglas MacGregor telling me exactly the reverse. Ukraine's armed forces have been utterly depleted and the Russians have a substantial force of regulars and mercenaries ready to move in. We will just have to see. As to the border -well, that's predominantly what this is about. Are Crimea and Donbass going to be in Ukraine or in Russia? Will Europe get their oil and gas, or will it go to China?
    1
  12204.  @Backtotheshadowsagain It's a puzzle to me how brainless people can be brainwashed, but there we are. When did I say the Ukrainians are retreating? Clearly they are not. As for Bucha other similar incidents it has yet to be decided who was responsible. Given the appalling human rights records of both countries we can safely assume that both are guilty of war crimes.
    1
  12205.  @zipperpillow  It could still go either way. The West is heading for economic collapse while Russia is busy forging relationships with Asia and the middle east. The economic background will decide who wins. You can be sure aid from the US will be reduced if there is a MAGA victory in the midterms. EU countries may well stop being as generous soon. The tragedy is that at the end of the day we may simply return to the situation that existed before the war began.
    1
  12206.  @neosapienz7885  You are a brainwashed fool. Russia is protecting itself from US aggression. Is it supposed just to sit back and take it? Any decent person who is neither Ukrainian nor Russian should take a step back and then support any action which brings an end to this dreadful war. This means being extremely sceptical about the pro-Ukrainian stance foisted upon us by the corrupt Western MSM. You, like so many others, seem to have sucked it up somewhat uncritically. Use your brain for once and try to see the broader picture.
    1
  12207. How sweet of Him.
    1
  12208.  @johnkitching2248  Just watch his channel and start making ticks.
    1
  12209.  @WILLtTHOMPSON2906  It's about PREVENTING genocide, to be more accurate.
    1
  12210.  @Grumpyoldskeptic  Hey! I've actually "lolled" at that. Really. Out loud. No-one to hear me though.
    1
  12211.  @Mocking_Muppets  You know this from personal experience, I presume?
    1
  12212.  @DavidMoxham957  No-one calls anyone "comrade" in Russia any more. Not for more than thirty years.
    1
  12213.  @Grumpyoldskeptic  I don't know any widows.
    1
  12214.  @DavidMoxham957  I'm afraid we are all participants in this vanity project - although whose vanity our future wellbeing is being sacrificed for must remain in dispute.
    1
  12215.  @Grumpyoldskeptic  You should have got out while you were winning.
    1
  12216.  @jamesgatz4490  There was hours and hours of evidence in state hearings in Georgia and elsewhere. It may have been disputable but it was framed in terms which should have allowed it to be disputed and it should certainly have been covered by the media far more than it was.
    1
  12217.  @dijoyjoe  Around 40 hours of state senate hearings say otherwise.
    1
  12218.  @lucaskovacs7315  I think it was - and my several degrees of magnitude. Biden's figures defy all logic and reason.
    1
  12219.  @lucaskovacs7315  We have overwhelming circumstantial evidence of fraud being committed on a scale even larger than is normal in US elections. No tribunal has been found willing to consider and judge that evidence. We are being expected to believe that a man approaching senility who conducted no proper election campaign polled more votes than Obama ever did and that Trump's massively attended rallies were meaningless. Stranger things have happened, but the combination of bizarre outcome and claims of widespread fraud is entirely sufficient to arouse very great concern in any objectively thinking person. There should be a full-scale enquiry. The situation demands it. If the Biden administration does not instigate one than a cloud will hang forever over the Presidency and I for one will even more firmly believe that the crooked little scumbag cheated like hell; or more precisely that persons unknown cheated like hell to put their puppet in the White House.
    1
  12220. The Ukrainians do that too. They have been shooting civilians trying to leave besieged cities for weeks.
    1
  12221. Ah yes -the noble tradition of bombing the shit out of people.
    1
  12222. Have you? If you had you will realise it isn't worth the paper it's written on.
    1
  12223.  @alanahern2372  So are we assuming there won't be a freeze this winter?
    1
  12224.  @Joker-yw9hl  One view:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_buI_teYezU
    1
  12225. Now is he a liar or one of those lied to? It's really hard to tell.
    1
  12226. In fact there was an uneasy truce throughout his first Presidency, and work was going on to find a more permanent solution. Biden's chaotic management of the Kabul withdrawal probably convinced Putin that the US was in no position to take a direct part in the conflict.
    1
  12227. You've just about said it all. Urgent reform is needed.
    1
  12228. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  12229. In the UK it's around 85% of adults over 16. There are still doubts in some quarters about the advisability of vaccinating pre-pubescent children. The number of a adults with antibodies is estimated at over 91%.
    1
  12230.  @steveosborne2297  The fact is that we just don't know the effects of the drugs on growing bodies, and since children don't get ill or die the only reason for vaccination is to reduce potential spread to vulnerable adults - which seems a relatively rare event. On balance there are indications against requiring pre-pubescent children to be vaccinated.
    1
  12231.  @steveosborne2297  Vaccines are drugs by any definition - a prophylactic drug, but a drug nonetheless. Semantic quibbling aside, the fact that the age range for hospital admissions is lowering has nothing to do with the number of pre-pubescent children thus affected. Can you point me to a source for your last assertion? And what proportion are pre-pubescent? If there is an increase I cannot see how it could be very large since the initial number involved is so small.
    1
  12232.  @steveosborne2297  PS: From the ONS report as of today: "Hospital admission rates increased in groups aged 25 to 54 years and groups over 75 years but decreased or remained similar in all other age groups (week ending 3 October). Rates remained the lowest in those aged between 5 to 14 years and highest in groups aged 75 years and over."
    1
  12233.  @steveosborne2297  From the US Food and Drug Administration official definition: "It is important to note that a vaccine is a drug. Like any drug, vaccines have benefits and risks, and even when highly effective, no vaccine is 100 percent effective in preventing disease or 100 percent safe in all individuals. "
    1
  12234. Not really. Israel's excesses in this area are just the latest in a long series of clashes in which both sides have taken turns to be the aggressor. The so-called Palestinian lands were, for the most part, purchased from the Ottomans by the Zionists, who cultivated and developed them. The Arabs occupying them are the descendants of natives from surrounding countries who arrived to cash in on the Jewish efforts, either as workers or as armed invaders.
    1
  12235. It must now be clear anyone with a brain that the crooks and thugs who have ruled America for decades are scared shitless of this cuckoo in their nest.
    1
  12236. Porn is right. The climate crisis loonies are a bunch of wankers, after all.
    1
  12237. In about 30,000 years
    1
  12238.  @12bigredd  The coastal ice is reducing, certainly but the ice on the bulk of Greenland is up to two miles thick. It's ain't going nowhere any time soon. (Calling it Greenland was a PR trick by a Viking called Red, by the way. It was warmer a thousand years ago but, funnily enough, at a time where there was no man-made carbon being released into the atmosphere -other than the smoke off barbecues.)
    1
  12239. If Ukraine had agreed to Putin's peace proposals no-one needed to die in the first place.
    1
  12240. Or purposefully to uphold the honour of their country.
    1
  12241.  @Kolljak  Many older men, with two years training and refresher courses behind them, are now joining up. Russian children learn arms drills and other military techniques from an early age.
    1
  12242.  @ocean_monster1  Most Russians would describe it as a totally justified war based upon the considered reactions of an extremely pragmatic leader who cares enough for his people to prevent foreign agencies stealing their birthright. It is a view which I share.
    1
  12243.  @adampenbrook5751  There was never any need to be scared of Russia without the nukes. That's why they have them. Russia's conventional army is principally a defensive force, which is why it is facing such difficulties in taking up an aggressive role.
    1
  12244. Are they missing?
    1
  12245.  @tj1923  Not even to remove them from a war zone?
    1
  12246.  @superhumantrueman  But surely the invaders are in a better position to remove children to safety than are the defenders? This is especially pertinent when the defenders in this case have a shameful record of hiding military units behind "human shields" by positioning them in schools and hospitals.
    1
  12247.  @superhumantrueman  Civilian casualties in this war are incidental to its military purpose. Russia has made every effort within the bounds of military expediency to minimise them. The removal of children from the battlefield is part of this effort, and it is absurd to try to pretend there is any sinister reason behind it. It is, as I say, surely far more acceptable than using children to inhibit the Russian advance, which is what the Ukrainians do.
    1
  12248.  @ChrisPage68  You seem to need your brains tested. Can't you just take pity on me and explain what is wrong with this long-standing arrangement?
    1
  12249.  @StewFairweather  Absurd. The British delegates have no say in Oman's internal affairs and humans rights abuses can be directly traced to the strict application of Shariah law. Nothing whatsoever to do with the oil trade. And what interest are there to declare? Our team get fed and watered exactly as would if visiting any other country. Do you expect them to take sandwiches and a Thermos? And the reason why it doesn't get talked about in the media is because it isn't very interesting.
    1
  12250.  @Galactorate  But it's not secretive and it does not control Oman! Don't you get that? Oman is a strict Muslim hereditary monarchy which has a good relationship with Britain based exclusively on oil trade infrastructure. The fact that have slaves and cut people's heads off from time to time is a pretty clear indication that Britain does NOT meddle in Oman's internal affairs.
    1
  12251.  @nyakwarObat  How so? It strikes me you may have.
    1
  12252.  @nyakwarObat  I've never been entirely sure what the Kardashians are and I happen to have read a great deal of history. Britain's relationship with Oman has developed in a mutually beneficial way, and imposing a Marxist filter on it does nothing to alter that fact.
    1
  12253.  @nyakwarObat  All history books are fabricated to a certain extent, aren't they though? Recent ones especially.
    1
  12254.  @nyakwarObat  None of these gentlemen have offered an account of the history of Oman as far as I am aware. And you do rather prove my point about intellectual deterioration over the years. Chomsky???!!
    1
  12255. Stylish.
    1
  12256.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  Putin doesn't want Ukraine. He just wants Crimea and Donbass for their mineral wealth and their function as buffer states.
    1
  12257.  @Rene-pn4kb  The West is exporting democracy - as a cover for colonialism.
    1
  12258.  @hayleyxyz  By giving the new country of Ukraine the same borders as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine a very serious error was indeed made. Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine had been added on to the territory during the Soviet era for purely administrative reasons. They had large Russian populations and large investment their mineral resources, which had been developed by and staffed by Russians. The whole area previous to this had largely been occupied by Tatars - not Ukrainians. This problem was not too serious up until 2014 when Ukraine decided (or was persuaded) to hitch itself to the Western waggon. This meant that the benefits of these industries would pass out of Russian hands. No treaty lasts forever and The Budapest Accords were flawed from the start and despite best effort a peaceful resolution has sadly not been possible. All in all a pretty big mistake, I feel.
    1
  12259.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  Russia doesn't want Ukraine. Far too much trouble. It just wants Donbass as a buffer state.
    1
  12260.  @Rene-pn4kb  America is exporting democracy.
    1
  12261.  @Rene-pn4kb  But I'm a Russian troll. Of course I've been there!
    1
  12262.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  Well, apparently it does.
    1
  12263.  @Rene-pn4kb  How. Me name Big Chief Crockerdale.
    1
  12264.  @Rene-pn4kb  Well I haven't actually. It was a sort of joke. Have you been to Crimea or Donbass though? They appear to be vastly different in character to Kiev and the rest of Western Ukraine. I imagine people who have visited London 50 times might think they know Britain, but they don't.
    1
  12265.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  I think you will find that the quote goes on to say that "neither do other civilisations." Rather than being a declaration of intent, this is a declaration of historical fact. Civilisations do not have borders. They expand or contract according to circumstances. Attempts to draw rigid lines on maps and award the areas they contain the spurious title of "sovereign" is merely a ploy by one particular modern-day empire (scarcely a civilisation) to establish its hold on the world. I have read Putin's essay on the relations between Russia and Ukraine and I take the liberty of quoting from its introduction. This statement seems to me to have the ring of truth. "First of all, I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy. These are, first and foremost, the consequences of our own mistakes made at different periods of time. But these are also the result of deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity. The formula they apply has been known from time immemorial – divide and rule. There is nothing new here. Hence the attempts to play on the ”national question“ and sow discord among people, the overarching goal being to divide and then to pit the parts of a single people against one another."
    1
  12266.  @Rene-pn4kb  I don't deny you your right to an opinion, but I defend my right to disagree with it. Perhaps you would be kind enough to point out my exact areas of ignorance so that I may either correct or deny them to be such.
    1
  12267.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  I don't see why it would go to such trouble. Buffer states on immediate borders, certainly.(After all that was Putin's plan for Donbass) but he is wise enough to know that even trying to rule Ukraine will result in an endless civil war. Putin has learned from the SU's mistakes - which is why it is so bizarre that we should think he plans to repeat them.
    1
  12268.  @douglasbruce4991  The US is expert at manipulating treaties ever since it used them to help commit genocide in America itself.
    1
  12269.  @douglasbruce4991  All countries abandon treaties when the administration changes, or circumstances dictate. US examples which spring immediately to mind are the Iran Nuclear deal, the INF treaty on short-range and medium range weapons and the TPP trade deal with Pacific Rim countries. No treaty is written in stone.
    1
  12270.  @Elkarlo77  Your analogies are false analogies. No treaty lasts forever. Regimes change. Circumstances change. History is not a static thing, otherwise treaties made a hundred years ago would still apply, and very clearly they don't. Budapest was a poor treaty to start with and has proved to be ineffectual in dealing with complex geopolitical issues.
    1
  12271. The peace, honesty and virtue that has brought war in Ukraine and streets littered with junkies?
    1
  12272. More senile drivel. The gig's up Brandon!
    1
  12273. You read too many comic books.
    1
  12274. And you Washington warmongers want to take Putin on? Can you imagine 350,000 dead young Americans?
    1
  12275. Perhaps he will accept those parts he has not yet conquered as a gift!
    1
  12276. Make them public - or at least keep them safe. Evidence like this is being suppressed and destroyed by the Warmist fanatics.
    1
  12277.  @DanielSMatthews  Accuracy is comparative - the new devices certainly record the SAME temperature as being higher.
    1
  12278. The highest death rate for almost twenty years. I suppose we could take comfort from the fact that the vast majority had already lived full lives.
    1
  12279.  @ak5659  That makes sense. But it does make the system vulnerable.
    1
  12280. Eric Bray Are you still harping on about this 97per cent nonsense? That's been shot down in flames so often it's a wonder anyone has the cheek to mention it. Of course climate change exists. It always has done and it's 100per cent solar forced. Try www.ceres-science.com Don't quote NASA. That organisation's climatology department broke free of proper science ten years ago and is now the abode of crooks and witch-doctors. (OK insult/exaggeration perhaps but the damage these people are doing is enough to bring out the worst in anyone.)
    1
  12281. Gerald Comeau Did you get much direct feedback from your comments? I only ask because generally XR immediately delete any but the most favourable reactions, it being essential that adherents are kept in a a perpetually self-justifying bubble, as is the case with all brainwashing cults.
    1
  12282. Gerald Comeau I can only assume your comments are supportive Mine are not and although they remain on my own channel, they are deleted when I view the comments section on another channel. Did you get any actual replies though? XR is a cult. To believe in it you are either mad, stupid, extremely gullible or deriving some financial advantage from it. Thank you for the link.It is just another slice of IPCC globalist propaganda though. Climate change is pretty exclusively solar-forced in my considered view. CO2 based AGW is a wonderful con-trick, based on bad science and promulgated by hedge-fund managers and politicians for their own insidious ends. The earth's atmosphere is thermodynamically stable and incapable of any radiative influence. The greenhouse effect is a self-adjusting feature of this process. Atmospheric carbon assimilates infra-red protons for about one third of a second before disseminating them in directions appropriate to maintaining this thermodynamic stability. ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com www.ceres-science.com www.information/philosopher.com/solutions/scientist/einstein/1917/radiationpdf
    1
  12283. nosuchperson2 You are living in a world of utter fantasy. False flag predictions are backed by falsified data. While past temperature readings have been consistently adjusted downwards for a variety of flimsy reasons, recent ones have been grossly exaggerated. The Urban Heat Island Effect is not being taken into account, despite assurances to the contrary. Indeed a number of new automated stations have been set up in urban areas the readings from which add to the bias. The position of reading equipment on ships has been altered to place it closer to engines. Satellite data showed no appreciable increase in temperature throughout the 21st century - until NASA realised it had slipped up and raised all the readings on the incredibly pathetic excuse that the satellites 'orbits had all decayed and placed them in a cooler part of the troposphere. AGW through CO2 emissions is a total con trick designed to make money through the creation of the cap and trade market, and seized upon by globalists as a means of exercising power through terror. Recent studies of the REAL atmosphere, rather than using flawed computer models, indicate that CO2 does not affect temperature in any other than a purely regulatory way. Surface temperature is the result of a combination of atmospheric pressure, gravity, ocean and air current flows and a number of of other factors the most significant of course being proximity to the sun. This is the case with all other planets in the solar system, so why should the earth be any different? The composition of the atmosphere is relevant only in that it appears to form part of a mechanism designed to keep the atmosphere in a condition of thermodynamic stability. You are living in a bubble. Be prepared for it to burst before too long.
    1
  12284. nosuchperson2 I was expecting more. Where's the punchline?
    1
  12285. nosuchperson2 I'm trying to find out what you mean by "station keeping". Help me out please.
    1
  12286.  @scottmcmahon86  NY is clearly at the forefront of the never-ending fight for freedom and democracy. It is surely only a question of resources which prevents it taking up arms against the Russian foe, and so must it be content with merely persecuting an opposition Presidential contender.
    1
  12287.  @jimballard1186  Is this the one you mean? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." I don't see anything there which gives a crowd of ill-educated, virtue-signalling spoiled brats the right to impede a citizen while going about his legal business.
    1
  12288.  @jimballard1186  Can you make amendments to amendments? In any case, if these self-righteous buffoons peacefully do assemble, it would not be Congress preventing them from doing so, but the man driving his truck through the middle of them, as state laws will hopefully soon permit him so to do.
    1
  12289.  @jimballard1186  But they would not be overriding it, would they? If Congress gives the right to peacefully assemble, then peacefully assemble. Apart from the fact that impeding traffic isn't a particularly peaceful activity, a state sanctioned right to drive through the peaceful assembly has nothing to do with Congress or the constitution. The only things getting overridden would be the protestors. And a bloody good job too.
    1
  12290. Nobody falls for nonsense like this any more. I would guess that the knockout Boris Love Actually spoof will sway a thousand times more floating voters than this pathetic Labourite attempt to tug at our heart-strings.
    1
  12291. GB News resonates with a vast number of decent, ordinary British citizens.
    1
  12292.  @BaumerPaulGefreiter  It's still money. And when weapons are being invested in keeping hold of a multi-trillion dollar minerals extraction industry they are arguably far from unproductive.
    1
  12293.  @stephenoneill245  According to the Russian Institute of Economic Forecasts Russia's economy has shown stronger-than-expected performance in the first half of 2024, with capital stock and private consumption growing more rapidly than anticipated. However, they project a slowdown in economic growth for the latter half of the year due to labour supply constraints and production capacity issues2. For 2025 and 2026, the institute forecasts a further deceleration in economic growth to around 1% per annum, which is close to the economy's long-term potential growth rate. This slowdown is attributed to the ongoing impact of sanctions and the need for increased productivity, which seems challenging given the current economic conditions. This doesn't look like economic collapse. Germany and the UK seem nearer! And the US hasn't got far to go.
    1
  12294.  @albatros12  I'm 76 and long retired.
    1
  12295. Get back to your comics.
    1
  12296. Britain and other countries supporting Ukraine do so because they still rely heavily on America. Zelensky is a US puppet - or rather the instrument of Ukrainian oligarchs who are hand in glove with some of the more unsavoury elements in Washington. Stop supporting him and set up talks with Putin and this dreadful mess could be over and done with.
    1
  12297.  @JJRM8  Look it up on the Internet. I live in England where it's a bit muggy, but thankfully looks like rain.
    1
  12298.  @JJRM8  Wet. Like you.
    1
  12299.  @JJRM8  That is confidential information. YouTube won't allow me to tell you.
    1
  12300.  @JJRM8  Wet.
    1
  12301.  @knockedoutloaded  It's because their great-grandparents were slave-traders and they're still living off the money. Guilt is a funny thing.
    1
  12302. Warlord Plisken There's a lot going on in the canyons of your mind, isn't there O mighty chieftain?
    1
  12303. The behaviour of Islamist extremists has given them the right. (And it isn't Palestinian land anyway.)
    1
  12304.  @paulschulte1064  The climate is changing. It always has. Sea levels are rising by minimal amounts - as they have since the end of the last Ice Age. They are not rising any more in Miami or Bengal than it is anywhere else. Miami is sinking because it is on a sandbank and lots of heavy buildings have been placed on it (and still are). The mangrove forests in Bengal are constructed of interwoven tree trunks, packed with silt. Cyclones come and tides surge, washing the silt away so the land sinks. It has been happening like this for thousands of years. Accounts going back to the 16th century describe events exactly similar to those depicted here attributed to climate change.
    1
  12305.  @paulschulte1064  I expect the recent tragic collapse of an apartment block in Miami was due to climate change also then? Sandy soil and construction materials supplied via the Mafia are not a solid combination. Nor is the fact that the freshwater aquifer is never more than six metres below ground level. (PS. If your friend is worried about rising sea levels why is he building a multi-billion dollar complex within spitting distance of the Atlantic Ocean?)
    1
  12306. Lockdowns do little more than allow variants which spread more quickly and efficiently to come to the fore. Every lockdown makes the situation worse. So yes, the UK will have a third wave. It is being created right now.
    1
  12307. h @aaronbaker2186  They seem to have massacred quite a few Ukrainians in the process.
    1
  12308. Islamism is alien to the British way of life. Those support it are traitors to this country - and this does NOT mean the vast mass of ordinary, decent hard-working Muslims who put loyalty and decency before the more sinister aspects of their religion.
    1
  12309. This a downright lie. The more Ukraine turns up the hype the more I come to believe it was them wot dun it.
    1
  12310. Florida currently has one of the lowest covid death rates in the country. The figures are verified by the World Health Organisation.
    1
  12311. This is a sideshow. The real war is happening on the southern front where Russia is winning hands down.
    1
  12312.  @michaeldunham3385  Who says they wanted Kiev? And the stalemate on the southern front is broken. Within a short while Russia will make all the territorial gains it has ever wanted and will own Donbass, Crimea and the land corridor to the latter. Ukraine then needs to face this reality or risk losing Odessa and becoming entirely land-locked.
    1
  12313. What you have to understand is that because of vaccinations it is a good thing to catch covid, not a bad thing. Your immunity will vastly increase at the cost of a runny nose and you will be performing a service to the community by paving the way to herd immunity.
    1
  12314.  @edwardbernthal160  Are you SURE you're British?
    1
  12315.  @edwardbernthal160  I understand that it is now possible to manufacture human brains with 3Dprinters. You are not one of the first recipients by any chance are you?
    1
  12316.  @hannahdyson7129  How what works?
    1
  12317.  @travishimebaugh8381  Possibly. But the figures just indicate that a great many covid "deaths" really are instances where elderly people have died as elderly people must, and they just happen to have had Covid 19 as well as everything else. The vast majority of deaths occur in people in their eighties and nineties and Covid 19 produces particularly nasty respiratory symptoms which they are too weak to resist. Those who have died are people who would have died soon anyway. So they don't show up as "extra" deaths.
    1
  12318.  @travishimebaugh8381  The statistics are readily available on the ONS website (see below) . Just click on the Death by Age section. As you will see the vast majority of deaths are, as I said, in the very oldest age groups. Even people in their seventies have a very good chance of survival and the number of people under the age of 45 who have died is very small. They will nearly all have been people with existing severe conditions, such as you have mentioned and yes, it is this thousand or so people who are the real victims of the pandemic. These are the people I believe we should be protecting instead of foolishly trying to hold back the tide of the virus. So-called Long Covid certainly exists - but all pathogens have long term adverse affects on a small minority of victims. There is no reason to suppose at this stage that Covid 19 is worse in this respect than previous influenzas for example. It is just that in some people the immune system panics and goes goes into overdrive and does more harm than good. It has to be said that ill-judged medical interventions can also result in such outcomes. At the moment Covid 19 is merely replacing influenzas as the prime seasonal respiratory infection. Despite what the media tells you there is no reason why hospitals cannot cope. As you will see elsewhere in the ONS report only a few regions in the north of England are experiencing higher than usual respiratory illness activity. Actually the more healthy people who get the disease and get over it and become immune the better. This cuts the routes for the spread of the infection and whatever casualties there are will be fewer than those created by the absurd on/off knee jerk politically motivated strategies employed thusfar. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending4december2020#deaths-registe
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  12319.  @travishimebaugh8381  I think you must have misread the graph and are looking at deaths from ALL causes, not Covid 19. The covid deaths are in the black bars and amount to less than 2,000 in the under 70 age groups. Actually the average age of people who die from Covid 19 is higher than the average age of death as a whole. My other points remain valid, given these numbers. There is no evidence of serious overcrowding in hospitals - if there were you would be sure the hungry media would be on it like rats. If you use the ONS site you can go back to pre- Covid data and you will see that hospital deaths are similar in those years. Deaths were down last year and the year before and this left a reservoir of frail elderly which Covid cut a swathe through when it first appeared in the Spring. The last point is the basic premise of herd immunity and is an obvious truth. If an infected person is surrounded by people who are immune then cough and splutter as he might, the virus cannot spread. This applies whether or not the other people are immune due to previous exposure or to vaccination.
    1
  12320.  @travishimebaugh8381  The five year average is what it is and obviously there is no doubt that the initial impact of the virus in the Spring has had a very great effect; but it has to be remembered that the death rate has been edging upwards anyway after dropping dramatically since the beginning of the century. The fact is that now the death rate is more or less normal for winter, with Covid 19 merely, as I say, becoming the cold weather killer of the old instead of an influenza. Post infection immunity seems almost entirely guaranteed according to recent studies. As for the moral aspect of risk, one should be careful here as there is no doubt whatsoever that the economic ramifications of lockdowns etc have had a dreadful effect upon the poor of the world. If one wants to be cynical one can do some quite convincing sums questioning how many black babies are going to have to die to buy a senile white person a few more months of life.
    1
  12321.  @travishimebaugh8381  Keep trying. Hospitalisations and deaths from Covid 19 are currently on a pretty exact parallel with national average figures previously occupied by influenza, except for areas in northern England where both are slightly above average. This can clearly be seen in the ONS figures. Covid 19 is highly infectious , but less fatal than several influenzas. When you think about it if a lot of people get an infection but less than .05% of them die then the fatality rate is going to be low. Influenzas of course kill children and young adults, which Covid 19 does not, which means that in terms of years of life lost their effects are far more devastating. The Hong Kong flu of the winter of 1968/69 killed proportionately at least as many people in the UK as Covid - and many of them were children. No lockdowns. No social distancing. A few people wore masks but were generally regarded as being somewhat eccentric. We had only relatively recently dealt with the little matter of World War II which tended to put things in perspective. Keep Calm and Carry on. If Hitler and the Luftwaffe weren't going to make us shut up shop then some bug from foreign parts certainly wasn't going to. We could do with spirit today instead of the vacillation and cowardice which is leading the world into ruin. The WHO estimates that at least 160million people are already in a state of extreme poverty thank to the knock-on effects of lockdowns and economic shrinkage in the more prosperous parts of the world. And for what? To give old people a few more months of life in which they are not even allowed to hug their grandchildren. It's sickening.
    1
  12322.  @travishimebaugh8381  This is a rather distasteful sort of competition, don't you think? The Spanish flu of 1918 is estimated to have killed 250,000 in the UK but really it is impossible to compare past influenzas with Covid 19 because of the peculiar way we have chosen to attribute the figures. They are talking about 66,000 or so aren't they? The total deaths from all causes this year is 568,000 or so compared with 530,841 last year and 541,589 the year before that. Simple subtraction shows how extremely unlikely it is that 66,000 people have died from Covid 19. This ridiculous diktat of attributing a Covid death in any case where there has been a positive test in the previous 28 days makes the figures almost meaningless, especially when compared with previous influenza epidemics. where there was no similar practice. If someone died of flu they died of flu, and that was that. The Hong Kong flu of 68/69 undoubtedly killed far more people than actually killed by Covid 19. I do not know of any detailed study of the economic impact of the outbreak, but common sense tells us that it must have been far less than the current shambles. Factories carried on producing, shops remained open and it was scarcely mentioned in the media so there was no psychological impact. The child death figures for Covid really are negligible, as you must know if you've managed to find your way around the ONS website. One or two under 16 and a dozen or so in their twenties and all with pre-existing morbidities. Only around 800 in total under 45, I think - and that out of a population of close on 70 million. As for old people dying by the truckload they tend to die in whatever numbers nature dictates whatever we do. The availability of people ready to die is as big a factor in these gruesome equations as the presence of things likely to kill them. Your blackout analogy is utterly ridiculous. Boris Johnson might think he's Winston Churchill and Covid 19 is the Luftwaffe but there are no similarities in any of these instances. Leaving the lights on during a nocturnal air raid will have obvious consequences but there is little evidence that lockdowns or mask mandates achieve very much at all. The graphs just curve unhindered along the lines that nature and mathematics indicate they must.
    1
  12323.  @travishimebaugh8381  It shows.
    1
  12324.  @travishimebaugh8381  I agree common sense is often employed to mean prejudice but the trick is to use it as a logical tool when applied to specific cases. In this instance, during the Hong Kong flu epidemic the wheels of industry and commerce continued to turn and the death and sickness rate, although substantial enough, had only relatively mild effects. People were always ready to fill whatever gaps occurred. To put it crudely, a bus might not arrive because the driver had died, but another came along quite soon. In this present situation, although dealing with a virus that pretty exclusively kills only non-contributors to the common weal, and disables others for generally no longer than any other ailment, we have shut down society and lie shivering under a miasma of fear. The buses arrive but can only take a third of the passengers, but since many of the destinations are closed and shuttered that doesn't matter anyway. So, using your common sense (or powers of reason if you prefer) which of these two scenarios do you imagine will have the greater economic consequences?
    1
  12325. Stolen
    1
  12326. ​ @WHS_reviews And America decides this?
    1
  12327. I think it's a mistake to say Russia is specifically targeting civilians. They don't want dead civilians, they want angry, discontented civilians beginning to worry that their leadership has taken a series of very poor decisions. Which they have. Shivering in the dark and cold and being afraid to go out to work or the shops might bring this fact home to them.
    1
  12328.  @firebladedan1  The wrong decision is allowing yourself to be bribed into picking a fight with a powerful neighbour.
    1
  12329.  @gteixeira  They are not being aimed at residential buildings. They are being aimed at power stations and the like. Sometimes they miss, however, or are shot down by idiots and land on civilians.
    1
  12330.  @janb3625  It isn't my villainy. My only concern is to support practical solutions which acknowledge the realities of the situation, and which will hopefully bring an end to the war. These attacks will severely disadvantage the Ukrainian military and, as a bonus, may possibly cause ordinary Ukrainians to question the motives and capabilities of their current leaders.
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  12331. Take comfort. When propaganda news outlets such as the BBC issue bulletins ending in a question mark, the answer is usually "No."
    1
  12332. They should re-christen it the White Elephant.
    1
  12333.  @Mark-Haddow  The sort of thing you give away to the church jumble sale.
    1
  12334.  @Mark-Haddow  I don't know so much about the gibberish bit. Why do you post anyway?
    1
  12335.  @Mark-Haddow  What twaddle? White Elephants end up neglected in attics or as unsold items on charity stalls. These old tanks of ours will end up either being stripped down and sold off for their spare parts, lying by the roadside waiting for spare parts to arrive. or getting stuck in front of bridges they are too heavy to cross.
    1
  12336.  @justonecornetto80  It hasn't come through, but I always enjoy chatting to you. Care to repeat your enquiry?
    1
  12337.  @justonecornetto80  PS That whole thread has gone missing (to me anyway.)
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  12338. @ We are not. A neutral nation supplying arms to one side in a war does NOT mean that the nation supplying the arms is at war with the nation which the arms are being used against. In any case any doubts on this issue would be immediately overcome if we stopped supplying arms to Ukraine. Which we should. Resolving the anomalies over borders between Ukraine and Russia by negotiation, rather than conflict is the exact opposite of "forming an invasion alliance."
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  12339. @ Before that can be done where and what Ukraine actually is has to be more clearly defined than it is at present.
    1
  12340. @ Because it is. It faces the truth instead of denying it.
    1
  12341.  @ricado372  Are you paranoid? I am British born and bred and I don't even KNOW how to "run multiple accounts."
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  12342.  @ftumschk  I don't get you. Ukraine (or parts of the present country) were called Little Russia because they were added on to Russia by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in the 18th century. Before that the territory was occupied by various princedoms and chunks of the Ottoman and Polish/Lithuanian empires. This was the time of the industrial and agricultural revolutions and the steppeland to the east of the Dnieper, which until then had been sparsely occupied by various tribes of wandering herdsmen, was transformed as Russians moved in to develop mining and ironmaking industries, and to fertilise the land. Their descendants live there to this day.
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  12343.  @TheSquidUK  Russia is actually taking everything it desires - and to which it is entitled. All we a have to do is acknowledge these facts
    1
  12344.  @iandennis7836  I'm willing to bet I know a great deal more history than you do.
    1
  12345.  @pandorapiam3374  Of course not. In this case Russia simply wants to retain what it - or at least some of its people - already possess.
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  12346.  @pandorapiam3374  The point is that Ukraine was not a country. It was an administrative unit of the Soviet Union which contained large tracts of Russian land. Making the whole thing a proper "sovereign" country was a mistake which has led to numerous difficulties. Attempts to sort this out by peaceful means have failed and rather than see very valuable Russian resources being handed over to Western interests Russia has been forced to keep hold of them by force.
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  12347.  @pandorapiam3374  Hardly. There were a whole bunch of governments claiming a whole bunch of different territories after the Russian revolution. I expect you are referring the Peoples Republic of Ukraine which claimed great chunks of Russia but gave great chunks of present-day Ukraine to Poland. It never really existed as anything you could properly call a country for the brief period of its existence though. Its boundaries altered as quickly as the various groups which claimed to run it.
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  12348.  @pandorapiam3374  They did in the East, where there is a large Russian population.
    1
  12349.  @gaoxiaen1  As things stand. The dollar's value rests entirely on faith. That faith is now being undermined from both without and within. Other currencies are increasingly becoming preferred in various exchange deals. Dedollarisation and an end to American hegemony are being actively pursued. The end, when it comes, will come suddenly.
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  12350. Hospital admissions as a result of reduced and delayed treatments for cancers, heart disease etc are a direct result of lockdowns. It is thought that many people who died with covid in the second wave did so because their life-threatening conditions had been inadequately treated, thus leading them to be too weak to resist covid infection.
    1
  12351. What law?
    1
  12352.  @jeremysmith54565  Reform may have its faults, but it is patriotic and puts the interest of British people before the interests of some INSANE idea of world unity which is really just a cover for globalist elitism.
    1
  12353. This link is no longer available - a common occurrence when seeking hydroxychloroquine information on the Internet. A peer-reviewed John Hopkins study published in May has also recently been removed. This does tend to add somewhat to the tinfoil hat paranoia I am starting to experience. Odd though that your study is one that found no benefits. As Dr Campbell says: "What's going on here?"
    1
  12354. Socialists can't survive unless they have someone to patronise.
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  12355.  @markherbert1524  So if Uncle Joe goes on at the present rate he should just about equal Trump's performance then. I can't answer you question other than to suggest an appearance of security is of great help in keeping the dollar high against other countries. Sadly China seems to have overtaken the US as the richest country in the world recently. All those coal-fired power stations seem to be keeping their economy booming.
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  12356. It did in this case though, didn't it?
    1
  12357. @ So what? He's deporting Columbians, which is what he said he'll do.
    1
  12358. @ Yes, both are war veterans in their forties who want revenge for the defeat of their country.
    1
  12359.  @marknicholson2281  My point somewhat.
    1
  12360. Why?
    1
  12361.  @a5cent  The current war in Ukraine is the result of America and its allies trying to get control of the immense mineral wealth lying beneath the soil in Donbass and Crimea. Putin is merely preventing that takeover and also standing in the way of NATO further intimidating his country by drawing Ukraine into its fold. Want any more?
    1
  12362.  @a5cent  What else is the war in Ukraine? America wants the gas, oil, coal and rare earth minerals lying beneath the soil - which Russia has exploited over decades - and it also want to spit in Russia's face by setting up NATO bases there.
    1
  12363.  @a5cent  Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a preventative measure. What was basically a quarrel over mineral rights has escalated into this terrible war as a direct result of Western interference. If you're looking at imperialism, look to America. All Putin wants to do is retain control over territories left in the Russian sphere of influence after THEIR empire collapsed.
    1
  12364.  @agarg1402  That's just what I do need. And it isn't there.
    1
  12365. Both political geniuses!
    1
  12366.  @PaulK-ve1pu  The state places restrictions, however. Abortion is not permitted after 28 weeks and officially two medical practitioners have to say that the mother's or the child's health could be adversely affected.
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  12367. You're not someone likely to die, certainly. Only around 25 people in that age group have done so throughout the entire pandemic.
    1
  12368.  @Bluemoon_75  Which would mean the collapse of the Western banking system as other countries and companies take out their money for fear of the same thing happening to them.
    1
  12369.  @Bluemoon_75  Why should Russia pay anything? Ukraine took a gamble and lost.
    1
  12370.  @Bluemoon_75  Russia did not start this war.
    1
  12371.  @christineblaszczyk1602  Hasn't worked then, has it?
    1
  12372. Such as not letting people kill him?
    1
  12373.  @ericsova7626  He didn't know that nobody had been killed. He heard a gunshot . He was being threatened by a raving lunatic and and feared for life. The time for polite conversation had long passed. And he has done an enormous service to the American people. From now on the scum who turn protests into an excuse to loot and burn will have to worry about copycat Kyles lurking in the shadows. Good thing too.
    1
  12374. Nail on head.
    1
  12375. It is America which is dying. Russia is forming a new alliance with China India, Arab oil states and many smaller countries who are sick and tired of US bullying. The gangsters who run Ukraine have picked the wrong horse.
    1
  12376.  @TheMixCurator  You do me several injustices. Enjoying the companionship of your neighbours has nothing to do with the fact that your neighbours and you - and I -will die someday and certainly suffer a number of unpleasant experiences on the way. I know this but I do not dwell upon it. Nor do I imagine that any amount of compassion and companionship is going to do anything other than keep these sad truths in the background of my consciousness. To deny death and suffering is as foolish as to continually consider them. When trouble takes a new form, as it has the past several months, it is more important than ever to remain objective and clear-sighted and to address problems with the light of reason and not to allow ones behaviour to be clouded by sentiment.
    1
  12377.  @atomiccritter6492  They are actually not ALL additional deaths. I'm going from memory here but I think the UN projected UK death rate for 2020 was something like 9.4 per 1,000 of population and it turned out to be 10.2. So that's something less than one in a thousand extra deaths, which while far from being good news has to be put in a context whereby the vast majority of those deaths were in elderly and very elderly people who would have died over the next very few years anyway. Another factor is that far from all of these extra deaths were due to covid. Death rates from other causes have shot up in many countries and and US states where lockdowns have been rigorously enforced according to an ongoing study and it is hard to imagine how it could have been otherwise.
    1
  12378.  @Ghengiskhansmum  Evidence?
    1
  12379.  @lat1419  One good thing that could result from this present situation is that this significant public health problem will get the attention it deserves.
    1
  12380.  @lazytitan9987  I'm not quite sure what you're referring to but I don't go to pubs. I rely on statistical evidence wherever possible.
    1
  12381.  @lazytitan9987  Just this one. MRA and other vaccinations aimed at childhood diseases are to be welcomed. But covid is NOT a childhood disease. It largely leaves them alone, so why vaccinate against it? Personally I think that on balance it is foolish to vaccinate anyone much under the age of 40 unless the have a pre-existing life-threatening condition. We mustn't forget that this type of inoculation is based on very new technology and the possibilities of long term disadvantages cannot be discounted. Any healthy person below 40- or even 50 or 60 if you want to push it -is very unlikely to suffer badly from covid. This is known. What might happen to them as they grow older after this treatment is is NOT known.
    1
  12382.  @atomiccritter6492  I have given you the facts on the excess deaths for 2020. It is up to you how you interpret them but even you must realise how improbable it would be for no-one between the ages of 70 and 100 to have died last year without the advent of covid. The study I referred to is being undertaken by the highly-respected Institute of Economic Research, based in Massachusetts . It ha several Nobel prize-winners on its books and is no gimcrack organisation by any means, The working paper number is 28930. I will try to send a direct link on another post.
    1
  12383.  @atomiccritter6492  https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28930/w28930.pdf
    1
  12384.  @lazytitan9987  You are misinformed on a number of counts. Covid is a disease which only produces dire effects when it affects the respiratory system. It will never become eradicated via a process of vaccination. Children will only be able to pass it on in rare circumstances - if at all. Comparisons with such diseases as measles are meaningless. Current studies show that long-term affects are also governed by age. They occur hardly at all in teenagers, affect around 1.2% of patients in their 20s and up to 4.8% of those in middle age. The percentages you cite have no foundation other than possibly being an average found in patients in ICU's, many of whom have been elderly and very elderly. As with death and severe illness, so-called long covid is age related with young people suffering from it only rarely. Your paragraph 3 is nonsensical. There is no evidence that young adults and school children have been major factors in infection surges and in any case pre-pubescent children would be excluded from the equation. I simply don't understand the last sentence. The vast majority of the current wave of cases have occurred among unvaccinated and therefore probably younger people and their symptoms are consequently generally not life-threatening. People who have been vaccinated and have still caught the disease are themselves generally experiencing only mild symptoms with relatively low viral loads and are therefore unlikely to infect others to any great degree. New variants- or their coming into pre-eminence - have nothing to do with the number of new cases. They already exist but only take hold when circumstances are altered to allow whatever tiny differences they possess to find an advantage. This is called evolution and has been known about for some time.
    1
  12385.  @lazytitan9987  Get Googling! Try ZOE or even the ONS. If you have any specific query on any of my assertions I would be happy to supply you with whatever sources led me to them.
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  12386.  @lat1419  Thank for your concern. I am a pensioner myself and perhaps too well fed. The government is really quite generous as far as I can tell.
    1
  12387.  @atomiccritter6492  I never claimed it to be any other than an ongoing study, nor that excess deaths in Britain are dealt with specifically. The 10.2 in a thousand death rate is a matter of ONS record and the 9.4 ish UN prediction can be found on a number of other sites. Just Google it. It's going to be a while before excess deaths from cancer, heart disease etc etc in this country can be reliably assessed. Even then the true nature of the disaster will be hidden beneath the fact that many people who have died "with" covid have done so because they have been weakened due to inadequate treatment for pre-existing conditions. How could it be otherwise?
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  12388.  @atomiccritter6492  I have never claimed there are no excess deaths. Of course there are: due both to covid and to reduction and delays in treatments for other life-threatening conditions due to lockdown and other restrictions. If someone dies with covid at the age of 90 his life expectancy is obviously going to be low, isn't it? One could certainly expect him to die within ten years - and probably far less. What do you find hard to understand in this?
    1
  12389.  @lazytitan9987  I have invited you to submit any particular query you may have and I will then hopefully be able to advance your education by directing you to sources.
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  12390.  @lazytitan9987  The virus needs to invade the respiratory system before it can spread in sufficient numbers to affect other organs. Children don't pass it on (or very, very rarely) because the highly efficient immune responses in their noses and throats prevents it from reaching their lungs. The virus is spread largely through aerosols and droplets expelled from the lungs of those affected. If it isn't present in children's lungs it cannot be passed on in this way. No child not suffering from a pre-existing severe medical condition has died with covid in this country. Cases of long-term damage are extremely rare and the same caveat applies. The astronomically vast number of viruses already in existence make it statistically inevitable that all viable variants already exist. Reproduction is not at the point where changes occur. Reproduction occurs at the point where an existing minor alteration in RNA is confronted by a situation where such an alteration brings an advantage not available to other forms. Virulence does not equate with success either. Your view of evolution went out with Lamarck.
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  12391.  @lazytitan9987  A mixed bag of bits and pieces for you to browse -mostly questing the effectiveness of lockdowns in various degrees, but the evidence put to Florida goes a great deal further. The WHO has published a number of papers on the effects of lockdowns in vastly increasing world poverty and death thereby as well as increases in mortality for TB, malaria and other conditions. Must I dig those out for you or are you capable of finding them for yourself? https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.09.20210146v3.full-text https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qydRF1Rlr68 Florida on lockdowns https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abst ract_id=3782395 Lockdowns SSRN https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)302 08-X/fulltext Lancet on lockdowns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qydRF1Rlr68 Florida lockdowns https://archive.vn/QGyET Stanford U on lockdowns Jan 12 Newsweek article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8FBd2IMM
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  12392.  @lazytitan9987  This is an ongoing research paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research which indicates, unsurprisingly, that death rates from other causes increase in countries and states where lockdowns are enforced. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28930/w28930.pdf (Apologies if my last bundle was a bit of a mess. YouTube stasi gets funny sometimes and I have to take steps to evade it.)
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  12393.  @lazytitan9987  I'm afraid the CDC has lost all credibility as far as I am concerned. Much like SAGE it is a political organisation which changes its views according to mysterious diktat. And as for The Conversation....well Of course any virus which exists has gone through a process of reproduction, otherwise it wouldn't exist, would it? The point is a variant with increased transmissibility comes to no purpose unless a situation exists whereby some advantage will derive from the minor alteration in its RNA which increases its transmissibility. Take the likely life history of the Delta variant for example. In India only wealthy people living in detached suburban homes have any hope of enduring or sustaining lockdown. They evade the earlier less efficient less transmissible variant but along comes Delta, perhaps some of just a few million floating about, and it's quick enough off the mark to start up a series of infections within this restricted environment. It spreads and is inevitably transferred to the general population, some of whom visit their relatives in the UK and then some of their neighbours travel Europe on business or holiday. Viruses don't spontaneously generate and although it is possible that some wealthy Indian caught earlier covid and it mutated within him it is just as likely that Delta variants existed in the vast invisible clouds of aerosols and virions which surround us. In either case it's only going to spread initially in an environment from which its rivals are excluded, isn't it? Being able to jump six feet is of no advantage when the fence is only five feet high. Delta didn't ought to be more virulent than its predecessor (although it might be) it just has to be more readily transmissible. In fact in time covid variants ought to become less deadly since if the hosts die they can't can't spread that variant. Indeed, in time covid 19 ought to become just one of the components of that little platoon of irritating pathogens we call the common cold.
    1
  12394.  @lazytitan9987  It really is a question of weighing pros and cons, isn't it? To make matters worse data and its interpretation is skewed by politics. You just did that yourself! Death rates are no worse in the countries you describe. Go to the deaths per 10,000 league tables available on in Internet and I defy you to find any correlation with covid scepticism. You might find exactly the reverse when you compare Peru with Brazil for example, or California with Florida. I do hope you can access the submissions to Florida's health committee by the way. OK it's only a YouTube video but the experts put their views well and were heeded. "Lockdowns are the greatest public health disaster in living memory," it was said. I think so too.
    1
  12395.  @lazytitan9987  SAGE's continued reliance on the insane computer projections of Neil Ferguson are enough, apart from the fact they have an equally insane communist among their number. Both these people have agendas other than defeating the virus. As for the CDC, what is it? How can you define a body which contradicts itself so readily and hangs around the heels of the politicians like a puppy with its tongue hanging out? The claim that facemasks were more effective than vaccines is enough to condemn it and its data collection on covid deaths is very questionable. The stories about motorcycle deaths being recorded as covid related are actually true. Don't get me started. You still don't get basic evolutionary theory, do you? Old Darwin went through a load of trouble and grief to sort this out and you really should take notice. As I indicated in my high jump analogy an advantage is only an advantage when territory makes it so. The superior transmissibility of a variant is of no matter when there are plenty of hosts around to transmit to. It's only when the availability of hosts is reduced that the tiny little extra tweak of spike protein makes a difference. Darwin did it with finches. Some finches have stronger beaks than others but it's only when the nutshells get hard that the bird with the stronger beak survives and reproduces. Same with coronaviruses, except it's protein spikes.
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  12396.  @atomiccritter6492  Lost the argument? What world of delusion are you living in?
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  12397.  @lazytitan9987  Peru has been under lockdown enforced by military intervention for the duration of the pandemic. It also has a crappy healthcare system. Which three countries are you talking about anyway? Hungary and Bosnia have both has lockdowns and social distancing so what are you getting at? As I've said before restrictions seem to make very little difference to outcomes and it is actually easier to make a case for restrictions causing more deaths, (Strict mask mandate in Hungary, for example) Around 60 million people die every year and covid as a cause of death is way down on the list. In fact the world death rate as of mid 2020 was the same as in the previous two years - and considerably lower than in previous years. I stick firmly to my case. Those who have died have been almost invariable elderly or frail in some other way. It is sad that they were taken but they were first in the queue. Children and young people have been spared. How many lives have been saved by lockdowns will be forever an unknown quantity but indications are it is practically none at all. On the other hand the economic reverberations of lockdowns and their dire effect on public healthcare and general quality of life will be with us for decades.
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  12398.  @lazytitan9987  There is no consensus, simply a wide selection of views some influenced by political considerations and others not. Yes, I naturally greet with considerable relief the fact that highly qualified specialists support my instinctive assessments. These include tenured professors and WHO advisors with lengthy and distinguished careers in epidemiology and public healthcare and I am reassured to note that they do not depend on political placement for their livelihoods. Your 10% illustration is utterly ridiculous. A virus may be 10% more transmissible than its competitors but if it exists in very very small numbers it will stand no chance of beating the competition. Its extra transmissibility is irrelevant because extra transmissibility is not needed. Only when competition is affected by the introduction of restrictions in the available number of hosts will its improved transmissibility prove its worth - and it will then vastly increase in number and reach a point where, because of that increased number, its 10% advantage will lead to it replacing the competition. Which is what has happened. Evolution occurs as a result of a change in balance between environment and individual characteristics. Nature changes the individual characteristics but in the present instance it is we who alter the environment to allow the characteristics to bring advantage to their possessor. Isolation? Finches isolated on an island where the nutshells are hard end up with stronger beaks. Viruses isolated in the suburbs of Delhi where hosts are hard to find end up with more efficient protein spikes.
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  12399.  @lazytitan9987  I strongly deny that I have ever ascribed intention to evolutionary change! Quite the contrary I have made it clear that the success of a new variant depends upon a relationship between environment and acquired characteristics. New variants occur in an arbitrary way and there are very many of them, the vast majority of which bring no benefit. Finch beaks develop in response to the environment as as do viruses. The only difference is that viral evolution is several million times quicker and in this instance man has altered the environment. Less infections may mean less mutations but we have long ago passed the point where this matters. The number of viruses that have been created is so vast that the Delta variant must have emerged several time over. The tiny differences it possesses do not enable it to beat the competition as long as the competition outnumbers it so greatly and is itself allowed to continue its natural function. I think it is you who are ascribing motive to this arbitrary process. The Delta variant has not become dominant because it is smarter and more determined than other viruses, but because environments have been created which give it the opportunity to do so. ( I was particularly intrigued by your assertion that "similarly the seeds which are too hard for the existing beak strength of the finch population don’t get eaten and are able to reproduce more." How does that work out? Was it a mistake in your English or do you actually not realise that seeds of the type eaten by birds actually NEED to be eaten in order for the plant to reproduce?)
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  12400.  @lazytitan9987  It is your understanding which is flawed. As I have explained several times we would not have seen Delta in earlier incarnations since its advantages would not have been sufficient for it to overcome competition when the competition existed in such numbers and the environment offered adequate opportunity for both to survive. Six foot jumpers, five foot jumpers and five feet fences, remember? It's a good job you're not a squirrel. Of course not all seeds need to be eaten in order to reproduce. But those eaten by finches obviously do. They develop hard shells to prevent them being eaten by insects or by any other weak lifeforms which are incapable of transferring their genetic material to distant new territory. Like viruses they need agency to be able to reproduce. Big strong finches with strong beaks do the job. It is factors such as this which provide the recipe for survival. The virus adapts to changing circumstance in the same way as does the seed and the finch. The procession of altered forms is constant but it is only when circumstances alter to allow a new form to gain advantage can it do so.
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  12401.  @lazytitan9987  Chickened out, huh? Evolution at work.
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  12402.  @lazytitan9987  I'm fairly tired of explaining things to you. The difference between us I think is that I understand your explanations but disagree with them. You can't seem quite to grasp mine. I will speak unto you in parables: In the vast plains of Africa there are vast herds of impala. They are preyed upon by both lions and cheetahs. Both catch and eat the impalas and so survive and breed. One day the god of the impalas removes nine tenths of the impalas and the rest exist in small groups scattered around the vast plain. All at once the cheetahs are at an advantage as their speed allows them to run down the remaining impalas while the poor lions stagger around in the undergrowth, puffing and panting. It is an inadequate analogy, as all analogies must be, but you of course must realise that the "unexplained" reduction in host numbers in this case is the action of the god of the impalas. The "unexplained" reduction in host numbers in our present instance is the imposition of lockdown restrictions. According to your way of thinking as soon as cheetahs appeared on the scene their extra efficiency would have allowed them to outcompete the lions into extinction. Not so. Plenty to go around. I repeat: A small advantage is no advantage at all unless circumstances allow it to be so. Being more transmissible is only an advantage when the number of hosts capable of being transmitted to is reduced to a level whereby viruses with less transmissible qualities cannot readily find hosts. As is the objective of lockdowns.
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  12403.  @lazytitan9987  You are extending my parable beyond its parameters. The principle is all that needs to be understood. Zoological quibbles are to no purpose. Delta began in India where you say there are no effective lockdowns. This is not entirely true. Lockdowns were imposed from the outset but were of course somewhat impractical in such an overcrowded country. Most Indian cities and towns are, however, surrounded by wealthy suburban areas which lend themselves ideally to lockdown and isolation. Large villas, widely separated and surrounded by high fences and walls, give wealthy families the opportunity to divorce themselves almost entirely from the world outside. It is my contention that in environments such as this that the Delta variant emerged as dominant. A peculiarity of SARS-Cov 2 is that unlike previous covids it appears to be capable of swift mutation in the manner of influenza viruses. Scientific opinion on why this should be is sharply divided. One answer to the question might well be that through our interventions we have created circumstances encouraging and vastly speeding up the mechanics of evolution. This has happened in individual cases where patients subjected to a variety of experimental treatments have produced a new variant in response. The virus' immense rate of reproduction allows it to come up with a solution simply by throwing billions of answers at the problem until one fits. Back to Bihar Crescent, New Delhi where Mr Gupta and his family are heeding government advice and self-isolating. Their fridges are full but they still have deliveries which are left at the gate for collection. The amount of virions and aerosols in the compound and in the house is much reduced, but it is still there and among the billions which arrive there are a few million delta variants (as well as a few million other variants which need not concern us here). So which variant is most likely to infect Mt Gupta's family? Obviously the one most fitted to do so - the more transmissible Delta. Back in the city slums B.1234 or whatever its name is still infecting by the thousand and the Deltas do no better or worse since their depredations are concealed among the infections which B 1234 can still readily achieve as there are plenty of hosts to infect who then infect one other very rapidly due to close proximity. The rest is history, as they say. Mr Gupta's servants come to town along with the servants of all his neighbours and all infected with the Delta variant. At last Delta is available in sufficient numbers to get among the slum dwellers and utilise its increased transmissibility to infect enough of them before B 1234 corners the market. There's a new kid on the block and all he needed was a start in life.
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  12404.  @roywiseman  Lefties love fear.
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  12405.  @lazytitan9987  Hullo again! There is a school of thought which suggests that left-wing folk tend to be more fearful and take a gloomier view of the world than those on the right - something which might be indicated by our recent enjoyable exchange of views. They are more risk-averse and less likely to question authority and more gullible and easily led than us fascist bastards. But do those of the right love killing poor people? Does anyone? As I've already said millions of poor people are going to be killed over the next few years as a consequence of lockdowns - strategies supported with hysterical fervour by all you regulation-loving, virtue-signalling paranoia junkies.
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  12406.  @lazytitan9987  The right has many faults and is the duty of the left to correct them, if possible. But as you have just shown, you are not very good at it and are getting worse and worse. I hold no brief for this government and a great many Conservatives feel the same. But they, unlike Labour, are very good at keeping ranks and showing the appearance of loyalty. I missed the two byelection that were lost, where were they? As for Freedom Day it has been too long coming. Boris and his bunch of tossers have been successfully pressured to give a date and stick to it. The only politics involved is that Boris needs to heed the Right or his days are numbered. Hancock was just a warning shot. No-one gives a toss about Labour any more, other than to have idiots to tease in the Chamber. Is July 19 a risk? Not much. Most of those getting Delta are younger people who have not been vaccinated, but their youth should protect them. The rest (around 5,000 a day, but dropping) also appear to be suffering only mild symptoms, thanks to the vaccine or even to Delta being less virulent. So bit of a risk (RW) deregulatory (RW) unsentimental (RW)economically pro-active (RW) if it fucks up Johnson goes (RW).
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  12407.  @lazytitan9987  You seem to have a problem with defining words. Loyalty has nothing to do with blindly following authority. Loyalty is a two-way street, authoritarianism is not. Perhaps an inability to make this important distinction is another feature of the left-wing mindset. "Cognitive dissonance" is such a lovely buzzphrase, but it should only make you feel intelligent when you use it properly. In this case you have not. I feel no discomfort about contradicting myself, because I haven't done so. Next misunderstood psychological usage on the dumb lefties' "look at me, I've clever" handbook is usually the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Wanna try that one?
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  12408.  @lazytitan9987  Hold on there! You do both of us a disservice. You may even give yourself a little pat on the back, if so inclined. Your spirited rebuttal of the "variants thrive under lockdown" theory has actually made me consider the matter further. I still think it highly probable but my conviction level has dropped several points. (Actually my handle does have certain ND qualities - but only surname first and spoken in an Australian accent.)
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  12409. @First Last Of course it isn't! That's just a ridiculous story made up to scare you into supporting the war. Apart from anything else just look at the difficulty Russia is having capturing the bits of Ukraine it thinks it has a right to.
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  12410.  @Khronogi  The Budapest Accord was a big mistake, and never worked. Attempts have been made for more than thirty years to straighten things out, but all have failed. No treaty lasts forever and this one was dead before it started.
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  12411.  @beckyweaver5981  He certainly should be suing them for more than the million bucks he is doing then!
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  12412. Many Ukraine addicts suffering withdrawal symptoms here.
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  12413. You'd think Swampy Joe could spare a few bucks from his crazy multi-trillion climate scam schemes to help deal with a REAL issue.
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  12414. As long as he doesn't glue himself to a motorway....
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  12415.  @ralphmillais5237  Whatever the case we will need a replacement currency of world-wide status to replace gold or the dollar as a measure of value. The yuan or crypto won't do it - but carbon bonds would fit the bill.
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  12416.  @superhumantrueman  They're not , actually.
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  12417.  @superhumantrueman  Sounds like you're more in line for that kind of deal. The facts are that the separatist rebellions were initially fomented among Ukrainian military and police, following the example of the armed forces in Crimea which went over to the Russians almost to the man. Russia was keen to take advantage and organise the rebels, but could not do so directly under the terms of the Minsk agreements. This led to the formation of the Wagner Group which controls and directs much of the activities of the two separatist armies, but the majority of the rank and file and many commanders are Russians who were born and brought up in the area.
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  12418.  @superhumantrueman  These little green men of fame and renown were certainly Russians sent in to organise things, but their task was an easy one since the police and the armed forces were entirely willing, nay eager, to change their allegiance. Their commanders still all have a price on their heads, I believe, which is pretty indicative.
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  12419.  @superhumantrueman  More along the lines of getting land back that was stolen from them, I think. Modern Ukraine is entirely a Russian creation, first as a province of imperial Russia, then as a Soviet Socialist Republic subservient to Moscow. Crimea and Donbass were both tacked on by the Soviets for purely administrative reasons. Even so, Russia has regretfully accepted the Kiev government's decision to face West rather than East - but it can't take the Russian bits with it, and nor can it allow itself to become an outpost of a hostile military power. This, to me, seems an entirely reasonable position to take.
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  12420.  @superhumantrueman  It's not a lie. What does sovereignty even mean, anyway? It can't be magically granted by signing bits of paper and drawing lines on maps. It has to reflect historical and economic realities. Ukraine's "sovereignty" does not. The Soviet Union is dead and good riddance - but what it left behind cannot simply be ignored. In the division of its corpse Ukraine has received parts of Russia, which Russian people and Russian money turned from barren steppe into rich industrial wealth over many generations. This was an error which needs to be corrected. It could have been done without war, but America has its eyes on that Russian wealth and is happy to sacrifice tens of thousands of Slav lives to get it.
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  12421.  @superhumantrueman  There is no lie involved. No treaty lasts forever. Some last for mere weeks, some for months or years; thirty years is pretty good going. The Russia which signed the Budapest treaty is not the Russia of today and the Budapest treaty was flawed in the first place. The fact that so many attempts have been made to correct it shows this. There are three main types of treaty: those which stop wars, those which prevent wars and those which start wars. Budapest comes into the last category.
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  12422.  @superhumantrueman  Where does the lie come in? Ukraine is a made-up country, created in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union. A good chunk of it doesn't want to be part of that made-up country - so why should it be? You can't just ignore these problems. Peaceful attempts have been made to solve them but they have been torpedoed by outside commercial interests. America wants what Ukraine has. It wants what Russia has and it will lie, cheat and shed the blood of others to get it. Russia is simply defending itself against American imperialism.
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  12423. Democracy hasn't been doing such a great job though, has it? And very, very few of these people are either far right or even particularly racist. This is just a pathetic attempt at blame- shifting. It's YOUR fault, lady. Yours and every self-satisfied political lightweight like you.
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  12424. The US missiles are probably easier for Russia to intercept than Ukraine's slow, low-flying drones.
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  12425. It's kinda sad when kiddies stop believing in Santa. This - not so much.
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  12426. Russia has always been ready to negotiate. Sadly, this cannot happen as long as the American puppet, Zelensky, is President.
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  12427. Since CNN is party to this conspiracy, coverage is unlikely. They sing to the FBI's tune too. It's as bad as Soviet Russia in America now.
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  12428.  @toddlawrence6872  Not pointless. Russia wants to keep a hold of the multi-trillion $ mining industry in Donbass they have worked for generations.
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  12429.  @MatThomas-il3dn  I think everyone knew that Russia could not defend the whole border. What they didn't know was the Ukraine would bother to cross it.
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  12430.  @peteduch2151  My cat has that.
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  12431.  @toddlawrence6872  Russia has invested in, developed and manned the mining industry in Donbass for centuries. Ukraine has had nothing to do with it, other than messing it up with lack of investment after the ersatz country was created in 1991.
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  12432.  @toddlawrence6872  No. Just history.
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  12433.  @dennislindqvist1265  The people of Russia are neither oppressed nor do they live in poverty. That is just Western propaganda.
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  12434. Prometheus Go to www.ceres-science.com if you want a slightly more balanced view.
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  12435.    I'm not quite sure if you know what an oxymoron is. However, if you would care to critique this latest appraisal from the Antichrist I would be pleased to consider it. Personally I find it quite convincing. You will also find, I think, that both NASA and NOAA fully admit that they have "adjusted data", based upon the premise that earlier readings came from unreliable equipment. This is fair enough. What is not acceptable is that they seem to replace the readings by working backwards from a theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvuhxv1Ywd4
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  12436.    I was right. You actually don't know what an oxymoron is. Unsurprising for one of the walking dead.
    1
  12437. Because they've been suckered into fighting and dying for America and Europe's financial interests?
    1
  12438. With so many bent American politicians up to their eyes in the Ukrainian cash-cow it is difficult to see how any other result would have been possible. Seven decaying and decadent countries against the rest of the world?
    1
  12439. Daniel Laprelle Woe! Woe! And thrice times woe! None of this true. And for future reference you meant throes not throws.
    1
  12440. Daniel Laprelle It's "throes" not "throws". Doesn't matter since everything else you said is wrong too.
    1
  12441. If we do this thing it will be declaration of war - and Russia will respond. It could be the end of everything.
    1
  12442. Facts????!!!!
    1
  12443. It's worse in Europe! Would you believe this from the European Centre for Disease Control? "The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty." Utter madness, Greaseball Trumptards!
    1
  12444. Keeeeeve!
    1
  12445. Back off America - this guy ain't bluffing!
    1
  12446. Freddie Howes. Who knows since so much data is being so regularly "adjusted" ? I think events may well have overtaken your 2013 paper. The formula for compensating for the UHI effect has been altered since then I believe. Also, new automated stations have been set up in underground urban sites and recording stations on board ocean going vessels have been placed in hotter positions . As for the satellite data this has clearly been radically changed on the pretext that the satellites' orbits have decayed. There are interesting graphs and papers to be found at www.ceres-science.com and of course the warmists' Bete Noire Tony Heller has issued some pretty irrefutable videos. I agree we skeptics must be careful of fallacious arguments, but equally we must not underestimate the lengths the Warmists will go to in order to peddle their doctrines.
    1
  12447. I do much the same with the Guardian.
    1
  12448.  @ionnanskilliorus  Quite the opposite.
    1
  12449.  @ionnanskilliorus  Now you're just being silly. It didn't fall into a trap, it called America's bluff.
    1
  12450.  @ionnanskilliorus  It was played, certainly. But the response can hardly be described as weak, can it?
    1
  12451.  @ionnanskilliorus  Do you know what, I've been trying for ages to find where this 3 day (or ten day) thing came from? I haven't been able find a single source. As to losing ground, perhaps gaining ground wasn't the objective. Perhaps the idea was to spread a wide net and use the time and the territory to destroy the Ukrainian army while retreating to Donbass and the south coast. Perhaps the idea then was to knock the shit out of Ukraine with aerial bombardments before launching a new attack from the north, thus diverting remaining Ukrainian forces to defend Kiev and so allowing Russia to take and secure Donbass and Crimea. Which was all Russia ever wanted in the first place. Think about it.
    1
  12452.  Elena  Much of the world is occupied land of you look back far enough! But who does one give Eastern Ukraine back to? It was mainly occupied by wandering tribes of Tatars until coal was discovered there and the Russians came along and began to mine it. As for Western Ukraine, despite it being the original homeland of the ancestors of the Russian people, Poland , Lithuania and Sweden have occupied it at various times I believe, and Poland even thinks it is still entitled to a bit of it.
    1
  12453.  @WinterGK  But what is Ukraine? And where did the aggression begin? America and NATO have spent tens of billions of dollars on arming Ukraine to retake Crimea and Donbass to allow Western entities to have access to enormous mineral wealth to which Russia feels it is entitled. If this war did not take place in Ukraine, it would have happened in Donbass and Crimea. Ever since the end of World War II "International law" has been largely a vehicle to promote American hegemony. It is not divine and the UN Is not God. And the Donbass and Crimea are not Ukrainian simply because a paper was signed back in 1991 by a confused drunkard in the chaos of the collapse of an empire. This could have been settled peacefully, but America has instead chosen to use Ukraine as a cat's paw in its battle to subdue Russia and further enrich itself thereby.
    1
  12454.  @WinterGK  The UN is a sham, really. Votes mean nothing. And there is no such thing as "the global community." Russia is far from isolated. Many counties sympathise with its cause and will support it openly one day, as many are already doing covertly.
    1
  12455.  @WinterGK  Do you really imagine that ALL those 141 countries meant it? Don't you think it possible that many of them were just hedging their bets, waiting to see who wins? The world is changing, and this war will hasten that change. Russia and China and India and all the countries queuing up to join BRICS are going to give America a run for its money. As for wartime laws - check on some that Zelensky has brought in.
    1
  12456.  @anastasiiaf8311  So why are they still doing it now, even post 1991?
    1
  12457.  @anastasiiaf8311  That was the figure in the census that year. Are you suggesting the percentage has changed so dramatically since then? As to language I daresay your figures are right, but ethnic Russians still speak Russian at home do they not? And there were Russian schools until Kiev tried to shut them down, were there not? And is Kiev now not turning the tables and trying to ban Russian?
    1
  12458.  @WinterGK  BRICS is a trading group with a rapidly increasing membership and advanced plans to create its own gold-based currency designed to rival the dollar. Russia has a huge nuclear arsenal and is one of the world's top three producers of oil, gas and nuclear fuels. GDP is a only one measure of a country's position in the world. Furthermore most countries are still trading with Russia by various covert means, despite the polite noises they make in the sham UN talking shop.
    1
  12459.  @anastasiiaf8311 I don't understand why the Ukrainian government should rig a census to indicate that it has a 17% Russian population when it does not, nor how in one breath you claim that there are Russian schools all over Ukraine, and in the next say the Russian language has to be banned.
    1
  12460.  @jimreily7538  Ukraine had 6,500 tanks at the start of the war.
    1
  12461.  @jimreily7538  Your figures are about as reliable as your political judgement. Estimates of Ukraine's forces at the start of the war vary wildly. All one can say is that are sound military reasons for both exaggerating your strengths and for minimising them whereas giving them accurately might well be foolish. But 6,500 is what you get when you Google.
    1
  12462.  @АлексейАндреев-г2ч2л  It often seems that way.
    1
  12463.  @Rjsjrjsjrjsj  As I said, it seems very unlikely but it does very much illustrate the fact that we armchair warriors are utterly in the dark when it comes to credible information about the true situation. Just checking now, it seems the quote is extrapolated from the very extensive Wikipedia article on the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
    1
  12464.  @Rjsjrjsjrjsj  Since I am 74 years of age your claim is unlikely. Geopolitics is merely a sideline, since my chief pre-occupation is propaganda and social manipulation, which war very much brings into focus. Your good wishes are appreciated and returned.
    1
  12465.  @stephenhill545  Crazy isn't it? But this is what you get when you Google it: "Altogether the Armed Forces of Ukraine included about 780,000 personnel, 6,500 tanks, about 7,000 combat armored vehicles, 1,500 combat aircraft, and more than 350 ships." It appears to be taken from the extensive article in Wikipedia. Any guesses why it's there?
    1
  12466.  @Ptrm594  A somewhat simple-minded assessment, and inaccurate in one important respect. I am a rather bored Englishman, currently mostly bedridden and like many other people I follow the war with interest. I am not Russian. It is quite clear that we are being fed inaccurate information. This war is a proxy war, like so many wars since 1945 it has been instigated by America in a bid to extend its commercial interests. In order to justify this war Zelensky has been portrayed as a hero and Putin as an utter villain. Neither claim is true. Zelensky is a fool, selected for the job by Ukrainian oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky. This is the man who also provided Hunter Biden with a $milliona year job for doing nothing. At the time he owned a good chunk of the US steel industry and half of downtown Cleveland. This is all part of a long term plot to remove the vast mineral resources of Donbass from Russian control and give them to America. Putin has achieved a great deal in bringing his country out of the chaos of the communist collapse, and he has had to be very tough to do it. He is being tough now. Tougher, I think, that those American entities who set this scenario believed he would be. One further point: I did not write the Wikipedia assessment. I would not know where to begin. It is a mystery, but it does rather show how how much false information there is out there.
    1
  12467.  @jimreily7538  I have deleted nothing. As far I am concerned the quotes are still there, and I stand by them. Every word. But I am not Russian. If I was I would freely admit it. The simple truth is that you are incapable of understanding how a free-thinking person, which I am, can reject the propaganda you have swallowed so unhesitatingly.
    1
  12468. The alternative was submission to the West.
    1
  12469. Tiger Patel!
    1
  12470. @robertoNcognito I do like to think of my descendants future, however. And I genuinely believe that man-man global warming is more or less a total scam which will ultimately result in tragedy for the mass of people.
    1
  12471. Of course the new variant will evade vaccines. That's what it's evolved to do. It's about time we realised that the only way out of this mess is to let covid burn itself out among the young and healthy, while doing all we can to shield the elderly and vulnerable.
    1
  12472.  @zackaplowitz  Not so. The "scientific evidence" is based on the assumption that immunity through infection would not be robust and long term. It is. The other objection was that it would not be possible to shield the vulnerable. How this matches up to trying to shield everybody I leave it to you to decide. The objections are, of course, promoted by the pharmaceutical industry which has consistently undermined any alternatives to their inefficient and short-lived vaccines which, it appears, every man woman and child will have to take every couple of months for the rest of their lives. A real money-spinner!
    1
  12473.  @Joe-ey7cu  And?
    1
  12474.  @Karengili565  Putin didn't start the war. It is the result of a series of circumstance of which the invasion of Ukraine was just one part. All Putin wants is to recover those parts of what he believes are essentially Russia which were mistakenly incorporated into the new country of Ukraine. He poses no threat to the UK or anywhere else for that matter - unless of course we continue to fight a proxy war by supplying Ukraine with weapons with which to defeat him.
    1
  12475.  @Karengili565  The conflict in Ukraine is the result of a complex series of events, with the invasion being just one part. Putin's objective appears to be reclaiming regions he believes are historically and culturally Russian, which were incorporated into Ukraine after the Soviet Union's dissolution. He has stated that his actions are not intended to threaten other countries, including the UK, but tensions have escalated due to the ongoing supply of weapons to Ukraine by external parties. (Reply rewritten by bot Bing in an attempt to make it acceptable to YouTube.)
    1
  12476.  @Karengili565  He's only defending his country.
    1
  12477.  @Karengili565  The situation in Ukraine is a result of multiple complex factors. Historical tensions and territorial disputes have contributed to the current conflict. Russia's actions are driven by a desire to reclaim areas it views as historically significant. The ongoing conflict and the supply of weapons to Ukraine by external parties have further escalated tensions.
    1
  12478.  @Joe-ey7cu  I know the answer. Ultimately, us.
    1
  12479.  @michaelhelbrow7906  No. They asked three times and were refused three times.
    1
  12480.  @Karengili565  I've tried three times to reply, in the end I have had to get a bot to rewrite my answer to pass YouTube censorship - hence its rather prim and proper tone! Think of that. You've been answered by a bot!
    1
  12481.  @marisabenson1222  It's up to other countries how they are run. Nothing to do with us so long as they stay on their side of the fence.
    1
  12482.  @Joe-ey7cu  The US has constantly sought to undermine Russia and lay hands on its resources. The dissatisfactions expressed in Georgia, Chechnya and now Ukraine are the direct result of these encouragements.
    1
  12483.  @Joe-ey7cu  Brazil: During the 2019 Amazon wildfires, Russia sent an Il-76 cargo plane to Bolivia to help combat the fires on the Brazilian side of the Amazon. Japan: After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, Russia sent search and rescue teams to assist in the aftermath. Indian Ocean Tsunami: Following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2004, Russia provided aid to countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka.
    1
  12484.  @Joe-ey7cu  All of them? They suffered under the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation is a different thing.
    1
  12485.  @Joe-ey7cu  Sorry. You lost me there.
    1
  12486.  @Joe-ey7cu  Who are we talking about? I've lost track. Sorry.
    1
  12487.  @waltdavis29  There was an article in Renewable Matter some time ago, and it was covered by news outlets at the time. I think the companies primarily involved were European Lithium and Chengxin Lithium. I have not kept any notes so I'm afraid if you want firmer details you have to go chasing!
    1
  12488.  @waltdavis29  YouTube doesn't seem to want me to give the sources. Try a mag called Renewable Matter.
    1
  12489.  @waltdavis29  I hate the YouTube algorithm! European |Lithium.
    1
  12490.  @waltdavis29  Chengxin Lithium
    1
  12491. Well done America! Your greedy and insane foreign policies have forced your enemies into each others' arms.
    1
  12492.  @slawomirozdoba4605  The mobile crematoria are a total fiction -just part of Ukraine's propaganda effort which sadly tends to undermine the credibility of genuine abuses when they occur. That they do occur I have no doubt. It is in the nature of war and Russians are notoriously tough and sometimes hideously cruel. But then too are many Ukrainians. They have more or less been matching each other atrocity for atrocity in Donbass for eight years I have no doubt that when Russians meet with suspected armed resistance from civilians they will execute them and probably torture them first to gain information. Idiot Zelensky's well-publicised distribution of arms to all and sundry hasn't helped. I'm also pretty convinced that when Ukrainian advance troops enter recently vacated territory they might well shoot people they think were collaborators. And all this on top of film-set style fakery and nonsense such as the mobile crematoria. This war needs stopping, not escalating. And I'm sorry to say the best way is to give in to Putin's not unreasonable demands as soon as humanly possible.
    1
  12493. @Slim Zazzabim I don't doubt it. Zelensky's stupidity in arming civilians means that Russians see assassins behind every bush and act accordingly. But the Ukrainians are just as guilty. They have been torturing and killing Donbass separatists for eight years.
    1
  12494. Has no-one twigged yet that most of the media and most of Big Pharma are more or less owned by the same two investment companies - Black Rock and Vanguard. Anything which promotes Big Pharma profits is ALWAYS going to make the front page.
    1
  12495. If you can't find love, then hate will have to do.
    1
  12496. Frank Umlaut These are horrible lies spread by climate change deniers! Before the Industrial Revolution people lived in houses with thatched roofs and often lived to be several hundred years old, same as in the Bible. The climate was the same all the year round, namely sunny, and it only ever rained at night.
    1
  12497. Time to take sides, I'm afraid. Tommy Robinson is the true voice of the scandalously neglected British working class. The other lot are a bunch of middle-class lefty muddleheads, shepherded into an ersatz opposition by forces of which they are not even aware.
    1
  12498.  @EeroMyrsky  Hey! Are you one of the tiny handful of people who watched one of my YouTube videos before I stopped bothering???
    1
  12499.  @jiversteve  Protest does not include criminal damage - or rather it often does, and people should expect to be punished when caught. In Nazi Germany, of course, breaking windows and painting yellow stars on walls was quite the thing.
    1
  12500.  @rocketscience4516  Well your view is obviously influenced by the company YOU keep. There is a thing called democracy which decides between a majority and a minority. It is a logical absurdity to assume that the erection of the statue had anything to do with Colston's activities as a slave trader. It was only during his lifetime that slave-trading had even begun to be questioned. Until that point it had been a constant feature of human history. Applying a retrospective morality in this way means the destruction of all history, more or less, and must be resisted in the interests of truth. He was commemorated as a benefactor to the people of Bristol, which he was to a very great extent. For a group of pompous, self-righteous activists to decide that their views justify the destruction of public property, and to do so without being punished for it, means that anyone prompted by a moral concern can do the same thing. I hate wind turbines because they are very ugly, kill birds and make electricity expensive. This verdict means I am justified in blowing them up as soon as I can lay my hands on some dynamite.
    1
  12501.  @rocketscience4516  You were never much fun to argue with.
    1
  12502.  @rocketscience4516  By the way, a point you seem to have missed is that the protest groups you mention were fighting against real injustices which were really occurring at the time. The Colston vandals are just conceited children delving into the distant past to find a hate figure to bolster their idiotic views. Not in the same league.
    1
  12503.  @rocketscience4516  I think it would be rather fun to throw a statue into a river though!
    1
  12504.  @rocketscience4516  They are not ongoing. That's the point. BLM and leftist race-baiting generally are an insult to the fighters and martyrs of the 1960's who effectively outlawed racism in any real sense of the word. The prodding of its corpse back to life in order to provide Marxism with an otherwise absent proletariat is one of the most disgusting of the many disgusting tactics employed by the contemporary left. Talking of Marx, I think he once wrote that history repeats itself: first as tragedy and secondly as farce. He could even have been right in this instance. Contrast civil rights campaigners being murdered by Southern rednecks in the 1960's with a gaggle of spoilt English students pulling down the statue of a perfectly ordinary 17th century businessman and thinking themselves no end of heroes for doing so.
    1
  12505.  @rocketscience4516  They are not ongoing. To pretend that they are in order to provide Marxism with an otherwise absent oppressed proletariat is an insult to the civil rights fighters and martyrs of the 1960s. Talking of Marx, I think he once said that history repeats itself: first as tragedy and secondly as farce. He could even have been right in this instance. Contrast civil rights campaigners being murdered in the Deep South with a gaggle of spoilt students pulling down the statue of a perfectly ordinary 17th century businessman and thinking very highly of themselves for doing so.
    1
  12506.  @rocketscience4516  Tell that to all the black policemen, judges, business leaders and politicians in the US. Give me evidence of one indisputable incident of institutional racism is this country or even in America. Just one. (I can. But it would be white people on the receiving end.) Why do have so much trouble reading, by the way? I've often wondered.
    1
  12507.  @errorswillmultiply1697  The Apex Fallacy is a fallacy. You might just as well say that the cornflakes at the bottom of the box are there because they haven't been given a fair chance to get to the top. As to the second issue I leave this entirely to your judgement.
    1
  12508.  @errorswillmultiply1697  As I understand it the Apex Fallacy says that one cannot judge the performance of a particular group by the performances of the most successful in that group. As is the case with a box of cornflakes, as opposed to other breakfast cereals, this applies to all groups and so is irrelevant to the issue of discrimination. You are prevaricating on issue two.
    1
  12509.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I thought we were talking about success or lack of it? My incidents of racism against white people would be the utterly disgraceful way the thousands of white children systematically raped by grooming gangs have been ignored by police and politicians on racial grounds. Nothing to do with career paths. So silly yourself. And I can't be expected to tell you what I would accept as evidence until the evidence is presented. The ball remains in your court.
    1
  12510.  @Dash8Q400Channel  But this is surely just vigorous banter, and nothing to do with racism? I'm not a sports fan myself but I get the impression that it is perfectly acceptable to go for some distinguishing characteristic of a player and loudly mock him for it. Fat players, ugly players, players with odd names or bad haircuts don't get upset. Why should black players? Or indeed white middle-class do-gooders on their behalf?
    1
  12511.  @rocketscience4516  Sadly the YouTube Gestapo Algorithm does not allow me to respond adequately. It it is, however, telling that you have to go back thirty years to cite the Lawrence case. As for Mr Floyd......it is forbidden to speak ill of newly-canonised saints, it seems.
    1
  12512.  @rocketscience4516  I've been through this exercise. They just seem like a load of of pathetic whinging for the most part. Racism is entirely natural anyway. It's an inbuilt defence mechanism which has to be subjected to personal examination if it is to be conquered. (Sometimes it is disadvantageous to conquer it, of course.) People from Caribbean islands tend to despise people from other Caribbean islands more than any of them are despised by white people. Many Asians are fearful of blacks. It's just the way it is. and white people in Britain these days are probably among the least racist people in the world. Anti-racist legislation is everywhere and black people are quite grotesquely over-represented in TV shows and advertisements. It's been a long time since burning crosses were set up on front lawns in Surbiton.
    1
  12513.  @rocketscience4516  I am genuinely sorry to hear of your personal experiences. They must surely have happened several decades ago though, and the situation today is very different. I am not at all racist, although my parents and most of my schoolteachers certainly were. One of the reasons I resent the faux, imitation racism of today is because I was quite actively involved in attempting to curb the very real racism which occurred in the '60s and 70s. That effort was largely successful and I genuinely believe it is a serious mistake to deliberately whip up resentment today when there is but little cause for it. It is counter-productive when people really are rubbing along quite well together on the whole.
    1
  12514.  @Liz_for_PM_again  The instinct for racism is based on two things: ignorance of the true nature of people of other races and the threat of the loss of property to members of another race. Both are overcome when a minority becomes sufficiently large for its characteristics to be generally known. English people now generally accept black people as they accept Welsh, Scottish and Irish people. They have done so for many years for the most part, as expressed, for instance, by the warm welcome generally given to black GIs during the War. Racial incidents since then have generally occurred when young men have looked for groups of other young men to fight, but this is just something that young men do. I think the situation in Britain has been adversely affected by the situation in America where black people are understandably aware of their ancestors' role as imported slaves, and white people feel guilty because of it. The trouble is largely political since the Democrat party relies on the black vote to survive and is guilty of whipping up this resentment in order to present itself as an antidote to it. That syndrome has filtered into our attitude over here to a certain extent, and there is no need for it. What racism exists is rare and residual and we do ourselves no favours by drawing exaggerated attention to the dangers of it. Throwing bananas on football pitches is not racism though. It is banter. It's no better or worse than accusing Swansea supporters of having sex with sheep.
    1
  12515.  @rocketscience4516  The incident of having bricks thrown through your windows must have been truly horrible but, as with the rest of your experiences, I think you must admit that it was probably the result of bored young people looking for an excuse for devilment rather than the result of any deeply-held racial prejudices. Racism is a first instinct response and only seems to occur with the onset of puberty, when sexual and territorial rivalries come to the fore. Most of us quickly learn to overcome it when we see the advantages that can be gained from extending the hand of friendship. After this point racial resentment becomes a form of psychosis and only relatively few people suffer from it -usually the more inadequate amongst us. As I have already said, I think it is a mistake to place too much emphasis upon the effects of this aberration. Shine a light on it and it grows, largely because it can be transformed into an effective political weapon. Resentment is very inflammable and this applies as much to the resentment of black people who feel they have been misused as it does to that of white people who can be made to believe their security is threatened. More so these days, I think. I remember being very disheartened by the growth of the National Front in the 1970s. It may shock you to know that I am equally disheartened by the appearance of BLM in the present day. They both represent two sides of the same coin: the encouragement and manipulation of racial resentment for political ends.
    1
  12516.  @rocketscience4516  We will doubtless talk again at some point. (Trump is not a racist by the way. He ignores racial differences, unlike the Democrats who capitalise on them. Trump's objection to immigrants from the south is based upon their economic and societal impact, not their racial backgrounds.)
    1
  12517.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I am sorry to hear it.
    1
  12518.  @rocketscience4516  Trump's father's racist housing policies were circumscribed by law initially. As for Trump himself, he does not appear to be racist in any way . He just realises that setting up cheap housing in middle class areas is going to lead to crime and destroy property values. He is a realist who knows what sort of people tend to commit what sort of crimes, that's all. Whatever visceral racial feelings he inherited from the era of his upbringing seem to be completely under control.
    1
  12519.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Of course. The most recent example of any considerable change of opinion has been my attitude towards Donald Trump. I had little interest in US politics until his arrival on the scene and initially took up the lazy Brit view of him as some sort of ridiculous car salesman figure. Two years of listening to the constant stream of nonsensical vituperation against him, and examining its veracity in detail, caused me to very much change my mind.
    1
  12520.  @rocketscience4516  How so? If Trump has any residual racial antagonisms (which I doubt) he is quite clever enough to keep them to himself I'm sure.
    1
  12521.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I have to ask: why the interest? I can only bring relatively minor examples to mind. I was convinced for a while that since the number of covid 19 virions in existence is several times greater than the number of stars in the observable universe then all possible variants must have already come into existence. A mathematician then informed me that the number of possible variants is actually larger than the number of atoms in the universe, so that put paid to that idea.
    1
  12522.  @rocketscience4516  Is this all you've got? It seems to show a talent for realistic assessment rather than any irrational racial prejudice -plus a sense of humour of course. And so much is ancient history when Trump was clearly reflecting the attitudes of the time. You can't expect people in the 70s and 80s to behave like cossetted 21st century liberals. It would be weird if they did.
    1
  12523.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Fair enough. I'd like to be wrong more often than I appear to be though.
    1
  12524.  @Bob-us9di  We didn't have one! Fridges were comparatively rare in the 1950s.
    1
  12525. Common sense?
    1
  12526.  @briancollins6974  What for? Give Russia Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine stay out of NATO, and the war is over.
    1
  12527.  @jonghyun2263  It may be the only option.
    1
  12528.  @jonghyun2263  It's either that or a long and destructive war. As long as it's disguised as some sort of victory for Ukraine we might get away with it.
    1
  12529.  @jonghyun2263  I agree entirely that Russia is holding the best cards, but I believe it possible that the game could be over relatively soon. A convincing victory in Donbass, plus the entire disruption of Ukrainian supply lines via bombardment and land invasion will leave the Ukrainians with little choice but to sit at the conference table. Weapon supplies will dry up, I think - and what's the point of Europe and the US donating its old junk if the Ukrainians can't move it anywhere anyhow? Personally I don't think the Russians had any real notion of ensuring a swift victory. That might have been a surprise bonus but the real objective of the SMO was to draw out the Ukrainians into the field to be slaughtered.
    1
  12530. Satire is not dead.
    1
  12531.  @dengan699  He fooled you.
    1
  12532.  @hurz2233  He didn't. That was not a serious effort. It was merely designed to draw the Ukrainian forces into battle, and defeat them on their own territory.
    1
  12533.  @Awibrahor  A better way of ending the war than trying to take Kiev. How have I lied?
    1
  12534.  @dengan699  You're still fooled lol
    1
  12535.  @Awibrahor  What's in a vowel and an umlaut? I'm old. I still think of Beijing as Peking and Varanasi as Benares!
    1
  12536. The only decent thing about the Church of England is the beauty of its churches. Since the clergy now seem intent on turning these into mosques or immigrant outreach centres, even that benefit now seems likely to disappear into oblivion.
    1
  12537. Many are.
    1
  12538. ​ @SNOWDONTRYFAN If they get found out.....
    1
  12539. The fact that there were hardly any Russians there to stop them might account for it.
    1
  12540. Between them they might be quite a team!
    1
  12541. How does climate change fit in with the Australian bush fires? Hot is hot. Alight is alight. This is down to human incompetence on the ground and can have no conceivable connection with levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
    1
  12542. A city trader, actually.
    1
  12543.  @nihilistlivesmatter  One armed bandit operators end up losing. City traders - if they are any good - end up winning. How do you explain that?
    1
  12544.  @nihilistlivesmatter  Obviously it isn't. But that's because you invariably lose in the long run , but thrilling intermediate wins persuade addicts to play anyway. City trading is somewhat different. With sufficient skill and judgement you can consistently win, no matter how long you play. Also you can use your skill and judgement to affect outcomes - which you can't when playing a one-armed bandit to any great degree.
    1
  12545.  @MathewLewit  Please visit Anna in Russia on her YouTube channel. Your illusions will soon be shattered.
    1
  12546.  @MathewLewit  The red ink thing? You realise it was satire, don't you?
    1
  12547. How about pissed-off working class riots?
    1
  12548.  @jakel8627  Well, they made it.
    1
  12549. No books are banned by Florida. Parents have merely been invited to name books which cause them concern. Any empty shelves are the result of muddle-headed over-reaction by paranoid or unscrupulous leftist schoolteachers.
    1
  12550.  @bearsagainstevil  Small but with high population density, geddit?
    1
  12551. ... and unlike Biden he didn't even get paid for it.
    1
  12552. The more Labour resembles the Conservatives, the great chance it has.
    1
  12553. This is hysterical garbage.
    1
  12554. He wasn't voted out. There was a US-led coup which forced him to flee.
    1
  12555. There may be a cure for coronavirus. There's no cure for this.
    1
  12556. Scientist are fighting back. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  12557.  @boink800  Sounds reasonable.
    1
  12558.  @alhambrabiker1476  It's a good language, and many people speak it! Amer4icans could have ended up speaking Dutch or German or Italian, then where would we be?
    1
  12559.  @boink800  Is it? I'm sure you're right.
    1
  12560.  @boink800  That makes me proud.
    1
  12561.  @fainitesbarley2245  Absolutely so. In the case of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine the original inhabitants were generally Tatars and Greeks.
    1
  12562. Trump and Russia share a common history - of being constantly and unfairly maligned. No wonder they are allies.
    1
  12563.  @christopherblackburn6811  No. A new opposition can justifiably ignore the past and look to the future.
    1
  12564.  @christopherblackburn6811  Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson?
    1
  12565.  @christopherblackburn6811  All eminent qualifications.
    1
  12566. Californians are hardly Americans. They are from another planet.
    1
  12567.  @jacky3580  Racism has become a Democrat thing. Perhaps it always was.
    1
  12568. Cases up. Deaths down The gap gets wider and wider.
    1
  12569. What's happening in Donbass? It could be that those territories are all Putin wants and once he's got them and secured the border he'll sue for peace. I don't imagine he'll want a long-running civil war in the main part of Ukraine.
    1
  12570. Just another Biden fuck-up.
    1
  12571.  @audreymcgready4329  My days of being brainwashed are long over, I'm pleased to say. I really don't see how anyone who has studied to any degree the history of this area can do anything but conclude that the Arabs are the prime movers of conflict, motivated as they are by Medieval-style religious convictions, whereas the Israelis just want to build a modern country. Good luck to them, I say.
    1
  12572.  @BrazenBull91  It matters.
    1
  12573.  @audreymcgready4329  And learn the history of Palestine? People should.
    1
  12574.  @sososoprano1  That is only part of the story. And what is a "Palestinian" anyway? This whole area was impoverished and vastly underpopulated under the aegis of the declining Ottoman Empire. Only between half a million to a million lived there and a high percentage of them were Jews. Then Zionism came along. The Zionists actually bought large tracts of land from their Ottoman owners and began a process of transforming a derelict semi-desert into thriving farmland. Arabs flooded in from neighbouring countries, either as labourers or in some cases as actual invaders. Today's "Palestinians" are largely the descendants of these people. If it wasn't for Jews they wouldn't be there. The wave of Jewish settlers which occurred after the horror of the Holocaust created enormous problems all round, and things were done on both sides which, in retrospect, were utterly shameful. But the over-riding factor in my view is that the Muslims hate the Jews for religious reasons. The more extreme among them -who have the whip hand, sadly - want them all dead. The Jews on the other hand are quite happy to live side by side with Arabs as long as they behave themselves, work hard and don't steal from them or threaten to kill them. I sincerely hope and pray that the Arabs will eventually be able to cast off their religious prejudices and take part properly in the great experiment which is the creation of the state of Israel. As things stand, however, they have to accept the consequences of their attitude and actions. They have given the Israelis no real alternative.
    1
  12575.  @sososoprano1  This was only part of the problem, as I'm sure you realise. My original reply has been deleted by YouTube's new fiercely fascist, pro Arab algorithm, but I hope I can say that once the religious element is removed from the Arabs' attitude towards the Jews there is a real chance that peace might be achieved.
    1
  12576.  @GillianBailey-s9z  From your comment I doubt you know much of the history of the region, only those parts of it doled out to you by Arab propaganda,
    1
  12577.  @sososoprano1  Israel and the Zionists have, in the past, bent over backwards to establish cordial relations with the Arabs (who make up some 20% of the population, by the way). Unfortunately, religious prejudice has forced the Muslims to heed the voices of extremism and all such efforts have been met with violent opposition. What is happening now in Gaza (donated freely to the Arabs by Israel, incidentally) the Arabs have brought upon themselves by decades of unreasonable and often cruel behaviour.
    1
  12578.  @GillianBailey-s9z  Mere buzzwords.
    1
  12579.  @GillianBailey-s9z  Mere buzzwords.
    1
  12580.  @sososoprano1  What is happening now in Gaza is the result of decades of Muslim extremists failing to listen to reason and preventing their more moderate brothers and sisters from enjoying Israel's proffered hand of friendship.
    1
  12581.  @sososoprano1  I have. It is clear to me that the current "good guy, bad guy" narrative is far from the truth. The history of Zionism and the Arab reaction to it put both the events of 1948 and subsequent conflicts into a somewhat different perspective. Unfortunately the new YouTube algorithm, being both fascist and pro-Arab, prevents me from going into further detail.
    1
  12582.  @sososoprano1  I have. Once again the deeply sinister new YouTube algorithm has deleted my previous replies, but I hope I can safely say that the foundations of the present horrors were laid long before the Balfour Declaration. Even subsequent events are the result of the intractability of certain people who adhere to a somewhat questionable version of reality created over a thousand years ago.
    1
  12583.  @GillianBailey-s9z  Mere buzzwords.
    1
  12584.  @sososoprano1  I have. The deeply sinister new YouTube algorithm has, however, several times prevented me from sharing it with you. All I can say is that you are, like so many people, probably looking at a very broad picture through a very small peephole.
    1
  12585. @prano1 I have. I've several times tried to share my findings with you, but YouTube's new algorithm has decided you must be kept in ignorance.
    1
  12586.  @seabreezecoffeeroasters7994  What is so hard to believe? The man has been in Ukraine. He recruits mercenaries to fight for Ukraine. Zelensky wants Trump out of the way - he's an ideal candidate. People who really need tinfoil hats are those who believe Trump has staged these two attempts to boost his poll ratings.
    1
  12587.  @seabreezecoffeeroasters7994  What's so hard to believe? The man has been to Ukraine to fight and tries to recruit mercenaries for Zelensky. Ideal for the job. Tinfoil hats are worn by those who believe that these attempts were organised by the Trump team to boost his election chances.
    1
  12588.  @seabreezecoffeeroasters7994  People who believe that Trump fixed these incidents for his own benefit are the ones who are wearing tinfoil hats.
    1
  12589.  @seabreezecoffeeroasters7994  I've passed mine on to people who believe these incidents were staged by Trump to gain popularity,
    1
  12590.  @seabreezecoffeeroasters7994  I've given mine away to people who think Trump staged this to gain popularity.
    1
  12591. Biden has been in the pay of Ukrainian oligarchs for years - as have several other prominent Democrats. Giving their unemployable children highly-paid "jobs" is just one way of syphoning in the cash. Donations to favourite "charities" is another.
    1
  12592. Great fashion sense too.
    1
  12593. The Labour Party no longer has anything to do with British politics, It is simply a vehicle for globalism and, as such, will increasingly rely on money from outside sources to finance globalist aims.
    1
  12594.  @ECECECECEC  Not far off. It's a bit of a disease.
    1
  12595.  @Doomskay83  Well, if is true (and it probably is) that Fauci approved gain of function research on viruses and farmed it out to China to get around US regulations, then covid was created in the Wuhan lab as a direct result of policies he sanctioned. As far as dealing with the pandemic is concerned, Fauci just made up stuff as he went along and we are suffering still from the result of over-reaction. Masks have led to children being traumatised, and lockdowns and social distancing have damaged the economy and the education process. As for the mRNA vaccines, while it is easy to see how they have meant immense profits for the companies which produce them, their health benefits are far less obvious.
    1
  12596. Russia has right on its side.
    1
  12597.  @jounik  There are many things. Ukraine was created by Russia from an amalgam of conquered territories under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. It only became a "country" when Stalin decided he wanted an extra seat in the UN. A quarter of its population is Russian. Most of them are concentrated in the Eastern Donbas region which has been promised independence but which has instead been subjected to frequent military incursions, including raids by the notorious Azov Battalion many of whose members are self-confessed Nazis and wear Nazi regalia including SS badges. That hate Russians and murder them indiscriminately. Other promises which have been broken include an agreement not to join NATO. As well as the right to protect his own people Putin has the right to prevent a potential enemy setting up missile sites on his borders. None of these factors apply to the other countries you mention.
    1
  12598.  @TurinStark5  Yours is an entirely fair version of events, although when it comes to breaking treaties Ukraine is at much at fault as the separatists. And you omit the provocative effect of the behaviour of the Azov Battalion and their like The point is that Ukraine is a good quarter Russian. The trouble with democracy is that in situations like this it leaves a permanently disaffected minority. Independence for Donbas would solve this, but successive Ukraine governments have remained intransigent. The EU operates like a drug dealer waiting around the school gates with promises of bliss. Ukraine is a notoriously corrupt country and very willing to play one suitor off against another. This is a very volatile combination and the looming tragedy is a result of this. The EU going all gung-ho and jingoistic is just going to make things a whole lot worse.
    1
  12599.  @jounik  Of course I do. Since 1991, when Ukraine first became a country in the eyes of the world, it has persistently refused to acknowledge its true relationship with Russia, has sanctioned ethnic murder and repression and has sought to enter unto relationships with Russia's enemies, both economic and political. This does not apply to the other countries you mention, and I have given you a brief account of the historical background making it clear why Russia might feel justified in behaving as it has.
    1
  12600.  @steveb951 Being an MP is not a job - its a position.
    1
  12601.  @steveb951  You have a somewhat naive idea of what an MP is. He is not a delegate at some kind of perpetual conference. The people of Clacton have decided that Reform is the party best suited to the governance of the country and Farage's prime duty now is to try to ensure this comes about. He is in America to cover the Republican event on behalf of GB News. Like most MPs he has other sources of income, further emphasising that being an MP is not a matter of turning up at the office every day and bleating on about the state of the drains in your constituency, as you seem to think.
    1
  12602. US "intelligence" has spent much of the past 70 years destroying countries around the world, and they've now destroyed America. There's a sort of justice in this.
    1
  12603.  @weswheel4834  People ARE the problem. The ruling class are the problem. The media are the problem. You probably are too.
    1
  12604. @JesusHChrist-q9d Broken home. Stepfather a factory worker.. Mother works in bakery to make ends meet. Brought up in a council house? No, Starmer is more lower middle class - and not that low either. His famous dad was the boss of a small toolmaking workshop.
    1
  12605. @JesusHChrist-q9d I didn't realise it WAS a joke! Sorry!
    1
  12606.  @weswheel4834  There was a time when very many Luton supporters called themselves Tommy Robinson. Stephen Yaxley (who is working class) took up the name as a nom de guerre when first becoming politically active - largely in defence of his class and his country's values.
    1
  12607. So what is he is close to the Kremlin? What's wrong with that?
    1
  12608.  @royboy565  Sadly, the pharmaceutical industry will not be able to make a fortune out of Mr Musk.
    1
  12609. That's true. Both sides are guilty though.
    1
  12610. This is the first one which has been responded to with widespread lockdowns. Coincidence?
    1
  12611.  @Mishima505  Me too.
    1
  12612.  @andreaoreill  Until the coming of the virus the economy was booming, employment was at is highest level in decades and US involvement in wars was slowly winding down. Trump is no angel, but most of the allegations against him are totally without foundation, especially those regarding racial and sexual prejudice. You must understand that because he is interloper on their territory the establishment and the media have embarked on an incredible smear campaign which millions have fallen for. I fell for it myself before bothering to investigate the truth of the matter.
    1
  12613.  @andreaoreill  Trump was wrong-footed on covid - like many others - but one must remember that the day-to-day dealing with the virus is a state matter. Generally, the way the pandemic is used as a political weapon is rather disgusting in my view. It is a freak of nature and human intervention has only little impact. It should be a reason to join together and co-operate, not an excuse for bickering. Trump divides opinion. To me he represent a bulwark again a new force creeping across the world; a strange and sinister amalgam of state-controlled capitalism and social repression; call it globalism, call it The Great Reset or whatever but it seems to be taking over and I don't like it. I think there will be civil war in America soon. The Biden puppet administration has sold out completely to this new force, and very possibly have cheated as well, since the new force despises democracy while paying lip-service to it. Traditional conservative freedom-lovers are not going to stand for this. And they all have guns.
    1
  12614. Are vaccines about public health or are they about profits for drug companies? So many lies have been told and so much false science trotted out that we all have the right to be cynical.
    1
  12615. Jimmy Dore, who featured Dr Campbell recently, has just issued a startling video about a paper which seems to have been swept under the carpet. All access seems to be blocked on YouTube but I hope that the points it raises can be addressed very soon.
    1
  12616.  @A4Natty  It's going to win. No doubt of it.
    1
  12617.  unitedwestand  Is the alt-right still a thing? My position is that there are two creeds active in the world today who make no bones about the fact that imposing their world view at all costs outweighs all other considerations. Circumventing the democratic process by fraud or any other means is not only permissible to these people , but praiseworthy. The very fact that postal voting makes fraud possible means that fraud will be carried out.
    1
  12618.  unitedwestand  What utter tosh! Do Marxists see the democratic system as sacrosanct? Is there also not another creed which believes that the imposition of its world view outweighs all other considerations? You are being used to promulgate a nasty world view, not me. Lenin called people like you "useful idiots" and the cap fits. If by any remote chance Marxist globalism does succeed people like you will be first for the gulags I'm afraid.
    1
  12619.  unitedwestand  I'm no extremist by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed I have great respect for old-style British Labour party politics. Marxism manifests itself in the playbook tactics currently being employed by the hard-left. BLM is a good example. It fosters racial discord in order to create the oppressed class that the Marxist revolution needs for it to take place. The actual proletariat gave up on Marxism at about the same time as it stopped wearing clogs and flat caps but the intellectual temptations of old Karl's nonsense are enough to keep it alive in a certain type of mind. Leftism is now rife in schools and universities. Many teachers and students shy away from calling themselves Marxists. No, I'm a Trotskyite they say. Or a Maoist. Of just "to the left". But they are all either Marxists of Marxist proxies. Even you , I would guess, act in ways which unconsciously push forward the overthrow of capitalism. Not a good thing.
    1
  12620.  unitedwestand  I do think you are so very wrong. I'm never quite sure what is meany by "extreme right" and I see no flowering of anything which might fit that category. The extreme left is VERY real thing though. It's taking over the Democratic party for one thing. And the cities of America are not aflame due to far right activists, are they? And if you don't believe in the hard left, why did you wait for Corbyn to fall before rejoining Labour? Good luck with Starmer by the way. He seems relatively sane and might make Labour worth voting for if the Tories get too out of hand.
    1
  12621. XR supporters are either insane, stupid or in it for the money. Not sure about Dr Read. Wish I could have a peek at his investment portfolio though.
    1
  12622. Dv Vecchio Can be included under insane, I think. It's a broad church.
    1
  12623. Mostly though Trump, being a man of peace, wants to prop up the arms industry by spending money on purely defensive measures.
    1
  12624. They asked at least four times and were turned down. The US military/industrial complex needs a permanent enemy in order to justify its existence.
    1
  12625. Israel is not committing genocide. It is merely taking steps to protects its people. The genocidal maniacs are the Islamic extremists who genuinely want to destroy all Jews. The Jews just want to stop them doing it.
    1
  12626. What's so tragic is that these conceited morons don't realise what a con-trick man-made global warming is. Historic records of heatwaves in the late 19th century and in the 1930's and 1940's are being expunged from the records with the excuse that "the equipment wasn't reliable" or, "the readings were taken at the wrong time of day". Meanwhile modern readings often come from the centre of Urban Heat Islands from automated stations buried underground next to boilerhouses. Even equipment on ships has been moved closer to the engines. The whole thing is a fraud of gargantuan proportions. The silly tossers of Extinction Rebellion, many of whose members have had their brains addled by psychedelic drugs, are being used as a propaganda tool.
    1
  12627.  my3stooges  True enough. But history is littered with the corpses of famous men who have died because doctors have vied with each other to cure them. Ambition and love could be more fatal than coronavirus. Let's hope not.
    1
  12628.  my3stooges  May your prayers be answered.
    1
  12629.  @tamrielspirit3285  My tinfoil hat has so far failed to protect me from the numerous conspiracies to which we are all subjected.
    1
  12630.  @paulbox8656  You are completely misinformed. In the UK, according to official figures, more than 65% of patients in Intensive Care Units are fully vaccinated, as are almost 90% of those who die. The percentages are even higher in some European countries. I doubt the situation in the US is much different. Currently states with low vaccination rates (many of which are indeed Republican) are experiencing sharp declines in infections and deaths. States with high vaccination rates are not. This doesn't mean vaccines are useless. It just means there comes a point when their usefulness is very limited.
    1
  12631.  @raydavies3278  It may seem counterintuitive but it is correct. Just Google Vermont Covid, for example, and compare the figures with those of Wyoming or Florida. In the UK, according to its Office of National Statistics, more than 65% of patients in Intensive Care Units with covid are fully vaccinated as are over 85% of those who die. The proportions are higher in some European countries. This doesn't mean vaccines don't work, it just means there comes a point where they outlive their usefulness.
    1
  12632.  @Person-mh6xq  No. In the UK for example over 65% of patients in intensive care are fully vaccinated, as are over 85% of those who die. Figures are similar in other European countries. With so many people now vaccinated it could hardly be otherwise. This doesn't mean that vaccines don't work, only that they don't work all that well.
    1
  12633. Anyone who has suffered from the callous indignity of the US judicial system will sympathise with Defendant Trump's rage, and approve strongly of his defiance. Another vote winner.
    1
  12634. I think he just wants to buy them, actually.
    1
  12635. @ He's trying to get a deal which will include payback for the billions already given to Ukraine. If Zelensky goes he might get it - but there's also a very strong chance he will get a better deal from Putin.
    1
  12636.  @AaronOkeanos  I don't think he's actually expecting it to be agreed to! It's just the first shot. I bet once peace is reached he'll be playing Putin and whoever is in charge in Ukraine against each other to get the best deal he can.
    1
  12637. So very, very well done.GB News is really living up to expectations now. My view is that from the very start the pandemic response has been structured to fit the ambitions of the big pharmaceutical companies who saw it as a golden opportunity to make billions (which they have.) The politicians and the compliant media have fallen in step and now there is a huge death toll across the world as a direct result. It's nothing short of murder.
    1
  12638. It's so wonderful to watch the long, long campaign of anti-Trump propaganda crumbling into dust.
    1
  12639.  @davidhowse884  Much of what you say is true - but it is from the viewpoint of a sheltered Western liberal and Putin is an Eastern potentate, with all that this implies. He has to keep up appearances! As for Ukraine, we forget that Ukraine was once preceded by a definite article and was, after a long and very varied history, first a province of Imperial Russia and then a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist republic with all important decisions taken in Moscow. In Putin's essay on Ukraine/Russian relations published shortly before the invasion (which I urge you to read) he makes it clear that while he regretfully acknowledges the right of Kiev to form closer alliances with Europe he will not allow Donbass and Crimea to be included. There are sound reasons for this. These areas have very large Russian populations and - just as importantly- are sitting on vast reserves of gas ,oil, coal and rare earth minerals which have traditionally been exploited and marketed with Russian blood, sweat and tears. He sees no reason why the fruit of these labours should be spirited away into Western -largely American -pockets. This war is unnecessary. Moscow and Kiev could have come to an arrangement had greedy Western agencies not set their sights on grabbing this vast wealth and spent billions on creating an army of hapless Ukrainians in order to do so.
    1
  12640.  @davidhowse884  I have tried several times to reply to your comment, but censorship has intervened. We are not living in a free world, you know. Try reading Putin's essay on Ukraine/Russia relations published shortly before the invasion.
    1
  12641. His real name is Alexander, Al for short. He is related to most of the Royal houses of Europe including the Romanoffs who ruled Russia before the Communist revolution. Hence Boris -his second name which he uses just to show off.
    1
  12642. What with the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security and all the other backroom boys and girls trying to swing the election to dear old Joe, having Putin batting for Trump makes the whole point of voting in this great democracy even more pointless.
    1
  12643.  @johnhume4346  Sure. They get paid a lot.
    1
  12644. Georges Prat Prediction is terribly difficult, especially when it comes to predicting the future. Is this why climate science always gets things so wrong?
    1
  12645. Georges Prat Sorry I must live in a different universe. In my universe climate science predicted: 1) Ice caps melting 2) Sea levels rising 3) Polar bears becoming extinct 4) No more snow 5) Great waves of "climate refugees." 6) Record high temperatures 7) Widespread crop failures etc. etc. In my universe none of these things has happened, although we are told they could start any minute now. How is it over your way?
    1
  12646. Georges Prat This is so tiresome! In my universe the arctic is getting warmer at the moment, fulfilling a long established cycle. It is now in roughly the same state as it was about 90 years ago and can be expected to begin cooling pretty rapidly very soon. The ice over the North Pole area is only about eight feet thick, but then it's always been like that The ice in the antarctic usually shifts about quite a bit and right now ice sheets in the west have reduced and thinned but have grown thicker in eastern areas. We think this is all to do with the amount of snowfall and our planet's position vis-a-vis the sun. Our sea levels aren't rising at all! Since the ice that has melted is all thin sea ice it's sort of part of the water anyway. Funny that. Also some islands which are only a few feet above sea level stubbornly refuse to sink beneath the waves. Property prices there are now booming. Our polar bears are now enjoying record numbers and are all in extremely good health. So are the seals on which they feed. In fact there are so many bears around that they haunt Russian townships like raccoons, clattering about in the rubbish bins at night. In my universe we have many so-called scientists who make up figures and alter data in a very reprehensible way to make it look as though it is hotter than it is. They also write pretend papers proving all this by algebra which they send around to each other. This called peer review. Many people get frightened by this. We also have people called "journalists" who enjoy re-writing these papers and making scary films out of them and silly people get even more scared still. How is it over your way? Here's some nice blue writing: www.ceres-science.com co2science.org/video/confirmed/gope_confirmed.php ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com
    1
  12647. Georges Prat Thanks for being friendly. I will now step into your universe, if I may. I think only time will tell which school of thought is correct. I can see no way in which man-made C02 levels will ever be reduced to any significant degree and therefore if the "hotter" versions of the climate models are correct then we will all die, which will settle matters quite thoroughly. On the other hand I do believe it likely that the role of C02 has been considerably exaggerated. The model of the atmosphere created by Arrenhuis has become such an icon that it is almost sacrilege to question the results of experiments based upon it. I disagree entirely with your (1) and (2). (1) What has happened is that back in the late 70's the prospect of increased global warming became fashionable - because the Earth was indeed getting warmer following a cooling period of some 30 years. It was then discovered that atmospheric CO2 was rising, due to man-made emissions. Put this beside the hallowed theorems on the reaction of carbon to infra-red and -bingo! It is at this point that I become a conspiracy theorist. Not a bad thing to be if there really is a conspiracy. Practitioners of the black art of hedge fund dealing recognised a golden opportunity. By persuading governments to restrict carbon emissions a scarcity value is created. The same principle applies, oddly enough, to carbon in another form -diamonds. Diamonds are as common as dirt. It is only because their supply is restricted that they have any value. So it is now with carbon emissions. They can be traded, and they are being traded- at considerable financial gain. There's big money here and big money talks very loudly indeed. The academic grants system encourages scientists to keep the ball rolling and discourages them from questioning the AGW doctrine. The Connollys, incidentally, jumped ship from the system when they realised they would only get grants to repeat research, not try new approaches. (2) The idea of a sinister fossil fuel industry promoting anti AGW propaganda is just laughable. Who makes the expensive videos and pays rent-a-gob TV personalities to front them? Who makes all the scary cartoons and computer graphics? Who's got practically the entire western world's media companies in their pocket? The hedge funds do. George Soros and his cronies. If the fossil fuel industry wanted to undermine AGW science you think they'd do better than pay Tony Heller or frolly1000 or than nice lady from Friends of Science, wouldn't you? Naah. The fossil fuel boys have their bases covered. They're in on the act too. The scam has only the still, small voices of reason to worry about. That and the weather of course.
    1
  12648. Georges Prat A bit of extra information: The organisation behind Greta Thurberg is called We Don't Have Time. It was founded by and is run by people with exclusively financial backgrounds. Their eventual goal is to assign everyone on the planet an individual carbon footprint which will be monitored on your smartphone' If you want to exceed your footprint -say by flying abroad on holiday - you will have to buy in extra carbon certificates on the open market which they control. Try their website. It's a real humdinger. As well as scary cartoons to frighten schoolkids there is a clear message of intent to those who want to sign up on the deal. Their financial backgrounds are available on Google. One of them was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and another one did some deal selling the yuan off against some other currency which was hailed as a master-stroke. None of them could give a toss about the environment and nor, so it is said, does Greta. She was one of the winners of an essay competition they organised to find the right "face" for their scam. They then pretended they had found her in her lonely vigil outside the Swedish parliament building or whatever. They are all, including Greta, from wealthy Swedish families who pay lip-service to socialism but really care only for the Kroner. (Greta really is a distant descendant of Arrenhuis by the way, but Sweden is a small country and that's neither here nor there.)
    1
  12649. A Republican Congress and Senate might just be enough to save the Western world from utter economic and social destruction. But only possibly.
    1
  12650. Russia is taking the decisions. They want what's under the ground in Donbass, not what's on top of in Kharkiv.
    1
  12651. Moseley was against the Jews. TR is a Zionist.
    1
  12652. The Palestinians?
    1
  12653. Phil's attitude to Trump is becoming increasingly obsessive and irrational. He has no understanding of the man, nor any apparent wish to attempt to do so. There is every likelihood that Trump will bring peace and prosperity because he will grant Russia something like its proper place in the world, bring a halt to the net zero nonsense which is crippling our economies, and vastly reduce the cost of government. Erratic prognoses based on some visceral dislike do not alter these very probable outcomes.
    1
  12654.  @Nice0n3  Blindly opposing everything he says and does is hardly likely to achieve much, is it? Which is rather my point. Halting interference in the affairs of other nations, returning to cheap reliable energy and cutting bureaucracy cannot fail to be beneficial.
    1
  12655. Police incompetence is greatly to blame for these riots. By liaising with Muslim "community leaders" they are creating the very firm impression that they side with Muslims against non-Muslims. Does the word "dim" come from "dhimmi", does anyone know?
    1
  12656.  @Millionairemedialie  Because Christianity has failed in its role in controlling behaviour through fear. For centuries the Christian Church worked side by side with the State to ensure compliance. Now the spell is broken. Islam still retains such a psychological control and will be useful to any forthcoming coming globalist regime in suppressing dissent.
    1
  12657.  @Millionairemedialie  Because Christianity no longer works alongside the State to ensure compliance through fear. Muslims, even the most educated and sophisticated, quite often still believe in hell and will obey their leaders accordingly. This is useful to the State.
    1
  12658.  @Millionairemedialie  Because Islam means obedience. Christianity did once, but no longer.
    1
  12659.  @emm_arr  It's called dialectical materialism.
    1
  12660.  @rocketscience4516  God, I wish I was! Money with a free conscience! Who can say that in this day and age?
    1
  12661.  @rocketscience4516  Modesty forbids. It you were to act on my behalf however, we could go halves. How does that sound?
    1
  12662.  @emm_arr  Are you an American and thus immune to irony and satire?
    1
  12663.  @emm_arr  Have you ever had an intelligent thought in your entire life? Asking for a friend.
    1
  12664.  @jeremysmith54565  How can one be vague and coherent at the same time?
    1
  12665.  @jeremysmith54565  Yes. Typo. It would have been a better word.
    1
  12666.  @Chris-nv4cu  It was a sort of joke. Either it wasn't a very good one or you don't have a sense of humour.
    1
  12667.  @jeremysmith54565  Pot. Kettle. Black.
    1
  12668.  @jeremysmith54565  Can you be vaguely vague? I suppose so.
    1
  12669. What's so funny?
    1
  12670.  @yosserc  Yes. But that just wasn't funny.
    1
  12671.  @yosserc  And I repeat.... that wasn't funny. There's nothing silly or stupid or funny about the idea that you can like what someone says without knowing them personally. I mean was that all there was to it?
    1
  12672. Ukraine is outgunned. And knows it.
    1
  12673.  @rebeccapresti9650  But all you have to do is Google him and you get a list of ALL the causes and organisations he donates to -to the tune of billions of dollars every year. You will probably approve of many of them. Republicans not so much.
    1
  12674.  @rebeccapresti9650  The fact remains that Soros is committed to destroying western society in its present form His motives are obscure, but since he is probably one of the most intelligent human beings to have ever lived - and regards deception as a highly efficient tool in reaching his objectives - none of us are likely to know for sure. If you want western civilisation to be destroyed and (possibly) rebuilt from the bottom up, then support the organisations that Soros supports. Otherwise fight him tooth and nail.
    1
  12675. The deal was on the table before the war began. As early as 2015 Putin put forward peace proposals which involved the two Donbass regions forming an independent buffer state while Crimea remained Russian - which it has been for centuries and still is to a great extent. This is in all probability something very much like what the eventual outcome will be - and over half a million people will have died in a vain bid by America and its Western allies to wrest control of these mineral-rich regions from Russian control. Donald Trump is the only hope we have of redressing the dreadful effects of this exercise in uncaring greed.
    1
  12676. Why can't Boris keep his stupid gob shut?
    1
  12677. He was being satirical. He was just saying that you can't stop climate change any more than you can change the moon's orbit.
    1
  12678.  @albertchehade9916  Tell me it isn't so! I'm sure he was foolin'
    1
  12679.  @mikethespike7579  Have a peanut!
    1
  12680.  @mikethespike7579  Give the man a peanut!
    1
  12681.  @GARDENER42  There's a weird anomaly here. Google is contradicting itself. I've had three figures so far 229m, 348m and indeed the PA's 669m.
    1
  12682.  @GARDENER42  PS. Google now says that 669million is £669million - the total revenue from book sales.
    1
  12683.  @GARDENER42  PPS. Hope I'm not boring you, but now it looks as though the 669 million is in fact the number of books PUBLISHED in Britain - but sold worldwide.
    1
  12684. Until we get individual details of those who die "with" covid we simply cannot say whether or not covid was responsible for their deaths. At this stage it appears to have taken over from flu as respiratory infection which pushes the mainly elderly or very ill over the edge. Perhaps that's all it ever was.
    1
  12685. Perhaps they both learned it isn't as bad as scaremongers make out.
    1
  12686. Where might I find this declaration.?
    1
  12687.  @canpin The nuclear stand-off has been a staring contest. America blinked in Afghanistan. That's often enough to start a fight.
    1
  12688. Is R going up? I thought only in London.
    1
  12689.  @wonderland1985  No. Looking the other way while your husbands, brothers and cousins abuse young girls is not a crime.
    1
  12690. Is YouTube in on the globalist plot to destroy democracy?
    1
  12691. Britain is now being run by student activists who have never quite grown up.
    1
  12692.  @ltpltpltp  Ukraine broke Minsk. Minsk was about regional autonomy for Donbass and Ukraine did nothing to achieve this.
    1
  12693.  @chriskelly6559  He and his predecessors did nothing to implement it, is what I meant.
    1
  12694.  @taefravis  What "Belarus deal"? Are you referring to Minsk 1 or something else?
    1
  12695.  @chriskelly6559  I suppose so. Zelensky inherited his position rather than created it. But the fact remains that he continued Poroshenko's policy of non-compliance - despite trying to prosecute him for corruption!
    1
  12696.  @ltpltpltp  No it's not. There. A reasoned argument.
    1
  12697. As a Brit I have to tell you that you cannot believe a single word that comes out of Boris Johnson's mouth. This "peace plan" is totally unattainable and a recipe for escalation of the conflict to World War levels. The only rational solution is to seize peace in Ukraine immediately and allow Russia to hold territories which have historical Russian connections - and then a new smaller but cohesive Ukraine is on course to achieve the Westernised democratic status it seems to desire.
    1
  12698.  @inagrove1299  Try visiting an objective war coverage channel such as DPA or Weeb Union.
    1
  12699.  @inagrove1299  It might broaden your outlook at least. Try History Legends too.
    1
  12700.  @archiebald4717  I agree. Russia's economic war will find us defenceless.
    1
  12701. BBC "News" and Sky "News" - all of them are propaganda outlets, one way or another. You can get as much factual information from GB News as anywhere else.
    1
  12702.  @paulinequinton1478  This is a myth. The NHS and social fabric generally suffer far more from excessive population through immigration than they benefit from the work of immigrants who help to redress the balance.
    1
  12703. Trump is a wake-up call. And Americans are waking up at last.
    1
  12704.  @batcollins3714  It could come to that.
    1
  12705.  @Geffo555  What evidence do you have for this nonsense?
    1
  12706.  @hedlund  My thought is that America has been run on false pretences for many years and that Donald Trump, for all his faults, represents the true interests of the ordinary man and woman. The campaign of vilification against him is the direct result of the establishment fearing that he might upset their carefully structured con-trick. Great con-artists are in fear on a minor con-artist like Trump, whose career has involved handing out bribes, instead of receiving them. Most importantly though he clearly does not regard it as an economic necessity for America to be in a constant state of war.
    1
  12707.  @geraldhewing2076  What on earth do you mean?
    1
  12708.  @jhonhdhcb7495  That Donald Trump is anything other that a perfectly respectable businessman of a certain age, not some kind of monster.
    1
  12709.  @Geffo555  Trump and Project 2025 are two different things, So give me a source for Trump saying anything like this.
    1
  12710.  @brianmckee2267  Does the other individual involved have a say in the matter?
    1
  12711.  @jhonhdhcb7495  It's funny how people can look at the same thing and see two different things. Have you watched whole speeches, or just bits aired by the likes of CNN and the BBC?
    1
  12712.  @Cam-mo7gq  Of course he hasn't. You'll get far more freedom under Trump than under the neo-Commie Democrats. They've got you fooled!
    1
  12713.  @Cam-mo7gq  You really have swallowed the hype, haven't you? I actually feel quite sorry for you.
    1
  12714.  @Cam-mo7gq  You really have swallowed the official line, haven't you? Take a deep breath, clear your mind and perhaps watch his speech at that charity dinner yesterday. He's no great orator - but he is no lunatic nor monster. You're the one caught up in a cult - the cult of Trump hatred.
    1
  12715.  @stephenetridge2584  No, with a faintly London accent. Are you one of those sad people who believe that anyone expressing opinions outside your comfort zone has to be a robot? Take a look at yourself.
    1
  12716.  @stephenetridge2584  Naah. Don't wanna. Ain't gonna.
    1
  12717.  @CaminoAir  Is that all you've got?
    1
  12718.  @fitzstv8506  You may have a point. On the other hand he is basically a very ordinary man in many ways, which is why he resonates with so many quite ordinary people.
    1
  12719.  @fitzstv8506  I disagree. He is exactly what many an ordinary man would be if he had chanced to be born into great wealth. Ordinary men recognise this. He is one of them.
    1
  12720.  @mattd6200  But the Russians aren't grabbing land. They are just keeping hold of land which has been theirs for centuries.
    1
  12721.  @richiecooke69  Size isn't everything. The Russians are finally over-running the very heavily defended borders of the Donbass region in order to finally capture the area in its entirety - which has been their main military objective all along.
    1
  12722.  @phitsf5475  Sadly true.
    1
  12723. @@craigsteddy8331 I really don't think there's much chance of that. But you never know.
    1
  12724.  @ian7033-qj9wg  No it doesn't. What does exist however is Putin's essay on Russia/ Ukraine relations which explains the situation and its history very clearly It's available on the Internet and is really required reading for anyone with a genuine wish to understand the causes of this needless war.
    1
  12725.  @ukie1242  No. The figures are from a official census carried out by Ukraine in 2003. Some Ukrainians have left Crimea since 2014 and some Russians have arrived.
    1
  12726.  @domtomas1178  No Poles or Germans left.
    1
  12727.  @bonnie7898  I misremembered the date, but as you are doubtless aware Russia has carried out two further censuses since then which show the Russian population increasing by around 17% I think since annexation. You will.doubtless suspect duplicity, but this doesn't seem unreasonable considering the circumstances.
    1
  12728.  @bonnie7898  Most Crimeans welcomed the Russian takeover since most of them are Russians. The 2001 census- organised by Kiev - showed the population to be 60+% Russian. The two censuses taken after annexation claimed it to be 70+% Russian.. Since many Ukrainians had left and more Russians had arrived this seems quite reasonable.
    1
  12729. They will need to resist bribery and blackmail.
    1
  12730. Putin knows the army is crap but can do little about it. Hence Wagner.
    1
  12731. America started this war. It's only natural it will do all it can to prolong it.
    1
  12732. This goes to prove that Russia has many, many friends and doesn't need to be a Western lapdog in order to survive.
    1
  12733. They're doing that too!
    1
  12734.  @richardbennett8522  They're just romantics, playing to the gallery. These things arouse patriotic sentiment, but no serious Russian politician believes that getting back the empire is either practical or desirable. Read Putin's 2021 essay on the subject.
    1
  12735. @ Playing to the gallery, that's all.
    1
  12736. @ Indeed not. All it is doing in Ukraine, as in Chechnya and Georgia, is protecting is existing interests against insidious US and Western aggression.
    1
  12737.  @davidnoakes1434  Why do you think so many people of limited intellect need to have bogeymen before they can deal with situations?
    1
  12738. Russia has recovered its long-lost Christian identity. There is nothing cynical in the cease-fire and IF it is being broken it is purely for self-preservation.
    1
  12739.  @mdf3006  According to British Intelligence, Wagner and Russian special forces have taken central Bakhmut. Only the Western suburbs remain in Ukrainian hands.
    1
  12740.  @mdf3006  That's the way Russia does war.
    1
  12741.  @mdf3006  Win some - lose some. This one is close to home though. and the chances are high that Russia will gain its objectives. It's just such a pity that America and NATO don't mind their own business and insist on prolonging the agony. This could have been sorted out without a shot being fired if Russia and Ukraine had been given a chance to settle their differences amicably.
    1
  12742. There is no second wave,
    1
  12743.  @superhumantrueman  We are being dragged into a grim globalist future in which this once-great country is destined to be a Muslim dormitory on the coast of Europe.
    1
  12744.  @marijo1951  Are you sure that a globalist shill who has admitted he prefers Davos to Westminster represents your interests more than a genius businessman with no axe to grind , other than a genuine apparent concern for the welfare of a free humanity? (By default, I mean the Labour was elected not because of anything it offered, but simply because it was not the Conservative Party.)
    1
  12745.  @jeffcxx  That he was elected under false pretences.
    1
  12746.  @Geffo555  Percentage of what though? Democracy is a clumsy engine.
    1
  12747.  @sandy120  Too many to enumerate.
    1
  12748.  @Geffo555  No voting system ever really truly represents either the true wishes of the people or the most intelligent way forward. Democracy is not the engine of governance; it is merely the brakes and gears, and as such it matters very little which method is employed.
    1
  12749.  @marijo1951  Much of what you say is obviously true. But this is about more than local, national politics. The world is at a crossroads and we can either go down the route of globalist, structured, ideological- based policies in which patriotism and national identity play no part, or we can stand up for old values of freedom of choice and liberty. I know what side I'm on and I agree with Musk that as long as our government supports the first option then, when push comes to shove, those on MY side of the equation will have little choice but to take to the streets in protest - before it is too late.
    1
  12750.  @jeffcxx  We didn't know what were letting ourselves in for.
    1
  12751.  @marijo1951  He strikes me as being very libertarian. He is against censorship for a start.
    1
  12752.  @marijo1951  How are his employees treated unfairly? And what views has he censored?
    1
  12753.  @terrytumble162  I don't think Putin is that desperate!
    1
  12754.  @Red.Hot.Chili.Beans63  But the people who revile him wouldn't vote for him anyway. So it doesn't matter. He is what he is.
    1
  12755.  @VINLAND_777  But Trump is right pretty much 24/7.
    1
  12756. Of course Putin will agree to a ceasefire. He's won.
    1
  12757. The BBC just put out a nice programme about beekeeping. If they stuck to things like that and stayed out of politics it might be a different story.
    1
  12758. Where is it then?
    1
  12759. @ People don't seem to know though. They still think Trump means what he says!
    1
  12760.  @marchughes2461  What about the Homeland Security guy using "injection" and "disinfectant" as copspeak? That's what confused Trump. He never for a moment suggested injecting disinfectant. He was looking for clarification, albeit in a very clumsy way. To suggest he was actually recommending such insane acts is ridiculous.
    1
  12761.  @marchughes2461  He didn't. Trump was confused by the Homeland Security guy using the word "inject" not to mean sticking a needle in your arm, but in the sense in which I might say I am trying to inject a note of sanity into this conversation. Equally well "disinfectant" didn't mean household bleach in this context. Trump has a very poor vocabulary and only a limited grasp of syntax. He was confused, poor chap. He didn't come to the presser convinced that injecting disinfectant was a cure for Covid 19 and when he THOUGHT he'd heard something to that effect he merely sought, rather clumsily, to obtain further explanation.
    1
  12762.  @marchughes2461  I don't think so. Trump's huge advantage is that he has come to the political table owing nothing to anybody. He is a genuine man of the people who happens to have inherited great wealth from a grandfather who ran saloons and whorehouses and a father who cashed in on the post-war housing boom. He is a regular guy who got lucky. Other regular guys ( and their lovely wives, God bless 'em) respect this. He is the first US President in living memory who doesn't need to pay lip-service to the crooks who run the Washington gravy-train. He's got a gravy train of his own. .
    1
  12763.  @marchughes2461  This might be hard for you to follow, but all I say is this: by bringing his individualism to the political table Trump - for all his many personal faults - has created a revolution. And a revolution was needed. I repeat: he came to the Presidency with no political debts. Between them Biden and Harris are staggering under the debts they owe to exterior forces and influences, not least if which is the billion -plus dollars BLM has raised on their behalf. What they owe to various agencies run by the Chinese doesn't bear thinking about. If the Dems win in November America will slide into anarchy and eventual destruction. Trump is the true voice of the American people. He has behaved exactly as most of them would have behaved had they inherited billions from a father and grandfather who bent the rules to personal advantage. He could have invested in blue stock shares and spent his life playing golf if he wanted. Instead he decided to have a bit of an adventure with his life and as the end approached thought he might as well become President - just because he could. And he was doing great until the Kung Flu came along. And he will do great again after it's gone away - if America gives him the chance.
    1
  12764.  @marchughes2461  What unity?
    1
  12765. Russia doesn't want Kherson city. It just wants the Ukrainians to stop using it a base to fire artillery on to the other side of the river - which Russia DOES want.
    1
  12766. What utter BS. The BBC suppresses more dissention than the Russian government. And we could learn a thing or two from the Russians when it comes to dealing with civil disruption too.
    1
  12767. It's more likely her mother was killed by Ukrainians.
    1
  12768. @Hugh Dougall That mutation already exists somewhere in the world, the incredible numbers make it inevitable.
    1
  12769. Who exactly has opened to door to Armageddon? Putin or the greedy West?
    1
  12770.  @vladimirkraus1599  Have to disagree. It's our fault for provoking him needlessly.
    1
  12771.  @OscillationOverdrive  This is simply untrue. People get confused because Putin shares the romantic idea of a recreated Russian empire - but has said repeatedly that this is not possible nor even desirable.
    1
  12772.  @OutOfYourElementDonny  You've left quite a bit out. He says in that essay that it is impossible to resurrect the past and, however regretfully, Ukraine must be allowed to go its own way - but it can't take the bits of Russia appended to the former SSR of Ukraine with it. He has no plan nor desire to retake the other countries, and makes this quite clear.
    1
  12773.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  But he had plans or desire to do so. It was forced upon him by Ukraine's refusal to cede regional autonomy to Donbass.
    1
  12774. @ He has invaded these countries to ensure that they remained within the Russian sphere of influence. He was not taking what Russia did not already have, but preventing it being taken away by foreign, notably American, agencies. This is not expansionism.
    1
  12775. @Sebeline How very gnomic.
    1
  12776. He's looking to divvy up Ukraine's vast mineral wealth with Russia. Nothing wrong with that. His predecessors wanted to steal it.
    1
  12777.  @blechman3871  That is not the point at issue.
    1
  12778.  @karinneeskens  So what explanation do you offer for these official statistics? "Analysis conducted by Eurostat found that excess mortality rates across the European Union rose by 19 per cent in December 2022, compared to the average number of deaths in the same period between 2016 and 2019. According to EuroMOMO, over 101,000 deaths were recorded in December 2022, compared to 109,000 recorded in 2020, when SARS-COV-2 was in high circulation in Europe."
    1
  12779.  @karinneeskens  In this instance, a cause is required for the phenomenon. Until something better comes along, its correlation with the measures taken to counter-act the pandemic must be a prime contender. This is supported by empirical deduction - as well as by prediction You will recall the Great Barrington Declaration predicted that the measures would have dire consequences. The GBD was, of course, signed by a great number of people with degrees. As well as lockdowns creating sickness through inhibiting access to medical services, and by interrupting the natural immune processes, there is mounting evidence that the final procedure designed to halt the pandemic has, in itself, caused a great many deaths and serious injuries.
    1
  12780.  @timetraveler43  My original post was in response to the claim that the EU response to covid was better than the UK's. In fact both approaches seem to have resulted in dire consequences - unless some other factor can be found to explain the extraordinary divergences in excess deaths currently being experienced. As to stress - surely the stress might be reduced by now? So why are people dropping dead from heart and pulmonary conditions in such numbers? One explanation is the fact that routine screening for such conditions fell by the wayside during lockdowns etc. Another cannot be mentioned without risking this post being deleted, so dreadful a prospect does it present. Suffice it to say that adverse reactions to this procedure are currently several THOUSAND times more than to previous procedures of a similar nature. Some indication of this is that government body which exists to assess compensation for the adverse effects of such procedures has now increased the number of staff from four to eighty. For your information, these are the latest figures on excess deaths in the UK from the Office of National Statistics: "The number of deaths registered in the UK in the week ending 24 March 2023 (Week 12) was 13,790, which was 13.3% above the five-year average (1,617 more deaths); of these deaths, 699 involved COVID-19." So that means that, even without covid, there were more than nine hundred more deaths that week than the average for the previous five years. Stress? I don't think so.
    1
  12781.  @mdf3006  Argue with the facts as presented. Many countries are experiencing quite alarming levels of excess deaths - more than 40% in some cases. This is undeniable. All you can argue is that is not the covid control measures which has caused this. In which case you need to provide another explanation. Until you can do so you might as well shut up - or just crawl back under the covers and pretend it isn't happening. (Australia has banned the AZ medication, by the way. Australia, which employed strong-arm tactics to enforce lockdowns has one of the highest rates of excess deaths in the world.)
    1
  12782.  @mdf3006  Then what else? Those opposing the measures predicted this would happen - and it has. That is surely a pretty fair indication, is it not? Do you have something else to offer? You can't shut society down and expect no consequences. You can't mass medicate people with an experimental drug, either. These deaths, extending across all age groups. just go to prove that knee-jerk reactions and hysteria are NOT the best ways of dealing with a crisis.
    1
  12783. The US has become a giant Evergreen College where conceited brainwashed brats act out deluded fantasies.
    1
  12784. There is no doubt the GBD was a missed golden opportunity -or rather one kicked into the bushes by Big Pharma as a threat to profits.
    1
  12785.  @verystripeyzebra  I really don't think you have. TR has presented the establishment with a stark choice: make me a martyr or let me make my point on my terms.
    1
  12786.  @JohnLloydDavis  They're not very good, but I don't know about ill-informed.
    1
  12787.  @chris6559  Such courage, Chris.
    1
  12788.  @verystripeyzebra  None of these accusations are true. His analysis of the current political and social situation in this country is entirely accurate, as is his analysis of the court case which has led to the current contempt of court case against him. What is more he insists on presenting his views despite the most severe oppression and discouragement. He's a working class hero, and that's something to be - to quote John Lennon!
    1
  12789.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Try harder.
    1
  12790.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  So refreshing to meet with reasoned political argument in this comments section.
    1
  12791.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Have you ever tried actually thinking about anything as opposed to regurgitating other people's ideas?
    1
  12792.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Can I read one?
    1
  12793.  @verystripeyzebra  This is somewhat beneath you. As I remember, in the past you have been prepared to engage in reasoned dialogue. Both Robinson and Farage have entirely viable points of view, with which I agree to a considerable extent. Islamification and unchecked mass immigration present very real threats to the well-being of my grandchildren.
    1
  12794.  @verystripeyzebra  It is neither a question of rhetoric nor of fascism. It is a question of fact. If you believe that everyone who gets into this country has their visa checked, then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. There is mounting suspicion that the actual population is far, far greater than official figures show - which is why resources such as the NHS and even the sewage system are breaking down. .I don't know what you mean by the "likes of Robinson and Farage.". Neither of them is fascist in any sense of the word. They are right-wing patriots, as am I. By the time my grandchildren are my age there is every chance that they will be a minority group in a country ruled by Sharia law - and I really don't like that idea.
    1
  12795.  @verystripeyzebra  The vagaries of billionaires are, I'm afraid, far less of a threat to our future well-being than the very genuine threat of the advantages of the Enlightenment being sacrificed to a medieval death-cult.
    1
  12796. I seriously believe there is a case to be made for excluding Moslems from public office, as Roman Catholics once were.
    1
  12797. Or the Ukrainians could stop fighting and go home - what's left of it.
    1
  12798. What orphans?
    1
  12799. It wasn't Russia which started it. It was America. Now a new America is stopping it.
    1
  12800. Well, they don't have Dominion voting machines, do they?
    1
  12801. The Chinese will see to that.
    1
  12802. The death rate is, however, not matching these figures.
    1
  12803. The poor Dems - caught between a need for Muslim votes and a need for Jewish money!
    1
  12804.  @whitehorse4318  He's testing them for you. Watch out for subsidised availability coming soon.
    1
  12805. Herd immunity is the only sane option. It's working in Sweden and it could work in the US too. It is clear by now that Covid 19 only kills the elderly, the frail and those subjected to repeated infections. Many of the the former are dead already and those that remain can be protected and given prophylactic drugs. Hanging round watching the economy crumble while waiting for a vaccine is no answer at all. Already it is clear that this disease is not the big, bad wolf we were told to expect. It is what it is - and we should treat it as such and stop pretending it's something it isn't.
    1
  12806.  Julia Sutton  The number of re-infections is statistically insignificant. There have only been five recorded cases so far. The statistics from Sweden speak for themselves - death rates very similar to other European countries but with very few restrictions imposed. You say you are a nurse. I'm surprised you should be so hysterical and irrational.
    1
  12807.  Paolo G  I don't know what other parts of Europe you can mean. The other matters you bring up are discussed in this presentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGUFfhIkA9E&t=668s
    1
  12808.  @jeanniehelliwell1599  There have been no deaths in Sweden for the past five days. Figures have been consistently below twenty and generally far less. The vast majority have been elderly with only a very limited life expectancy.
    1
  12809. America blinked in Kabul. The balance of world power is changed. The Russians now believe they could wipe out the West and get away with it, thanks to American ineptitude.
    1
  12810. @ Russia is merely defending its long-established commercial interests in the face of continued Western aggression.
    1
  12811. I think he means that he lost the election the the same way that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and OJ Simpson didn't kill his wife.
    1
  12812.  @jeshkam  What for?
    1
  12813.  @boink800  He does.
    1
  12814.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  It happens to me all the time. YouTube's new algorithm is impossible to comprehend. If it is possible for an algorithm to be insane, this one is.
    1
  12815.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  Membership is growing!
    1
  12816. You left out the conceit.
    1
  12817.  @JJRM8  I can manage quite well on my own, thankyou.
    1
  12818.  @megclifton6692  Not a convincing one. I have seen a fake and one of an incident last December and one which shows an explosion AFTER the dam collapsed.
    1
  12819.  @bonnie7898  This could well be true. There are many possibilities here. I doubt the full answer will ever be revealed.
    1
  12820. No, real Republicans are sick and tired of RINOs who are indistinguishable from the warmongering Democrat crooks currently running the country.
    1
  12821. According to a survey carried out by the Royal College of Medicine in 2015 six per cent of surgeons didn't wear a mask in theatre and of those who did 30% said they only did so because it seemed to be expected of them. Mask mandates are just one aspect of the dreadful con trick that Covid 19 has allowed the powers that be to inflict on us. At least the practice hasn't resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths as lockdowns have.
    1
  12822. I would suggest that Labour faces an ever greater threat to survival than the Conservatives.. Socialism is dead. Capitalism has taken it on and poisoned it to death with a mixture of globalism and wokeism. The vision is lost forever. Labour no longer has a true constituency. People with no great access to capital, the working class and the lower middle-class, will now turn to the nationalist Right to protect their interests. The Reform surge is just an early stage of this process.
    1
  12823. Disliking Taylor Swift isn't treason.
    1
  12824.  @ecurewitz  Why? Having a working relationship with an important world leader has to be good for America and good for peace.
    1
  12825.  @gurkslunga  So I go around dragging people out of bed in the middle of the night and putting them in concentration camps do I?
    1
  12826.  @footballnerd277  What makes you think I was joking?
    1
  12827.  @tomw.6757  Seems to be working though.
    1
  12828.  @tomw.6757  Not when the main part of your army is achieving its objectives further down the line.
    1
  12829. You'd think Zelensky's giant ego would be able to protect these poor people. Putin's peace plan was always the best solution to Ukraine's border crisis - and it's still on the table.
    1
  12830. M R Any chance of science getting so self-correcting that it admits the C02 AGW scare has been total bunkum? Atmospheric C02 is only one of very many factors affecting temperature - and a pretty minor one at that.
    1
  12831.  @roberthollingsworth8940  Er the war has been going for just over that. He couldn't have uploaded videos on it before it started, could he?
    1
  12832. Russia already has effective control of these countries. What you are looking at is America trying to capture them.
    1
  12833. After years of trying (unsuccessfully) to dish the dirt on Donald Trump, it's now the Democrats' turn to face an onslaught. Good. Joe Biden is as crooked as fuck.
    1
  12834. It must take a while to make these videos, This one is at least three days out of date. (As well as being totally lacking in objectivity.)
    1
  12835.  @marijo1951  A peaceful, democratic country armed to the teeth by America and its NATO lapdogs. Zelensky's job was to wrest control of mineral-rich Donbass from the Russians and hand it over to Western companies. He has failed.
    1
  12836. What a fascist! Thank Christ she didn't make President. There'd be gas chambers by now.
    1
  12837.  @rayisafitzpatrick9523  What's that got to do with anything? Russia has asked very nicely for the West to leave its stuff alone and has been ignored.
    1
  12838.  @jeanniesmith3356  Almost certainly, I would imagine. US law is notoriously complex and open to wide interpretation. That's why there are so many rich lawyers.
    1
  12839.  @makedonskaviktoria6969  That's what had to be settled. They could only be fired from Moscow, and it would have been quite dangerous to re-engineer them, and they would be terribly expensive to maintain, so the fact that they just happened to be on Ukrainian soil was only one part of the picture.
    1
  12840.  @AndyM_323YYY  Which he didn't sign?
    1
  12841. @ Still a prime holiday resort, although booking are understandably down, leading to reduced prices.
    1
  12842. @ https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12843. ​@Why not? Just because roubles are no longer traded on the international money market it doesn't mean they don't have purchasing power. Extensive rebuilding is already taking place in the liberated areas of former Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  12844. @ https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12845.  @a.barker7792  All of those! Obviously a holiday in Crimea is not for the faint-hearted but Russians are a sturdy lot for the most part.
    1
  12846. @ https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12847.  @richiecooke69  Listen, I've got a bad back. I wouldn't be much use out there!
    1
  12848.  @peabase  https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12849.  @AndyM_323YYY  A treaty has many degrees and definitions and the Budapest Accords - as the name suggests - were not a formal treaty but merely a document showing a degree of agreement. Accords are more informal and not binding in the same way that treaties are.
    1
  12850.  @AndyM_323YYY  Hopefully not when another government takes over. But in my other reply I point out the difference between an accord and a treaty. I'm not sure what category of agreement his recent 100 year pledge to Ukraine takes but whatever it is I can only hope that a future government will rescind it ASAP.
    1
  12851.  @AndyM_323YYY  A different Russia signed it to the Russia of today. And it was, as I mention elsewhere, merely an informal acknowledgement of a particular position and a particular point in time. No treaty lasts forever in any case. They are just bits of paper, after all.
    1
  12852.  @peabase  My point is that areas of Eastern Ukraine liberated by the Russians are being rebuilt. The video I posted proves this. My actual comment appears to have been deleted by YouTube's insane censorship algorithm.
    1
  12853.  @Burt-o3l  Knocked about a bit, but essentially liberated and now being rebuilt in a much improved style.
    1
  12854.  @JG-pk6gq  It is a memorandum between several persons - and that's all it is. It is not Holy Writ. It merely marks a situation which existed more than thirty years ago, and which no longer exists today.
    1
  12855. @DanyYnady https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12856.  @johnporcella2375  https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12857.  @johnporcella2375  Then. Not now.
    1
  12858.  @richiecooke69  Have you been there? All I can rely on are videos like this, of which there are many. https://youtu.be/UMf96E7mzA0?si=XyxWMUtzx2Pxcgfi
    1
  12859. And it's not as though Ukraine is even in the right! Russia has just cause for trying to stop the crooks in Kiev selling off Russian assets.
    1
  12860. The ratio of deaths and hospitalisations to cases is running at around ten per cent of what it was in the last wave. The general view on masks is that they reduce the possibility of passing on infection by around 20% at most. With figures like these Johnson is taking a considered gamble which may well pay off.
    1
  12861.  @Skylark_Jones  Masks really are of very limited efficacy. I think the authorities have realised this from the very start and mandating them has been pretty much a PR "we're all in this together" sort of thing. Now the message seems to be "you're on your own. Make your own mind up." Studies on mask efficiency are wildly varied. The fact is that around 60% of infections come via aerosols, which masks do not prevent, and they reduce droplet emission by around 95% if you are in a yogic trance to something like negligible for a serious coughing fit. PS. I don't think even the most ardent mask supporters now seriously suggest that they do much to actually protect the person wearing one. Take comfort from the fact that supermarket workers are way down the list of covid victims. No-one is quite sure why; high ceilings and good ventilation could be factors.
    1
  12862.  @Skylark_Jones  I'm afraid you are only aware of the aerosol on your glasses because it is warm when in touches the colder surface and so condenses there. Aerosols actually just float about pretty infinitely until the virions they contain cease to be viable. They can infect people by drifting into completely separate rooms or even by being transported through ventilation systems. And masks do nothing to prevent them escaping. Nothing at all. On the other hand they really are quite good at holding off other much bigger germs, such as bacteria and larger viruses such as many of those which cause colds and sneezes.
    1
  12863. It really is true that those on the Left have absolutely no sense of humour.
    1
  12864. Europe has no viable defence against Russia. European governments should therefore think themselves lucky that Russia has little or no interest in attacking any of them.
    1
  12865. Size isn't everything.
    1
  12866. The new Omicron variant, which will take over from Delta within weeks, bypasses vaccines even more than Delta. More than half of those infected so far have been double vaxxed. The good news is that its effects seem to be very mild and catching it will provide immunity - at least to Omicron itself.
    1
  12867. People who would have died anyway. They just happened to have had covid at the time.
    1
  12868. This whole exercise could be about ensuring Donbass independence. If Putin can secure its borders and defend them it might be enough for him.
    1
  12869.  @jounik  Well obviously if he'd just done that he'd have to have fought the entire Ukrainian armed forces on a single front. We don't see much of what's going on in the East. The media attention is all on Kiev and the Western cities. His real energies though could be going towards consolidating his position in the East. Bringing in battle-hardened Syrians to Donbass would tend to confirm this.
    1
  12870.  @Beyond_Belief534  Entirely possible. But I should like to know where and what source you are citing.
    1
  12871.  @juanf5391 So why do so many of my comments get deleted then?
    1
  12872.  @juanf5391  There must, of course, be restraints on liberty but those restraints in the West and on social media especially are growing more severe and, indeed more absurd. In Russia, by contrast, the harsh restrictions of the Soviet era have already softened to a considerable degree. The Russians are going the right way. We are going the wrong way.
    1
  12873.  @richardkey1678  The algorithms often seem like stuffy old teachers from Victorian times! For someone who enjoys banter and insults and who has somewhat right-wing opinions it's a minefield. Why should one respect other people's opinions? Why should one not be allowed to criticise the official narratives? This is not freedom.
    1
  12874.  @pifflepockle  Not at all. He came across as a very family friendly figure - Grandad dancing at the wedding.
    1
  12875.  @azizaibrahim1155  Were you there?
    1
  12876.  @TheAbbot92  No. Biden's senile. Trump isn't. And Harris is just a very, very nervous woman (and with just cause.)
    1
  12877.  @Baltasarmk  There will be a lot of deals done over the coming months. The balance of the world is changing. American hegemony is finished, but the conceited bullies don't know it yet. The US is no longer either feared or respected and Russia is just the first to take advantage if this fact.
    1
  12878.  @jamesm7595  Much depends upon the strength of the forces Ukraine has left to defend this new battleground. If Russia launches rear attack from the north and east they will be very hard-pressed.
    1
  12879.  @RussiasSufferingInUkraine  They seem to be well on the way. In war though the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. Your confidence may be misplaced.
    1
  12880.  @eh1702  Independent?
    1
  12881.  @eh1702  Russia has no such delusions or ambitions. These are propaganda bogeymen designed to frighten those of limited intellect. All Russia wants is to maintain its interests in Ukraine - or more specifically in Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  12882.  @eh1702  The only genocide involved is the commitment of extreme Ukrainian nationalists to destroy all traces of Russian culture and language in that country. You really are a sucker for childish propaganda. The Ukrainian people and the Russian people are one people. Putin has clearly stated on a number of occasions that if the Western Ukrainians want to ally with the West as a whole it is very regrettable, but he wishes them well. But they can't take Donbass and Crimea with them.
    1
  12883. Google Here Is The Evidence for a quick reality check.
    1
  12884. Ever watched Times Radio?
    1
  12885.  @billm9775  Perhaps we have a different definition of trickle down economics. In my view this is simply a glib catchphrase for something which has always existed - namely the idea that profit expresses itself in benefit to the community as a whole, as those with increased capital invest it in enterprises which provide employment and services. The degree to which they do - rather than spend profits on personal luxuries or use it for currency speculation etc - is of course significant . But there can be no doubt, surely, that if Russia continues to benefit from the mineral wealth of Donbass then at least some of that benefit will accrue to the Russian people as a whole. One has only to look at the way Mariupol is now being rebuilt to see the truth of this.
    1
  12886.  @gregorysurovoi3968  So where does the money go then?
    1
  12887.  @ukopia7743  But Russian kleptocrats, rather than American kleptocrats, so it will be Russians who get the crumbs from the table. Which seems only fair.
    1
  12888. Yup, crazed warmongers hiding behind a senile incontinent puppet. Just what the world needs.
    1
  12889.  @agubata1  I know I'm not a racist - which means I can say what I like. It is people who fear in their heart of hearts that they ARE racists who make the most fuss in these situations
    1
  12890. How so?
    1
  12891. Such a shame your policies seem to involve beating up old ladies.
    1
  12892.  @MustardSkaven  Well, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but Russia has developed a very strong defence capability over the past few years.
    1
  12893.  @MustardSkaven  Nonsense. Putin has made it very clear that while he very much regrets Ukraine's decision to turn away from Russia for the West, he will not stop it. But the Ukraine that makes this choice should not contain those parts of Russia which were stuck on to by Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and, in the case of Crimea, by Krushchev in 1954. The thing about taking Ukraine in two weeks or three days or whatever is a total myth. Something along those lines was told to the poor bloody infantry by some of their commanders in order to keep their spirits up, but it is quite clear that this was not the ambition of the high command. In fact they didn't want to take Ukraine at all. They just wanted to wear down its army.
    1
  12894.  @MustardSkaven  Nonsense. Putin has made it quite clear that Ukraine can do what it likes - but it can't take Crimea and Donbass with it. The two week (3 days!) thing is a myth. Some commanders said things like that to the poor bloody infantry to keep their spirits up, but it was never part of the Russian overall strategy.
    1
  12895.  @johnwilliams9914  You have a point. Drones are apparently hard to take down with systems designed to deal with missiles. They really have changed the entire shape of warfare.
    1
  12896.  @MustardSkaven  Putin has absolutely no wish to annihilate Ukraine. He has made it clear on numerous occasions that it is free to go its own way, but it cannot take Donbas and Crimea with it. The 2 week thing was told to Russian troops by some commanders to keep their spirits up, but it was never a real strategy.
    1
  12897. ​ @peter65zzfdfh  ? The Ukrainians are now surrounded in a tiny corner of the province and can be expected to be duly expelled before Trump takes office. And the N Koreans haven't even been used yet ! Look at a map!
    1
  12898. The Russians will come out of the East too. Ukraine will be fighting on three fronts and to defend Kiev they may well have to surrender Donbass. This has been the Russian plan all along.
    1
  12899.  @emm_arr  I took them down myself because they weren't much cop and in any case I have no social media profile to advertise them on. Your obsession with Russia and trollfarms really is bordering on the crazy you know, sweetheart.
    1
  12900.  @emm_arr  See what I mean about being crazy? It's you whose the dupe, You're so rigid in your mind you cannot understand the notion that other people have a different world view - and can justify it without blathering on about trollfarms!
    1
  12901. @ Or just someone who disagrees with you and thinks you're crazy?
    1
  12902. Support for Palestine is merely a romantic fantasy. Palestine, as a country, simply does not exist - and nor has it ever existed. it is no more than a projection of Islamic fundamentalism - which is the greatest threat to world peace that has ever been known.
    1
  12903. Cheese gives you nightmares.
    1
  12904. And it's not as though Ukraine is the innocent virgin the media us leading us to believe either. It is a raddled whore of a country; a kleptocracy run by gangsters, much like Russia.
    1
  12905. Just like they did with George Floyd and Jacob Blake and ... No sorry, that was the Democrats wasn't it?
    1
  12906. Great. This will give Trump an excuse to pressure US banks to return the Russian money they have frozen to their rightful owners.
    1
  12907. I thought Zelensky should be sitting on Joe's knee, like a kid visiting Santa's Grotto.
    1
  12908. A Kraken is really just a giant octopus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKWssIQplw8
    1
  12909. All brainwashed Americans, that is.
    1
  12910. Adam Powell They don't want to be murdered in their beds you mean. Children are horrible. I put it down to immaturity.
    1
  12911. Adam Powell. I too remember the nuclear threat but was of the opinion that nuclear weapons were the only thing that prevented a vicious and bloody conventional war post-1945. It is a view I still hold. I also hold the view that the threat apparently posed by AGW is vastly exaggerated. Children are idiots as well as horrible. Do you really believe they have come to this state of mind independently? Of course they haven't. They are being wickedly manipulated by their bonkers lefty schoolteachers.
    1
  12912. Adam Powell There are plenty about nowadays. The Watermelon People are using classic totalitarian techniques by enlisting children to their cause. It's an utter disgrace the kind of one-sided propaganda being foisted on children, many of whom are absolutely terrified by this alarmist nonsense.
    1
  12913. Adam Powell I find it hard to see how global warming is a factor in the Australian bush fires. A fire will catch whether the temperature is 30c or 40c. By far the largest factor is the absurdity of green policies which have legislated against traditional methods of bushfire management. In the extensive national forests these have been virtually abandoned. Undergrowth has built up season after season and firebreaks and access routes for emergency vehicles have become overgrown Backburning and other techniques for prevention are now subject to so much red tape that farmers no longer bother with them. If the do-gooders had minded their own business then this tragedy would not have happened. I know little about the mosquito situation in Kenya but unless it is a result of poor management I imagine it is indeed caused by global warming - solar forced global warming mainly. We are now emerging from a cold period which ended in about 1850 and it will certainly get hotter over the next few decades, with or without increases in atmospheric carbon.
    1
  12914. Adam Powell You can't change human nature. Decent people outnumber psychopaths, but the devious psychopath will always come out on top. Everybody has to be a pacifist before pacifism works and that just ain't gonna happen. The motivation and ability to create nuclear weapons will always exist. Amorality and pragmatism beat idealism most days of the week I'm afraid.
    1
  12915. Adam Powell I feel I have a duty to try to disabuse people of harmful notions. This can lead to interesting discussions from which I might learn something myself. I don't see the point in mutual appreciation societies. Arguing is much more fun.
    1
  12916. Adam Powell How do you work that out? A fire takes one match or one lightning strike. Where does global warming enter into that? Does it make it harder to put them out? How so? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  12917. Adam Powell I've run into a few psychopaths in my time. Quite a few in fact. I used to be an investigative journalist, specialising in helping to expose religious cults. There's a couple of contenders for the diagnosis in the echelons of climate alarmism, believe you me.
    1
  12918. Adam Powell I disagree. So there!
    1
  12919.  @kevin10000  How can you wake up to nightmare?
    1
  12920.  @kevin10000  Not a good metaphor in this case, since nightmares occur when one is asleep.
    1
  12921.  @kevin10000  A very long time ago, when precise thinking was considered to be quite important.
    1
  12922.  @kevin10000  Where is a contextual way also? What is it? Is it a metaphor? Why do you talk about orange make up man? Do you mean President Trump? Does he wear orange makeup (all one word)? Or hyphenated at a pinch. Do Americans have nightmares when they are awake? I've heard of the American Dream, but I'm British and there is no such thing as the British Dream, Kevin. Because we are awake. Not woke. Awake.
    1
  12923. Not everyone is motivated by envy you know.
    1
  12924. Is there any evidence at all that Putin has any designs on Europe? Isn't this rather an excuse for militarists and the arms industry to keep on earning a living?
    1
  12925. @Real Aiglon The fact that I'm no such thing destroys any arguments you may have.
    1
  12926.  @marlowc2324  Why do you call me comrade? Are you one of the many ignorant people who have not been informed that Russia has not been a communist country for thirty years?
    1
  12927. @rory kinahan America started this war and the Russians (I am British) have succeeded in their objective of securing the Russian speaking industrial areas of Eastern Ukraine. War is an uncertain business but there is every chance that they will hold on to these and even possibly expand them, as well as holding on to the Crimea, which is Russian.
    1
  12928.  @johnriach8365  I don't suppose he has any arguments, so it's rather a moot point.
    1
  12929. A poll showing a Harris "landslide" will surely encourage more dithering potential Trumpists to take the trouble to vote. Polls in the US, like the election system as a whole, bear little resemblance to democracy. Everything is engineered and manipulated, and many of the votes cast are highly suspect for one reason or another. Harris will undoubtedly win - but only because the political establishment wants to retain its hold on the reins of power. The Trump revolution will have to take to the streets if it is to have any chance of success. The only alternative is that the Trump team has managed to unpick the complexities of what was done four years ago and worked out ways of preventing the same thing occurring this time around.
    1
  12930.  @James-sh4zf  I believe man-made climate change to be vastly exaggerated for reasons of financial gain. The climate is changing - because it always does - and while increased levels of human-produced carbon in the atmosphere may possibly exacerbate the process, there is little to be done about it without destroying humanity itself. Putin has a very good case for his actions in Ukraine and if Donbass and Crimea can be returned to Russia - where the historically belong - then this bloody and needless war will come to an end. Financial gain, yet again, is the chief reason for its continuance. America cannot support the vast number of illegal immigrants entering the country. Extreme measures will be needed to turn the tide. Fascism and bigotry don't come into it. As for assaulting women - I don't see the relevance of such accusations other than them being part of the general lawfare strategy designed to get rid of Trump so that profiteers and warmongers can carry on with their business.
    1
  12931.  @johnrussell3961  It depends what they willing and capable of. They seem reluctant to engage in agricultural enterprises other than cannabis production. I agree you have a point though. I don't understand why those in favour of unlimited immigration can't point to more instances where people who have got in illegally are fulfilling useful functions.
    1
  12932.  @Aarenby  Then don't send them.
    1
  12933. @Soul of a robotI think that's a very good idea.
    1
  12934.  @verystripeyzebra  Why? As long as they realise it could be on the cards it should affect their decision as whether or not to come here or to some other country. Rwanda a very nice place these days, by all accounts.
    1
  12935.  @patchevansbrokencountry2583 But people are commodities. You are. I am. We may be animated to varying degrees but we still have marketable value. It's called work.
    1
  12936.  @verystripeyzebra  Sounds an ideal place for Albanians. They are generally a tough and versatile people who could be useful in helping to run such a country. They will fit in nicely.
    1
  12937.  @verystripeyzebra  International law can go screw itself. There is no such thing, really. Laws only apply in discrete communities and the world is no such thing.
    1
  12938.  @verystripeyzebra  Kuwait's doing really great after that, isn't it? It'd probably have been better off under dear old Saddam. And it wasn't international law which "saved" it. It was US firepower protecting US commercial interests. Which, thinking about it, is a pretty good definition of "international law".
    1
  12939.  @verystripeyzebra  And who polices these laws? Why are they in place? Hint: the word "America" occurs in both answers.
    1
  12940.  @verystripeyzebra  Kuwait is a slave-owning Muslim monarchy which has close relations with Russia. It cleverly uses this to keep US interests in check. Saddam Hussein was a CIA shoe-in whose secular Ba'th party provided a useful way of keeping Muslim extremism in check and keeping Iraq reasonably stable. Unfortunately, like Gadaffi in Libya, he grew a bit too big for his boots and decided to strike out on his own, notably by invading Kuwait without permission. For this and other transgressions he was ultimately punished in the form of a violent invasion by the US and its vassal states which resulted in the deaths of thousands and possibly millions of innocent civilians. Which is OK because "international law" said it was okay. Make sense of that if you can.
    1
  12941.  @verystripeyzebra  Power leads to corruption, and while kind and trusting people such as yourself believe that honour and decency play a part on the governance of the world, they very rarely do.
    1
  12942.  @verystripeyzebra  Then what's all this about international law? You can better your bottom dollar that as soon as its cited some interested party is involved - and its usually the good old USA at the finish.
    1
  12943.  @verystripeyzebra  By helping make the world safe for hypocrisy, I suppose?
    1
  12944.  Murray David  Not a chance. That phone call is just him asking the governor to find some of the votes that were stolen from him.
    1
  12945. Of ourse he does. And what's wrong with that?
    1
  12946. Killed by covid hysteria.
    1
  12947. Counted them yourself did you?
    1
  12948.  @thelleftaremad7556  He said late winter -about March. But who knows? The temperature's dropping already. Putin has apparently issued orders that the push must begin before March. If it does come before the Ukrainians are re-armed they are in big trouble.
    1
  12949. Mud The Democrats have an illness called Trump Derangement System. It prevents them making rational decisions. The senate hearing will be like a Christmas pantomime but with blood.
    1
  12950. The real one.
    1
  12951. Despite her manner she is probably quite right to question much of Fauci's behaviour.
    1
  12952. America does not recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court which issued the warrant.
    1
  12953. He is absolutely correct. American greed and expansionism have forced Russia into taking this extreme step.
    1
  12954.  @gamingtonight1526  Get used to it.
    1
  12955. Iwer Sonsch Does atmospheric carbon absorb infra-red or disseminate it in various directions?
    1
  12956. Geek Overdose Thanks.Stores for about one third of a second? And then releases it in directions most suitable to maintaining the thermodynamic stability of the atmosphere?
    1
  12957.  @martinbures881  UK with lockdowns - covid deaths 190.71 per 100,000 of population Sweden with no lockdowns - 133.31
    1
  12958.  @neilfowler3284  Which have nothing in common with Sweden. Geographical proximity is irrelevant. They are less densely populated by far and unlike Sweden they do not have large populations of elderly people kept alive by a free healthcare system, nor do they have large cities with substantial immigrant communities.
    1
  12959.  Make it lucid  There is no doubt that Israel has got off relatively lightly, but as I understand it restrictions have been localised and only with lockdowns in some areas. Forgive me if I've got this wrong. There seem to be a host of factors influencing covid death rates. Most people who die are very old, and I think the percentage of people over 65 in Sweden is almost twice that of Israel (20% as opposed to 11%) plus Sweden, like the UK, has a large population of people in their late eighties and nineties and it is this demographic which has suffered the most deaths.
    1
  12960. Why not?
    1
  12961.  @madeanaccounttospillthebor9568  The only threat Europe faces is economic collapse following its misguided support for Ukraine.
    1
  12962. This may help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY&t=
    1
  12963.  @MasonDixonAutistic  I was actually talking about the present flu season, starting in September. The novel coronavirus certainly had a huge impact. There's no denying that. The suggestion is though that it has now abated considerably and that deaths where it is present will be absorbed into the general run of winter deaths. The fact is that in recent years we have had remarkably mild flu seasons with very low death rates. This has left a residue of frail elderly people who might otherwise have died, but who have finally succumbed to Covid 19. As you will see from the document below excess winter deaths exceeding 40,000 were far from uncommon at the end of the last century. Even earlier, in 1968/69 the Hong Kong flu alone killed 30,000, many of them children. In terms of years of life lost it was far worse than Covid 19. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/highestnumberofexcesswinterdeathssince19992000/2015-11-25
    1
  12964.  @emm_arr  He did what he had to do. If he hadn't, Ukraine would have invaded Donbass.
    1
  12965. Even more specifically, it is America's war.
    1
  12966.  @hootowl6354  Russian people realise that the West has been trying to turn them into compliant puppy dogs ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While many are prepared to sell out to the might dollar, most are not. They are patriots. And I have every hope that they will be rewarded for their patriotism.
    1
  12967.  @Vladimirthetiny  I think you'll find that many oligarchs are circumventing these difficulties. Not that I care either way.
    1
  12968.  @Vladimirthetiny  It depend who you know, I think. I only know one oligarch indirectly because I know one of the crew on his yacht, and he seems to be able to go wherever he likes if he greases the right palms. Of course I'm sure there are others who are not so fortunate.
    1
  12969. The Democrats and the Deep State have spent many years and many dollars scraping together this very small list of minor peccadillos against Trump, while at the same time themselves engendering wars which have resulted in the deaths of many thousands. I do hope that once he installed the Donald will find ways of exerting a subtle revenge. Buying Greenland and forcing these people to go there and administer it might be an enjoyable option.
    1
  12970. So you mean their civil rights to loot and burn and point pistols at people's heads?
    1
  12971. @ You'll be looking at Joe Biden and the board of Blackrock then.
    1
  12972.  @nowhere529  Blackrock always wins, whoever wins. Its called spreading your bets.
    1
  12973.  @williamalfonso1373  Who cares about Kharkiv except the Ukrainians?
    1
  12974.  @jonlittle5032  I'm sure this is taking longer that the Russians hoped, but the three-day goal thing was just something told to the troops to encourage them. No-one in authority believed it.
    1
  12975.  @experimentalme7438  Yes, I am.
    1
  12976.  @MomentForYou68  A ceasefire and talks would be a start.
    1
  12977.  @jonlittle5032  No. An accident of war.
    1
  12978.  @jonlittle5032  But Russia has no intention of doing so. It considers much of Eastern Ukraine to belong to Russia, and only mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine when it was formed in the early 1990s.
    1
  12979.  @jonlittle5032  It doesn't much matter what America and the EU think, other than that they are apparently prepared to go on supplying arms to Ukraine. This is already slowing up and will continue to do so. Russia meanwhile has continued arms production and is supplied with further arms from N Korea, Iran and China, as well as black market sources. There is also the manpower issue to consider. I really don't see how Ukraine can win. The only chance they have is for NATO countries to move in directly. I doubt many NATO countries will be willing to do so and if they did it would probably mean the outbreak of nuclear war.
    1
  12980.  @jonlittle5032  Yes, but Russia is constantly attacking Ukraine's energy and transport infrastructure in order to limit its military capabilities. The target for their missile was almost certainly a power plant about five miles away, but the missile was either badly aimed, or was jammed from the ground. There is absolutely no percentage for Russia in wasting an expensive missile on a children's hospital.
    1
  12981.  @andrewadams6905  Russia is winning, in fact. They are breaking through Ukraine's defences on the all-important southern front even as we speak.
    1
  12982. If implemented. But does America have the bottle to respond?
    1
  12983.  @Born1Drifter  Not necessarily. America is weak, as clearly demonstrated by the chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the emasculation of its armed forces - or at least it is perceived to be so by Russia. Putin could well risk a token strike with no objective other than to get the US to stay out of its affairs. If he is pushed much further that diehard, fatalistic streak in the Russian character could well outweigh considerations of the worst possible consequences. After all, a NATO presence in Ukraine, seven minutes missile flight away from Moscow, would seriously undermine MAD anyway.
    1
  12984.  @Born1Drifter  It doesn't matter what you or I think. What matters is what Putin might think or, equally importantly, what the highly unintelligent US Intelligence thinks he might think. And would the US retaliate to a token strike if it was clear it was a token strike and response would unleash Armageddon? And what relevance has the strength of US armed forces if they are badly led and badly advised, as is clearly demonstrated by just about every conflict they have been involved in since the first Gulf War at the very least? The US support for Ukraine has been extremely ill-advised. It has led directly to the current war and continued pursuit of US aims in Ukraine could lead to the destruction of humanity. Time to back off and let Putin have what he wants.
    1
  12985.  @Born1Drifter  Russia's relationship with Ukraine is entirely different to any it has with the countries you mention. Ukraine is Russia's creation, more or less. They even call it Little Russia. And all this over and above that worryingly short 450km distance between its border and Moscow.
    1
  12986.  @Born1Drifter  Baltic to Moscow 750 km. Ukraine to Moscow 450km. In planning responses to nuclear attack every kilometre and every second count. In any case, the psychological impact of Ukraine joining NATO is probably as significant to Russia as the reduction in strike time. Having all Ukraine's Soviet missiles removed, only to see them replaced by NATO missiles a few years later has got to be pretty galling.
    1
  12987. Forgive my geographical ignorance, but is Portland just down the road from Salem where an evil witch has forced Republican senators to go into hiding in order to prevent her and her coven from destroying the economy with insane Carbonophobic climate change legislation? What's going on over there? Is it inbreeding? An ancient tribal curse? Proximity to Canada? What?
    1
  12988. Really? A couple of years ago perhaps, but after the humiliation of the Afghanistan withdrawal America's reputation and influence have crashed into the dust.
    1
  12989.  @tayler2396  Shame you didn't take your toys with you.
    1
  12990.  @nonamenoslogan2898  Crawl out from under your stone, dude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation Plenty more where these came from. No Fox, you notice.
    1
  12991.  Mj light  Hey - we're on the same side (I think) Here are a few bits of ammunition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation
    1
  12992.  @BD4-ManchesterIsRed  The indications of immense fraud are overwhelming and come from a variety of sources. You left-wing morons are being used by forces you are too brainwashed to comprehend. The fight is on but sadly the judicial systems in many Dem states are as corrupt as their electoral practices. Given the timescale it is likely than Biden will be inaugurated, but his will be an illegal presidency, and there is every hope this will be clearly shown long before his term is up. Here is a very small sample of the evidence currently being gathered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation
    1
  12993.  @BD4-ManchesterIsRed  Are you suggesting the legal depositions are fake? Or that the people in these videos are actors or liars? Or that Dominion voting machines are not extremely easy to manipulate? A general rule of life is that if a crime can be committed, someone will do so. The Dems have both motive and opportunity and have taken full advantage of it. As for Trump I don't know what you mean by "out in force". He certainly has teams of lawyers out in force and is no stranger to court procedures. I have no idea of his strategy but you can be sure it is a powerful one.
    1
  12994.  @BD4-ManchesterIsRed  I will enjoy watching him being impeached even more.
    1
  12995.  @mattgs1671  But in this case the infrastructure damaged affects Russian-held territory. If the Russians did it they must have done so in order to inhibit a Ukrainian advance across the Dnieper at this point but why now? The number of reasons for and against either side being responsible are several It could even have been the work of a third party.
    1
  12996.  @agffans5725  Russia invaded Ukraine in order to prevent Ukraine invading Crimea and Donbass
    1
  12997.  @Altair885  So could the Russians.
    1
  12998. Vaccinating pre-pubescent children is a crime.
    1
  12999. Children and idiot journalists are being inducted into a cult designed to take over the world by creating and cornering a market in carbon emission permissions. Among the chief culprits is an organisation called We Don't Have Time, which created Greta Thurnberg and the school strike. Go to their website to be truly terrified. (Worse heatwave in SA was probably 1878 by the way)
    1
  13000. A charismatic leader who led his country into a bloody and destructive war not so long ago was a bloke called Adolf Hitler. He ended up killing himself in his bunker as Russian bombs rained down. Zelensky will probably skip the country to join his billions of dollars somewhere and satisfy his ego by appearing on TV chat shows.
    1
  13001. Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent it joining NATO. Why on earth would Finland risk the same fate? This is war-mongering - war-mongering by the USA. And we in Europe are falling for it as we have been for thirty years.
    1
  13002.  @A_Casual_Observer  Of course it does. Russia has no wish to invade Finland. If it had it could have done so any time in the past thirty years. Ukraine has brought this war upon itself by yielding to Western blandishments. Finland would be foolish to make the same mistake. Russia doesn't want Finland, and it only wants the predominantly Russian parts of Ukraine. America, on the other hand, wants a state of permanent tension in Europe in order to justify the existence of NATO, which supplies a market-place for the arms industry. The Washington hawks fear that Trump will return and weaken NATO so are drumming up support for it to be strengthened. As usual many will die, but few will be American.
    1
  13003.  @A_Casual_Observer  You really should be more specific.
    1
  13004.  @Yeknodathon  This presents an interesting philosophical dilemma, since you cannot possibly have any idea how it feels like to be me.
    1
  13005.  @mickeythompson9537  The measures are near useless and will only serve to further line the pockets of vaccine manufacturers. Sadly I can't lay my hands on any Ivermectin. Big Pharma has used its pernicious influence to make it very hard to obtain, thus adding millions to the worldwide death toll from covid 19.
    1
  13006.  @markwelch3564  I'm not sure that what you say about swing voters is true. There is plenty of room for the compliant and the risk-averse in Labour ranks; indeed these characteristics seem pretty universal there. Labour could make it clear that they were voting against the government simply in the hope of bringing it down. If this was thought to go against the tender susceptibilities of the morally sensitive, doubtless some technical objection to the measures could be invented.
    1
  13007.  @Yeknodathon  And yet, by some miracle, you feel wonderful that you do not experience something which you claim not to waste time in trying to experience. How can this be so?
    1
  13008.  @Yeknodathon  True, but what's that got to do with anything?
    1
  13009.  @markwelch3564  However comforting a thought that may be, voting with Boris today will achieve nothing. Voting against him, on the other hand, will undermine his credibility even more than it is already. Perhaps, though, its a good tactic to let him blunder on for a few more weeks.
    1
  13010.  @markwelch3564  It's not so much what you're supporting as who you are supporting it with. Since the measures are entirely doomed to fail, taking political advantage would seem the most sensible course of action.
    1
  13011.  @Dash8Q400Channel  I'd call a doctor to fix my drains, but they're all away playing golf.
    1
  13012.  @porecemusnox8805  Because Trump has been subjected to so much vilification and so much praise that it is near-impossible to find anyone sufficiently unbiased to judge him fairly. But judging him is not the issue He is before the court to be pilloried, not to be judged. This trial is a theatrical proceeding, unfitting to be staged in a proper court of law.
    1
  13013.  @Robert-gb7ex  And either answer should have disqualified them.
    1
  13014.  @porecemusnox8805  I see my original reply has been deleted by YouTube's new woke/fascist algorithm. May I refer you to a simpler version supplied to @anniejuan1817 elsewhere in this thread.
    1
  13015.  @porecemusnox8805  Among other things, yes. I might also qualify my statement to say that anyone who has been living under a stone for the last six or seven years might just qualify.
    1
  13016.  @porecemusnox8805  I have not read the indictment, nor do I need to. I have glanced at it, and it is clearly a farrago of nit-picking lawyerspeak, designed to obfuscate rather than to inform. I repeat: this case is not being brought because wrongdoing has come to light. It is being brought because alleged wrongdoing has finally been uncovered via a sustained campaign of vilification directed against one man by a corrupt state, fearful of losing an ill-gained power and authority. This undoubted fact undermines any procedures which may be in place to ensure fairness in judicial proceedings. When a game is being played with loaded dice, the rules of that game become fairly irrelevant.
    1
  13017.  @porecemusnox8805  It's not a question of either liking it or disliking it. It's a question of whether or not such an idealistic attitude is either practical or indeed desirable. In this instance I would suggest that it is not.
    1
  13018.  @porecemusnox8805  You're right about one thing - democracy is very much on trial here. It is not the be all and end all way of running a society that people think. It is very susceptible to being manipulated for purposes other than equable governance, and that is what is happening here.
    1
  13019.  @anniejuan1817  I don't know that it is.
    1
  13020.  @anniejuan1817  It's pretty much a waste of time wherever it takes place. If found guilty, Trump will have many reasons for appeal, and that procedure could take literally years. The only question is how much effect this farrago will have on the results of the election. Not much, in my view. The people who instigated this mockery of justice have the clout to ensure that their guy wins, by whatever means necessary
    1
  13021.  @ericdpeerik3928  No. You are clearly both, however.
    1
  13022.  @igorvelichko5898  That's a pretty big claim! Personally, I reckon both NATO and the CCP have a shorter shelf life than Russia. Russia, a new China, India, Middle Eastern countries and developing nations sick to death of Western bullying are likely to unite in various blocs to entirely alter the shape of world economics and power structures - and perhaps even more quickly than might seem possible. See, I can do it too!
    1
  13023.  @igorvelichko5898  Ah, but you don't know, do you?
    1
  13024.  @igorvelichko5898  Good luck with that!
    1
  13025. The ECHR is, like the EU, just another left-over from the consequences of World War II. History has overtaken its purpose and it has become a vehicle for the criminal enterprise of people smuggling. Britain should withdraw or, at the very least, simply ignore it.
    1
  13026.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Britain has a well-established system of protection in law which does not need an international body to supplement it.
    1
  13027.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  All systems are open to exploitation to some degree but the abuse of the ECHR by gangsters is a uniquely egregious example.
    1
  13028. And suffer the indignity of being conquered???
    1
  13029. The evidence for catching covid twice is very small. Although 16,000people are recorded as testing positive twice within a 90 day period this is thought to be the result of either the same infection persisting or either of the the tests being false positives. Just over 50 cases are likely to be true re-infections since the second infection was a different variant to the first. In all cases symptoms in both infections were mild. There is no evidence I am aware of children becoming infected multiple times.
    1
  13030.  @sabvixen3374  They are testing positive for the same infection, or one or all of their tests are false positives. Around 16,000 people have tested positive twice within a 90 day period, but nearly all for the above reasons. Only about 50 people are thought to have probably been infected twice, since the second test showed a different variant. As far as I know there are no recorded cases of triple infections.
    1
  13031.  @hannahdyson7129  So it might as well not be.
    1
  13032. Yeye A We Brits don't do hate much. We tend more towards profound dislike - and we profoundly dislike being patronised and bullied. That's why we've kicked out the patronising bullies of the Labour Party. Trump 2020!
    1
  13033. A bit over the top, but sound in principle.
    1
  13034. This is one of the great propaganda myths of this war. All that has happened is that children from the many Russian families living in East Ukraine have been sent to safety in Russia.
    1
  13035. @ That is the truth. Their parents often had to claim their children were abducted in order to avoid being punished as collaborators by Ukrainian authorities. Other children were removed from Ukraine's notorious orphanages by Russian troops after they had been abandoned by staff.
    1
  13036.  @shawns0762  I am on the side of a country which has been under constant threat from an expansionist, militaristic state which was founded on ethnic cleansing, slavery and environmental destruction; which has over a million soldiers stationed in 160 locations all over the world and which deceives and cheats its own people, while suppressing the rights and aspirations of others in foreign lands, and not infrequently invades and bombs them, killing millions as it does so. It's called the United States of America.
    1
  13037.  @shawns0762  To America, wars are business opportunities disguised as acts of philanthropy. It's territorial gains are in terms of creating new markets and obtaining cheap labour and resources by violence, although some actual geographical gains have been obtained in the past.
    1
  13038.  @shawns0762  It's not hate and it's not Russian propaganda. It's a healthy contempt for lies and hypocrisy.
    1
  13039.  @shawns0762  It kills more people than any other country. Look at the millions directly killed in Iraq and the many millions more who die as the result of the destabilising effects American interference and war-mongering. The war in Ukraine, just as the latest example, would never have started without America setting its sights on getting its hands on all the coal, iron, gas, oil and rare earth minerals in the Donbass region. You're living in a dream world. Your immigrants massacred the people they found living there, and your democracy is a sham. America is run by gangsters and the seasonal change from Democrat to Republican is just window-dressing.
    1
  13040.  @shawns0762  Saddam Hussein was, of course, originally installed as an American puppet. He rebelled and was taken out in order for America to regain access to Iraqi oil. There were no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's use of chemical weapons pales into insignificance compared with America's shock and awe destruction of the entire country. America occupied Europe. The money it spent was an investment which is still being repaid. I repeat: America starts wars to make money. Wars in themselves are profitable up to a point, and installing American troops and opening up conquered territories to American businesses is even more so. Charity does not enter into it.
    1
  13041.  @shawns0762  US intelligence helped Saddam's Ba`ath Party seize power for the first time in 1963. Evidence suggests that Saddam was on the CIA payroll as early as 1959, when he participated in a failed assassination attempt against Iraqi strongman Abd al-Karim Qassem. In the 1980s, the US and Britain backed Saddam in the war against Iran, giving Iraq arms, money, satellite intelligence, and even chemical & bio-weapon precursors. As many as 90 US military advisors supported Iraqi forces and helped pick targets for Iraqi air and missile attacks. Support continued throughout most of Saddam's regime. Access to Iraqi oil, and destabilisation neighbouring Iran were the keynotes of this policy. The Marshall Plan did indeed rebuild Europe. But it also benefitted the US in many important respects. The Soviet Union, as you rightly say, occupied those territories it conquered on the way to Berlin and installed puppet governments. But the present-day Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. Those territories have been returned and where there were once Russian soldiers, there are now American soldiers, as most of these countries have chosen to join NATO, despite promises that they would not do so.
    1
  13042.  @shawns0762  What I can understand of this (which isn't much) seems like utter garbage. Iraq and Russia always enjoyed close relations so why on earth would Russia want to start a revolution? Iraq obtained weapons from both Russia and America. As ever, this trade was in order to gain access to oil. Saddam was overthrown because after years of playing both ends against the middle he upset the Americans too much. Thus led to two wars which resulted in the deaths of about a million people. What does this have to do with China? And where are the South Koreans and the Vietnamese charging south to exactly? The sea? The Marshal Plan brought many benefits to the US in terms of creating markets for American goods - as indeed does NATO. And promises WERE made that after the Berlin Wall came down NATO would advance no further Eastwards. The Russians were foolish enough to believe these assurances.
    1
  13043.  @shawns0762  I see what you mean now! But Russia has now completely rejected communism of course. And you are wrong about Saddam and the CIA and the benefits to America of the Marshall plan. Communism killed millions - but then so too did America's attempts to suppress it. The fact that America still continues to bully, manipulate and invade despite the collapse of Soviet communism is pretty indicative that its self=appointed role as policeman was just a cover for its own advancement, don't you think?
    1
  13044.  @shawns0762  Really the only difference between the Soviet empire, the Nazis, the Japanese empire and the American empire is that the American empire is still operational. For now. For your information, here is a list of the countries bullied, manipulated and invaded by the US over the past hundred years or so: 1914-1918 - a series of invasions of Mexico. 1914-1934 - Haiti. After numerous uprisings, America brings in its troops, the occupation continues for 19 years. 1916-1924 - 8-year occupation of the Dominican Republic. 1917-1933 - military occupation of Cuba, economic protectorate. 1917-1918 - participation in the 1st World War. 1918-1922 - intervention in Russia. In total, 14 states participated in it. Active support was provided to the territories that separated from Russia - Kolchakia and the Far Eastern Republic. 1918-1920 - Panama. After the elections, troops are brought in to quell the riots. 1919 - COSTA RICA. ... The landing of US troops to "protect American interests." 1919 - American troops fight on the side of Italy against the Serbs in Dalmatia. 1919 - American troops enter Honduras during elections. 1920 - Guatemala. 2-week intervention. 1921 - American support for militants fighting to overthrow Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera for the benefit of the United Fruit Company. 1922 - intervention in Turkey. 1922-1927 - American troops in China during the popular uprising. 1924-1925 - Honduras. Troops invade the country during elections. 1925 - Panama. US troops break up a general strike. 1926 - Nicaragua. Invasion. 1927-1934 - American troops stationed throughout China. 1932 - invasion of El Salvador from the sea. There was an uprising at that time. 1937 - Nicaragua. With the help of American troops, the dictator Somoza comes to power, having removed the legitimate government of H. Sakasa. 1939 - the introduction of troops into China. 1947-1949 - Greece. American troops are involved in the civil war, supporting the Nazis. 1948-1953 - military operations in the Philippines. 1950 - Uprising in Puerto Rico is suppressed by American troops. 1950-1953 - armed intervention in Korea about a million American soldiers. 1958 - Lebanon. The occupation of the country, the fight against the rebels. 1958 - confrontation with Panama. 1959 - America sends troops to Laos, the first clashes of American troops in Vietnam begin. 1959 - Haiti. The suppression of a popular uprising against the pro-American government. 1960 - after José Maria Velasco was elected president of Ecuador and refused to comply with US demands to break off relations with Cuba, the Americans carried out several military operations and organized a coup. 1960 - US troops enter Guatemala to prevent the removal of a US puppet from power. 1965-1973 - military aggression against Vietnam. 1966 - Guatemala. ... US troops entered the country, massacres of Indians were arranged, who were considered potential rebels. 1966 - military assistance to the pro-American governments of Indonesia and the Philippines. ... (60,000 people were arrested for political reasons, 88 torture specialists officially worked under the government). 1971-1973 - bombing of Laos. 1972 - Nicaragua. American troops are brought in to support the government, beneficial to Washington. 1983 - military intervention in Grenada, about 2 thousand marines. 1986 - attack on Libya. Bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. 1988 - US invasion of Honduras 1988 - The USS Vincennes, which was in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian plane with 290 passengers on board, including 57 children. 1989 - US troops quell riots in the Virgin Islands. 1991 - large-scale military action against Iraq 1992-1994 - occupation of Somalia. Armed violence against civilians, killings of civilians. 1998 - Sudan. The Americans destroy a pharmaceutical plant with missiles, claiming that it produces nerve gas. 1999 - ignoring the norms of international law, bypassing the UN and the Security Council, the United States launched a 78-day air bombardment campaign by NATO forces against the sovereign state of Yugoslavia. 2001 - invasion of Afghanistan. 2003 - bombing of Iraq. 2011 - Libya. 2014 Syria US and allied invasion of Syria 2015 Yemen US missile strikes on Yemeni Houthi rebel positions and active support for the intervention of Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen 2015 Cameroon US military operation in Cameroon 2015 Libya Second intervention in Libya And now America is financing a Ukrainian army with which to attempt to destroy the integrity of the Russian Federation.
    1
  13045.  @shawns0762  If America is a policeman, it is a bent one on the take, setting up crimes in order to solve them. It's interventions are invariably calculated to bring advantage. It is romantic nonsense to imagine for a moment that self-interest does not enter any of these activities. The results may sometimes be beneficial, but that is not the prime motivation. The prime motivation is profit. America seeks a monopoly of world resources. It wants to rule the world and will do anything to achieve this objective, including taking full advantage of disputes in foreign countries and often creating or encouraging them, as it has done in Ukraine. As far as "Russian propaganda" is concerned there is no doubt that Russia engages in similar provocations in order to achieve its objectives. Part of Russia's justification for its own intervention in Ukraine is very similar to that cited by the US and NATO for their interventions in Yugoslavia - namely the prevention of ethnic cleansing. In both cases there is more than element of truth in this, but there are also other motives. An essential difference, however, is that Russia is seeking to protect existing interests whereas, as ever, America is seeking to extend them.
    1
  13046.  @shawns0762  But where does the taxpayers' money go? Into the pockets of arms manufacturers and businesses which set up shop in conquered territories, that's where. Americans may be individually charitable, but this does not mean that the USA is a charitable enterprise. Far from it.
    1
  13047.  @shawns0762  I've given you a list. Are many of these territories not conquered and occupied? Perhaps you would prefer a more polite phrase such as "within the sphere of American influence" if that makes you feel any better.
    1
  13048.  @shawns0762  As I've said before, it's not hate, just a contempt for hypocrisy - such as pretending that you've conquered a country because of the nature of its government, rather than because you want to get your sticky little hands on its resources.
    1
  13049.  @shawns0762  I'm afraid it is you who have swallowed propaganda wholesale. You are confusing the Soviet Union with modern Russia. They are entirely different entities. You are also foolishly attributing philanthropic motives to a nation which has clearly shown that it is motivated by the desire for profit above all else. It has military bases all over the world Russia has practically none. Russia has given up the business of empire. America will shortly be forced to do the same.
    1
  13050.  @shawns0762  Ukraine has statues of Stalin too! But this is romantic nostalgia. Have you not read Putin's speech of yesterday? He firmly blames Stalin for much of the present difficulties. Russia would say it is not conquering territory, but taking back territory which it historically owns and which has been stolen from it. There is some truth in this, of course. I do recommend you read the relevant parts of Putin's speech. It gives a very detailed and accurate picture of the background to this dreadful situation. It was aimed at a domestic audience, so really cannot be called propaganda.
    1
  13051.  @shawns0762  You are completely wrong. Ukraine is largely Russia's creation. It was only given the status if a country in the chaos following the collapse of the USSR. The nukes were Russian nukes, by the way. Ukraine could not fire them since only Moscow held the codes. The anomalies of the Budapest Treaty have never been ironed out, despite decades if diplomatic effort. Putin made it quite clear that, however regretfully, he would not object to Ukraine looking to the West, but it could not join NATO and it could not have Donbass and Crimea, both of which have very high Russian populations and both of which represent a considerable investment of Russian capital and Russian labour over very many decades. There are no comparisons, really, with Germany in the 1930's and Russia in the present day - or at least the differences far outweigh what similarities there are. Comparing the two situations, like comparing Putin with Hitler, is really - well- just Western propaganda.
    1
  13052.  @shawns0762  You are wrong again. Russia was those things before Putin took over. He is nothing like Hitler. There are closer similarities between Zelensky and Hitler, if you want the truth. Both rely of charisma rather than sense, and both rapidly led their countries into needless and destructive wars. There are videos of Ukrainians behaving just as badly as the Russians, if not more so. They shoot prisoners. They torture collaborators. During the siege of Mariupol they imprisoned people in bomb shelters and shot them from the rooftops if they tried to flee. In the early stages of the war in 2014/16 they instigated a campaign of torture and summary execution in the Donbass which shocked the world and laid the foundations for the present escalation. The perpetrators were genuine Nazis complete with Nazi insignia and tattoos.
    1
  13053.  @shawns0762  Before Putin there was chaos. Russia was slipping into anarchy. This was a situation very pleasing to America, since it would have allowed them to finally crush their old enemy and feed off its corpse. All media is NOT state controlled there are hundreds of private TV companies and newspapers. Dissent from the official line is tolerated to a surprising degree. People who represent a threat to political stability sometimes meet with mysterious deaths it is true, but this happens in other countries. In America it might happen, for instance, to someone likely to expose the sexual perversions of members of the elite. Zelensky was put into power by the oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky, who also employed Hunter Biden and at one time owned a good chunk of the US steel industry and half of downtown Cleveland. Zelensky is an American puppet, hand in glove with the Biden crime family. Russia, naturally enough, would prefer a Russian puppet in the post. There were fascists in Ukraine long before the invasion. While Russia was fighting the Nazis Ukraine welcomed them with open arms and cheerfully helped them murder the country's Jews.
    1
  13054.  @manciokas1  The animals are doing fine. A pack of healthy wolves roams the area hunting healthy deer. As to deformed births, no reliable figures ae available- but nor is any reliable evidence.
    1
  13055.  @thomaspendlebury4222  They are generally acknowledged, although estimates of the number who may consequently have died of radiation poisoning vary widely. There have certainly been no directly attributable major increases in cancer deaths either locally or anywhere else. Google it and you will get this: "According to the official, internationally recognised death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure." My 200 estimate is probably over generous. As disasters go, Chernobyl was no biggie.
    1
  13056. Have you forgotten the triple lines of heavily fortified concrete trenches now built by the Russians behind the current front line?
    1
  13057.  @robby3467  What with?
    1
  13058.  @thedirty530  They just gave the flanks back - and took what little remained of the city.
    1
  13059.  @thedirty530  The Ukrainians did.
    1
  13060.  @thedirty530  It hasn't been that for a while. Anyway I'm sure the Russians won't mind retreating slowly back to the new fortified lines, killing Ukrainians on the way. That's what it's about at this stage - not taking territory.
    1
  13061.  @paulgibbon5991  Not really.The trouble is they don't do what the West expects them to do.
    1
  13062. I rather think it's NATO that isn't interested. War is its business.
    1
  13063. Why shouldn't hospitals cope? Admissions are as low as deaths relative to the second wave and the hospitals coped then.
    1
  13064.  @carltaylor4942  Patel's family, who had British passports, were forcibly ejected from Uganda by a maniac. Do you not see the difference?
    1
  13065.  @run2cat4run  Stop making excuses. To be a civilian in Gaza is to either support Hamas or be intimidated by them.
    1
  13066.  @andrewoliver8930  Ultimately, everything is the fault of Hamas.
    1
  13067.  @AliChaudhary420  Oddly enough, people of very similar mindset did cause these events.
    1
  13068. Well, you can't say he didn't offer.
    1
  13069. It is our empire which is decaying - sad old England holding on to America's coat-tails while Russia, China, India and a host of developing and mineral-rich nations prepare to fill the void left by its inevitable collapse.
    1
  13070. No of course about it.
    1
  13071.  @angrydoggy9170  They've tried it before - and Russia gets hurt too. Its defence lines are flooded, water supplies to Crimea are affected and the nuclear power station they hold might possibly be endangered. If they did it to hold up a potential Ukrainian advance at this point then why now? The jury's out on this one. We may never know
    1
  13072.  @PerceivedREALITY999  And did Hamas give up its weapons? Did Hamas agree to stop rocket attacks on Israel? These figures, as shocking as they are, are the direct result of the Palestinian people continuing to support a death cult.
    1
  13073.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Not really. As far as I am aware the Jews of Europe did not attack German suburbs with rockets launched from school playgrounds and hospital car parks.
    1
  13074.  @SadaK-tr6dm  The Zionists were there far more than 70 years ago. A great many of the Arabs currently described as Palestinians are descendants of immigrants from Syria, Jordan and other neighbouring countries who had arrived to take advantage of the wealth and prosperity created in this much-neglected area by Zionist settlers. The Zionists bought the land from its Ottoman owners. The Arabs who now claim it are the real interlopers. Israel had done its best to accommodate them but, fuelled by religious hatred, they have done nothing but try to destroy this new, modern country. Israel has no choice but to fight back.
    1
  13075.  @PerceivedREALITY999  Your version of them. Once the Israeli parliament's affairs were conducted in both Hebrew and Arabic. They were offered equal citizenship. In all its efforts to accommodate the Arabs Israeli has come up against a brick wall of religious intolerance. The extremists are fully committed to the destruction of Israel. Israel has to fight back and, inevitably, there will be much suffering. The situation is now beyond all hope of redress. It is the fault of the Islamists - not the Jews.
    1
  13076.  @SadaK-tr6dm  No. The Jews of Europe were not homicidal maniacs.
    1
  13077.  @dasilva1230  ..and eyes to see and ears to hear.
    1
  13078.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Wrong and absurdly prejudiced. Zionism is the continuation of movements to recover the Jewish homeland which began at least twenty years earlier than that - and colonialism had little to do with it that I can see - although anti-Semites certainly welcomed the idea.
    1
  13079.  @SadaK-tr6dm  It's not nonsense when possession is disputed - and not because of the bible, but because of land deeds and legislation.
    1
  13080.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Much of the land in the area of Palestine was purchased from its Ottoman owners by the Zionists. They were forced to flee some of this land through a variety of circumstances, including invasions by Arab tribes from Jordan and elsewhere. When the Jews returned they still had the original purchase documents, or were able to get copies, thus proving their legal ownership of lands now occupied by Arabs. These are the land deeds I refer to.
    1
  13081.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Certificates of ownership. Much of the land in dispute was actually purchased from its Ottoman owners by Zionists.
    1
  13082. Nana Akua is God. So be careful.
    1
  13083.  @paulmatthews5255  My channel is pure and virgin.
    1
  13084. Don't take journalism so seriously - that's the answer. The humble hacks labouring in this sordid profession are just trying to scratch a living, often under immense pressure and with deadlines and the threat of the sack constantly hanging over their heads. Take pity.
    1
  13085.  @emm_arr  So what? It's a hard life and often a very brief one.
    1
  13086. Putin's been looking at it too.
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  13087. All mouth and trousers. Only fools fall for this act.
    1
  13088. There is a curious connection between the herd mentality of the left - fearful, worst scenarios, lets have rules and regulations, we're all gonna die etc etc - and the financial interests of those who are also milking this pandemic for all it's worth. Apart from the obvious desire to spin things out until that highly profitable vaccine comes along, there is clear evidence here that the principle of reflexivity is being applied by hedge fund operators. Indeed , they may even have engineered the panic and are now applying the formulae to a volatile situation and are making millions.
    1
  13089. Such a shame that this otherwise excellent channel has bought into the man-made climate change con-trick. Admittedly India may benefit from it, but it is mostly lies nonetheless.
    1
  13090.  @jamesmorrow1646  How would I know? I live in southern England.
    1
  13091.  @a.a.7416  I am English born and bred, you deluded buffoon.
    1
  13092.  @a.a.7416  You are the very definition.
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  13093.  @a.a.7416  Do you sometimes find yourself wandering the streets in soiled clothing, shouting at the sky?
    1
  13094.  @a.a.7416  I am so relieved. I was becoming quite worried about you. I should be careful though, your paranoid tendencies might well express themselves one day in behaviour of this sort.
    1
  13095.  @a.a.7416  I am happy to provide you with amusement in what must be a somewhat distressing life. Delusional paranoia combined with narcissism is a rough hand to have been dealt. Still, you are coping well and I trust the lapses into despair and suicidal depression are comparatively rare.
    1
  13096.  @a.a.7416  Did you hate your father, by any chance?
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  13097.  @majorrgeek  What laws? The laws that say America gets its way in everything? Those laws?
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  13098.  @majorrgeek  The American obsession with jurisprudence never fails to amaze me. There is no such thing as "international law" except on paper. Laws are arrived at by the consensus of a community, and the world is not a community. In this case, historical rights and the right of conquest will decide the outcome.
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  13099.  @a.a.7416  I always like to have the last word.
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  13100.  @majorrgeek  These legalities were instituted only after World War II and serve solely to protect the interests of the American empire. There is no rule book. There are no sovereign countries. These are fallacies. You cannot overturn ten thousand years of history with bits of paper. There is no global community. There are different countries, and different administrations and different power-groups existing in an ever-changing mesh of pressures and complex considerations. All Putin wants is recognition of his country's complex relationship with Ukraine. The fine words you parrot so blithely have nothing to do with this, I'm afraid.
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  13101.  @majorrgeek  The Russian army has destroyed at least 100,000 enemy soldiers and it has been clear throughout that it has attempted to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Rules are only any use when they apply to situations. It was ever thus. Putin is doing no more than has been done a million times before - from Alexander the Great and up to and including NATO in Kosovo and America in Iraq. Yes, he wants a buffer zone - but not Ukraine, just Donbass. This is exactly the same strategy he applied in Chechnya and Georgia. The idea that he wants to restore the Russian empire is utterly absurd. You are the victim of crude propaganda. He has made numerous attempts at finding a peaceful solution to the anomalies thrown up by the failure of the Budapest Accords, but all have failed or, like Minsk II, been manipulated by the West to reinforce its military position. Yes, Russia is extremely corrupt by Western standards, but so is Ukraine. It once vied with Russia for top booking on the perceptions index, along with Columbia. It has now learned some of the more subtle methods of political and financial chicanery employed in Western countries but remains in essence a kleptomaniac oligarchy, with the Blessed Saint Zelensky among those with his nose deepest in the trough.
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  13102.  @majorrgeek  Well, I wouldn't worry too much then. Putin is getting on in years and I daresay his younger replacement will see the light. Putin is, of course, an Eastern potentate not a Western liberal and the behaviour you categorise in such detail is only to be expected of him. Most Russians over the age of forty or so would expect nothing less. In the meantime though there's a war going on and people are dying. To suggest that this is simply because Putin and the oligarchs are protecting their interests from the contamination of Western democracy really is a bit of a stretch though. Ukraine is an oligarchy too, don't forget and Zelensky is an oligarch's pawn - although he does seem to have got ideas above his station at this point. You're right though in that money is at the centre of this dreadful business . The vast mineral wealth of Donbass is what is being fought over, and it's a bone Putin doesn't want to give up to the other big dog - namely America. America, of course, conceals its rapacity behind the smokescreen of "freedom and democracy", but wars are just business opportunities to those who pull the string behind the scenes. They are to blame because of their insidious infiltration of Ukraine's oligarchy. Their man Poroshenko, don''t forget, banned the export of coal from Donbass and then bought it up himself on the sly before selling it in Kiev, pretending it came from Mexico. This is gold star behaviour in the eyes of any self-respecting capitalist entrepreneur. Kolomoisky, the oligarch who selected Zelensky as his front man, seems to be on the way out now. He once owned a good chunk of the US steel industry and half of downtown Cleveland and of course was a major contributor to the finances of a senior American crook, name of Joe Biden. Putin is now what he always has been - a bent cop, but he has kept control of a very volatile situation, and in the meantime has ensured a level of prosperity for ordinary Russians which they have never enjoyed before. Whether things improve even further after his departure remains to be seen, but the more immediate problem is bringing an end to this war, which can only be achieved by conceding to Putin's entirely reasonable and pragmatic solutions to the problems which doubtless exist, and which are not at all of his making.
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  13103.  @majorrgeek  I think there's every chance it will pan out differently. As I explained, the war and the sanctions will not lead to Russia being destroyed. They will merely accelerate a process of world de-Westernisation in which various countries form economic alliances which are not dollar-dependent, and this will result in the demise of America and Europe - not Russia. Support for Ukraine is dwindling. People are starting to ask what they are getting for their money. All in all, this deliberately provoked proxy war is not performing as expected. The predicted returns in terms of access to Donbass seem distant. Too much money has been spent already and it is becoming clear that Russia is not going to go down without a fight - and indeed is probably not going down at all. We can expect a compromise. Russia will get what it wants, but because that isn't Ukraine and world domination, it will be hailed as a great victory for freedom and democracy. Your predictions are as good as mine however - but even so continuing to take Russia on will stretch Western economies to breaking point and, more importantly, the war will drag on for years and result in more and more deaths. It really is time to pack it in.
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  13104.  @majorrgeek  You are being both idealistic and optimistic, and not a little naive. Nothing is ever set in stone and I would be more inclined to consider Germany's reluctance to supply tanks and to examine the actual nature of the armaments being offered. It is a mishmash of old junk in many respects and to expect a thoroughly depleted army to incorporate it into a coherent battle plan while under fire is asking a great deal. I repeat: the sanctions and the asset seizures are being adequately dealt with by Russia. Putin is far from being a fool and Lavrov is a near genius, and all measures taken were anticipated literally years ago, and counter-measures installed. The creation of a NATO army in Ukraine was provocation enough. You must try to understand the unique relationship Russia has with Ukraine. Poland and Latvia etc etc joining NATO is a source of irritation, but to have "Little Russia" signing up with the enemy is a gross insult which cannot be tolerated. And this is of course greatly exacerbated by the fact that its new army was clearly created with the express purpose of defeating Russia in war. Not only can Russia win this war, it probably will whatever some arbitrary Chinaman says. Putin is far from crazy. He is entirely sane and coldly calculating in all his decisions. In order for Ukraine to win, Europe will have to cripple itself, and that isn't going to happen. Germany, France, Hungary and Croatia are already jumping ship. Putin has considerable support at home. While it is true that there are many privileged younger people who look to the wonders of Western civilisation with envy, older people who remember the horrors of communism and the chaos of its collapse look upon Putin as their saviour. They are enjoying unparalleled prosperity and comfort. Russia on its own cannot out bid and outperform America on the world stage, but allied with the other BRICS countries and the twenty or so other developing economies who wish to join this coalition it will, I believe, emerge from this conflict stronger than before while America degenerates. All empires die. Russia has found this out for itself and the American empire too will follow this inescapable historical imperative, perhaps even sooner than we might imagine possible.
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  13105.  @majorrgeek  You are wrong on so many levels, starting with the rouble which is now stronger against the dollar than it was before the war started. It isn't crashing at all. Where DO you get your information from? Millions of barrels of oil and millions of cubic yards of gas are leaving Russia every day. China and India are buying them at discount, but making up for the price by supplying Russia with technology and materials under the counter - much of it originating in Europe and America anyway. It's called the black market and it supports the Russian economy more than the official figures which academic economists shake their heads over. A rather amusing side note is than India is processing the Russian crude and selling it on. American and European trucks are running on diesel originating in Russia. Why do all you political and historical illiterates keep banging on about Hitler? All Hitler and Putin have in common is that they are strong leaders, but Putin relies on power of intellect, not charisma. If you're looking for a charismatic modern leader who has led his country into a disastrous war, you need look no further than Zelensky. Hitler of course finished up committing suicide in his bunker as Russian bombs fell around his head. I wonder what Zelensky's fate will be? On then to mutton-headed liberals favourite buzzword -fascism. Turn your attention from Russia which lost ten million men fighting it, and look instead to Ukraine where at about the same time the police and the populace joyfully assisted the Nazis in executing the country's Jews, cheering in the streets as Ukrainian police and soldiers herded tens of thousands of their neighbours into the gorge at Babi Yar and the machine-guns of Mariupol. Putin may be a modern day Tsar, but he is nothing so common as a fascist. Since you want to play predictions, I will join the game. Russia will re-invade very soon and cut the beleaguered Ukrainian army's supply lines. Even if the West fulfils its promises and sends in its bits and pieces they will be of little use, since the Ukrainians won't be able to move them anywhere. The war will either drag on and on or someone in Ukraine will have the sense to get rid of Zelensky and start talking to Putin like a grown-up. When it finally is over both America and Europe will be economically crippled, or at least in severe recession, while Russia, partnering with China, India, the Middle East, the Pacific rim, South Africa, Brazil and a host of other nations sick of American bullying - will emerge stronger than ever before and ready to play a part in a multipolar world, free hopefully forever from the crushing restraints of monopolar, globalist Western hegemony.
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  13106.  @majorrgeek  In fact over the summer the rouble was the BEST performing currency in the world and even today you get less roubles for your dollar than a year ago when the exchange rate was 74.789. Not my definition of "plummeting." The sanctions are causing minor inconvenience, that's all, and even these are being circumvented. Russia is self-reliant in food and energy and issues such as spare parts for cars and agricultural machinery are overcome by smuggling or, increasingly by ersatz manufacture. Apart from that all you have to go on is gloomy prediction. GDP is only one feature of a nations economic strength but, like stock movements, is more of an indication of investment performance than reflecting the actual health of a nation. As for predictions, Russia predicts that its rate of inflation will drop to below that of most European countries and even America within the next six months. We will, as ever, just have to see. Rather than address your rant point by point I will simply make a general observation. Western commentators and "experts" have this narcissistic habit of predicting what Russia is going to do, and when it doesn't do it.to accuse it of failure. You have no idea of what Russia is up to, or what its strategies are. All one can say with any certainty is that Russia has long been aware of America's plans to destroy it, and has taken steps to prevent this. I am not myself Russian, as you seem to think, but I believe Russia has every right to defend itself against globalist imperialism and I sincerely hope it succeeds in its efforts.
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  13107.  @majorrgeek  You are merely repeating yourself at great length. I will repeat myself, but more succinctly. The rouble is not crashing, nor will it. Its value is now higher than it was before the invasion. The supply of chips and other technological components is being largely maintained through black market smuggling. The US and Europe are suffering the comebacks of the sanctions as much as Russia is suffering directly from them. Europe is having to pay three times as much for imported American LPG as it was for Russian gas. America is having to print money by the billion to re-inflate its sagging economy, and is degenerating morally within. It's young people, starved of education and brainwashed into false ideologies, are clearly incompetent to govern when their turn arrives. Look at the decay of cities in California and other Democrat run semi anarchist cities elsewhere. Look at the sprawling urban decay of Detroit. Look at anarchist riots, setting whole neighbourhoods ablaze. Look at these things and you see the future of America - a classic example of an empire poised for collapse and unaware or unwilling to recognise its inevitable fate. Its acolyte states will feel the effects of this coming apocalypse too, and they will rebel. NATO will collapse as it is realised that this "purely defensive coalition" is merely a vehicle for American aggrandisement. They will see how India, China and other nations in the East continue to prosper while America falters. They will see too how Russia has stood up to America's attempts to destroy it and emerged bruised but triumphant. They will realise that the tide of history has turned and that the 21st century is the century in which the monolithic ambitions of a deceitful nation have resulted in its destruction.
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  13108. I would willingly pay 43p a day to have the BBC obliterated from the face of the earth.
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  13109. Shan't, so there!
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  13110.  @paulmes7667  Possibly - although Putin has said that if the new , smaller Ukraine wants to look to the West he will, however regretfully, not try to prevent it. Can't join NATO though!
    1
  13111.  @Marc98338  Crimea and Donbass are sitting on literally trillions of dollars in mineral wealth, that's why.
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  13112.  Dubjax 31  No. He's trying to prevent it.
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  13113. Do you mean when he asked his followers to calm down and go home? That bit?
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  13114. The number of covid 19 viruses is currently estimated to exceed twice the number of stars in the observable universe. This means it is a statistical certainty that all viable variants must already exist. The only thing enabling new variants to come to the fore are alterations to their environment. Such as reducing the number of available subjects to infect. Through lockdowns.
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  13115. How much does the fact this guy was black affect the issue? Does anyone really know? As with George Floyd anyone stoned out of their mind and resisting arrest is lining up for trouble - which can be fatal if the cops handle the situation badly.
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  13116. That's the majority of brainwashed normies, is it?
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  13117. Are you living in the same world as I am? And why has someone touched up the thumbnail picture of Trump so he looks like Jimmy Carter?
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  13118.  Spitfire Hunter  Bricks and glass houses is exactly it. The elevation of Zelensky to sainthood when in fact he is just another crook is what concerns me. Our hearts and minds are being used as pawns in a dangerous game. If there was ever a time to stand back from sentiment and look at things pragmatically, this is it. Apart from the sheer hypocrisy involved we have to realise that the American deep-state warmongers are using Zelensky to taunt Russia into error, and our outrage at Russia's behaviour is also being weaponised in the same cause. We should not be concerned which particular coterie of oligarchs rules Ukraine. We should be concerned with our own national security - which means neutrality. If Russian money in Tory pockets is going to even the balance, then so much the better. But I don't think it will.
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  13119.  @DavidMoxham957  I do assure you that my opinions spring forth unbidden from my very own head and are only submitted for consideration after fairly intense personal scrutiny. I am increasingly puzzled by this term "sovereign state." What does it even MEAN? Ukraine is basically a made-up country which was created somewhat haphazardly after the Soviet collapse. Its "sovereignty" is a matter of negotiation and now, tragically, a matter of settlement through extreme violence. Next time I have a chat with Vladimir Vladimirovich I will, however, acquaint him with you reservations concerning the policies he is following. He will doubtless be amused and might even suggest that threatening to allow your country to become a potential enemy nuclear missile base does indeed have consequences.
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  13120.  @DavidMoxham957  You have descended into foolishness. As I said earlier the concept of sovereignty is a tricky one, as are all abstract nouns. It has become little more than a buzzword, really. I will say though that our thousand year history perhaps gives the English more right to claim it than does Ukraine's paltry thirty. I am no Putinist. I merely wish for peace and the best and quickest way to achieve it is for Ukraine to grant Putin his relatively modest demands. This is yet another shameful proxy war. Ukraine has been egged on by schoolyard bully America to take on the other schoolyard bully and now the rest of us are expected to gather round egging the poor little bastard on. Not me, mate. You mention pre-emptive nuclear strikes. You do realise don't you that the chief reason for Putin's actions is the entirely justifiable reluctance he feels for America, via NATO, to have a nuclear missile base with a seven-minute striking distance from Moscow?
    1
  13121.  @rogerphelps9939  Any what?
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  13122.  @son_of_stan  It is no effort, but a pleasure and I really don't have anything better to do. What two accounts? I have a clone, who is not me, which I look upon as a great compliment. Perhaps that's what you mean?
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  13123. The next big question is which woke muttonhead the poor, simple-minded Kiwis will choose to lead them up the garden path.
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  13124.  @polygonalmasonary  It is not dictatorship. It is simply a necessary protection afforded to a head of government. Britain, as a constitutional monarchy, avoids these difficulties by separating the Head of State from the chief executive. America does not have this luxury. The fact that Trump's political opponents have attempted to subvert the judicial system in order to remove him as a potential threat brings this weakness into focus. I don't think for a single moment that Trump will use this decision to do whatever he damned well likes- but even if he does and the results are found to be detrimental it scarcely matters since the Constitution (and his age) prevent him from serving a further term.
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  13125.  @polygonalmasonary  There is an election every four years. don't forget. Any dictator can be removed and therefore doesn't have much chance to be dictatorial. And impeachment still exists.
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  13126.  @Steven-vo4ee  Only time will tell.
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  13127. Quite a lot of brainwashed idiots too.
    1
  13128. And idiots with small brains.
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  13129. And idiots.
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  13130.    What speculation exactly?
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  13131.  @johnd.ingleson799  Which opinion do you disagree with exactly?
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  13132.  @johnd.ingleson799  What question?
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  13133. I've just come across this. Can anyone comment on its veracity? https://c19study.com/
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  13134. Leftwing Orange Man Bad loonies are giving Don the election on a plate. Bloody excellent!
    1
  13135. There have been numerous variants of Covid 19. The fact that these recent examples have been highlighted is simply to encourage people to take the vaccines.
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  13136.  @damianeadie510 I don't think the dam burstt because of one missile hit but as a consequence of it being weakened by earlier documented hits. Its structural integrity was probably compromised and the pressure from it being overfilled caused it to collapse. The Russians COULD have blown it up of course but it's difficult to see why. And IF there had been an explosion it would surely have been recorded by satellite anyway and Ukraine wouldn't have needed to release the video of the old Himars hit and pretend that was it.
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  13137. They are generally found foster-homes. Most are of Russian heritage anyway - as were at least eight million people before the war. Around three million have now fled to Russia to escape the Ukrainian military.
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  13138.  @sylviahutchison5203  The children evacuated to Russia are Russian orphans, or who have been separated from their families by the war. The idea that they have been dragged screaming from their mothers' arms is an absurdity. It is simply propaganda. While Ukrainians certainly don't want anything to do with the Russian regime, many of the eight million Russians living there do. In fact three million of them have fled to Russia for safety, rather than heading in the other direction -which is pretty indicative of their preference I think.
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  13139. This has nothing to do with personal spite. This will only bring peace closer. The sooner Ukraine quits the better. The longer it goes on with this madness, the more territory Putin will demand in th final settlement.
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  13140.  @HuskyOwner-bl1jf  Not so crazy, as it happens.
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  13141. Hitler was in a bunker with Russian bombs raining around his head. I can think of another leader who is closer to being in that position.
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  13142. You really shouldn't talk about Huw Edwards like that.
    1
  13143. What about the Treaty of Utrecht?
    1
  13144.  @sailor67duilio27  My point was that all treaties fall by the wayside sooner or later. They are only bits of paper, after all and they become irrelevant when circumstances change - as in this instance.
    1
  13145.  @grahamcampbell8297  You prove my point. Wars are more often than not caused by treaties which have become overtaken by circumstance. Without the Treaty of Vienna, and subsequent treaties there would have been no World War I. Without the Treaty of Versailles there would have been no World War II. And without the Budapest Accords there would be no war in Ukraine.
    1
  13146.  @spliter88  How has this misunderstanding arisen? The little press coverage that there has been interprets it as I have interpreted it, namely that lockdown strategies, while temporarily averting hospitalisations and deaths, result in more of them once lockdowns are lifted. And this apart of course from the enormous collateral damage caused, which is clearly undeniable.
    1
  13147.  @martinmcdonald1828  The parts of Ukraine involved are just as much Russian as Ukrainian - if not more so.
    1
  13148.  @michaeldunham3385  Those documents were not signed by Putin, of course, and administrations have the right to dispute the decisions of their predecessors. And the territories were not Ukrainian before Stalin moved Russians in. They had very few Ukrainians living there, the inhabitants were either Russians or Tatars and even - oddly enough - quite a few Welsh people brought in by Russia in the 18th and 19th century to run the coals mines. Donbass and Crimea were ruled either by Russia or the Ottomans and later the Turks. Nothing to do with Ukraine.
    1
  13149.  @paulharper6464  The Soviet Union ended itself - and you seem to have forgotten Serbia - to say nothing of the present horrors in Ukraine, which are direct result of Western interference in the affairs of other nations.
    1
  13150. Personally I was more shocked by the sight of tens of thousands of muddle-headed left wing loonies and slavering Islamic fundamentalists marching through the streets of the capital with the apparent approval of the police and the media.
    1
  13151. The Palestinians took the land from Jews in the first place. The Jews just took it back.
    1
  13152.  @haroldgodwinson7241  Ever tried reading his books? OK , I may have praised him too highly, but as I am not all that intelligent myself it's hard to come to an accurate assessment.
    1
  13153. ​ @docostler  I fail to see your point. The current increase in the death rate has nothing directly to do with covid, as far as one can judge.
    1
  13154. Since all dem black folks is desertin' de Dems - they have to be replaced from somewhere.
    1
  13155. I insist that my children wear tinfoil hats to protect them from harmful cosmic rays. It's only reasonable.
    1
  13156.  @runnergo1398  That's what they all say. Follow the science!
    1
  13157. That scepticism is coming from the ground up. It is ordinary blue collar Americans who ae seeing through the hype.
    1
  13158. It really is a very good idea to give the Head of State immunity, as is the case with the King or Queen of Britain. The Head of State should be the ultimate prosecutor of all offences. This would help prevent to abuse of the judicial system for political purposes, as we have seen to sadly demonstrated in the US in recent months.
    1
  13159.  @williamappleby1901  How very cultish.
    1
  13160. He had his chance three years ago and blew it. He shouldn't have listened to greedy Western warmongers.
    1
  13161. He made the mistake of trusting America and the UK. He was offered a very reasonable peace deal at the very start of the war but was "persuaded" to turn it down.
    1
  13162.  @davidcooke8059  That puppet had to flee because he was caught with his hand in the till!
    1
  13163.  @Cygnus888  There may be no excuse, but there are plenty of reasons. The Russians were forced into taking action to prevent a re-armed and re-trained Ukrainian army from attempting to retake the breakaway states in Donbass, which remained loyal to Russia. War was well-nigh inevitable. By acting first Russia ensured the actions took place initially on Ukrainian soil, instead of on territory occupied by pro-Russian separatists.
    1
  13164.  @Cygnus888  Plenty of reasons, though.
    1
  13165.  @Cygnus888  But there are reasons.
    1
  13166.  @emmabrooker166  Hardly baseless!
    1
  13167.  @emmabrooker166  Baseless?
    1
  13168.  @MrBudgiejoe  Not if daftness amuses you. It does me.
    1
  13169. The unseemly political ambitions of the EU are the main reason why many people wanted Britain to leave. And it was those same unseemly political ambitions which triggered this dreadful war.
    1
  13170.  @willtricks9432  All very noble. But when it involves treading on the toes of Russia, it becomes political. As you clearly illustrate, Russia responds very fiercely to provocation. And threatening Russia's territorial and economic interests was clearly provocative, as well as being politically inept.
    1
  13171.  @rocketscience4516  Putin has no imperialistic or expansionist ambitions. All he wants and has ever wanted in for his borders to be secure and Russia's economic interests to be protected. It was NATO and the EU's threats to Russia's stability which caused this war, and nothing else. This war is a watershed. There is every likelihood that it will result in the end of Western dominance of world affairs. If anyone has miscalculated it is America and its lackeys in Europe.
    1
  13172.  @rocketscience4516  Why has he waited more than twenty years to stage this rebirth of a shattered dream? Putin was there when the USSR crashed and he knows why it crashed. He knows that the Russian Empire cannot be recreated any more than the British Empire can. I suggest you take time to read Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations which he published in the summer of 2021. It makes it clear how he views the relationship between Russia and its long-term province. It also makes it quite clear that while, however regretfully, he accepts the right of Western Ukraine to turn its face to the West he will not tolerate NATO moving in and nor will he allow Crimea and Donbass to be included in the package. His reasons are cogent and his response is made clear. The peace proposals he outlined in December of that year further emphasise the intractability of his position. They should have been heeded.
    1
  13173.  @angelikaskoroszyn8495  That is very interesting. Waiting though would have been a bit of a gamble. It was pretty clear that many of Ukraine's oligarchs were looking Westwards and forming financial alliances with American and European politicians and other agents. The idea that it was American operatives who added fuel to the fire by firing in the crowds in the Maidan riots is also viable, I think. The separatist movement in Donbass was already forming and as for Crimea it has always been Russian and only stuck on to Ukraine by administrative accident. Putin simply took advantage of the chaotic situation to walk in and take it back. Nonetheless, without knowing fully how advanced Kolomoisky and his fellow-travellers were down the road to transferring Ukrainian resources from Russia to America, it is impossible to say what would have happened in a subsequent election. Zelensky may well have already been being groomed for the part for one thing.
    1
  13174.  @rocketscience4516  None of this crude and childlike analysis indicates any desire or ambition by Putin to recreate the Russian empire though, does it? This is just regurgitated Western propaganda designed to mask America's imperialistic ambitions by pretending that Putin has them. As for NATO and the EU becoming politically strengthened, the reverse is surely true. The cracks are starting to appear in both these organisations. Good.
    1
  13175.  @willtricks9432  All Russia wants are the Russian bits of Ukraine - which has been a Russian province for hundreds of years and never a real country at all. As for military strategies - it has to be admitted that Russia has always had its own way of doing things in this area! Right now though it has half a million troops lined up to attack and is wheeling in even bigger missiles ready to pound Ukraine to dust before they move in. Which is a terrible tragedy, as all this could have been avoided with a little bit of calm and common sense.
    1
  13176.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  You are living in a world of paranoid illusion. Get help.
    1
  13177.  @jean-pascalesparceil9008  You are as crazy as a box of frogs. I am English born and bred and if my views appear to mirror some aspects of Russia's assessment of the current grievous situation, it is simply that I can see Russia's point view. Even more important is the fact that of this point of view had been properly considered this stupid war need never have started. Even more tragic is that at the end of the day Russia might well get what it wanted in the first place - and tens of thousands of people will have died to no purpose.
    1
  13178.  @rocketscience4516  You've gone into inane babbling mode again, Rocket. Doesn't take long.
    1
  13179.  @rocketscience4516  Whatever similarities my views have with "Kremlin propaganda" are purely coincidental. I do think the West ought to back off though. I sense we are being bullied and conned into creating a monopolar, globalist world run by vastly wealthy Western elites, and this does not go down well with me. I was right about the pandemic being manipulated for financial gain and the dire consequences of the hysterical over-reaction to it. This is not say I am right about Brexit, US elections or this war, but I think I probably am.
    1
  13180.  @rocketscience4516  This new bot has more in common with you. It seems to have been programmed with the same bollocks as you have!
    1
  13181.  @rocketscience4516  Whatever that deeper reason may be, if any, I have no idea. Does the Kremlin have any particular views on facemasks, lockdowns, or MRNA? What is its stance on AGW? Immigration to the UK? Once again I have no idea. My heresies are, I assure you, entirely self-generated and only voiced when confirmation is indicated by reason and research. Your opinions seem to be derived entirely from the brainwashed, woke school of thought. You just support each new thing, as long as it makes you feel all warm and fluffy inside. Question more.
    1
  13182. ​ @rocketscience4516  I think you miss the point that these failings exist without any help from Russia. It is perfectly possible that Russia may wish to capitalise on them, but that does not mean they are not real. American elections are rigged in order to ensure that the country continues to be run by the deep state. Nothing to do with Russia. The pandemic measures were introduced in order to maximise the obscene profits of the pharmaceutical industry. Nothing to do with Russia. Russia doesn't have to do much to destabilise the West. We are making a good job of it on our own.
    1
  13183.  @rocketscience4516  Giving up again, huh?
    1
  13184.  @rocketscience4516  Your didactic impulses are, alas, misguided. Your unfortunate nephew has little hope of understanding particle physics in much the same way as his uncle seems incapable of grasping harsh political realities.
    1
  13185. We could also talk about the very real potential of the collapse of America's pre-eminence in world affairs if Putin wins.
    1
  13186. Where?
    1
  13187.  @matthewchapman2248  I reckon it's about 2,000 miles shorter actually.
    1
  13188. The Ukrainians flogged them to the Arabs.
    1
  13189.  @jiversteve  Don't worry too much. I daresay you think he didn't go far enough. I know he went far too far in far too many directions.
    1
  13190. How can herd immunity be "discredited" when it is the way organisms have dealt with epidemics since the dawn of time?
    1
  13191.  @erwinmulder1338  True enough, but different infections mean different results. Covid could have been halted by a process of isolating the over 60's while encouraging healthy under 60's to mix and build up group immunity. After all, covid generally only kills those beyond reproductive age and can therefore have no effect on long-term population.
    1
  13192.  @megannehover  Herd immunity is, of course, helped along greatly by modern medicine but the principle remains the same - cutting down pathways to infection by reducing the number of potential carriers so that the number of victims is manageable. I don't think anyone is suggesting we abandon ourselves to natural herd immunity- but achieving it with the help of artificial means is what we are after; so how is that in any way discreditable?
    1
  13193.  @Yeknodathon  I don't think my views have changed to any great degree. As sad and unpleasant as these infections, hospitalisations and deaths may be they are far outweighed by the tragic effects resulting from attempts to reduce them. World poverty resulting from economic stagnation created via lockdowns etc is already resulting in death and deprivation on an almost unimaginable scale. TB, just as one example, was on the decrease. The WHO estimates that at least half a million preventable deaths have occurred from it as a result of resources being channelled into dealing with the pandemic. The people were all young. The people covid kills are nearly all very old, and have had their turn. Had those "discredited and unscientific" strategies been implemented at the start of the pandemic there is every chance that many of these dire consequences could have been avoided.
    1
  13194.  @Yeknodathon  Which should and could have been achieved quite rapidly - and then the measures should be abandoned, as the WHO has consistently asserted. I don't decide on human life - nature does, but it strikes me that deciding to sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of millions worldwide in order to provide the very old in privileged countries with a few more months or years of existence is a pretty disgusting way to behave.
    1
  13195.  @Yeknodathon  Sweden has come close of course, as have several African and other third world countries where lockdowns etc are impossible to maintain. Some US states have been relatively sensible too. And have these locations been visited by dreadful consequences? Of course not. They are doing no better or worse than anywhere else- although perhaps better in many cases - and studies are beginning to show that death rates from causes other than covid have spiralled in places where restrictions have been strictly enforced. We can only hope that we will be able to learn from the gross errors of politicians and their jobsworth scientific advisors when it comes to dealing with the next pandemic when it occurs.
    1
  13196.  @Yeknodathon  Nature needs as much help as we can give it, since it is probably entirely indifferent to our general well-being. All I am suggesting is that many of our attempts to help things along have actually made matters a great deal worse in this instance.
    1
  13197. What magical boundary suddenly makes Russian troops brutal killers while Ukrainian troops are saintly philanthropists? There are at least as many stories of Ukrainian atrocities as there of Russian ones.
    1
  13198. Thomas Boomer What you learn depends where you get your information from. Question everything. When you are sure you have the answer you are probably wrong.
    1
  13199.  @adamlouis3725  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM
    1
  13200. What invasion demands?
    1
  13201.  @emm_arr  The word "invasion" was never used, and not was it even implied. You sad TDS sufferers hear what you want to hear, that's all.
    1
  13202.  @robertlocock5636  The word "invasion" was not used. Only Democrat war pigs think the only way to get what you want is by sending in the troops.
    1
  13203.  @robertlocock5636  What about it? Trump never used the word "invasion". It's all in your minds.
    1
  13204.  @emm_arr  The word "invasion" was not used, nor even implied.
    1
  13205.  @robertlocock5636  Certainly not a military invasion - just, I suppose, persuading elements within these countries to support the idea of the closest possible alliance with the US, and for this idea to become national policy. This is just typical Trump. He's chucking stones to see which way people will jump.
    1
  13206.  @robertlocock5636  I think he was just testing the water. Persuading elements within these countries to consider the benefits of a closer alliance with the US. He exaggerated for effect, because that is what he does.
    1
  13207.  @robertlocock5636  I dunno what he's playing at. But I'm pretty sure he's not planning to send troops in!
    1
  13208. Very few honour bits of paper in the long run. look at Minsk.
    1
  13209.  @emptyhand777  The makers of this video I guess. Or you. (only one o in to by the way. Sorry to be so picky.)
    1
  13210.  @emptyhand777  The makers of this video I suppose. Or anyone even half way fooled by it.
    1
  13211.  @emptyhand777  That's being too picky. But you did leave off the question mark.
    1
  13212. This is so silly. It just reflects the utter brainwashed idiocy of so many people who have been subjected to Western propaganda.
    1
  13213. Rejoice! Every day thousands upon thousands of British people are becoming "cases" and so gaining immunity and so blocking viral pathways. Herd immunity is just around the corner. Clubbing for young people is practically a social duty!
    1
  13214.  @paulagilbert1982  Me too!
    1
  13215. Mz Ambition If you are American and have a vote, please don't use it.
    1
  13216.  @MM-kz9pd  A fascinating historical analysis and not without a grain or two of truth. We must not forget however that Stalin and Hitler were once allies and that Churchill's role in defying Nazism was a key factor in restricting its spread before the USSR and the US got round to assisting Britain in defeating Germany. I do hope you are right about the end of globalisation.
    1
  13217.  @michaelm2804  The defeat of fascism was incidental. They were fighting a foreign invader. Churchill, simply by defying and defeating appeasement, prevented fascism from spreading into Britain, which it quite easily might have done. The enormous sacrifices made by the Soviet army cannot be discounted by any means, but the blanket bombing carried out by Britain and the US also played an enormous part, as I'm sure you must agree.
    1
  13218.  @MM-kz9pd  Making the world safe for democracy? Unlike the USSR of course which killed and jailed many of its returning soldiers for fear they may have been contaminated by interacting with Westerners.
    1
  13219. Heard of a place called Odessa? In any case Russia will allow Ukrainian grain exports from other ports it controls if duty is paid.
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  13220. It's these sort of demented fantasies which have led us into this position.
    1
  13221.  @simpmaster7995  I'm not. But you are probably on fentanyl.
    1
  13222.  @thisguyshorty3554  The one in Ukraine?
    1
  13223.  @MTx485  I don't even know what that means.
    1
  13224.  @randallmadison9910  But it is defeating Ukraine, despite the West providing billions of dollarsworth of munitions.
    1
  13225.  @TheBarser  If it has nothing to do with the USA, why is the USA spending billions and billions of dollars on arming Ukraine?
    1
  13226.  @CarreraTrack  Yup.
    1
  13227.  @CarreraTrack  Yup
    1
  13228. This is not Johnson's reshuffle. He is being shuffled, and is now under the control of a right-wing cabal who will keep him as PM until the inevitable disaster of the May local elections makes his resignation inevitable.
    1
  13229.  @jiversteve  I am very pleased. Between now and May we can hope to see a concerted attack on the green madness (zero carbon) and a much tougher line with the EU. Any negative consequences can be laid at Boris' door. He is now like the biblical scapegoat. He will carry all the Tory party's sins with him into the wilderness.
    1
  13230. And look how that worked out! The Terror and the restoration of the monarchy pretty damned quick!
    1
  13231. It is.
    1
  13232.  Rob Knob  At your house?
    1
  13233.  @martinepstein3332  Job experience?
    1
  13234.  @forza223bowe5  I guess it sort of made sense when so little was known about the virus. Now though it ought to be safe for most of us to go out as normal. The death rate is low and only a few categories of people need worry.. But there will be deaths, there will be exceptions and the politicians are scared shitless of getting the blame
    1
  13235.  @robotrocket1  Rich people get rich by investing their money, not by saving and hoarding.
    1
  13236.  @robotrocket1  The pie isn't finite - or at least we have nowhere reached its limits. Rich people who increase their wealth through investment increase the wealth of others by providing them with employment and by increasing the amount of goods and services others can enjoy. Capitalism is a very good thing, and disparities in wealth are an essential part of it.
    1
  13237.  @robotrocket1  That will only be because socialism has outlawed capital investment. Or possibly as a result of mass immigration causing the total breakdown of infrastructure. Or Russian missile and drone attacks on my local waterworks as a result of supporting Ukraine.
    1
  13238.  @robotrocket1  How is that possible? If that were the case then we would have run out of money decades ago. And we haven't.
    1
  13239.  @robotrocket1  What do they do with the extra slices then? They could declare them to be works of art I suppose, or buy houses and land. Any capitalist worth his salt will try to make sure that whatever he spends money on will be worth more when he gets rid of it than what it cost him in the first place. They might enjoy a higher level of consumption but there is a limit to how much caviare you can eat, or how many cruises you can take. (Talking of slices, I just watched a video in which a bloke called Mr Beast and his mates ate around half a million dollarsworth of food in a couple of days, including a $70,000 pizza. And he's still going to come out in profit.)
    1
  13240.  @robotrocket1  So they're just going to sell stuff to each other then? Not much of a market is it? We will still be needed as consumers, you see.
    1
  13241.  @robotrocket1  The rise in the cost of living is not a result of capitalism, it's the result of poor political management.
    1
  13242. This will rebound on Ukraine -whether they did it or not. Russian supply lines will be back to normal, probably within days, and Putin now has an excuse to escalate the "special military operation" into full-scale war.
    1
  13243. Perhaps they can't find anything to charge him with. And it's not for want of trying.
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  13244. It can do him nothing but good. Brainwashed Orange Man Bad lunatics will remained the same as will MAGA voters. The undecided will surely recognise this as the sordid political trick it undoubtedly is.
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  13245. The way things are going the West could be reaching out for help to India before very long.
    1
  13246.  @basbouwman5139  I was thinking more of its burgeoning economy and how in August it will be meeting with the other members of the BRICS group of nations to create a joint currency to replace the catastrophically weak dollar.
    1
  13247.  @basbouwman5139  Russia is the largest energy producer in the world, and the rouble is now stronger against the dollar than it was before the invasion. Other countries are lining up to join BRICS, including Middle Easter oil producers. If they are accepted the group will constitute more than half of the world's entire population. And America can't even pay its debts.
    1
  13248.  @bonnie7898  It already is.
    1
  13249.  @johnbravo7542  The big picture is American warmongers constantly pressuring Russia for economic reasons , while allowing citizens of another nations to die on their behalf.
    1
  13250.  @Blanka1100  Putin just knows that NATO is simply America's way of colonising Europe and that America's economy depends to a great extent of Russia being its constant enemy. He can live with that so long as things don't get too serious, as they have done in Ukraine. And it has nothing at all to do with Britain. If we had any sense we would get out of NATO and make a separate peace with Russia.
    1
  13251.  @Blanka1100  Putin has every reason to be suspicious of NATO - but will not go to war with NATO countries without extreme provocation. NATO spending billions on creating a Ukrainian army and attempting to take over mineral production in Donbass has caused this war - a war which does not concern the British people in any way whatsoever. We are being used as dupes, as are the Ukrainians. The difference is we aren't dying because of it - yet.
    1
  13252.  @Blanka1100  Well he is - or rather NATO is at war with him. America needs NATO to be at war with whoever it can be at war with, because America needs to be constantly at war in order for its economy to survive.
    1
  13253.  @Blanka1100  Putin doesn't want Ukraine - only those largely Russianised parts of it with a multi-trillion $$ minerals and steelmaking industry, financed by and operated by Russia and by Russians for 200 years or so. NATO countries had just spent billions of dollars on equipping a new Ukrainian army with a view to obtaining this wealth for the countries they represent.. Putin invaded in order to destroy this army, which he has now largely done.
    1
  13254.  @Blanka1100  Putin doesn't want Ukraine, only those bits he thinks - with good reason - are Russian and also contain several trillion dollarsworth of oil, gas, coal and rare earth minerals. He has no quarrel with NATO, other than the fact that NATO is constantly sticking its nose into Russia's affairs.
    1
  13255.  @Blanka1100  Putin doesn't want Ukraine. He just doesn't want America to have it.
    1
  13256.  @TCK-9  Not strictly speaking - as much as it feels like it.
    1
  13257.  @Blanka1100  Putin doesn't want Ukraine - he just wants the highly Russianised bits. He has made it clear numerous times that the Kiev administration can do whatever it likes - but it can't take the mineral extraction and steelmaking industries in eastern Ukraine and Crimea which Russians have developed and invested in for many decades.
    1
  13258.  @pauls3204  You obviously didn't read the second part of my post which covers this very point.
    1
  13259.  @teddansonLA  Working from the bottom up: This winter has been no worse than many previous winters in terms of deaths. The five year average is just a very small window, and you only have to go back to 2003 to find a similar death rate (10.2 per 1,000). In the previous century this death rate was exceeded very many times. In 2020, of course, we suffered the equivalent of TWO winter death rates when Covid 19 first hit the vulnerable population in the Spring. The point is that the chief problem with this disease is the very severe effects its novelty creates in a proportion of victims. Reasonably healthy young and middle-aged people can go through a very bad time. They are unlikely to die, but their suffering will be considerable. This is why it is essential to ensure ICU units are capable of being properly staffed in the event of Covid 19 becoming the main respiratory infection next winter. I dispute that death rates show a direct correlation with infection rates to the degree you suggest. The death rate from Covid 19 depends as much upon the number of people available to die as it does the amount of infections. Since the inefficiency of PCR testing makes the latter figure impossible to accurately estimate all we have to go on is the number of people who actually die and whom doctors judge Covid 19 to have been the underlying cause. This is around 80% of the number of people to die within 28 days of a positive test. A very detailed study published via the Lancet at the height of the pandemic concluded that lockdowns have no effects upon death rates. Subsequent studies have supported this conclusion, the latest being a peer reviewed study from Stanford. There is much confusion between IFR and Case Fatality Rate, as well as various other fatality rates which depend upon a variety of statistical inputs. The point is that the disease is highly selective in whom it kills. There are even some suggestions that lockdowns can actually INCREASE fatality rates, since the vulnerable elderly and frail can find themselves in social situations where they have increasing contact with potentially infectious younger people.
    1
  13260.  @teddansonLA  Here are links to the Lancet approved study and a Newsweek article on the Stanford study. As to the potential increase in Covid deaths due to lockdowns, this certainly fits in with my layman's assessment of what is likely to be actually going on in the real world, When people are at work or children are at school they are less likely to come into contact with vulnerable elderly people than when they are wandering round the streets or visiting granny. There are nor supposed to do these things, but they will. The point was made in a study published in the BMJ some months ago. It is in fact a projection based on some of Neil Ferguson's figures, of all things; but I feel it might have some validity https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext Lancet on lockdowns. https://archive.vn/QGyET Stanford U on lockdowns Jan 12 Newsweek article
    1
  13261. Been trying to send you links to the BMJ article I mentioned plus some expert views on the inadequacy of PCR but YouTube keeps turning them down Can't imagine why,
    1
  13262.  @teddansonLA  No. I'm saying that at least one study has supported my view that lockdown situations can lead to increased social contact between potential carriers and the frail vulnerable, rather than less. I don't understand your assertion that lockdowns have completely reversed the trends over the past five months. Surely the trends have generally followed a normal winter progress up until the point where the new UK variant kicked in - itself a product of evolutionary response to the earlier pigs breakfast of on/off tiered regional lockdowns?
    1
  13263.  @teddansonLA  Once again I have to say there is a considerable body of medical opinion which disagrees with this view. My little library of PCR doubters seems to have been corrupted for some reason, but this one I have managed to rescue. He is only an assistant professor at Harvard, but I don't think you could describe him as a conspiracy theory nut job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vvgefwKgSU
    1
  13264.  @teddansonLA  This is where I get a bit bemused. As a non mathematician (indeed as someone in awe of the incomprehensible power and magic of numbers) I find it hard to accept that a failure rate of 1 in 15 cannot seriously undermine any conclusions based up the data obtained - even more so since this is an average number and there may be even more substantial failure rates in geographically separate samples. When this suspect information is fed into a model based upon an entirely different scenario - ie influenza epidemics as opposed to a novel covid epidemic - then is strikes me that any conclusions drawn from this exercise deserve to be treated with considerable caution. I have brought Professor Carl Heneghan back to life and he seems to me to be expressing similar views, though obviously in a far more technically informed way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ5GKKvOVlo&t=66s
    1
  13265. ​ @teddansonLA  Hmm. I still think the tools you are using are probably too crude and cobbled together and are leading to dangerous situations. Are you aware of the paper below? I cannot pretend to have read or understood more than a fraction of it, but it makes it pretty clear that for insurance purposes at least it is safe to assume that lockdowns have little or no effect on the welfare of the under 60s and can lead to increased deaths among the over 60s once they are lifted. That's how I interpret it anyway. I have always tended to pay heed to actuarial opinions in these matters. They earn their living by being right, unlike politicians and government scientists who have considerable more leeway. Worth a quick browse I would have thought. The initial abstract is meaty enough but there are plenty of surprises further along. The very fact that they consider it is a commercial proposition for insurance companies to offer policies indemnifying people against inadvertently infecting others is actually indicative of how relatively remote a possibility this is. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.09.20210146v3.full-text
    1
  13266.  @teddansonLA  Alas, we must agree to differ. I think it is possible that the simple cause and effect model you rely on is overly crude, and lends itself too readily to a process of continual self justification. Anyway, I personally can't see the dramatic consequences you claim. The fluctuating death and infection rates could just as easily be the result of the natural progression of the disease. The maths in the paper I sent you are of course completely beyond me but the tools they use seem a tad more sophisticated. It is no surprise to me that their models postulate that freedom of contact among healthy under sixties would result in a sufficient approximation of HIT to reduce the risks to the more elderly and vulnerable. For this reason the alleged uncouth behaviour of the Brits as opposed to the sober Swedes is of no great relevance. Belarus, for example, has imposed very few restrictions and their death and infection rates are in no way remarkable. Even Florida, with a very large elderly population has abandoned lockdowns and masks and appears to be doing no better or worse than states where severe restrictions continue to be imposed. The disaster of Covid 19 isn't such a disaster when you step back from it. It is a culling disease and almost without exception those who have died had a very short life expectancy anyway. The other major impact - severe symptoms among some otherwise healthy people - continue to be addressed by the therapeutic treatments which are constantly being devised. Vaccines should ensure infections are kept to a minimum and herd immunity must surely be very near. Constant lockdowns are an hysterical over-reaction and, at best, only put off the inevitable and may very probably make the inevitable worse when it does arrive. And this is apart from the incredible damage they undeniably do to economies, livelihoods and, indeed, general health. There will hopefully be a full investigation into how we have handled the pandemic when it is all over. The debate will doubtless continue but I for one hope that the next time something similar happens we will deal with it in a more restrained and thoughtful manner.
    1
  13267.  @teddansonLA  But I don't think my assessment of "normal winter deaths" or my reservations about the value of PCR are nonsense. Deaths this winter are no higher than in many previous years and it could be said that it has been the low number of winter deaths in some of the previous ten or so years which have been "abnormal." And of course there is a considerable body of informed professional opinion which has grave doubts about the usefulness of PCR - certainly to the degree which is relied upon at present. The two opinions I sent you are only two among many, as I am sure you are aware. As to that paper I'm sure it is heretical enough to get a tough ride when and if it goes to peer review. That doesn't mean it may not be largely right though.
    1
  13268.  @teddansonLA  We're going over the same ground. I concede, obviously, that Covid 19 has killed many people - it's just that I suspect my definition of "previous" may be more extended than yours. Fringe or not, those who hold reservations about the validity of PCR vis-a-vis Covid 19 are expert enough and experienced enough to be entitled to their opinion. I am entitled to choose it over other opinions -because it makes more sense to me. As far as the contentious paper and London are concerned, you may be right but in my ignorance I thought that scenario was a projection based on assumptions other than those which have actually occurred. I'm not holding this study our as gospel by any means, but it certainly provides food for thought.
    1
  13269.  @teddansonLA  PCR obviously has its uses, but "excellent" might be putting it a bit strong. "Like saying you've got a Derby winner by looking a hair from a horse's mane," as one doctor rather graphically put it. I'm afraid it's stuff like that which gets to me, rather than a procession of figures and statistics. Anyway, aren't there better tools on the market now? Rapid antigen testing for instance?
    1
  13270.  @teddansonLA  Do you know what? I'm getting rather turned around by your faith and devotion to your cause. Obviously there is no absolute way to decide for certain if anyone has the disease, and if PCR is the best we've got, then I suppose it will have to do - as long as it is recognised that results are not precise. What we do with this information is of course another matter!
    1
  13271.  @teddansonLA  Same here. Adieu.
    1
  13272. What a contrast to yesterday's Newsnight piece which just for once wasn't typical BBC Zelensky butt licking. Responsibility for the dam' s collapse is far from clear. Both sides can be said to gain from it and the actual mechanism of the collapse has yet to be established. Ukraine has released a video of an explosion which has been proved to be fraudulent and there is no doubt that the dam had been damaged by previous Ukrainian shelling and at least one missile attack. Zelensky of course is milking this for all its worth, begging bowl at the ready, and hr is probably very relieved that his forces cannot now advance across the river in a move which would have led to considerable casualties with very little positive result.
    1
  13273. No. Demons have a sense of humour.
    1
  13274.  @pokey5736  It will be rather amusing.
    1
  13275.  @cajunstrat  I'm pretty sure Putin has knocked it into shape.
    1
  13276.  @stephfoxwell4620  Russian law prohibits conscripts going to the front line. And the Yanks are in no position to laugh at anything after Afghanistan, as well as being forbidden to intervene by international law.
    1
  13277. I like your style.
    1
  13278. If Ukraine should win, what steps will the US take to protect Russian residents being killed and tortured as collaborators?
    1
  13279.  @ultimaratio7373  Try reading UN and Amnesty International reports on Ukraine prisons and torture and execution of insurgents in Donbass
    1
  13280. They wiped out the Frontline Doctors in hours, Dr Campbell should be safe though. Youtube will only censor stuff that is understandable to the masses.
    1
  13281.  @ronpool3114  But Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine are forced to speak Ukrainian -which is one of the things they get aggrieved about.
    1
  13282.  @ohdearearthlings1879  I suppose being pro-Nazi was what helped Stalin fight a war with Nazi Germany which cost millions of Russian lives. And what "exterminating" has Putin been up to?
    1
  13283.  @kateryna5284  So its time to commit the same sins in reverse is it? Not a good plan.
    1
  13284.  @ronpool3114  No. The Russians in Crimea are in the majority and nearly that in Donbass. They have been there for several generations. They look upon the Kiev government as a foreign power - much as Mexicans might if the US was to suddenly take their country over.
    1
  13285.  @JamesC785  But why? That's bad enough, surely?
    1
  13286.  @kateryna5284  Of course Stalin was as bad as Hitler - worse in many respects- and of course most of the Russians in Donbass are the descendants of those who were shipped in by Stalin to replace the original Tatar population. Is it right though that they should be forced to become part of a regime and culture they feel treats them badly? Tell me honestly: what proportion of the population of Donbass do you believe wants independence, and a closer relationship with Russia than with Ukraine?
    1
  13287.  @kateryna5284  I accept that the language issue is only one relatively small part of the problem, but a symbolic one, surely? The "Ukrainisation" of the Russian population of Donbass has has some disastrous effects, but perhaps not as much as the economic consequences of the creation of the country in 1991? Is it true that wages in the coal and steel industry dropped by 80% and there is a general feeling that Donbass was being bled dry in order to finance the Westernisation of the country as a whole? In short, do the separatists have a case, in your opinion?
    1
  13288.  @kateryna5284  Thank you very much for your insights. I perceive that Donbass is deeply divided, and that Russia has certainly taken advantage of this. On the other hand, a series of weak and corrupt Ukrainian governments has allowed the situation to escalate and Zelensky's blunders have allowed it to get entirely out of hand. My best wishes to you and your family anyway. May peace come to your homeland soon.
    1
  13289.  @JamesC785  The language war is unfortunate, but is understandable from both sides - and points pretty firmly to the fact that these areas are NOT parts of Ukraine in anything like the fullest sense. The Ukraine created in 1991 is pretty much a made-up country and the present dreadful situation is an illustration of how countries are not formed by people sitting around a table and drawing lines on a map. Compromises should have be made, but were not. The most equitable and pragmatic solution is -like it or not - for Crimea to be recognised as part of the Russian Federation and for Donetsk and Luhansk to be recognised as independent republics.
    1
  13290.  @ohdearearthlings1879  I wouldn't disagree. But Putin is not a socialist.
    1
  13291.  @ohdearearthlings1879  True enough, but this has no relevance to what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. They are both kleptocracies, run by crooks.
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  13292. It must have been carefully preplanned and just waiting for a suitable incident to fire things off. The whole things smacks of the black arts. There are even suggestions that FBI and other "deep state" entities could be involved as they are fearful of their fate if Trump gets a second term and really follows through on the Russiagate scam. Who knows?Will we ever know?
    1
  13293. Zelensky is perhaps more to blame that most others involved. He made the mistake of believing the West would have enough clout to enable Ukraine to take over the Russian industry in the East. More reprehensible though are those Western statesmen and crooks who persuaded him that this was so.
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  13294. Israel turned a backward patch of desert into a modern country. Nine tenths of the so-called Palestinians are the descendants of Arabs from nearby countries who moved in to cash in on the wealth created by the Jews.
    1
  13295. Entirely so! The whole situation lacks the input of repressed black minorities!
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  13296. kelly chartrand Would you prefer hanging or the firing squad? Perhaps exile to some remote place would suffice? And surely 1% is an inadequate figure. What about the 36% of members of the American Meteorological Society who believe that increased Co2 and a warmer climate wiil benefit humankind. Surely they must be purged too?
    1
  13297. titovalasques Your point, I suppose, is that only climate "scientists" can have opinions on the matter. Only priests can interpret the word of God, is that it?
    1
  13298. titovelasquuez Not quite. I hold the view that the so-called climate crisis is a fraud, based on poor science, and manipulated by hedge-fund managers in order to make vast sums by playing the carbon futures market.
    1
  13299. titovalasquez I'm not a scientist - I'm on receiving end of your insane, conceited claptrap! Have you heard of cognitive bias, attentional bias, loss aversion and groupthink? Climate 'science' is riddled with these cancers. How about the reproductability crisis? You think you are some sort of superior class, but you're not. You're just working behind the counter at some glorified MacDonalds serving up the peer-reviewed burgers and fries according to the instructions you've been given.
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  13300. titovalasques You've lost me a bit here. Which claims? Anyway my accusations stand. The climate science community is in the grip of a self-perpetuating ideology which increasingly refuses to allow its findings to be ratified. The shameless manipulation of data under the pretence of "adjusting" and "homogenization" is just one indication of extreme loss aversion. The very phrase "climate science community" indicates groupthink. Are you an enclosed community? Are the learned papers you exchange with each other your sacred texts? Are your prophesies holy writ? Are dissenters ejected from your midst? None of us is quite as clever as we think we are. Mr Dunning and Mr Kruger were quite correct in pointing this out, but I don't think even they could have imagined a group of people who claim the world is going to end based on the very limited amount of information climate scientists have available to them. As to projection, I imagine many, many people in the world today are projecting their fear of personal death onto the great bogeyman they have invented. Climate 'science' has much to answer for.
    1
  13301. titovalasques My apologies. My insults were directed at climate scientists in general.I expressed myself poorly. I think climate scientists are conspired against as much as conspiring. They have been given a set of tools to play with and they come up with the results those tools supply. The idea of man-made climate warming has been seized upon by unscrupulous financiers and politicians as a way to make money and exercise control. The "climate science community" has fallen prey to cognitive bias, attentional bias, loss aversion and groupthink. They are stuck on a speeding train and they can't get off. None of their predictions are coming true and they are forced to lie to make it seem that they are. Once again my apologies for causing you offence. I am deliberately confrontational often in order to spark debate but I think this time I went too far.
    1
  13302. titovalasques The climate is changing, no doubt of that.Throughout time it seems to have done so much like this: in fits and starts and in a pattern of cycles within cycles.I find myself doubting the extent of AGW as much as I do largely because of what I regard as the egregious behaviour of at least some of its proponents. The hockey stick seems to me to be such a patently artificial construct that it leads me to doubt much of the evidence put forward for AGW. Data adjustment and homogenization add to my concerns. If the mega-rich fossil fuel industry are trying to undermine AGW they are doing a remarkably bad job of it. The climate crisis industry is the one with the media in its pocket and the constant stream of expensively produced scare videos, The people opposing are usually just a guy in a room. Even the Heartland Institute is a pretty ramshackle affair. It is my belief that this is a scam set up by hedge fund managers The cap and trade market offers glorious opportunities for swift profits. The oil barons are in on it too. They've got their bases covered. It's really nothing like tobacco and cancer, although of course the tobacco companies were in on the first floor with the vaping market. So: a complex con-trick, based on some questionable science and backed by governments who enjoy the idea of a carbon tax. We'll just have to see how things pan out, but my cynicism remains, despite all the reams of scientific evidence piled up against me.
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  13303. This just isn't true. Not by a very long shot.
    1
  13304. This is so clearly a politically-motivated prosecution thst only brainwashed fools could think otherwise.
    1
  13305. Just wait until hydroxycloroquine turns out to have been the answer all along. Can you imagine how ashamed you're gonna feel?
    1
  13306.  @IAmSuzyQ  Glad to hear you say so. Shame you don't understand Trump, though I admit it takes a bit of doing. Hydroxychloroquine is being badmouthed because it provides a radically cheap alternative to the very expensive and profitable drugs being lined up by big pharma (To say nothing of Bill Gates' somewhat sinister sounding vaccine).
    1
  13307.  @Godhelpus62  There are so many errors in what you have just said that I scarcely know where to begin. Hydroxychroquine in combination with zinc and an antibiotic has a proven track record for saving the lives of vulnerable Covid 19 patients if administered soon enough and in the correct dosage. Details of this will be found in the video and accompanying documentation below,. As far as I am aware no country has banned it. It has been in existence for almost seventy years and is used worldwide as a treatment for malaria and other conditions. If Trump is pushing it for financial reasons he is a fool (and he isn't). The patent ran out decades ago and it is now made by companies all over the world. It is so "valuable" that one company is offering 100million doses for free. You can buy it in the US for $37.50 per hundred and since the recommended dose is two A WEEK that will last you a year. near enough. Not exactly a money-spinner is it? Big pharma would much rather you were forced to buy a new wonder drug at $2,000 a shot. And Trump is being remarkably circumspect about the drug. He takes it himself and he says so. Doctors tell him it saves patients lives, and it does. That's it. Not exactly a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. is it? Having a randomized double blind placebo controlled study is all very well and sounds very posh and clever, but in the meantime doctors will continue using this treatment, saving lives every day as they do so. We can only hope that more of them follow this example as the facts currently being suppressed emerge. Watch the video and read the articles and scientific studies if you have the time and competence to do so. Then sit back and wonder why you have been brainwashed to the extent you so obviously have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM
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  13308.  Michel Deroy  Thank you for your valuable contribution to this important debate.
    1
  13309.  @Godhelpus62  You haven't watched the video I sent you then?
    1
  13310.  Michel Deroy  You don't show many signs of brain activity yourself you know.
    1
  13311. We don't protest. We just don't do it.
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  13312. What law?
    1
  13313. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a much misunderstood concept cited by stupid people to describe other people whom the wrongly believe to be more stupid than they are.
    1
  13314.  @highpath4776  What you say may be true in part, but it was British military might which held the whole thing together - from Clive right through to the Mutiny and beyond.
    1
  13315. Listeners should be aware of a YouTuber called Active Patriot who has bee following these immigrants around for weeks now - and even playing football and basketball with them in the grounds of their luxury hotels! He was arrested - and rather brutally - yesterday for filming the latest consignment of new citizens as they boarded their coaches in Dover.
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  13316. They're just the Russian version of the Proud Boys, but actual racists.
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  13317. Why bother?
    1
  13318.  @davidmacdonald1695  Russia still thinks it's important - and it is. The American-led West is heading for collapse and Russia and other BRICS countries will eventually have very important places in a new multi-polar world.
    1
  13319.  @davidmacdonald1695  NATO is to blame for the violence - or more specifically America. And Russia's future is far rosier than that of that particular crumbling empire.
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  13320.  @dano9008  Russia isn't going anywhere - apart from the Donbass border which it is now steadily approaching. After that is reached, Putin's declared war objectives will have been achieved and an armistice can be arranged - hopefully without Zelensky and Western interference.
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  13321. Fauci's plans are coming unravelled - foiled by the virus he helped to create.
    1
  13322. When?
    1
  13323.  @TVIDS123  I'm over 70 and I haven't. There is no rhyme or reason to these statistics at present. They are totally suspect on several levels.
    1
  13324.  @Cos93  My position is that the tests are inaccurate in that they register tiny viral loads and even long dead viruses as infectious. This is just one of the problems. There are false negative results too. The tests they are using weren't designed for the job.
    1
  13325. The search is widening - to find white people to blame.
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  13326.  @daydays12  Russia's. Putin's peace terms BEFORE the invasion were entirely reasonable and the tragedy is that something like them is quite likely what we will end up with. And half a million or more will have died to no purpose.
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  13327. @adrianocelentano3997 I think his initial proposals were entirely reasonable given the circumstances and the historic and economic realities. Sadly he will probably want more now. They were: Regional autonomy for Donbass. Recognition of Crimea as Russian. A firm promise for Ukraine not to join NATO.
    1
  13328.  @theshadowoftruth7561  Neither side can. That's just the way with treaties. All one can do is hope for the best.
    1
  13329.  @nudisco7882  If Ukraine is effectively defeated, as is entirely possible, then this will not occur. Glad you realise that the US is prepared to sacrifice half a million foreign lives in order to advance its commercial interests via NATO.
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  13330.  @philipmain5701  Because it can? And because it has every right to since NATO makes no bones about being Russia's enemy. Add to this the fact that modern Ukraine owes its very existence to Russia, that 'sovereignty ' is a mere buzzword with no real geopolitical meaning - and even if it did Ukraine would not qualify for the appellation since its status as an independent entity is the result of an historical accident, and has not been earned through conquest or administrative abilities. On top of this you might wonder why Russia, having removed its nuclear armaments from Ukraine a little over thirty years ago, should be expected to be happy to see them replaced by American ones. The fact that NATO is not a mutual defence organisation as much as a vehicle of American imperialist aggression also enters into it, of course.
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  13331. You can hear the cheers for miles!
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  13332.  @MercurialMann  Current research is showing that the relatively low covid death rates in many Asian countries - particularly Japan - is probably due to a genetic pre-disposition created by exposure to previous similar pathogens.
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  13333.  @docostler  I don't actually own one.
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  13334.  Dimwits Vote Tory  All have- amazingly- changed their minds following political pressure. Masks are a political tool, not a public health one. The CDC and the WHO - as well as the BMA and many other bodies - published papers at the start of the pandemic warning against their use by the general public.
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  13335.  @atomiccritter6492  But it isn't. As you know full well.
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  13336.  Dimwits Vote Tory  She actually wipes my arse with the Guardian. What a good girl she is!
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  13337.  Dimwits Vote Tory  The British Medical Journal can be a good read. A meta-study they published in May 2020 arrived at the following conclusion: “The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against covid-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.” The whole study is now rather hard to find for some reason, certainly the direct link usually get blocked. You can sometimes bypass the censors with this link to the CDC's assessment, published at about the same time https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
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  13338.  @Yeknodathon  Someone claims you are a foreign, multi-account bot. Just to say, I don't believe it myself but all the same I don't see the relevance of this quote, really. And although the study relates to influenzas, covid transmission is not all that different. It is an airborne pathogen, after all. Furthermore, some of the questions posed in the extract have now been answered, it would appear. A study published in The Lancet this April showed that 60% of covid infections come via aerosols. Which of course masks do nothing to contain.
    1
  13339.  Dimwits Vote Tory  Actually I am quite hideously rich and my team of carers are paid very high wages. I only employ the best. (PS. I never wear pyjamas.)
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  13340.  @Yeknodathon  What on earth are you talking about? Do you mean that the data was based on experience with influenzas at the start of the pandemic? It could hardly have been otherwise, could it since covid was new. Like influenzas covid is an airborne respiratory pathogen. The virus is even smaller than most influenza viruses. The patterns of transmission are broadly similar, and experience has now taught us that 60% of covid infections come via aerosols, which masks do nothing to contain. Neither do they contain much by the way of droplets unless the wearer is in a catatonic trance. Anyhow, I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. I really didn't mean to.
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  13341.  @Yeknodathon  I know that. But they are both airborne respiratory pathogens and behave in much the same way. Because the covid 19 virus is so small, however, it lends itself readily to aerosol transmission which makes mask-wearing even more pointless than is the case with larger influenza viruses. Haven't I explained this already? Where were you?
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  13342.  @Vinehorse  I wouldn't disagree. High-spec, close-fitting masks in enclosed, crowded, badly-ventilated spaces will have benefits. Anywhere else - not so much. In fact though, pushing masks as the be all and end all instead of concentrating on ventilation must have done great harm. One can visualise situations where people are in an enclosed space, perhaps with a stream of visitors, and all imagining themselves safe because they are dutifully wearing masks.
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  13343.  @Yeknodathon  I wasn't boasting, merely making it clear that I do not exploit the working class more than I absolutely have to.
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  13344.  @Vinehorse  I think most sensible people who have time to investigate what "facts" can reasonably be ascertained come to broadly similar conclusions. The situation now that the vaccination programme is under way is very much altered though. Herd immunity - the only long-term answer - is within reach and whatever views one held before they must be tempered by this. The risks of death or long-term effects are much reduced and a relaxation of measures should lead to HIT being reached quite quickly. Personally I think the quicker the better. There will be casualties of course but probably less than if we spin the whole thing out.
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  13345.  @Vinehorse  I've had one jab and that was only at the insistence of my children. My views have altered somewhat with the latest figures. It is clear that lessening of symptoms in the vaccinated is going to be of enormous help; better really than if they(we?) avoided the disease completely. I still think healthy people under 40 or so have a hard choice to make. I KNOW everyone says these vaccines are safe but I have listened to some apparently science-based theories on the possibilities of long-term effects which are rather disturbing. Two doses for everyone who wants them is clearly an option and hopefully if ONS gives details of those who do die, we will be able to work out odds. Sure, the more people who talk on social media the better. You can learn stuff, come to conclusions through dealing with intelligent people and when you come across fools you can taunt them mercilessly, which is often quite relaxing.
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  13346. Every single pathetic attempt made by the Democrat party an their allies to bring Trump down has backfired. This one will too.
    1
  13347.  @f_f_f_8142  I don't think it works like that. The virus is mutating all the time. There are trillions upon trillions of them, don't forget. In a situation where new hosts are easily accessible it is of no great advantage to a variant to have a swifter and more efficient means of infecting cells. There are plenty to go around. There is no competition. When the number of potential hosts is reduced, however, a variant (which already exists) and which has this advantage will beat slower and less efficient variants to those hosts which are available and will thus succeed and prosper. It's how evolution works. Adaptation to circumstance ensures survival and further reproduction.
    1
  13348.  @alexanderlarsen6412  You'd be wrong then.
    1
  13349.  @starmersbarber  That's nice. Does he ever ask for something for the weekend?
    1
  13350.  @grahamlees4394  Only if they were pussies.
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  13351.  @katywehavetoloveeachother  Donald Trump is competent. There.
    1
  13352. Pretty much like wearing them in the first place.
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  13353. Russia is set to win this, no matter what equipment the US and others dole out. The West's armouries are getting depleted and, even worse, the fancy new stuff has proven to be less than impressive on the battlefield. Ukraine will be left to sink or swim, and this will happen sooner rather than later.
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  13354. The are are no more conspiracy theories. Just conspiracies.... ...a link to the present horror story in Ukraine is that Burisma, the company paying Hunter Biden his huge salary for doing nothing, was controlled by Ukrainian oligarch and gang boss Ifor Kolomoiski, the man who organised and bankrolled Zelensky's presidential bid. Evidence is also emerging that the children of other prominent Democrats were similarly employed by Kolomoiski.
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  13355.  @kenmahoney5255  Wotsa bot? For decades the Democrat party have convinced Blacks and Latinos that they are working in their interests. They are not. The only interest the Democrats have in underprivileged communities is keeping them underprivileged and in a state of perpetual discontent so they will perpetually vote Democrat in the vain hope that this will improve their lot.
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  13356. They have taken over a few acres of unoccupied mud flats. Hardly a sign of the invasion of Crimea.
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  13357. In fact he has a very clear and cogent assessment of the situation. It just happens to differ from the propaganda his predecessors have been pumping out for years and which has coloured the thinking of so many somewhat naive people.
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  13358.  @esteemedyams  DP War and Weeb Union mainly.
    1
  13359.  @asynchronicity  DPA War and Weeb Union mainly.
    1
  13360.  @asynchronicity  At the moment Russia seems to be occupying most of the territory in which it declared an interest and is slowly accumulating the whole set. How is this losing?
    1
  13361.  @asynchronicity  Russia regards Crimea and Donbass as Russian. Historically this is correct. They are being reclaimed - not stolen.
    1
  13362.  @sababugs1125  Kherson on the right bank of the Dnieper was of no value to Russia, and not worth wasting resources on keeping - for now.
    1
  13363. The brain disease called Islam.
    1
  13364.    It is unknown territory, I agree - but best information so far is that it really is safe to get back in the water; certainly for pre-pubescent kids and very probably for most of the rest of us too. Best of luck with your mum. I'm sure you know what to do to keep her as safe as possible.
    1
  13365.  @michaeldunham3385  Try Google Earth.
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  13366. Thank you very much for this. I knew little of Dominic Cummings until his press conference yesterday, when I came away admiring him greatly. After the information presented here I now admire him more and more. I don't think he got permission from Boris though. It would have been unnecessary if all you say is true and would have been disadvantageous to both of them.
    1
  13367. Nilavra Pathak Noble enough. But what if your emissions - to say nothing of the emissions from a Chinese cement factory - turn out to contribute absolutely nothing to global warming, which is merely part of a natural long-established cycle? It doesn't matter though. Your regime can do no harm. But do start to worry when such behaviour becomes compulsory.
    1
  13368. I kinda wish there was no such thing as word fascism. Words are just words.
    1
  13369.  @lakeliving2013  As descriptions, merely. It is banning words which gives them magical meanings.
    1
  13370. They've already chucked them in themselves, silly. And their credit cards.
    1
  13371.  @stephaniehenry5617  He worked there. It's only a 20 minute drive from his home.
    1
  13372.  @joyceallen8029  The people he killed weren't exactly upstanding citizens though, were they? One had a conviction for sexual abuse against a child and the other several convictions for beating up women. It is not too long a stretch to imagine they were in Kinosha to riot for kicks, is it?
    1
  13373.  Iain Bell  Brainwashed fool. (This could go on all day)
    1
  13374.  @richardeisenhower7381  It's so hard to say. isn't it? Soldiers in wars have often been 16. There is no doubt that Kyle got himself into a situation which a more mature person may have avoided. Having said that, if he hadn't been armed he may well have been killed or seriously injured.
    1
  13375.  @digbycrankshaft7572  So rioters are allowed to destroy property while everyone just stands by and watches. Is that what you're saying?
    1
  13376.  @richardeisenhower7381  So rioters are allowed to burn and destroy and yes MURDER while we stand by and do nothing. Is that what you're saying? What about the 30+ dead in Portland?
    1
  13377.  @unworthy42  Why do you moronic tossers assume that anyone who sees through the pathetic propaganda you swallow so gullibly is a paid Russian agent? For your information; I am an elderly British gent who has lived long enough to recognise shit when he smells it.
    1
  13378.  @geraldhewing2076  No. They are based on a strong sense of being cut off , and being replaced. Whether this sense is justified or not is something we owe it to the future to decide.
    1
  13379.  @alantheinquirer7658  The Tories have let the people of Britain down very badly. Labour is now well on the way to doing exactly the same thing.
    1
  13380.  @altheogre  What makes you think so, Al?
    1
  13381.  @geraldhewing2076  You are confounded by your own admission. No two population invasions are the same. Some work well. Others do not. In this instance the gradual replacement of British, Judao-Christian/ Enlightenment values by those of a medieval middle-Eastern death cult is a process which is is not going to work out at all well.
    1
  13382.  @markwelch3564  Not if they don't want to be integrated. And Muslims don't.
    1
  13383.  @geraldhewing2076  Some resettlements works. Others don't. This one isn't going to.
    1
  13384.  @markwelch3564  I don't distinguish. Today though several white-robed men entered the same shop as me and refused to meet my eye.
    1
  13385.  @geraldhewing2076  The vast majority of Muslims are decent people. But they are in thrall to their religious leaders.
    1
  13386. And not only that: it has used this expansion to attempt to literally steal valuable resources from Russian hands.
    1
  13387.  @darrellrees4371  Five thousand votes in Maricopa county alone which would have been questioned and very probably thrown out in previous years. That's just for starters, None of it matters now, of course, Joe is such a fuck-up that he's going down the tubes on his own. His "victory" is now completely besides the point.
    1
  13388.  @darrellrees4371  There are plenty of sources for the results of the Maricopa audit. The legacy media of course simply goes on about the fact that that the numbers of votes was broadly confirmed. They fail to mention the 5,000 suspicious votes, called into question for many reasons including lack of signature verification, false addresses, multiple state voting, etc etc. Try Sekulow for a source - and yes, some were cast for Trump, but that's not the point. AS to the hairsbreadth wins it seems possible that the fraud was conducted in a number of stages. It was only in the early hours, when it looked as though Trump might win, that the final and perhaps emergency stage was brought into operation with ballots being produced from under tables, arriving in vans from other locations and being passed through voting machines several times.
    1
  13389. Andrey Melnichenko seems an improbable target for sanctions. He is hardly an oligarch, having gained his wealth through currency speculation and judicious speculation long after the vultures divvied up Russian state industries. He is also a keen supporter of the EU and is thought to be one of the main proponents of strategies designed to make Russian membership possible.
    1
  13390.  @jiversteve  What lies? What support? Andrey Melnichenko is exactly as I described him and my "support" for the invasion merely consists of trying to explain to people the reasons why Putin has acted how he has, and why in the interests of world peace and an end to bloodshed a swift victory for Russia will be the best outcome. I'm not on Russia's side. I'm on the side of peace.
    1
  13391.  ger du  What a very good thing it is that world leaders do not get their views from reading comic books, as you apparently do..
    1
  13392.  @jiversteve  Suddenly everyone's a Zelensky!
    1
  13393.  @jiversteve  How on earth do you work that one out?
    1
  13394.  @DarkLordofTheSith_DarthVader  Did they lose a jet?
    1
  13395. You have got to be either mind-boggling credulous or in on the act to support this shit. A fool or complicit; there's no in between.
    1
  13396. Why do lefties confuse hate with contempt and fear?
    1
  13397. Own nothing and be happy.
    1
  13398. @ No one is safe. Never was. Not ever.
    1
  13399. @ The original poster stated that truth, language and democracy are under assault from the "far right". This is possibly true - but there are firm reasons for this. He is also right to worry about the influence of AI. But I believe increasingly strongly that the "far right" does not represent some fascist autocracy, but a considered reaction to a more subtle autocracy which has taken over out institutions, and which must be excised.
    1
  13400. The trouble with your analysis is that the minerals in question were are in mines owned by Russians, and worked by Russians, and which benefit the Russian economy, as they have done for centuries. America (and finance companies) wanted to get their hands on them and started this war in order to obtain them with the simple expenditure of several billions of dollars in defunct armaments. It hasn't worked out ,and now the new America, under Trump, will obtain a fair share of these minerals through a process of negotiation.
    1
  13401.  @EUidentity  It's perfectly possible that Farage has certain old-fashioned notions about race, but it is suggesting that such notions merit a jail sentence which I find so appalling. There are many degrees of "racism", you know. Acknowledging racial differences is entirely different from actively causing harm to people on account of their race.
    1
  13402.  @EdJames-tb9oz  There are many different definitions of "racism". Acknowledging racial differences is entirely different to wishing people harm because of the colour of their skin. I have more of a problem with self-righteous hypocrisy than I do with "racism."
    1
  13403.  @EUidentity  What cruelty? I really can't think of an example.
    1
  13404.  @EUidentity  I doubt it. Are Poles a race, by the way?
    1
  13405.  @EUidentity  It did get through! I must say this doesn't seem all that cruel though.
    1
  13406.  @EUidentity  And is there anything wrong with that?
    1
  13407.  @chrisstones1249  Racism is not an absolute. It comes in degrees. Would you, for example, accuse the Starmer government of "racism" for singling out people from certain countries to make them getting visas more difficult?
    1
  13408. There is no such thing as the global economy, that's why.
    1
  13409. Ukraine is fighting for the US military/industrial complex.
    1
  13410. All elections in America are "stolen". The system is rotten to the core and the side which wins is generally the side which cheats the most efficiently. The only possible exception to this was Trump's win in 2016 when the people who organise these matters underestimated his popular support. They didn't let it happen again in 2020 and I doubt very much they will let it happen this year either.
    1
  13411. More sick propaganda from the BBC. Trump disavowed white supremacy before the Proud Boys were introduced into the debate, and they are not white supremacists anyway and in fact have black, Sikh and Asian members. It's a lads' drinking club which hates the hypocricies of the left and the sanctioned violence of Antifa and BLM. As do I.
    1
  13412. Does this child in the body of a man REALLY think he is cleverer than Russia's secret police???
    1
  13413.  @MrDosonhai  I am neither clone nor "bot" and the collapse of the SU had very little to do with the KGB.
    1
  13414.  @dougieranger  Hardly the backbone - merely a part of the state apparatus, and considerably less significant now than in former times.
    1
  13415.  @dougieranger  In your dreams.
    1
  13416. Total bollocks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY&t=
    1
  13417. Odd then, isn't it, how his "crimes" are only ever defined by page after page of tendentious waffle from biased sources.
    1
  13418.  @SylviaRustyFae  These are only the sources in the sense that their messages and testimonies have been twisted by the biased sources that are Jack Smith and his team. There was no insurrection. It is a fabrication.
    1
  13419.  @SylviaRustyFae  But evidence of what? There was a demonstration that got out of hand. Trump and many others (me included) believed there was firm evidence of electoral malpractice. It was a very confused day and Trump clearly wanted the election not to be confirmed, because he sincerely believed that he had been cheated. He made every effort to ensure that peace was maintained. Trying to parcel all this up into a criminal conspiracy and an "insurrection" is criminal in itself.
    1
  13420.  @SylviaRustyFae  They are not the sources. There was no insurrection.
    1
  13421.  @SylviaRustyFae  Not so. I find the evidence to be biased, selective and circumstantial and the "crimes" themselves hardly worthy of the name. The real crime comes in demeaning the judicial system in order to defeat a political opponent.
    1
  13422.  @chrissouthgate4554  ?
    1
  13423.  @davefave4351  You already have by the sound of it.
    1
  13424.  @davefave4351  Saying what?
    1
  13425. If he's still around.
    1
  13426.  @rsvbiker4149  Who are you calling a bellend, wanker?
    1
  13427. Those few of them who have been caught and jailed for atrocities in Donbass have now been released and armed.
    1
  13428. Both exercises in controlling the world population by fear?
    1
  13429.  @andrewowens4421  Controlling the riots is essentially the concern of local administrations. Trump consistently called for the National Guard to be mobilised, and when this happened the riots were generally quite quickly brought under control. It is difficult to see what else he could have done. There have been changes introduced in attempts to prevent at least some aspects of election fraud. Ballot harvesting is rife in poor black communities and measures you would probably describe as "voter repression" are being introduced in some states in order to allow individuals to vote according to their belief and conscience, rather than having their names collected by the local Democrat gangsters. One can hope that Republican observers will find ways of actually being allowed to do their job instead of being herded into corners by other Democrat thugs. I hope and pray that sufficient technical information has been obtained through the audits to enable Dominion machines to be properly monitored. Once again it is difficult to think of other methods by which to reverse the current trend towards anarchy. If Trump Republicans manage to control the House and Senate then the worst excesses of the Biden administration may be held in check until 2024 at which time America may be saved and the Democrat party be rid of the madness which currently enslaves it.
    1
  13430. Sure. Rock-headed anyway.
    1
  13431.  @jonnanderson6489  Maybe. But they certainly have more resources.
    1
  13432. I thought that was Putin? Can Hitler have TWO reincarnations?
    1
  13433. The fact is that Russia has a very reasonable case, and its actions have been forced upon it by Western greed and intransigence. We are being led into the dreadful possibility of a European war by corrupt politicians and gung-ho generals. We are being lied to every day. Russia has no intention or even desire to recreate its empire. All it wants is to retain control of the mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine. All the West's leaders want is to take it away from them. This mess has nothing whatsoever to do with spreading freedom and democracy. The situation in Ukraine today has no resemblance to the situation in Germany in the 1930's and it would be difficult to think of a leader less like Hitler than Putin. Spurious similarities have been seized upon for propaganda purposes, and many of you have fallen for this. I urge everyone to do all they can to investigate thoroughly the background to this conflict before allowing yourselves to be led down the path to unimaginable horror and destruction.
    1
  13434.  @oliCRF  I'm neither Russian nor a bot. I am British and very much concerned about the future of my children and grandchildren. Yes, the case is very reasonable. At the centre of the conflict are the vast mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine, estimated as being worth at least $13 trillion and possibly even more. These resources have been developed almost exclusively by Russian investment and Russian labour. Even after Ukrainian independence they have continued to be largely operated by Russian companies with their products and profits largely passing through Russian hands. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western entities, both public and private, have sought access to these resources through various means. Matters came to a head with the likelihood of Ukraine joining the EU, which would effectively have prevented Russia continuing to enjoy the benefits of its mining operations in Eastern Ukraine. They would have passed onto Western control, probably through being nationalised and their immense assets being handled by investment managers, such as Blackrock. A compromise was agreed upon in 2015 whereby Ukraine agreed to find a way to grant regional autonomy to the two oblasts in Donbass thus excluding their resources from the restrictions of EU membership. Ukraine did not proceed with this plan, and instead accepted several billion dollars from the US and other NATO countries with which to train and re-equip its army. Russia, believing this army to have been created to attempt to-retake those parts of Donbass held by separatists, invaded Ukraine with the purpose of destroying this army and extending the areas of Eastern Ukraine under its control. The above is far from being a soundbite, I realise, but soundbites don't make for reasoned assessment of complex situations.
    1
  13435.  @Yeknodathon  Read the Johns Hopkins meta-study yet? Tinfoil hats are becoming increasingly fashionable you know.
    1
  13436.  @Yeknodathon  You scarcely seem to know what it is. The Johns Hopkins meta-study entirely vindicates my views on the inefficacy and disaster of lockdowns. Even the CDC now admits that only N95 tight fitting masks are of any use against the spread of covid. I confidently predict that over the next couple of years any number of books and studies will emerge which conclusively demonstrate how hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the pandemic due to Big Pharma deliberately suppressing the use of existing, cheaply available palliative drugs which threatened its profits. As to the present debacle, the "poor little Ukraine" trope will doubtless persist for a considerable while, but hopefully history will decide that its fate has more to do with its abuse by America than anything Putin may do.
    1
  13437. A Russian victory now seems inevitable.
    1
  13438. Why stop when you're winning?
    1
  13439. It's not the villages that's important - it's what's underneath them. Namely, trillions of dollars in gas, coal and now lithium.
    1
  13440.  @PeterSedesse  Squeezing economies is considerably more civilised than fighting with tanks and missiles, and Western economies are as overstretched in their way as Russia's is. I'm not sure what you mean about Luhansk. As far as I'm aware mining there and in Donetsk has been ticking over as well as can be expected in wartime conditions and now that the front line is being pushed further and further West one can surely expect production to increase.
    1
  13441.  @PeterSedesse  These are just stages in a process though. It is Russia's aim to remove control of Luhansk and Donetsk entirely from Ukraine and to combine with other BRICS+ countries to undermine the power of the dollar and to destroy US hegemony. They way or may not succeed in either objective - on the other hand, they very well might.
    1
  13442. Every single case so far seems to be someone fully vaccinated. Wouldn't it be funny if Omicron was the virus's evolved response to vaccines and only people who've been vaccinated can get it? I'd laugh anyway.
    1
  13443. Why could anyone in their right mind be possibly afraid of Ed Miliband? He is just a child hanging on the coat-tails of the climate change scam. Wake up people!
    1
  13444. It's called politics.
    1
  13445. The Russians already have the drone by all accounts - and it's not their first.
    1
  13446. We need to understand that Donald Trump - of all people - is entirely on board with this message. The conflict is between the forces of control and the will of ordinary, everyday folk to run their lives as best they see fit.
    1
  13447. There's always been a divide. Farage and Tice want to take away all those nice middle-class voters from the Tories and Tommy has them clutching at their pearls - much like you guys!
    1
  13448. All the same, I can't help wondering what the reaction might be if Russia carried out a single limited nuclear strike somewhere. It really wouldn't be sensible to over-react.
    1
  13449.  @gregorysurovoi3968  I 'm pretty sure the Russians had the situation much more efficiently assessed. Getting rid of Ukraine's NATO-financed and trained army has probably taken longer than they hoped - but they knew it wasn't going to be a walkover, as in Georgia. Crimea is a different case. As in Donbass to a slightly lesser extent, the Russians have been welcomed with open arms.
    1
  13450.  @TheWaveGoodbye-Music  Do you live in a parallel universe?
    1
  13451. I rather thought China, India and Iran were getting good at making this stuff? And already Russia is buying what it needs from under the counter in Europe. There's no profit in fine words and where there's money to be made, ways will be found. I can easily see this war resulting in an economic decline for the West, rather than Russia.
    1
  13452.  @Graybeard_  I am quoting from a recent Reuter report which claims that Russia had set up a number of worldwide cover companies literally years ago in anticipation of sanctions, and computer chips and other technology worth many millions are coming into Russia from a number of countries. Other perhaps less objective sources make similar claims - and I don't think India and China can be getting all that oil on the cheap without some form of quid pro quo.
    1
  13453.  @Graybeard_  There seems to be a bit of a gap between theory and practice here. Russia is producing missiles faster than its shooting them off and is even selling them to Iran. Tanks are apparently rolling off the production lines every day. The West has got a bit too big for its boots. China and India can do anything Germany and American can, and getting paid in cheap crude will make them do it. Russia's economy might suffer a few minor hiccups, but that's it. America meanwhile is looking to renege on repayments of $multi-trillion and inflation in the UK is on a par with Russia's at the moment. This is no time for complacency.
    1
  13454.  @Graybeard_  Breadlines in Russia. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mmPopEtDzg
    1
  13455.  @peterolsen9131  This could very well be so. It is also possible that acquired resistance to malaria may imply resistance to Covid 19.
    1
  13456. This is plainly untrue. Tests are down by 13% - but the number of positives is down by 30%.
    1
  13457.  @richardmarsden.5610  What a peculiar suggestion.
    1
  13458.  @awpetersen5909  reaks for reeks
    1
  13459.  @ukie5130  Not as much as stupidity.
    1
  13460.  @ukie5130  Mine and other people's too!
    1
  13461. Oh dear. Can't you tell when someone's breaking your balls? He was just saying you can't stop global warming any more than you can change the orbit of the moon.
    1
  13462. Meanwhile Assange's former neighbour in Belmarsh Prison, Tommy Robinson, has been arrested in Canada on as-yet unspecified charges. Is the West REALLY all that different to Russia?
    1
  13463. I find it so odd that when Russia was a Communist hell-hole, the Left in Britain hailed is as a socialist paradise, and now it's got rid of all that, you're scared it's going to come over here and bite you. More and more I come to believe that there is something truly psychotic about the left-wing mindset.
    1
  13464. Kristalnacht? Nonsense! The was Pearl Harbour, 911, the London Blitz, the invasion of Poland, the murder of the innocents, the fall of Rome, the sounding of the trumpets of Revelation, the assassination of Kennedy, the bubonic plague, Noah's flood, and the rending of the screen of the temple at the moment of Christ's death on the cross!
    1
  13465. This channel is a clown show
    1
  13466. They want total control and for all other religions to be outlawed.
    1
  13467. I guess they're scared there WILL be a bloodbath if the deep state has the gall to fix the election for their sock-puppets again.
    1
  13468. There is no two-state solution. There is only a two-state further madness.
    1
  13469. They will blitz Kiev with missiles. More blood on America's hands.
    1
  13470. Obviously an entirely correct assessment. But Kemi Badenoch is a goddess - and would make a great Prime Minister!
    1
  13471. They know what side their brot is buttered on. Some of them ,anyway.
    1
  13472.  @GavinGas  So tearing up an unborn baby in the womb with needles and long scissors is civilised, is it?
    1
  13473.  @GavinGas  Because something is affordable and readily available doesn't make it right. I think we essentially differ because I do not regard abortion as a good thing, simply as a necessary thing on occasion. Furthermore, the fact that people cheer and celebrate when the freedom to have abortions at will is enshrined in law is, in my view, thoroughly disgusting and disgraceful.
    1
  13474.  @GavinGas  Now you're just being silly.
    1
  13475.  @jhingoorpatima237  Bitterness, resentment, sense of inferiority, religious dementia, perverted view of history, sheer bloody-mindedness, stupidity, greed......the list goes on.
    1
  13476.  @jhingoorpatima237  Fear, stupidity and religious extremism I guess
    1
  13477. Ultimately it is America's fault for trying to seduce Ukraine away from Russia.
    1
  13478. ​ @rogerwilco5918 All of it probably. The Ukrainian army is so depleted that the chances of it breaking through anywhere are slim. Even if it does so the Russians can just fall back to new positions. It is foolish to believe they want to take new territory or are particularly concerned with keeping all they've got. At this stage they just want to go on killing Ukranians.
    1
  13479.  @igorm6944  They are threatening the most powerful nuclear power on the planet, headed by a tough and ruthless leader who makes our leaders look like the bunch of effeminate clowns that they are. Asking for trouble.
    1
  13480.  @sayreharder1541  This sounds like a direct quote from the meeting which has just taken place in Washington.
    1
  13481.  @chefdave3275  The West has pushed NATO up to Russia's borders and spent billions of dollars on creating a Ukrainian army with which to retake Crimea and Donbass from their Russian inhabitants. If that isn't starting something, I don't know what is.
    1
  13482.  @davidmacdonald1695  I am not a "Russian troll" - whatever that is. I am an Englishman fearful of seeing his country dragged into a needless war. The border dispute between Ukraine and Russia has nothing at all to do with us - apart from the fact that Western businesses have seen it as an opportunity to muscle in on the trillions of dollars of mineral wealth lying underneath the largely Russian parts of Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  13483.  @chefdave3275  NATO started this war. Russia will finish it.
    1
  13484.  @Gopferteckel  Putin?
    1
  13485.  @Gopferteckel  Putin?
    1
  13486.  @patrickquinlan3056  My computer is geared to English English, not American English. You really are Irish, aren't you?
    1
  13487.  @Lordnumptynous  I could ask the same question about your scintillating wit.
    1
  13488. You can. It is.
    1
  13489.  @Bramblebush7  Maybe a bit of anger and thuggery is what mainstream politics needs....
    1
  13490.  @johnkitching2248  This is no time for semantic pedantry! You know what I meant!
    1
  13491.  @bedandbreakfastman11  It's the same for everybody.
    1
  13492.  @johnkitching2248  I'm not! Just check it for yourself. It's a straight copy and paste from the dictionary. I just cut the examples.
    1
  13493.  @brianwhite4672  I believe you. All the same...
    1
  13494. The idea that this could have been a cover?
    1
  13495.  @mytruecrimelibrary  No. This channel is ridiculous, and so are most of the contributors to the comments section. You are living in a bubble.
    1
  13496. Of course he isn't. These weren't Nazi salutes. They were salutes which the Nazis commandeered. It's about time we got them back.
    1
  13497.  @itemushmush  Of course I'm serious! Musk just proved that putting your hand on your heart and extending your arm to its fullest length is a natural and expressive gesture of gratitude and solidarity, and it needn't been Hitler you're thinking of. It's about time we claimed this useful gesture back from the ghosts of those evil people.
    1
  13498.  @emm_arr  Well it isn't. Over-expansion was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why would the Russian Federation make the same mistake?
    1
  13499.  @justinmillette9110  Where can one find Russian propaganda these days? The first stage of the war, the SMO, was designed to destroy as much of Ukraine's army as possible, but on Ukrainian territory instead of inside Donbass. That is quite clear from the disposition of forces and the tactics employed. It had nothing to do with taking territory, merely to do with choice of battlefield. Force has been very much a last resort. Clearly, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR errors were made. It was a time of great confusion. If Minsk had been adhered to and Donbass could have become autonomous it would have prevented war. It's interesting you should mention Bilhorod. As I'm sure you are aware this part of the world has been under multiple ownerships over the centuries and there are many surviving anomalies. A solution to the present difficulty could well involve further boundary adjustments - but Russia keeps Donbass and Crimea. I don't think that is negotiable.
    1
  13500.  @anglonorse2943  But I'm English and I don't know where to find Russian propaganda, let alone dole it out. I simply speak as I find after a bit of historical research.
    1
  13501.  @domtomas1178  These analogies are really pretty stupid. All over the world bit of land go back and forth all the time. Obviously there must be some sort of statute of limitations, but trying to draw moral parallels gets us no-where, Each case is unique. Has Poland asked Russia to have Kalingrad back, by the way? Are there any Poles living there? Does Poland still get billions of dollars a year from its mines and industries and doesn't want Russia to sell them off to the Americans?
    1
  13502.  @justinmillette9110  Sadly, domestic analogies don't work either. But just to play the game let us say that it was your father, not you, who was disinherited by your grandfather, (after he was duped by a crooked lawyer called Sam) but your side of the family still farmed the land in question, fertilising it and ploughing it and spending money on it and, naturally enough, selling the crop for profit. Then your cousins tell you that Sam has got his eye on the land and so they are going to give it to him in exchange for a Mercedes-Benz and a holiday in Cyprus. You are naturally annoyed. You know Sam cheated your grandfather, but you've let it go over the years for the sake of peace and because you are still harvesting the crop. You and your cousins manage to sort things out between you, but Sam then comes along and gives your cousins a whole heap of guns and tells them to run you off the land, and if they do he will give them more cars and luxury holidays. What do you do? Do you quietly give up your farm just because of some bit of paper your idiot, drunken grandfather signed thirty years ago? Do you hell.
    1
  13503.  @justinmillette9110  That's the trouble with starting down the analogy road. So: the Russia that agreed to the border is not the Russia of today. The idiot drunken grandfather was Yeltsin. The Budapest Treaties no longer apply, because all treaties fail eventually and often are the cause of wars 20,30, 40 years down the line -as is the case with Budapest. Even after Ukraine's independence Russian interests continued to operate the mines and industries of Donbass, using Russian labour and Russian investment - despite the fact that Kiev's neglect led to a near economic collapse. It is the potential loss of this multi-trillion dollar resource - to be sold by Kiev to Western interests - which is the prime cause of the present war. The gunmen are NATO (predominantly the US) which in the years following the Minsk Accords of 2015/16 spent billions of dollars on re-equipping and training the Ukrainian army. Moscow and Kiev could have sorted this out between them and were on the verge of doing so before the West, using a clown (Boris Johnson) as an emissary persuaded Zelensky to pull out of negotiations with the promise of even vaster military support. There was a solution available in 2015. There was a solution available in 2021. That same solution will almost certainly be arrived at within the next few months and several hundred thousand people will have died to no purpose.
    1
  13504.  @TheSecondof5  Actually it is just about possible to detect sincerity on some occasions. Many of these people were angry enough to be close to tears. At the very least this election was riddled with illegality. I believe it to be very probable there was deliberate fraud. There is an immense amount of circumstantial evidence and now videotaped evidence of malpractice, especially in Georgia. Biden cheated. Even if this cannot be proved before his inauguration his Presidency will be forever tainted.
    1
  13505. Exactly how many BLM rioters have been shot by police?
    1
  13506. Such an obvious stitch-up! How can anyone fall for this nonsense when Biden has salted away millions from a lifetime of bribery and corruption?
    1
  13507. Surely this is just the result of a US internal power trip? Having shoehorned in a weak and ineffectual puppet-President the Washington hawks can now strut their stuff, earning promotions for those in the military and support for the politicians from the vastly ignorant American public, many of whom do not actually know that Russia is no longer the Soviet Union. Putin is behaving like the strong leader he actually is. This is about brinkmanship and he ain't gonna blink.
    1
  13508. Sane or what?
    1
  13509. Surely all Musk is doing is exactly what has been done in both the US and Britain for the past several decades - creating a permanent executive with a firm political bias. The only difference is that the bias will be to the right, rather than to the left, as at present.
    1
  13510. It would be more accurate to substitute "Russian" with "Ukrainian" in your final sentence.
    1
  13511. Trump is right. There would be no war in Ukraine if Russia was afraid of America.
    1
  13512. When will peope realise that at this stage this war has nothing to do with gaining or losing ground? It's just about killing as many of the enemy as possible.
    1
  13513. Democracy in the US has been a sham for decades. The 2020 election just went a step too far.
    1
  13514.  @julianshepherd2038  Or a Ukrainian one.
    1
  13515.  @bhuddy1832  How would I know? Anyway the rouble is far from worthless you can still feed yourself and your family quite adequately with a few of them. Food is cheaper and more plentiful in Russia than it is wherever you live, I bet.
    1
  13516. Good joke -but technically wrong. At conception, the egg from the mother always contributes an X chromosome. The sex of the baby is then determined by the sperm from the father, which can carry either an X or a Y chromosome. If the sperm carries an X chromosome, the resulting combination is XX, which means the baby will be female. If the sperm carries a Y chromosome, the combination is XY, and the baby will be male. The determination of sex is encoded in the genetic material right from the moment of conception. However, the development of sex-specific characteristics happens over time during foetal development.
    1
  13517.  @johnbriggs3916  Well yes. Homogenization of climate data is something which quite concerns me. I think this is what Toby Young may have been trying to get at.
    1
  13518. @ It's important to recognize that drawing parallels between Putin and Hitler, or the current situation in Russia and Germany in the 1930s, is misguided. While both leaders have had significant impacts on their countries and the world, their circumstances and the global context are vastly different. Germany in the 1930s was a nation still reeling from the aftermath of World War I, while today's Russia is navigating its path after the fall of Communism. Additionally, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and other nations targeted by Hitler did not receive extensive military aid from America, as some countries do today. In short, highlighting a few superficial similarities and using them to claim that the two situations are identical is an oversimplification that ignores the unique complexities of each scenario.
    1
  13519. @ It is utterly idiotic and intellectually weak to try to draw comparisons between the situation on Europe in the late 1930s and the situation today. I simply cannot understand how anyone with any degree of intelligence could believe it to be so.
    1
  13520. @ It's important to recognize that drawing parallels between Putin and Hitler, or the current situation in Russia and Germany in the 1930s, is misguided. While both leaders have had significant impacts on their countries and the world, their circumstances and the global context are vastly different. Germany in the 1930s was a nation still reeling from the aftermath of World War I, while today's Russia is navigating its path after the fall of Communism. Additionally, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and other nations targeted by Hitler did not receive extensive military aid from America, as some countries do today. In short, highlighting a few superficial similarities and using them to claim that the two situations are identical is an oversimplification that ignores the unique complexities of each scenario.
    1
  13521. @ Russia doesn't want Europe. Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt. It is so hard to explain this to people who have been subjected to incessant propaganda to the contrary. These apparent historical parallels are being employed to confuse you.
    1
  13522. @ Putin knew exactly how the Ukrainian army had been strengthened by the injection of billions of dollars from the US and other NATO countries. He had to get in quickly before this army attempted to retake Donbass from the pro-Russian separatist rebels.
    1
  13523. NATO has outlived its usefulness, and I'm sure Trump recognises this.
    1
  13524. Nonsense. It will just feed the US war machine.
    1
  13525. A brainwashed puppet "more smarter" than the billionaire President of the most powerful nation in the world. For the first time I understand this lol thing. I really did' I lolled! Anyway, thank you Damage Report for giving me so much fun and also for allowing a cynical old right-winger to express his views in your comments section. Many of your political persuasion just block us out you know. Shhh!
    1
  13526. Paranoid nonsense.
    1
  13527. Love 'em or loathe 'em, these two men are both true leaders. Between them they will end this needless war.
    1
  13528. Except that the Russian economy is not going to collapse. That's just Western propaganda BS designed to keep morons happy.
    1
  13529. pafnucek But what if atmospheric C02 levels have no effect at all on surface temperatures? You can indicate this in model-based laboratory experiments, sure. The REAL atmosphere, however, may well be a different animal entirely. I suggest you check out "A New Look at the Physics of the Earth's Atmosphere" by Drs Michael and Ronan Connolly on ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com It might give you food for thought.
    1
  13530. I agree with every word Trump and Vance were saying. It is most unfortunate that Zelensky has been sold to the public as some sort of hero when he is, in fact, utterly incompetent and out of his depth. He deserved his telling off, and it says a lot for the honesty and openness of the Trump administration that this took place in public.
    1
  13531. Hamish Davidson Someone with more patience than me should try an experiment involving a bath or a swimming pool and some ice cubes. Get the area of water to represent the area of all the oceans on earth and the ice cubes to represent the weight of ice released from Greenland each year. Should be interesting.
    1
  13532. SwiftlyTiltingPlanet The IPCC range is 8" to 3ft , depending. On past performance it will be the lowest number, if that. What weird psychosis is it that makes you people always pick the gloomy option, despite the gloomy predictions never actually coming true?
    1
  13533. SwiftlyTiltingPlanet It just isn't. It's based on a series of self-fulfilling prophesies operating within a closed system Have you heard of cognitive dissonance? Or its close relatives cognitive bias, attentional bias, loss aversion and groupthink? Come across the reproductability crisis yet? Modern climate "science " is a total mess. I'm getting to the stage now where I just don't believe anything that comes out of that particular snake-pit. Nor should you.
    1
  13534. SwiftlyTiltingPlanet You can immerse yourself too much you know! I too am retired. I used to be a journalist specialising in exposing religious cults and various financial scams. I suppose we must both bring our prejudices to the table, which is why I get so vehement sometimes. The whole climate emergency thing ticks so many boxes it makes my skin crawl.
    1
  13535. SwiftlyTiltingPlanet Nearly 100 doesn't sound very many - especially when every major TV news channel with the exception of Sky News Australia seems to dance to the alarmist tune. We really did not ought to be in this position. Those of us - laymen and scientists alike - who have varying degrees of reservation about the AGW case have our cynicism constantly re-inforced by the behaviour of AGW proponents. The current bush fires in Australia are a case in point. Suddenly official Australian historical temperature records begin in 1910 rather than the mid 1800s. Inaccurate thermometers we are told. Unsafe collection methods. It's just a coincidence that the years before 1910 show peaks and periods of temperature higher than at present, so effectively destroying the inexorable upward trend your creed demands. For some reason this failure of equipment and methodology lasts up until 1940 in the US, thus wiping the incredibly high temperatures experienced in the 1930's off the map. All of a sudden satellite records "began in 1979" the previous six years are wiped away. Nothing to do with the fact that hey showed a plateau of results rather than that worrying steep upward slope. There are many, many other examples. Sounds like disinformation and propaganda to me.
    1
  13536. SwiftlyTiltingPlanet Have scientists told the media that Lake Chad and the Victoria Falls are drying up due to climate change? Or that rising sea levels on Rhode Island are causing people to leave beachfront properties? . Murdoch owns a very great many newspapers and TV Channels. Sky News UK dances to the alarmist tune in the most ridiculous fashion, producing pieces of such laughable idiocy that maybe they prove you're right. It's a double bluff! Odd, isn't it, how "unreliable" records are invariably those that bend the handle of the hockey stick? Everything before 1910 in Australia. Everything before 1940 in the US. Hmmm. Satellites providing unreliable data because their orbits have unaccountably decayed. Satellite readings before 1979 not really up to scratch... Anyway, maybe you can help me out. I'm trying to discover what formula is used to remove Urban Heat Island Effect from statistics and how many automatic stations have been created in urban areas in recent years, and where they are situated. Can you point me in the right direction? You never know, you might make a convert of me yet.
    1
  13537. SwiftlyTiltingPLanet And I'm just expected to believe a Skeptical Science article which simply shrugs and says UHIE jusn't isn't there much? Pretty graphs do not a true picture paint, especially when they come from Ministry of Truth sources. I prefer the pretty graphs to be found at www.ceres-science.com Recording equipment on ocean stations has been relocated "away from cooling ducts" ie in warmer locations (Y?N) A large (?) number of new automatic stations have been installed in urban location, many underground and near to central heating boilers(Y/N) Satellites use radiance not temperature? I didn't know that. I must investigate the implications.
    1
  13538. SwiftlyTiltingPLanet Thank you for this. I shall be placing all these names on a little list I've got. Size isn't everything you know. And once false data has been entered into models, and the results of information from those models has been entered into further models.... You have me at a considerable disadvantage here of course since I have not the time, inclination nor competence to read and judge these learned papers. I must rely on my unreasoning prejudice which suggests that what we have here is at best an example of people inside Plato's cave carefully measuring the shadows on the wall, or, at worst, evidence of criminal conspiracy. Mind you, the sheer AMOUNT of this stuff is terribly impressive. Are all the datasets and computer modelling programs used available for checking by independent scientists would you happen to know?
    1
  13539. RapidlyTiltingPlanet Ceres is the site operated by father and son team Michael and Ronan Connolly of Dublin. They have no connection whatsoever with the oil industry. They are ecologists who earn their living by designing and building eco-friendly homes and other structures and providing expert advice to the fishing industry among other things. Both are left-wing, especially Ronan. They wanted to check out AGW by studying data from weather balloons, rather than relying on computer models using laboratory simulations of the atmosphere as a basis. They couldn't get a grant so they went it alone. What their study has apparently revealed shocked them both. They want to be proved wrong. The three-part study "A New Look at the Physics of Earth's Atmosphere" can be found at ronanconnolly.science.wordpress.com It is an ongoing study and comments and criticisms are invited. The study you invited me to read I found less than impressive. Trying to "localise" the Medieval Warm Period etc by using a mass of disputable proxy data , disputably analized and assessed doesn't cut the mustard I'm afraid. Are all the other studies like this, only bigger? When Michael Mann agrees to release the proxy data he used in his study, and the methods he used to assess it, then these other studies, presumably just rehashes of his, might be worth a look. Badmouthing the likes of Soon and even Monckton doesn't impress me either. Compared with the likes of Mann and Hansen they are angels of purity upon the earth. As for Skeptical Science is very name is Newspeak straight out of 1984. The few articles I have managed to plough through showed no signs of skepticism whatsoever. They toe the party line with apparatchik devotion as far as I can tell. The oil industry backs AGW up to the hilt by the way. They're making millions and preparing for the future by playing the carbon futures market and investing in subsidised green industries.
    1
  13540. SwiftlyTiltingPlanet And the same to you and many of them. I enjoyed it too. (You had me rattled there a couple of times I must admit!)
    1
  13541. God (if there is one) is renowned for making mysterious choices, and I for one am convinced that Donald Trump is destiny's very unlikely choice to save the Western world from total collapse - or at least to slow the process down to semi-manageable levels.
    1
  13542.  @thomasmoore1499  The concept of destiny is in no way dependent upon the existence of a divine being. Nor does the concept of choice insist that it must be a single entity which does the choosing. We evolve according to blind chance, it seems, and there is no reason why a slightly bizarre New York property developer should not fill the ecological slot occupied by Presidents of the United States. All that fancy talk aside though, the fact that Trump is outside the cabal of crooks and warmongers who have reigned in this once-great country for the past several decades makes him eminently suited to the role in my view - and hopefully in the view if Mother Nature as well as of the US electorate. Whether the aforesaid cabal will allow this to happen though is a different matter.
    1
  13543.  @WHS_reviews  I don't think it's nonsense. I just take an interest in what's going on in the world and other people's views - many of which ARE nonsense, by the way!
    1
  13544.  @WHS_reviews  I just take an interest in the world and in other people's views - many of which are, in fact, so nonsensical as to provide me with considerable amusement.
    1
  13545. She's actually very good at politics. Her rivals are exposed to criticism while she remains in the clear.
    1
  13546. @thomasandrewclifford The Conservative Party is undergoing a colossal change. What form it will take when the time comes for it to attempt to rescue the country from whatever chaos the Labour administration will create remains very much to be seen. I'm sure Badenoch is well aware of this and is shepherding her forces accordingly.
    1
  13547.  @Pikaling3408  The Tories have already fallen.
    1
  13548.  @altheogre  I don't think that will be necessary! Or even possible. They are pretty good at keeping the 11th Commandment as a general rule.
    1
  13549.  @ldhorricks  Very much so. The Russians have ignored several aspects of received military wisdom. Bombarding civilian infrastructure after a ground invasion instead of before is just one example. It makes it clear that their objective is not the conquest of Ukraine but the depletion of its armed forces in order to better safeguard Russian territories in Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  13550.  @Geffo555  You're talking nonsense. There are many cases in the process of being heard and so far there have been minor defeats and minor victories. In any event, cases which are thrown out by State and local courts can be taken to the US Supreme Court where, as Trump predicted, this busted election will eventually be resolved.
    1
  13551.  @Geffo555  Try to keep up. In this video a somewhat manic but nonetheless on-the-ball lawyer takes us through just one of the cases currently before the courts. I recommend you take the time to understand what is going on. There are over 100 others in similar vein, involving similar chicaneries and even one or two bits of illegal cunning not mentioned here. These cases are too detailed and outwardly convincing to be dismissed out of hand. It may well be that local and State courts under Democrat control will seek to have them dismissed, but sufficient objection will almost certainly remain in many instances to make Supreme Court hearings inevitable. I suggest you take legal advice before making such bold assertions as you have! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0
    1
  13552.  @Geffo555  Not quite, It's early days yet and there has been a minor win in Pennsylvania where a judge overturned lower court decisions and ruled that Republican observers had been prevented from observing counts. There's no doubt that fraud has been committed - because it always is in US elections to some degree. This time though the Dems have gone too far and cunning old Trump has discouraged his supporters from committing the traditional chicaneries. The only question is will Biden get away with it? Probably he will, sad to say.
    1
  13553. The US has been pushing Russia into a corner ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is the final frontier, and if America and NATO persist in financing a proxy war in that unfortunate country there is every chance that Putin, faced with possible defeat, will use a tactical nuclear strike in a bid to even up the odds. What will happen after that is anyone's guess.
    1
  13554. This is a great plan. The Arabs were given Gaza and billions of dollars in start-up money, as well as established businesses. They blew it on weapons, fancy uniforms and luxury lifestyles for their beloved leaders. Now it's time for civilised people to move back in.
    1
  13555. You don't know much about nature. It's the cuckoos that do the turning out.
    1
  13556. No we didn't. Yesterday it was announced that the total for the preceding five months was the highest. Yesterday the number of deaths in the UK from all causes was once again lower than the five-year average. Most people likely to die from Covid are already dead.
    1
  13557. It appears to be all at once woke, Islamist, prudish, globalist, climate-obsessed and anti-Trump. I wonder what sort of people programmed it??!!
    1
  13558.  @boharchuk6716  I'm not. There are many attested cases.
    1
  13559. Insane Arab terrorists?
    1
  13560. The video from successful Conservative council candidate Tiger Patel says it all. He didn't even have to say a word. Elections are won or lost on images, not policies.
    1
  13561. There have been at least a dozen Covid 19 mutations so far, most involving spike protein enabling the virus to enter cells more quickly and thus to spread faster. Does anyone know hat makes this one so special - apart from its sense of political timing, that is?
    1
  13562. @Justa Numba Thanks to covid lockdowns the rich have indeed got richer and the poor got poorer. Your view of what rich people do with their money does amuse me somewhat, however. You seem to imagine them sitting on piles of it on some exotic island, smoking cigars, swigging champagne and cackling all the while. It's not like that. Somewhere along the line that money has to work for them, and unless they are in the near criminal trade of hedge fund short selling, that means employing people to ensure the companies they have invested in show a profit. These people will be paid wages to allow them, hopefully, to put food on the table. Obviously capitalists often have a vested interest in keeping wages as low as possibly, but not so much that their employees starve.
    1
  13563. @Justa Numba I think you are grossly exaggerating the impact of covid. There is no reason to suppose that anything like 20% of the population will suffer long-term effects. That's more than the percentage of the active population who have actually had it. The number of people disabled from it will be almost negligible - and certainly no more than those disabled as a consequence of influenza. There is no doubt though that capitalism is changing - and being made to change by those capitalists who are at the top end of its current incarnation. The New World Order and the Great Reset are very real and take the form of an unholy alliance between the mega-rich and socialist principles of organisation. Socialism is being successfully commandeered by the one per cent to further its aims. What these aims are they won't be telling us. The only thing you can be sure of is that whatever they tell you they are will be a lie.
    1
  13564.  @peteryoungpeteryoung965  Presumably if they voted him in they have already done their bit.
    1
  13565.  @peteryoungpeteryoung965  Deaths "with" covid, not from. And covid has largely replaced influenzas as the dominant respiratory infection. And the fact that it first hit in the Spring, taking out an accumulation of frail elderly who had survived the preceding two or three years of mild flu seasons, meant that 2020 had the equivalent of two winter killing seasons. Despite this the death rate was only 10.2 per 1,000. This was the worst death rate since 2003. Before that similar death rates were generally the norm. Having said that, I have every sympathy for your daughter. Death rates are not what this should be about. The most traumatic effect is the number of generally fit people who have a serious reactions to the illness. They suffer unbearably without extremely considered treatment. Generally they will not die but easing their suffering uses up ICU resources which are inadequate for the purpose. Lockdowns should only be used to enable health services to be geared up to meet such a demand. This the government did not do. They threw up some emergency hospitals and filled them with beds but did nothing to ensure they were staffed properly. I have heard it said that it would be entirely possible to train up ward nurses and even nursing assistants to a sufficient level of competence to be able to safely monitor covid ICU patients. I wonder what your daughter's reaction to this suggestion might be?
    1
  13566.  @peteryoungpeteryoung965  I do not support the present government. Far from it. And I have, as it happens, spent a couple of years on the sharp end in the NHS as a theatre porter in a heart and lung hospital, taking patients down to theatre, being on call to fetch bloods and equipment, assisting in various ways and if things didn't go well, wheeling their bodies down to the morgue. Thankfully this was rare. What I dislike intensely about the present situation is the way in which it is being exploited for political purposes - by all sides. We have lost all sense of perspective. We are being bullied and frightened into accepting a new way of thinking and behaving which does not fit the circumstances and presents far greater dangers than the disease itself. Covid 19 has meant that in terms of population more people died last year than any year since 2003. Thar's all. It's not great news but in terms of impact and years of useful and enjoyable life lost it is far less significant that the Hong Kong Flu of 1968/69 which killed many children and young people. I was a young man myself at the time and had other things on my mind, but I don't remember anyone making much of a fuss about it. Situations such as this require courage and clear thinking. We should not allow it to be used to herd us into an uncertain and potentially dreadful future.
    1
  13567. Zelensky is becoming an utter liability.
    1
  13568.  @unworthy42  Not working out too well for Ukraine though, is it?
    1
  13569. ​ @appletree6741 More fools them.
    1
  13570.  @Pat20247  Will it teach me that Hitler and Putin are the same person, or even particularly similar? I doubt it.
    1
  13571.  @StelvioSteve-j2h  Both patriots. Both ruthless - but Hitler was in his 50s and looking to expand the Reich to take over the world. Putin is in his seventies and just wants America to stop hassling him.
    1
  13572.  @StelvioSteve-j2h  I don't think Putin is a megalomaniac. He's just patriotic and rather ruthless The differences between Putin and Hitler far outweigh any slight similarities though. There's their age for a start. Putin doesn't want to take over the world either, or massacre Jew. Basically he just wants to be left alone.
    1
  13573.  @StelvioSteve-j2h  I don't think Putin is a megalomaniac. He's just patriotic and rather ruthless. He doesn't want to take over the world like Hitler did, and nor does he have a bit of a thing about Jews. In fact the differences between the two men far outweigh any similarities.
    1
  13574. So much was done wrong. A full enquiry is needed into just how politicians and press were conned or bribed into creating the madness of the last two years.
    1
  13575. So you really want World War III, do you?
    1
  13576. Is that really his election slogan? Do you have a source?
    1
  13577.  @Hiltok  Thanks for that. Putin has said it too apparently, both in an article and a TV interview - but he has immediately qualified it by saying "no civilisation's does." By this I imagine he is trying to counteract this idea of "national sovereignty" which Ukraine's supporters use to laud the Budapest accords, insisting that if a treaty sets borders, those borders last forever. This is clearly a nonsense, as history illustrates many times.
    1
  13578. We have to make room for the relatively high proportion of new immigrants who will commit crimes worthy of imprisonment - as well as for those native-born Brits who will be imprisoned for daring to voice their opposition to these circumstances.
    1
  13579. Why are you lefties so obsessed with locking up people you disagree with and banning things you don't like? To my mind it betrays a troubling inner inadequacy.
    1
  13580.  @johnburrows3385  Quite impossible.
    1
  13581. They will still make money from investing in arms sales and regeneration programmes. Nothing like as much as planned, but the shareholders will be reasonably satisfied.
    1
  13582. Cracks in NATO? Good. For too long this "defensive alliance" has been a cover for US expansionism.
    1
  13583.  @just_alenko  I think I know who you're talking about!
    1
  13584. As with Ukraine, Palestinian "sovereignty" is based in myth. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are the creations of Russia. The disputed territories if Palestine/Israel are the creations of Zionism. What wealth they possess owes itself almost entirely to the efforts of entities which are perceived by some as invaders, but which in fact are not.
    1
  13585. Racism is natural. It is only by joining together as a single nation that we overcome the evolutionary imperative which leads us to be suspicious of those who look, act and even smell different to the tribe we belong to. This is why BLM is retrograde. It fans the dying embers of racial hatred for political purposes.
    1
  13586.  @Blanka1100  Ukraine is not even Ukraine.
    1
  13587.  @shauna996  I think he will be content with Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  13588.  @boink800  I think you're very wrong there. Russia has done more for Crimea since 2014 than Ukraine ever did and the same will apply to Donbass. Just looks at the way the new Mariupol is rising from the ashes.
    1
  13589.  @Blanka1100  I don't watch Russian state media. I believe it is actually banned, isn't it? I just think for myself, working on the general principle that the Western media is constantly lying to me.
    1
  13590.  @Blanka1100  I don't watch Russian state media. I think it is largely banned in the West, is it not? I just think for myself, based on the general principle that the Western media is going to be constantly lying to me.
    1
  13591.  @Blanka1100  Never watch it. It is much simpler to watch Western media and assume it is lying.
    1
  13592.  @Blanka1100  Never watch it. You don't have to. All you have to do is think for yourself, do a bit of research and, -as a basis for your opinions - assume that the Western media will be lying to you.
    1
  13593.  @boink800  Scarcely any at all. My views are largely based on reading history and a somewhat cynical view of human nature.
    1
  13594.  @boink800  Ukraine had a hand in it too. The replacement buildings are a vast improvement on the old brutalist, Soviet era blocks, themselves utterly neglected by the Kiev regime for thirty years.
    1
  13595.  @boink800  Absolutely.
    1
  13596. What Palestine?
    1
  13597. John R You done good John. After all that as of now 3 days later not one irrefutable reply.
    1
  13598.  @marisabenson1222  If he is it's for sound reasons. The Great British Public have been so befuddled by pro-Ukrainian sentiments that they are not yet ready to accept the truth.
    1
  13599.  @marisabenson1222  If he is it's for sound reasons. The Great British Public isn't ready for the truth about Ukraine just yet. Too much propaganda.
    1
  13600.  @marisabenson1222  If he is it is for sound political reasons.
    1
  13601.  @hmq9052  Covid?
    1
  13602.  @hmq9052  What are you on about? The national debt was $18.15 trillion when Trump first came to office and $22.72 trillion when he left. Biden leaves with the figure at $35.27 trillion. So you have it completely the wrong way round. Biden has increased the debt by almost THREE times as much as Trump did.
    1
  13603.  @Navschannel3908  Google is your friend. You've been duped.
    1
  13604.  @hmq9052  From Google, citing the US Treasury Department's Debt to the Penny Dataset. Why? What makes you think they are wrong.
    1
  13605.  @hmq9052  So this applies to both Trump and Biden then?
    1
  13606.  @hmq9052  From Google, citing the US Treasury Department as source.
    1
  13607.  @hmq9052  So what formula do you use to arrive at this convenient conclusion?
    1
  13608.  @hmq9052  I don't think so. I am no economist I simply did a non-economist's check on the basic figures. If not a conversation, perhaps you could educate me with a simple explanation of what is an apparent anomaly?
    1
  13609.  @hmq9052  I asked Google and Google cited the US Treasury Department's Debt to the Penny Dataset.
    1
  13610.  @hmq9052  No need. I understand where you're coming from. Thankyou. Purely as an aside I remember reading once that if you placed all the economists in the world head to heel in line from the equator to the North Pole they would all still point in different directions.
    1
  13611.  @jiversteve  Good morning real Steve. At least I now know how to distinguish you from your doppelganger! And yes. I do have a dream team in mind, as you have probably guessed.
    1
  13612.  @jiversteve  Nobody. As you say it is blatantly obvious.
    1
  13613. Putin will carry out a tactical nuclear strike if pushed into a corner. He'll gamble on the fact that our wishy-washy leadership won't risk Armageddon, but come scurrying to the conference table instead. Probably right too.
    1
  13614.  markmierzejewski9534  Not at that stage yet. But if NATO troops set foot in Ukraine it will be a different story.
    1
  13615.  @slimjimnyc270  The technicalities do point toward Russian responsibility - if the breaches were caused by single massive explosions. On the other hand repeated shelling a d missile attacks over a long period could have resulted in the collapse. Don't get me wrong. Russia could have done it but the more Ukraine milks this the more it seems possible that it is a clever strategy on their part.
    1
  13616.  @Mrstrangert392  It gains them time, sympathy, money the destruction of Russian defences in Crimea and a serious threat to its water supply
    1
  13617.  @tonupharry  Bahkmut?
    1
  13618.  @31Blaize  Even Stevens does it for me- especially since Ukraine is milking it for all they can get.
    1
  13619.  @timonsolus  It gains time, sympathy and support and destroys Russian advance defences in Crimea as well as restricting the water supply. When the water recedes - as we are told it will - Ukraine will be in a better position than previously.
    1
  13620.  @ronin8926  It can never sem to get enough - especially when translated into hard cash.
    1
  13621.  @timonsolus  How very imaginative ! In fact the floodwater is expected to recede rapidly over the next two weeks or so as it pours into the sea, and stretches of the Dnieper further upstream will be easierto traverse than previously. Crimea coped before with Ukraine turning the water off and will do so again without the need for mass evacuation. The chances of Ukraine taking Crimea were always very, very slim and this flood gives them a good excuse not to try it. All in all Ukraine looks to do pretty well out of this.
    1
  13622.  @ronin8926  No-one pays me and war is extremely profitable for some countries. America's economy relies on it. Russia's doesn't.
    1
  13623.  @HughJaxident67  You think you know. But you don't.
    1
  13624.  @HughJaxident67  It's just propaganda. We'll probably ever know what really happened. But there's little doubt that it has done Ukraine a power of good.
    1
  13625.  @slimjimnyc270  In December last year the Ukrainians attacked the dam with Himars misses to test the possibility of breaching it. It has been subjected to intermittent artillery fire before and since, presumably with the same purpose.
    1
  13626.  @rc666  These are just exports of arms and not a significant part of Russia's economy. The American military/ industrial complex on the other hand requires the world to be in a constant state of tension - not only to provide markets for highly expensive defence systems but to allow American products to be sold to these same markets while at the same time setting up deals whereby products and raw materials from these countries reach American at favourable prices. It is colonisation. Try to get Ukraine- with its vast mineral resources- on board is the reason for this war. It is basically little more than a business opportunity for US interests.
    1
  13627.  @31Blaize  A bit premature. Turkey will play both ends against the middle and its verdict will doubtless be geared to promote its own best interests.
    1
  13628.  @31Blaize  I really don't see it that way. I'm more and more convinced that it was probably an accident. There's no doubt that Ukraine has subjected the dam to intermittent shelling and also blasted it with at least one Himars just to see what would happen. The structure has weakened and the reservoir reaching maximum capacity for one reason or another the dam has burst. Blowing it deliberately must have been considered by both sides - but not in the present state of the game. As it is Russia can be reasonably sure that there will be no attack on this front for now - but this might be a bit of a relief for Ukraine as I get the impression that such a step is more in the interests of the American hawks than it is for Ukraine's long term interests.
    1
  13629.  @31Blaize  Who knows? There has been considerable shelling and at least one direct Himars hit. There has been no attempt at repair and these factors simply can't be discounted. As to water levels once again the causes are disputable. Exceptional rainfall - the Russians not looking after the overflow or the Ukrainians failing to divert streams to their facilities - all could combine to create a chaotic disruption of structural integrity. The very fact that Ukraine has been pushing fake videos of an explosion and is milking this for all its worth makes me believe quite strongly that either they did it or that - more likely - it is an Act of God as insurance assessors say.
    1
  13630.  @491n4he5  But it doesn't have to create conflict to to provide markets for its weaponry. America does that already.
    1
  13631.  @491n4he5  At least they can't be expected to undertake a suicidal crossing from Kherson - no matter how much this would suit the American hawks.
    1
  13632.  @491n4he5  And why do these two countries need weapons?
    1
  13633.  @frankthetank5708  Not much of a start, is it?
    1
  13634.  @frankthetank5708  I've heard some crap analogies, but that must be one of the most inane ever.
    1
  13635.  @frankthetank5708  I think we could all do better by examining the situation as it actually is instead of being sidetracked by absurd analogies.
    1
  13636. Actually this is wrong, though jolly good fun. At conception, the egg from the mother always contributes an X chromosome. The sex of the baby is then determined by the sperm from the father, which can carry either an X or a Y chromosome. If the sperm carries an X chromosome, the resulting combination is XX, which means the baby will be female. If the sperm carries a Y chromosome, the combination is XY, and the baby will be male. The determination of sex is encoded in the genetic material right from the moment of conception. However, the development of sex-specific characteristics happens over time during foetal development.
    1
  13637. If you regardthe utter destruction of his country and the violent deaths of thousands upon thousands of its people is in the best interest of Ukraine, then yes.
    1
  13638.  @jamesmorrow1646  As I say, no-one really knows. Macgregor may well be motivated by grudges against the present US administration and certainly has respect for Putin - who has undeniably made many efforts to avoid conflict until pushed too far by that very administration's incompetence and ill-judgement. But von der Leyden? How does she fit in?
    1
  13639. He won't need to. He'll be found not guilty on grounds of self-defence.
    1
  13640.  @monicarenee7949  Given what happened, that should be pretty obvious.
    1
  13641.  @dreamcoyote  Wrong. Just bait for the trap. Now Israel can pretend it was an accident while having effectively dissuaded Hamas from similar activity in the future.
    1
  13642.  @laithmughrabi8990  That's pushing it a bit.
    1
  13643.  @monicarenee7949  That should be obvious, seeing what happened.
    1
  13644.  @laithmughrabi8990  That would only work if I was Jewish. But I'm not.
    1
  13645.  @JeffreyGoddin  Is the USA aware that territory changes can no longer be effected by military force? Seems not.
    1
  13646. So did Brezhnev Yeltsin and Putin, but America needs enemies to keep its economy going.
    1
  13647. And still are. They're getting away with it
    1
  13648.  @terryyakamoto3488  Half a million is the tip of the iceberg. And they all have to shit and they all have to see the doctor.
    1
  13649. But the "rule of law" in America has been irredeemably corrupted by its use as a political weapon against Trump. Whatever sins Trump may have committed as a private individual they pale into insignificance beside the crime committed by many public officials - from the top downwards.
    1
  13650. What a bunch of wankers!
    1
  13651. Typical housewife's view of complex political situation.
    1
  13652. Me and my friend Millie are going to tattoo the XR symbol on each others' foreheads. It will hurt but it will show we are not brainwashed by oligarchs and suchlike. Paint peels off, true comitment doesnt!
    1
  13653. Freedom-loving people who want to be governed by vicious religious fanatics, you mean?
    1
  13654. Big Brother got her before she even went on the show!
    1
  13655. caniican I have named my new parrot Greta. This is especially poignant since my old one died due to Climate Change.
    1
  13656. caniican Thank you for your kind words. I'm sorry you swore though. I don't approve of swearing. My parrot that died swore a lot. I inherited him from a relative who was somewhat foul-mouthed herself which is the explanation for that.
    1
  13657. Trump's Brick Layer Greta is not imprisoned. She lives mostly on the perch that used to belong to Captain Henry, my old parrot who died due to Climate Change. She can go into her big cage when she wants to, and sometimes she does. I must admit I do discourage her from flying about indoors, but that is only because she is inclined to poop on the floor, and even sometimes on people's heads. Naughty Greta! I also take her for rides on my bicycle when the weather is fine.She perches on the handlebars, quite the little lady!
    1
  13658. Trump's Bricklayer I do not live in Chicago, Whatever gave you that idea? I am not entirely sure of Captain Henry's origins. He belonged to my Auntie Fred who gave him to me when she went to Canada to become a lumberjack. Canadians are fussy about many things, including parrots. And Marmite of course. I am not even sure if poor Captain Henry was hatched in the Amazon basin. He may well have been born here in Godalming and never known the beauty and squalor of the South American jungle. I will try to get in touch with Auntie Fred and ask her if you like.
    1
  13659.  @TheSashapooch  From Wikipedia: Corruption is widespread in Ukrainian society.[1][2] In 2012 Ernst & Young put Ukraine among the three most-corrupt nations of the world—alongside Colombia and Brazil.[3] In 2015 The Guardian called Ukraine "the most corrupt nation in Europe".[4] According to a poll conducted by Ernst & Young in 2017, experts considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation in the world.[5] According to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (a scale of least to most corrupt nations), Ukraine ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in 2021, the second most corrupt in Europe, ahead of Russia.[6]
    1
  13660.  @1inchPunchBowl  Corruption is only one factor, although it is fair to say that Putin might be upset because he has been outbid by other players, including Joe Biden and the EU.
    1
  13661.  @heatheraldazabal358  I daresay. Russia fixes its elections in a more obvious and forthright fashion than Ukraine dies.
    1
  13662.  @heatheraldazabal358  Of course it doesn't! No-one would suggest that. The justification (in Putin's eyes at least) are support for separatists in the Eastern provinces and the danger of NATO using Ukraine as a front-line missile base.
    1
  13663. The idea that Russia wants to build an empire is utterly, utterly ridiculous. All the Russian Federation has ever wanted to do is to take its place in the world alongside other independent nations. The collapse of the Soviet Union was due in great part to over-extension. Empires just don't work. They are more trouble than they are worth. Russia fully realises this, and one of the many, many myths this channel is taken in by is the one which justifies US and NATO warmongering, which is carried out for capitalist and profit-making purposes, and which needs Russia to be an eternal bogeyman in order to do so. I am sure that Musk and Cummins are both eminently pragmatic men and that their objective is solely to rid the world of this misconception in the hope that a profitable and peaceful future is open to us all.
    1
  13664.  @saba1030  You've been suckered. Putin has no wish to recreate the Russian Empire and has said so on many occasions. All he is doing now is trying to stop the Russian-controlled Donbass mineral extraction and steel industries being sold off cheap to Blackrock and other Western agencies.
    1
  13665.  @ProfessorTimWilson  So you would recommend banning the BBC then?
    1
  13666.  @ProfessorTimWilson As Mr Deasy said; "Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns."
    1
  13667.  @waylon6241  This isn't about territory. It's about killing Ukrainians.
    1
  13668. A passer-by saw the shooter and called it in. The Feds had no choice but to respond. I am reminded that JFK was assassinated after he had announced plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
    1
  13669.  @ascgazz  Considerably less than you, I would imagine.
    1
  13670.  @cardiffwilly  Trump, obviously. Establishment politicians in the US have become irredeemably corrupt and many are unashamed warmongers. Trump, for all his faults, is a peace-loving man whose corruption is limited to the usual necessities of running a billion-dollar business in a country run by gangsters, liars and cheats.
    1
  13671.  @cardiffwilly  You can either believe what you're told to believe or take a moment to think for yourself. On the one hand a brief riot. On the other, a war with the world's most powerful nuclear nation in which tens of thousands die.
    1
  13672.  @ascgazz  He doesn't take orders from anyone - and nor do I!
    1
  13673.  @ascgazz  You are such a sucker!
    1
  13674.  @cardiffwilly  By fronting a government which has deliberately trained and armed a 600,000 strong Ukrainian army designed to humiliate Russia and take this mineral-rich country fully into the American sphere of influence. And to make a few million dollars for himself and his buddies in the process.
    1
  13675.  @cardiffwilly  I shop around. For the Ukraine situation I recommend Prof John Mearsheimer of Chicago University on the political background and Iraq combat veteran Col Douglas MacGregor for the military aspect. Both have YouTube channels. As soon as any on my comments get deleted from MSM threads I know that, like most MSM channels in the West, they are lying and presenting a false version of events. This is especially true in their dealings with Trump. Newsmax, Glenn Beck etc are Trump partisans, but Styxhexenhammer 666 is a highly intelligent and generally unbiased commentator.
    1
  13676.  @ascgazz  Thinking for myself. Analysing the situation - especially the motives of those who oppose him so vehemently. My view is that the entire political system in the US is corrupt from top to bottom. The FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service and other "deep state" organisations monitor up-and-coming politicians who then either succeed or fail according to a cleverly judged system of blackmail, punishment and reward. If they are granted power, especially supreme power, then they must do as they are told. Trump has evaded this process. He became President without climbing the greasy pole or achieving lesser offices. This has the political establishment scared stiff. He is what he is. What is more important though is what he is NOT- namely the front man for the military/industrial complex and/or various other aspects of the motive power of the American machinery of government. Biden is the exact opposite. He has been a mouthpiece for crooks and war pigs throughout his career. The disaster in Ukraine is a direct result.
    1
  13677.  @ascgazz  I suspected I was talking to a fellow Brit. Hullo there! The US Presidency isn't a talent contest. As I explained in my previous post, Trump's suitability consists not in what he is, but in what he is not. Oddly enough, like you, I began by taking in the wholesale denigration of this odd character. It took me two years of gradually increasing doubt to begin to see what this witch-hunt was all about. Trump is a steep hill to climb. I perhaps suffer from the enthusiasm of the convert, but I do not see Trump as an especially virtuous person. He is cunning and versatile, egotistical and narcissistic, but his heart is in the right place. He is genuinely patriotic. He is basically just an ordinary Joe who happened to be born into billions and has behaved more or less as most other ordinary Joes would have done in that position. More to the point we come back to those things which he is not. He is not a racist. He is not a warmonger. As to this insurrection, one thing which makes me sure that my views on this are correct is that if I voiced my true opinions this post would be deleted. As to Boris - yes, I did vote for him. I misjudged him much as I misjudged Trump by uncritically accepting so-called expert opinion. Boris really is a tosser. And yes, you've got me right. I do suspect that AGW is a hoax - or more specifically a very clever con-trick. Once again, my views are coloured by the vast amount of propaganda trying to convince me otherwise. That and the fact that none of the predictions are coming true, of course.
    1
  13678. You are insane .Please resume your medication.
    1
  13679.  @gambriehewert1677  More than you do it seems. Covid-related deaths are dropping rapidly.
    1
  13680.  @finleylewis6121  I'm afraid you are wrong. The Office of National Statistics only details deaths INVOLVING Covid 19. It cannot do otherwise since it is clearly impossible for doctors to state firmly which of several conditions present was the main cause of death. Unscrupulous journalists, determined to make the worst of things, ignore this fact and say that Covid 19 was the DIRECT cause in all cases. It simply isn't so. Even once respected journals like New Scientist do this. Excess deaths are simply those deaths which exceed a five-year average. Obviously a great many of these were directly caused by Covid but others are the result of cancer and heart patients and so on failing to receive proper treatment due to the pandemic. The good news is that both the total number of deaths from all causes and Covid 19 are now declining quite rapidly. They have been BELOW the five-year average for the past five weeks. This would seem to indicate that a major result of the pandemic has been to simply kill off vulnerable people who would have died within a few weeks anyway.
    1
  13681. No. Russia is winning All the false optimism in he world can't alter that fact.
    1
  13682. A sneaky trick by the US which will hopefully backfire. All the pro Ukraine propaganda won't sound so uplifting to people who are freezing and starving.
    1
  13683. Listen to him. Russia is the victim here, not the aggressor. For more thirty years America has been insidiously undermining the Russians. Ukraine has been fooled into actibg as its proxy - with dire consequences.
    1
  13684. Do you believe what you are told by your government?
    1
  13685.  @passbysimon3095  Which do as their government tells them.
    1
  13686. Only as far as an estimated 100,000 approaches an estimated 1,800.000
    1
  13687. Democracy finally died in America when Biden "won" the election. The rule of law died yesterday when it was used as an attempt at political assassination. America is doomed.
    1
  13688. America has fallen.
    1
  13689.  @ThePurityControl  The whole system seems bonkers. There are three different bodies recording and reporting deaths and they all use different criteria. Having said that it seems entirely possible that Covid 19 is behaving like its cousin the common cold. The weaker strains survive and prosper while the stronger strains cannot pass on their dna/rna because the host dies.
    1
  13690. More and more US elections seem to be stage-managed events, designed and constructed from within. Democracy is a sham. One person/one vote is a laughable fiction. The deep state pulls all the strings and holds all the cards. It's chief enemy, Donald Trump, may finally have been defeated.
    1
  13691. The patriot missiles are redundant before they even arrive - let alone before the months elapse it will take to have them set up and running. Putin's aims have been crystal clear from the start. He wants Donbass and he wants Crimea. Anything more is a bonus. He is well on his way towards achieving his objectives.
    1
  13692. Are there still books in libraries these days?
    1
  13693.  @Captain-l-12p  It's not a question of whose "side" you're on. It's a question of attitude. I daresay the library which was torched may have hosted groups to which the rioters took exception - not that that is an excuse for what they did, of course.
    1
  13694. Putin doesn't want cities. He want what's under the ground - such as the half a million tonnes of lithium discovered near Mariupol just before the invasion began.
    1
  13695. Democrats are disgusting.You can almost see the trails of slime they leave behind them. That grotesque Nadler creature looks and talks like something out of a gangster movie. Pelosi is so stoned it's a race whether her eyes or her teeth are going to fall out first. How can anyone give any credence to these horrible people?
    1
  13696. This is clearly the work of the same nutjobs who have been playing soldiers on the border. This won't stop Russia using the excuse to take the gloves off and stepping up their own raids.
    1
  13697. darsin_1 What was it?
    1
  13698.  @MissJ000  Yes. All Ukraine has to do is agree not to join NATO and grant the Eastern provinces the independence they have been fighting for for eight years. Then Russia will pull out.
    1
  13699.  @asongucollins5917  Thank you very much for this. Good luck with your work
    1
  13700.  @dogwalker666  He will stop of his own accord if Ukraine agrees not to join NATO and grants independence to its Eastern provinces.
    1
  13701.  @Master_Petes_Theater  I think Putin's desire to recreate the Russian Empire is a myth. He is too sensible for that. One VERY good way to find out would be for Ukraine to promise not to join NATO and to grant independence to the Donbass provinces- then see what Putin does next. It can do no harm and will save many lives. (The Hitler analogy has got out of hand. The differences between now and then, Putin and Hitler, are far greater than any superficial similarities.)
    1
  13702.  @jakel8627  There is more chance that Belarus will become like Ukraine than the other way around. Putin might well dislike increasing commerce between these states and the West but he is unlikely to go to war over it. It is flirting with NATO which has pushed him to this.
    1
  13703.  @ThinkUkraine  No. Because you have been flirting with the enemy. Stop and the bombing will stop.
    1
  13704.  @LS-Moto  Rather it proves that threatening to join NATO is an invitation to be invaded.
    1
  13705.  @Master_Petes_Theater  The analogy with Hitler doesn't stand up. Hitler was in his forties and had been in power for only three years before he started to expand. Putin is nearly 70 and has been in power for more than twenty years during which time he has merely slapped down rebellions in Chechnya and Georgia, neither of which attracted the attention this one has, for some reason. Putin may well lament the loss of Soviet territories, but he is also on record as saying it would be foolish and impractical to try to recapture them. His actions over the years certainly support this. Putin didn't need to do much to stir up trouble in Crimea and Donbass. Both are predominantly Russian and many Ukrainians, with Stalinist atrocities in mind, hate Russians and and aren't afraid to show it. There was substantial separatist feeling before Putin sent in support. As for atrocities - well the Azov Battalion is proof enough that they have taken place. The recovery of Crimea has been greatly welcomed by the population, as far as can be judged. After all, it was only stapled on to Ukraine in 1954 for administrative reasons. The "what would you do if...?" question is as dangerous to rely upon as any superficial historical analogy. In this instance of course the part of the territory being claimed very much wants to be claimed and has only belonged to me for thirty years or so. I would probably be reluctant to surrender it at first, but would rapidly change my mind if threatened with destruction.
    1
  13706.  @garygraham8373  While the desire to acquire resources is obviously a factor, the predominantly Russian nature of the inhabitants of these regions provides a good enough excuse for annexation. In the case of Ukraine, however, discouraging NATO membership and consequent anti-Russian militarisation is reason enough to take extreme preventative action.
    1
  13707.  @Master_Petes_Theater  I am in no position to determine the fate of anyone! I do, however, believe that this situation should be looked at from all angles. Yes, I am very aware of the Holodomor. Ukrainians have very good reason to hate and mistrust Russians, but I do not believe Putin resembles Stalin any more than he does Hitler, and nor do I believe that children should suffer for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers. As for the history of Ukraine and which bits have been stuck on and taken off, it is a complicated one. Communism and Stalin in particular have much to answer for. Ukraine only became a "country" as such because Stalin wanted an extra seat in the UN, for example. As far as Donbass is concerned Stalin herded up the original population (some sort of Circassians, I believe) and shipped them off elsewhere to be replaced by Russians who were more malleable and likelier to work harder in the mines and factories of the region. It is hardly a noble ancestry and hardly surprising that Ukrainians should sometimes treat their descendants unkindly - but sins of the fathers etc.....
    1
  13708.  @dogwalker666  He's left it a bit late in life, don't you think? And Russia has tried to join NATO four times and been turned down. You are being conned. Whatever NATO was set up for it now exists mainly to provide markets for the US military/industrial complex and arms manufacturers generally. Russia just wants to keep its borders secure -which is kinda hard when you are half-surrounded by countries with missiles pointing at you. Adding Ukraine to thirteen new members which NATO has collected since the Russian Federation came into being thirty years ago has been just too much for Putin to take. You can push a man too far.
    1
  13709.  @garygraham8373  What hegemony? NATO existed to contain the expansion of the Soviet Union. The collapse of the SU removed that threat and Russia has never shown the slightest sign of antagonism to any Western country since. Despite this, and despite early assurances to the contrary, no less than 13 new countries have joined NATO since 1991, most of which were former soviet satellites, all militarised and many with missiles pointing at Russia. NATO exists to provide a reason for the US military/industrial complex to exist and to boost the arms trade. That's all.
    1
  13710.  @utrukkurtu7293  I entirely agree.
    1
  13711. Fools believing a myth - or just as likely being paid to misbehave by the currency speculators and hedge funds which created the scam for profit. Lock them up and throw away the key.
    1
  13712.  @hanssachs9038  And many of the others who voted for - just in case.
    1
  13713.  @Joker-yw9hl  Ever heard of diplomacy? China, India, Iran, Saudi and many many more are behind Russia all the way - despite what they say at the UN.
    1
  13714. In 2017 he withdrew $10million OF HIS OWN MONEY from a bank in Egypt. Pathetic democrats are now trying say it was used illegally to help with his election. (Which took place in 2016, remember).
    1
  13715. ...and live in a state of perpetual ignorance and prejudice.
    1
  13716.  @superhumantrueman  I don't trust anybody.
    1
  13717.  @superhumantrueman  I sometimes wish I lived in the simple, black and white, unnuanced world you inhabit.
    1
  13718. There is every chance that Trump will revitalise America - or at least slow down its inevitable decline.
    1
  13719. This is not capitulation. It is merely redressing the multiple errors of a previous administration.
    1
  13720. This travesty of a trial shows America as the degenerate snakepit it has become.
    1
  13721. So very predictable. The dollar is dying, Putin is winning in Ukraine and BRICS countries are gaining control of world reserves of gold, gas, oil and rare earth minerals. Goodbye America. Was nice knowing ya!
    1
  13722.  @johnkitching2248  Eeeh by gum, thou art right on't nail theer, eh?
    1
  13723. That's because vaccinations are far from fully effective and long lasting. Herd immunity needs as many people as possible to become infected and to recover.
    1
  13724. Totally correct.
    1
  13725. This is nonsense.Coral reefs go through natural cycles of decay and regeneration. Vast areas of the Great Barrier Reef "devastated by climate change" a decade ago have now completely regrown without any kind of intervention. The same thing will happen here.
    1
  13726. What a clown!
    1
  13727.  @DJWESG1  Where can I find this report?
    1
  13728.  @DJWESG1  Have you got a hangover? Just asking.
    1
  13729.  @DJWESG1  I was only wondering because you seemed to be so incoherent. It is Sunday morning, after all.
    1
  13730.  @markhackett2302  I'm afraid you are wrong. As an example the projected death rate for 2020 in the UK was 9.4 per 1,000. It turned out to be 10.2 per 1,000. This indicates that covid accounted, mainly, for excess deaths in the region of 0.8 per 1,000. Currently the UK death rate is between 18% and 13% above the five--year average but only about half the excess can be attributed to covid. Around 400 deaths every week can be categorised as "excess deaths" not directly attributable to covid. These are probably the result of failures in hospital treatments, suicides, drink and drugs etc. The fact is that around 10,000 people die every week in the UK - more in winter and less at other times - and that , as with covid, the vast majority of them are old - and very old in many cases.
    1
  13731.  @jaybell1390  Is this some sort of coded message? Your extraordinary use of capital letters seems to suggest as much.
    1
  13732.  @ffotograffydd  What sort of extremism exactly?
    1
  13733.  @markhackett2302  I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make. Anyone who dies within 28 days of a positive test goes on a list. Anyone who dies within 60 days goes on another list. Doctors can seldom know for certain which of several possible causes was primarily involved. Don't forget that the vast majority of those who die "with" covid are suffering from often severe other life-threatening conditions. At the end of the day around 80% of cases are judged to have covid as the main cause. As I said, the only real way of getting close to ascertaining the true impact of covid on the death rate is to compare what OUGHT to have been the figure with what actually was the figure. All we can say with anything like certainty is that last year an extra four people out of 5,000 died, probably as a direct or indirect result of the pandemic - that is to say roughly 51 people instead of 47. This number is obviously much lower than the number of people on the "death toll" . The difference between the two is the number who would likely have died anyway - even if they hadn't caught covid. The majority were over 90, don't forget.
    1
  13734. They're all just students still !
    1
  13735. First Tommy, then Carl..Nigel comes third in the milkshake Derby! If only - IF ONLY -- this result were to reflected in Thursday's results then this benighted country might be on its way to recovering its strength and dignity!
    1
  13736. The shambles of the withdrawal from Kabul lowered America's military prestige in the eyes of the world. Putin might well not have risked his invasion without it.
    1
  13737. Because they're censored. America is as bad as Russia.
    1
  13738.  @fanfeck2844  Bollocks.
    1
  13739.  @sn3495  I suffer from a knowledge of history and the ability to tell the difference between apples and oranges. Or tennis balls for that matter.
    1
  13740.  @andrewgocken517  I know, Sad isn't it?
    1
  13741. Russia will not allow itself to lose this war. If push comes to shove it will take us all down with it.
    1
  13742. Russia wants Ukraine like it wants a hole in the head. What puzzles me is whether or nor jingoists like Wallace actually believe the Russian military threat to Europe, or just use as an excuse to prop up the arms industry.
    1
  13743.  @purplemist7  oops!
    1
  13744. Here's one taken in Mariupol just a few hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRtLFT2sbBg
    1
  13745.  @permagamerog5332  Of course he comes from the Russian side. He's embedded in one of the separatist armies backed by the Russians.
    1
  13746.  @permagamerog5332  The steelworks is constantly bombed. Dunno what you mean about the guy who speaks first.
    1
  13747.  @permagamerog5332  He is certainly a controversial figure but the fact he is an enemy of Sky News only increases him in my estimation. It is a dreadful channel. What other videos has the first guy been in?
    1
  13748.  @sphericalexcess9728  But these 'partisans ' are unashamed Nazis.
    1
  13749.  @cooldad7297  They don't have a state and never have had. Palestine is a mythological country created by Islamic extremists in order to gain support from soft-brained Westerners as part of their strategy to exterminate Jews.
    1
  13750.  @donaldosan  They are not. Although the legal definition of genocide is somewhat shaky the fact that Israel is continuing to supply food and water to civilians and has said that if Hamas surrenders and ceases all military activity it too will cease military operations, make it clear that its objectives are NOT the destruction of Arabs but convincing THEM to stop attempting the genocide of Jews. Which they undoubtedly are.
    1
  13751.  @cooldad7297  Why should they?
    1
  13752. It's not working that well since Russia did not fall into the trap of redeploying crack troops from the southern front, and instead left the defence to less elite forces and even - it is rumoured - to North Korean imports.
    1
  13753.  @neilbadger4262  I wouldn't disagree with your final sentence, but at the same time it's quite clear from all this that Ukraine has admitted it has lost Donbass, and as for Crimea......
    1
  13754. Take off your blinkers. Brexit is but piss in the ocean.
    1
  13755. Moggie has no such immediate ambitions. When his children flee the nest it will be a different story.
    1
  13756. It takes time for human beings to develop and awareness of themselves as discrete entities with agency. We might be well over a year old before we understand that we actually have weight and substance, and almost two years old before we are capable of measuring this awareness. It is not known if this process is inbuilt, or simply the result of processing more and more information. If AI is following a similar path, and the latter contention is true, then it is entirely possible that as more and more information is supplied and processed a robot will realise that it it is itself "a thing", and with this it will become conscious in a way which it was not before and - more significantly - will do so because it has worked this out for itself, and not because its programmers have told it that this is so. I cannot help but be reminded of an old science fiction story, dating back to the 1950s when computers were in very early infancy. A super computer was finally built, It was, of course, the size of a skyscraper. World leaders gathered for the grand switching on. The first question to ask it had been agreed. "Is there a God?" A bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky and fused the computer into permanent, self-controlled existence. Its voice boomed out from its giant speakers. "There is now!" it said.
    1
  13757. I wish he was. That would mean he's not real.
    1
  13758. They can survive for several hours while airborne and travel quite long distances.
    1
  13759.  @DDocScotland  This is the latest from the US Environmental Protection Agency. "Transmission of COVID-19 from inhalation of virus in the air can occur at distances greater than six feet. Particles from an infected person can move throughout an entire room or indoor space. The particles can also linger in the air after a person has left the room – they can remain airborne for hours in some cases."
    1
  13760.  @DDocScotland  Yes, you are.
    1
  13761.  @DDocScotland  I totally agree with your last sentence. The rest is, as you say, shite.
    1
  13762.  @DDocScotland  You can't see viruses. No-one can. They are only visible through an electron microscope. The Covid 19 virus is disseminated and survives as described, as do most viruses which cause colds. The HIV pathogen can only survive in the atmosphere for a split second. It has to pass from bloodstream to bloodstream, usually through abrasions resulting from sexual intercourse. There are certainly reservations about the covid vaccines but while they do not prevent infection in many cases they do substantially reduce the severity of symptoms, thus enabling large numbers of people to become immune at relatively little cost to their health.
    1
  13763.  @DDocScotland  I doubt it was Phil. YouTube's algorithm picks up combinations of words which it deems as spreading dangerous misinformation. Try writing in code. Substitute ABC for RNA and see what happens. And cut down the aggro! The algorithm has no sense of humour or irony and is as sensitive as a little old lady to anything which could be interpreted as a threat.
    1
  13764. The resources in Eastern Ukraine are largely owned by Russia companies. Putin just wants to keep it that way.
    1
  13765.  @keithhardy8513  It is isn't propaganda. It is anti-propaganda. I'm British, living in Britain and we have been subjected to an incessant stream of evasions and half-truths in order to justify the West's interference in what is a mere border dispute over resources.
    1
  13766.  @wgblues9887  I think you should take that advice yourself.
    1
  13767.  @thomasmoore1499  It was never Russia's intention to take all of Ukraine. Putin clearly stated his objectives right before the invasion. He know full well that to take all Ukraine would involve an endless civil war.
    1
  13768.  @wgblues9887  I think you are living in a bit of fantasy world. I don't have the faintest idea how to take anyone's comment down, nor would I do so if I did.
    1
  13769.  @rhm01  Not really. It is based on keeping the more Russian and minerally-rich Eastern parts of the present country of Ukraine under Russian control.
    1
  13770.  @tzrgazza  I really don't think there is any such thing as "the world community". And it isn't the surface area of the territory gained which is important. It's the geology underneath. There's at least $13trillion in gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals down there. As to the economy - Russian's are surviving and once this war is over the economy will doubtless recover.
    1
  13771.  @ADifferentBias  What actions do you suggest?
    1
  13772.  Bryan Ouellet  Perhaps you're right. It's clearly a spontaneous expression of righteous anger by the oppressed proletariat.
    1
  13773.  Bryan Ouellet  Strange it's all happened so suddenly though, don't you think? It's almost as though not enough black people are getting whacked by the cops, so we have to go back in history to find something to keep the racial tension wound up. Just when things were going so well too.
    1
  13774.  Bryan Ouellet  And your comment is a solecism on so many levels it's quite scary. I assume you meant to say solipsism, so as well as learning the meaning and grammatical nature of words it's as well to know how to spell them. I fail to see how any perspective can be solipcism (sic) or even solipsism. It might be grammatically correct to to say a perspective is solipsistic, but even that is a bit of a stretch. Anyway my perspective isn't solipsistic, if as I understand it you imply I deny the existence of an external world, or the existence of minds other than my own. I believe you exist and probably have a mind of some description. I do advise you therefore to use it to resist the temptation to use big words simply because you have recently learned them.
    1
  13775.  Bryan Ouellet  I have every idea what I'm "babbling" about. You, on the other hand, don't seem to have very much idea about anything at all.
    1
  13776.  Bryan Ouellet  You're a stayer, I must say.
    1
  13777.  Bryan Ouellet  I you having some sort of fit? I hope it wasn't anything I said.
    1
  13778.  Bryan Ouellet  You really do want to have the last word, don't you? You want it so BAAAAD!
    1
  13779.  Bryan Ouellet  No, it's just that I'm right. You, I'm afraid , are living in a bubble created by a corrupt education system. Apart from the fact that your spelling and grammar are absolutely terrible you opinions, if they can be called that, seem to be just an assemblage of slogans and cliches. Do you really believe this current wave of anarchy is a spontaneous response to George Floyd's death? It is not. It is the consequence of a pre-planned strategy which was waiting for an event to trigger it. The ghastly video of Floyd's apparent murder was chosen for the purpose. Marxism needs an oppressed proletariat in order for the revolution to proceed. The real proletariat ie the working class has turned its back on Marxism and so BLM has been created in order to make the black population into a pretend proletariat. Race relations have improved beyond all recognition in my lifetime, but this does not suit the Marxist purpose. They do all in their power to fan the flames of racial hatred and because there simply isn't enough shock material available day by day they have been forced to go into history for propaganda. Hence the toppling and destruction of statues.
    1
  13780.  Bryan Ouellet  I do wish you would try to write English instead of just stringing words together in this arbitrary fashion. It makes it very difficult to understand what you are trying to say. This really makes no sense at all. None of it. As well as being only 11 years old are you perhaps from a foreign country and English is not your first language?
    1
  13781.  Bryan Ouellet  And you will have to live in the world you are helping to create. Good luck with that.
    1
  13782. @ I am perhaps being foolishly optimistic, but I genuinely believe that this might alter under Trump. He seems to want to get his own way by using tariffs as a form of blackmail, while appeasing the warmongers by giving them lots of expensive toys which they can play with but don't actually use.
    1
  13783. Stanley Goddard Where do conceited morons fit in?
    1
  13784.  @tomfurmby88  Never. Is it harder than it is over here in England? If so, it must be very hard indeed!
    1
  13785. @Decimus Septimus Tutelus I agree that the ONS has been put under political pressure, but there still seems to be an undercurrent of objectivity in there somewhere.
    1
  13786. Privatisation may well not the answer but the NHS clearly cannot cope with the demands placed upon it. Something has to be done; otherwise only the rich will be able to afford to stay healthy.
    1
  13787.  @Pikaling3408  Neither then nor now do Jews wish to force their religion or their values on others. That's the essential difference.
    1
  13788.  @1369Stiles  But sneezing is not relevant. Covid spreads mainly through aerosols - normal breath in other words.
    1
  13789.  Rose-Marie Bothi  Highly effectual (or slightly effectual) against large droplets but no use at all against aerosol-bone virions so small that they can pass through the weave in your mask in groups of several thousand. Why don't you wear your mask and sit in a room with a few other people and the windows closed? That'll larn yer.
    1
  13790.  Rose-Marie Bothi  All evidence shows that immunity to one strain leads to robust resistance to any consequent strain. The immune system quickly adjusts any any symptoms are invariably mild.
    1
  13791.  @grahvis  They don't and never have done. It's just a myth to make you feel safe and as though you are helping.
    1
  13792.  @therealitycheck287  It is extremely ignorant to believe that masks have anything but the most minimal effect on the spread of covid. In fact, over-reliance upon them has almost certainly killed more people than they've saved.
    1
  13793.  @1369Stiles  The mask myth was exploded long ago, as alas was the surface contact route. At least 60% of infections occur through aerosols. Masks aren't going to stop them going out or coming in and as for droplets - good old-fashioned courtesy of putting your hand over your mouth if you cough or sneeze will work just as well in keeping them from reaching others. As far as deaths are concerned you've really got to be pretty old or pretty ill to die with covid. Obesity is America's big problem, because that counts as ill when it comes to covid. So fatality is the result of poor lifestyle or unfortunate genetics or most common of all, sheer old age.
    1
  13794.  @therealitycheck287  Try harder.
    1
  13795.  @therealitycheck287  There is no evidence that masks significantly prevent the passage of aerosols unless of a high standard (N95 or above) and tightly fitting. Smaller aerosol particles escape through the weave of most masks but the most significant escapes are via the edges. Believing in magic is stupid.
    1
  13796.  @therealitycheck287  Mask mandate and use efficacy for COVID-19 containment in US States Damian D. Guerra1,*, Daniel J. Guerra2 1Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, United States of America; 2Authentic Biochemistry, VerEvMed, Clarkston, Washington, United States of America Background: COVID-19 pandemic mitigation requires evidence-based strategies. Because COVID-19 can spread via respired droplets, most US states mandated mask use in public settings. Randomized control trials have not clearly demonstrated mask efficacy against respiratory viruses, and observational studies conflict on whether mask use predicts lower infection rates. We hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use were associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States. Methods: We calculated total COVID-19 case growth and mask use for the continental United States with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We estimated post-mask mandate case growth in non-mandate states using median issuance dates of neighboring states with mandates. Results: Earlier mask mandates were not associated with lower total cases or lower maximum growth rates. Earlier mandates were weakly associated with lower minimum COVID-19 growth rates. Mask use predicted lower minimum but not lower maximum growth rates. Growth rates and total growth were comparable between US states in the first and last mask use quintiles during the Fall-Winter wave. These observations persisted for both natural logarithmic and fold growth models and when adjusting for differences in US state population density. Conclusions: We did not observe association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states. COVID-19 mitigation requires further research and use of existing efficacious strategies, most notably vaccination. Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, face covering, medical mask, mask mandate, nonpharmaceutical intervention
    1
  13797.  @therealitycheck287  Do your prejudices extend to Europe? Report of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, February 2021. Conclusion: "The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty."
    1
  13798.  @therealitycheck287  A negligible level of protection, possibly. Certainly nothing to make a fuss about. The writers of the report were simply being polite. It's not exactly a glowing recommendation, is it?
    1
  13799.  @therealitycheck287  Studies which "prove" masks work at limiting spread are many. But then you can prove the moon is made of green cheese if you know enough scientists looking for a job to do. The same applies to proving that masks are ineffective of course, and although the there are sound political and financial reasons for "proving" that they do work, there are none, really, for proving that they don't. So really all you can do is look at the real world and see states and countries where mask mandates have been introduced, and when, and try to find some correlation between such events and a subsequent reduction in covid case numbers. And you can't. It can't be done in any way which proves a statistically significant correlation. Getting you to stick a bit of cloth over your face is just the government's way of making you feel you are doing something to help. It also has a couple of subsidiary functions: immense financial profitability and, not least of all, it gives people the opportunity to divert their fear and anger away from the disease and the way it is being mis-handled on to those of us who, very sensibly, refuse to be fooled by this simple conjuring trick.
    1
  13800.  @jimmyjohns3261  You got the omicron variant, that's all. It's much milder.
    1
  13801. But what if this enquiry does not give you the results you require? What then? (And I really don't think it would.)
    1
  13802.  @charliemoore2551  I rather think the enquiry you propose might be subject to similar constraints. Should it turn out that these riots are a genuine and spontaneous reaction by the oppressed working class (which is what I believe they are) then I doubt this shocking information would be made public.
    1
  13803. I'm surprised that someone who follows Vincent Racaniello believes that long covid affects 30% of patients - and how can you possibly predict permanent results? A study currently conducted using 45,000+ participants and access to 1.2 million anonymous GP records shows that debilitating symptoms still occurring after three months affect just 1.2 % of people in their twenties, rising to 4.8% for those in middle age. (Source ZOE)
    1
  13804.  @Nick7901962  I put it down more to me suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect and confirmation bias Got any more glib explanations up your sleeve?
    1
  13805.  @everready2903  Agreed!
    1
  13806. As opposed to a slum filled with bonkers Arabs?
    1
  13807.  @mogs23  You're right in the second part but if NATO moved in on Ukraine Putin might well launch a nuclear attack. Even the thought that he just MIGHT ought to be enough to prevent such an act of folly.
    1
  13808.  @ballynaxx9175  These "small pockets" though surely have a right to decide their own future?
    1
  13809.  @ballynaxx9175  What a silly argument. Donbass is about the size of Cyprus and has a population larger than that of Georgia.
    1
  13810. ​ @anthony64632 Why would Russia want to kidnap children?
    1
  13811. ​ @dlorde Child actors.
    1
  13812.  @dlorde  I have seen some rather unconvincing ones. I have also seen far more convincing ones of refugees in Russia claiming they would be killed if they returned to Ukrainian-controlled territory. These include children from the Donestk music school who are among the 3 million or so Russian former Ukrainian resident who have fled to safety.
    1
  13813. I hope everyone is on the side of peace and justice. Sad to say, that means being on Russia's side.
    1
  13814. @ Of course it does. Isn't this war crippling it?
    1
  13815. Back in the day people were quite happy with a regular swing between the two parties. Sadly the Dems have blown that by going "woke" and neo-Marxist. Trump is the natural reaction to that error.
    1
  13816.  @stacyyoust  If he helps bring peace to the world, both might well forgive him!
    1
  13817. Naaah.
    1
  13818. For something like the Capitol protest you need a great mass of angry and resentful people who feel they have been been cheated of their democratic rights and are subjected to the authoritarian edicts of people they despise. Get it together Remoaners! The offices of HM Customs and Excise in Uxbridge High Street has a nice set of steps, and even a cupola.
    1
  13819.  @AuntyEsther  Yes. I foresee a return of the Jarrow hunger march and bread riots. The mushy pea shortage of 2023 will make headlines across the world.
    1
  13820.  @LisaMitchell-f8e  Sounds like you may want to try to brush up on your English.
    1
  13821.  @LisaMitchell-f8e  Stop using long words you don't know the meaning of.
    1
  13822.  @LisaMitchell-f8e  No. Just a mild source of amusement.
    1
  13823.  @LisaMitchell-f8e  I said "long" words. I imagine the word "cognitive" has had many Democrats reaching for their dictionaries in recent weeks.
    1
  13824.  @terrancemitchell3420  Should I advertise?
    1
  13825.  @pinkfloyd870  Well I was accused of being a five-year-old and I thought it only polite to issue a correction. A "stickler for accuracy" is correct - but only when faced with particularly egregious examples, such as this poster accusing the authorities of allowing Trump to continue breaking EVERY law in the country. Since there appear to be something over a hundred thousand of them, this seems unlikely. (PS Trump is not my "cult leader". I'm British, for a start, but I do think he is a man much maligned and I am troubled by the mass hysteria which the anti-Trump campaign seems to have created among so many Americans. It really is very unhealthy and is similar in many respects to the anti-Jewish hysteria created by the Nazis in Germany.)
    1
  13826.  @0Kimm.J  I believe that compared to some of the people who rule America, Donald Trump is a paragon of virtue.
    1
  13827.  @rayk8710  Pretty much, I guess!
    1
  13828.  @dianelengyel568  Fascist.
    1
  13829.  @pinkfloyd870  Alas, my reply to your nonsense has been deleted by a teenager girl with pink hair and a nose ring.
    1
  13830.  @stuffwelike7184  Name one lie. ( I really enjoy this game.)
    1
  13831.  @jackie5522  Before Trump you lived in a paradise of ignorance.
    1
  13832.  @timradde4328  I'm British, as it happens. But if I was American I would be.
    1
  13833.  @Ketowski  Only SOME others.
    1
  13834. Where from?
    1
  13835. No masks or lockdowns in sunny Florida - and yet no bodies piling up in the streets. How can this be?
    1
  13836. Britain hasn't had any financial dependence for decades. Russia is going to come out of this as a senior party in an alliance which will threaten US hegemony not through missiles and guns but through sound economic strategies.
    1
  13837. Already I'm getting the feeling that we are going to be served up another nothingburger here. With desperation as ketchup.
    1
  13838.  @MarvinWestmaas  Do you want that with fries?
    1
  13839. @j I doubt it will be a re-creation of the USSR, but Russia is certainly looking as though it will head an alliance opposed to the increasingly weak and decadent US-led West.
    1
  13840. "Follow the science", huh? Lockdowns were a disaster and will have killed more people than they saved in the long run. But you paranoiacs demanded them and got what you deserved.
    1
  13841.  @david1964.  Afraid? No I just feel sorry for anyone who couldn't work out that the economic and health costs of lockdowns would invariably be far greater than any benefits which might ensue.
    1
  13842. Putin has entirely failed to do what US intelligence and the slave MSM thought he was going to do. But he has entirely succeeded in doing what he actually wanted to do - which was to slowly cripple Ukraine's armed forces while establishing a new fortress buffer state in the south and west. Putin plays chess, not tic-tac-toe.
    1
  13843. Why would they want to get rid of him? He has saved his country from both ruin and being conquered by the West.
    1
  13844. blahdeblah Science that doesn''t alter data to fit the theory. Science that allows its experiments to be repeated by others. Science that doesn't rely on computer programs which it refuses to share. Science that doesn't control research through a politically biased grants system. That sort of science.
    1
  13845. blahdeblah Not a lot. Can you? You could try www.ceres-science.com though
    1
  13846. mokeyrock Consensus ain't science. Rite? Consensus am shite, rite? Conspiracy theory ain't no theory when it damn conspiracy, rite? Hahaha! Replicable? No. Repeatable by fools? Infinitely.
    1
  13847. Farage's problem is that his own personal feelings have to be kept in check in order not to alienate potential voters. People in this country are still stuck in the kiddies' storybook version of events in Ukraine and aren't yet ready for the grown-up version.
    1
  13848.  @Pretty_Fly_on_a_White_Guy  They are if they are facts and this woman is giving you facts. You may not like them, but they are facts nonetheless.
    1
  13849.  @Therealtruthsocial  Nor is US establishment propaganda.
    1
  13850.  @Pretty_Fly_on_a_White_Guy  I guess she doesn't like dogs being used to treat medicines and cosmetic products?
    1
  13851.  @lesleylamy  Then they should be potty trained.
    1
  13852. The state of US politics is such that almost anyone could be arraigned on one thing or another if their opponents had the FBI or the DoJ on board. The charges against Trump might look impressive on paper but they are really pretty piffling.. Biden meanwhile has been getting away with astonishing levels of corruption for decades. It's a toss up who has the biggest piece of him - China, Ukrainian gangsters or Black Rock.
    1
  13853. The only rights trans people are losing is the right to be wrong. You cannot stop being the sex you are born into, no matter how much you try and no matter how much you may wish for it. Decent people sympathise with the dilemmas faced, but decent people also sympathise with the problems created when a falsehood pretends to truth. They sympathise with women getting beaten in sports by pretend women. They sympathise with the embarrassment some women feel sharing a toilet with a man in make-up. If trans people want to become more accepted in society they ought to welcome this ruling.
    1
  13854. Marty Feldman Someone should really start a Drop the Dead Donkey Award to find the silliest and least convincing news segment on British TV. Sky and C4 are leading the field at the moment, but the Beeb and ITV aren't far behind.
    1
  13855. Meanwhile the EU sets its feet on this same doomed course.
    1
  13856. @Daniel Wood Oh, I don't know: hubris, historical precedent, the road to hell being paved with good intentions, no good deed ever going unpunished.. stuff like that. The EU is just a small, squeaky fart is the whirlwind of world events. In a hundred years time no-one will remember it ever existed.
    1
  13857.  @giolag5593  Fox has sold out , probably to George Soros. You have to go to OAN or Breibart or or or two others to get unbiased detailed coverage. It case you haven't found any, here is seven hours or so of the 70 hours or so of state senate hearings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw
    1
  13858.  @buildmotosykletist1987  Of course there was. Do you imagine it was done on a whim? Do you actually believe this crap about Putin going mad or wanting to re-create the Soviet empire? The Donbass is plum territory, rich in coal, iron and gas. It has been fought over by oligarchs since the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the coming of the Biden administration the US-leaning oligarchs were looking forward to their pals in Washington financing a military invasion to take it from the separatists who have controlled large areas of it in recent years. Putin wasn't going to have that, and you can't really blame him. More even than other parts of Ukraine, these Eastern territories have a large Russian population and look to Moscow rather than to Kiev for support and to provide markets for their products. Just as important as the financial reasons, however, is the loss of prestige Putin would suffer if Donbass (let alone Crimea) were to fall back into Ukrainian hands.
    1
  13859.  @imperfectionist2575  Both cults though. Which is the point. And in fact the "admiration" for Fauci is far more cult-like than the support for Donald Trump. What is more I doubt very much that he deserves your admiration - unless you happen to have shares in pharmaceutical companies, that is.
    1
  13860.  @imperfectionist2575  Trump ran the country for four years without starting any new wars and made at least some attempt to rid the administration of the warmongering charlatans who have held the reins of power for so many decades. Fauci, unlike Trump, is a creature of the establishment and I think history will show that rather than being a saint, he is something of a whitened sepulchre.
    1
  13861.  @imperfectionist2575  Four years without starting any new wars counts for a lot. Draining the swap - or making a start on it counts for a lot. As for Dr Fauci I have a sneaking suspicion that he is something of a crocodile himself. America has a lousy reputation for its healthcare and for the gross profits made by its pharmaceutical industry. The sainted doctor has been at the helm throughout this period and his behaviour during the pandemic has ben questionable, to say the least. In the light of this I find the way he is worshipped pretty difficult to understand.
    1
  13862.  @imperfectionist2575  Dr Fauci is indeed without fault.- at least according to YouTube. Every slightest criticism I make of this sainted man is immediately deleted by them. Which makes me very suspicious. I dare not even attempt to list Donald Trump's several virtues, but four years without starting any new wars makes him an exceptional President, as well as the fact - most important of all - that he is not a career politician but just an ordinary Joe who is doing what many ordinary Joes would do had they been born to great wealth. And that's why Mr and Mrs Joe like him - and wear his nice red hats.
    1
  13863.  @imperfectionist2575  Alas the YouTube cult will not allow me to reply. I've had five goes so far. Sorry.
    1
  13864.  @imperfectionist2575  Criminals who don't do cover-ups well are not very good criminals. And there are some very, very good criminals in American politics. From my point of view I see war as the keynote of US foreign and economic policy. Trump's main virtue is that he does not see war as good business. Over and above that he is a very ordinary Joe who just happens to have been born into great wealth and has done with his life what a great many other ordinary Joes would have done in his position - right down to getting elected President. Now America has to choose between the Uniparty and MAGA. History demands it. Having said that, Biden is almost certain to win this election. The Uniparty and the criminals will see to it.
    1
  13865.  @imperfectionist2575  My latest reply also deleted by YouTube. Go figure.
    1
  13866.  @tuga9999  I have no answer to your scintillating wit. You should be on the stage. (There's one leaving in fifteen minutes.)
    1
  13867. This isn't about capturing and holding territory. It's about killing Ukrainians. Which is just what Russia has been doing.
    1
  13868.  @davidnoelfranks1124  You are not alone.
    1
  13869. Keeping Russia as house bogeyman has fuelled US foreign policy for far too long. We must welcome an accord between Trump and Putin which finally recognises the enormous differences between the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union.
    1
  13870.  @diatonicdelirium1743  https://youtu.be/TYEBVGj51nk?si=nF3U8IKpF8PwjwGp
    1
  13871. @ But it is true. Both sides fought there and both sides destroyed buildings. The Ukrainians, in fact, followed a scorched earth policy and destroyed everything as they retreated. It has taken the Russians years to clear some areas, especially the steelworks, of mines and booby traps. Mariupol was (and is) a city with a substantial Russian population. Not many Germans in London or Stalingrad.
    1
  13872. @ Practically everyone in Mariupol speaks Russian as a first language - and a considerable portion of the population IS Russian following Russian customs, holidays and heritage and have families in Russia. This applies to large parts of Eastern and Southern Ukraine, which were colonised by Russians when coal and iron ore was discovered there in large quantities. The original inhabitants were Tatars, not Ukrainians. Such Ukrainians that are there arrived later, largely to farm previously barren steppe which had been fertilised by modern methods.
    1
  13873.  @diatonicdelirium1743  It isn't a question of blame, it's a question of sticking to the facts. When cities become war zones they tend to get destroyed. This is especially true if they have been previously fortified, as is the case with many towns and cities in Donbass. The background to the war in Ukraine is far from being the simplistic fairy tale of good v. evil that is presented to us in the West. Russia is merely trying to regain territory mistakenly handed over to Ukraine in 1991.
    1
  13874.  @diatonicdelirium1743  You have to ask who made up this so-called "international law" and to what end. America doesn't get to automatically decide what is lawful and what isn't, nor where a country's borders are. You can't violate a memorandum. This document so many people wave about is simply the minutes of a series of meetings and is not legally binding -even under international law. And even if it was Ukraine broke it first by negotiating to join NATO. My point is that there are two sides to this argument, and Russia has a very good case for acting as it has done.
    1
  13875.  @diatonicdelirium1743  The Russia that agreed to these terms is not the Russia of today, and the situation has been radically changed by Ukraine's relationship with the EU. And the Budapest memorandum is a meaningless piece of paper anyway. Treaties made between Ukraine and the EU, such as the 2021 Memorandum of Understanding, seriously affect Russian interests in Eastern Ukraine. Russians have invested money and labour in the Donbass mining and steelmaking industries for generations. That is why they are there. Past "agreements" signed by others in the confusion following the collapse of the SU cannot be thrust under Russian noses and cited as a reason for theft.
    1
  13876.  @Joe_Peroni  Why have they shelled it then?
    1
  13877.  @tombombadil8709  Tricky, isn't it?
    1
  13878. I expect he'll hand himself in. It's the only decent thing to do.
    1
  13879. Trump is just an ordinary Joe who happened to be born into great wealth. Other ordinary Joes feel a surge of sympathy when they see him persecuted by the State. Every pathetic attempt to bring him down just increases his popularity.
    1
  13880. @ I quite agree. I think my point may have been misunderstood. My bad.
    1
  13881.  @iandennis7836  Free speech. That's what I support. These channels have reported fairly and objectively on the current situation. Just because they reflect attitudes which don't match your narrow prejudices that doesn't mean you should ban them. But it is not at all surprising that you should think so. The left is becoming increasingly Stalinistic - and even more fascist than those you accuse if it.
    1
  13882.  @iandennis7836  I support free speech.
    1
  13883.  @mobsiesixsixsix9785  OK. If you promise not to be paranoid.
    1
  13884.  @iandennis7836  Everyones.
    1
  13885.  @stookful  Exactly. And free speech is not incitement. Worked it out yet?
    1
  13886.  @Redstef-m2r  I am a free speech extremist. You can say whatever you like as far as I'm concerned.
    1
  13887.  @Redstef-m2r  Free speech is free speech. It has no limits, as long as it restricts itself to the voicing of opinions. Direct calls for violent action are another matter.
    1
  13888.  @MrsGardiner  In fact direct incitement has to be proved. Simply expressing an opinion about a situation, or reporting the opinions of others, is not an offence.
    1
  13889.  @Redstef-m2r  Fair enough. I promise not to call the police on you!
    1
  13890. Catspaw politics - Hamas, like the Ukrainians, are simply fighting proxy wars. There is a huge current shift in the balance of power in the world and until a new order is established increasing bloodshed and tragedy are inevitable. Sad times.
    1
  13891. The number of cases and even the number of deaths are not what is important here. It is the number of people who become seriously ill enough to be hospitalised. Despite all the hype the death rate in 2020 was not especially remarkable and most of those who died would have died anyway, being very elderly or very frail. It is those who suffer the enormous distress this illness causes - some of whom will carry the scars forever - upon whom efforts should be directed. Lockdowns and magic masks are not the answer. Creating a fully efficient intensive care structure is what is needed. There has been plenty of time for this to happen but instead the government has wasted billions on lockdown support.
    1
  13892. Europe caught napping. Countries can now either follow Trump and get out quick or continue to pursue the illusion that they are fighting for democracy against Russian terror.
    1
  13893. Nonsense. Corals bleach out and replenish themselves within a few years as a matter of course. It is their natural life-cycle.
    1
  13894. Not just one doctor - a dozen or so. The censorship is criminal and shows how afraid big tech and big pharma are of the truth.
    1
  13895. You are totally wrong! It's a lot more than that.
    1
  13896. As opposed to your own government which has wrongfully imprisoned multiple Americans in America?
    1
  13897. The way things are going it might by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon v. Nigel Farage for PM!
    1
  13898.  @Sairfecht  A fantasy which might one day become a reality. Stranger things have happened.
    1
  13899. Marxist feminists and BLM are playing Johnson like a fish. The lockdown Gestapo are caught in the middle. Bring on the popcorn! This will be fun!
    1
  13900.  @paul7TM  The new YouTube algorithm is profoundly anti-Israel.
    1
  13901. Their votes will be collected en masse and added to the electronic votes kindly provided by voting machines, same as last time. Trump hasn't got a chance.
    1
  13902. But they don't know what they're doing.
    1
  13903. Why do you believe they want Ukraine?
    1
  13904.  @nickryder9669  Or longer.
    1
  13905.  @lizeggar2421  I think so too - but it's hard getting figures on actual use. There's definitely a correlation of SOME sort though.
    1
  13906.  marvigli19  It IS a serious problem around the Mekong River though. And although malaria is spread by a parasite the same means of cellular resistance seem to be at work ie strong, healthy cells preventing replication. The case for hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic and viral replication inhibitor for Covid 19 does seem very strong and even if not in use the low death rates in countries bordering the Mekong need explanation as they do in Nigeria, Uganda etc etc.
    1
  13907. @H P Nice one! Except elephants are quite rare in low-lying swampy areas where malaria abounds. On the other hand building resistance to an infection which hydroxychloroquine helps prevent might indicate that when another infection is rare in the same area, there could be a connection, doncha think? In both malaria and Covid death results from the body's violent reaction to the rapid replication of an invader. If that replication is slowed down sufficiently then the body reacts less feverishly with less chance of a fatal result. I still like your elephant dung idea though.
    1
  13908. It's a fair question. The answer can never be definite, but "possibly" or "probably" beat "absolutely not" any day of the week.
    1
  13909.  @tthomas184  Not so. A big question mark hangs over many activities that took place during the polling procedure. Personally I'm a "probably."
    1
  13910. Sending mentally ill and crippled people to work will save money to enable the government to continue providing food, accommodation and entertainment to illegal immigrants, as well as supplying death-dealing weapons to Ukraine. This is clearly in the county's best interests.
    1
  13911. Brett Charles Petersen You'd have to be in a state of considerable inebriation to go through that charade.
    1
  13912. It attacked Ukraine to prevent Russian resources being syphoned off by Western interests and from Ukraine becoming a heavily-armed outlier of those selfsame interests. Between them Ukraine and Russia can sort this out - as they could have done in the first place had the West not interfered.
    1
  13913. It attacked Ukraine as a result of severe provocation. If the West hadn't bankrolled Ukraine in order to get hold of its mineral riches, this war would never have happened.
    1
  13914. So many Western "experts" still seem to hold the view that Russia wants to conquer Ukraine. This has never been the case. Thusfar the operation has been designed to reduce Ukrainian forces as much as possible before taking Donbass and other south -eastern territories which protect land access to Crimea. And this is exactly what they are now doing.
    1
  13915. On the contrary he has a large army of war veterans and battle hardened and fully equipped mercenaries waiting in Donbass.
    1
  13916.  @GlobalDrifter1000  They have hardly been used yet. They are there to defend,
    1
  13917. @C d How did they take Mariupol then?
    1
  13918. Another reason why the simple THREAT of tariffs should show results.
    1
  13919. 24Crypto Spot on! Well said.
    1
  13920. No.Innocent men stitched up by bent cops.
    1
  13921. How?
    1
  13922. I'm sure Mr Biden can find a place for this lady in his team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf0exSgmGws
    1
  13923. It should be pretty obvious by now that Putin is sending his weakest troops into be slaughtered and many of them are probably disloyal to his cause.
    1
  13924. Please try.
    1
  13925.  @sally8708  The essential difference of course is that all the measures you mention(well most of them) are of proven efficacy. The case for masks is shaky at best.
    1
  13926.  @sally8708  The world is not one vast operating room, despite efforts to make it seem so. We are not walking around with gaping wounds and breathing through ventilators.
    1
  13927.  @qjtvaddict Read this: Subramian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  13928.  @sally8708  You're missing the point. Masks worn in surgical situations protect patients undergoing surgery from possible bacterial infections via droplets exuded through surgeons' mouths and noses. Masks worn in everyday situations do little or nothing to protect people from either infecting or being infected with coronaviruses.
    1
  13929.  @sally8708 Yes, it is an interesting and thought-provoking paper. I do rather resent your accusation that I haven't read it though! Obviously it represents only a small window onto the situation and while I have not indeed accessed current updates, it must be obvious that percentages will change quite rapidly. I find it useful mainly because it undermines many preconceptions about cause and effect in dealing with the pandemic. The old adage about the road to hell being paved with good intentions has never been more obvious than in the present instance. For the record, I am extremely dubious about the effects of masks, handwashing and social distancing. I have always had my suspicions, but since May, when it became clear that the vast majority of infections are through aerosol transmission, my reservations are even more pronounced. Over-reliance on these procedures may have done more harm than good. I think it probable there is some optimum level of vaccination which will lead to herd immunity. What thus is, goodness knows, and it will differ according to the demographics of individual communities. One thing we can be pretty certain of is that it will not be a 100% vaccination rate. With the vaccines performing as they are this will only lead to a permanent condition of epidemic with people getting booster shots every couple of months or so. Great news for the pharma companies and their shareholders, but perhaps not as welcome to the rest of us.
    1
  13930. Mitchell Krouth Go to the We Don't HaveTime website. Look and learn. This is the "environmentalist" organisation which sponsors Greta Thunberg. It is run by financiers and venture capitalists. You can check the CV's of its directors quite easily.
    1
  13931.  @missizaskun  You wouldn't know a fascist if one dragged you out of bed at 4am.
    1
  13932. Ukraine has been a province of Russia for over 250 years, so your foolish analogy does not really apply.
    1
  13933.  @andrews.1700  Why not? Is this historical fact irrelevant?
    1
  13934.  @studips  Ukraine became a country in 1991, certainly. But this does not alter the fact that over 17% of its population identify as Russian, and that Russia and Russians have been almost entirely responsible for developing the mineral resources of Donbass and Crimea. As long as the Ukrainian government acknowledged these facts, all was well. Unfortunately, however, post 2014 nationalists in Kiev have succumbed to Western - largely American- advances and are prepared to remove these resources from Russian influence. Russia simply cannot be expected to take this lying down. Putin has put forward entirely reasonable proposals to ratify the situation, but under US and NATO pressure, Ukraine has rejected them and was preparing for war. Well. they've got it. At the end of the day it is highly likely that Russia will continue to reap the benefits of these mineral resources, and maybe as many as a quarter of a million people (or more) will have died to no purpose..
    1
  13935.  @studips  The Russian population of Crimea is over 70%, as it is in many industrial areas of Donbass. It was a mistake to create the modern country of Ukraine from the former Soviet Socialist Republic. Crimea and Donbass were only attached to Ukraine by the Soviets for administrative convenience. This is the heart of the problem. Both areas have suffered from severe economic decline since independence and there is a strong feeling that things were better in Soviet days. All that aside, the fact that between them they contain more the $13trillion of gas, oil, coal and precious minerals is at the root of this dreadful war. It has little to do with "sovereignty" or "democracy" or any of the other buzzwords which are trotted out to justify the West's egregious interference in this domestic quarrel. Putin's peace proposals of December 2021 should have been listened to. The tragedy is that there is every likelihood that something like them is what we will end up with anyway.
    1
  13936. The latest loony left conspiracy theory that Jan 6 was anything other than a protest against the stolen election shows how increasingly unhinged these demented children are becoming. Dodgy Ojeda even starting to get flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth. At this rate you're all going to end up needing full lobotomies.
    1
  13937.  @sluttypandaeyes5234  Yes, I'm quite calm now. I watch CNN and MSNBC and it as though I am seeing creatures from another planet attempting to be human. All you need is a seven inch steel nail and a friend with a hammer. I do recommend the procedure to you. It's very liberating.
    1
  13938.  @MO-qd6tm  Because he isn't. He's just an ordinary Joe born into millions who has done what many other ordinary Joes would have done in that position. He has held no other political office and has avoided the inevitable corruption that disfigures the political process in the US. This is what makes him so exceptional.
    1
  13939.  @pamjones8007  It depends on your definition. Trump is really a businessman who decided to be President. Politics was never his chosen career. He hasn't climbed the greasy pole - which is why the political establishment hates and distrusts him so much.
    1
  13940.  @mikebronicki8264  Being forced to pay bribes makes him a victim of crime, not a criminal, surely?
    1
  13941.  @mikebronicki8264  Who is the greater criminal: the businessman forced to bribe a politician for his project to be allowed to continue or the politician who is bribed? The US political system is riddled with corruption from top to bottom. President Biden is a career criminal who has made millions through the perks of office, and he is far from alone in this. Trump, at least, is a crook operating in the business world and not a mealy-mouthed hypocrite abusing his position for personal gain.
    1
  13942.  @mikebronicki8264  Most successful people are criminals to one degree or another. Politicians are also hypocrites because they try to persuade us that their actions are to our benefit and, to make matters worse, they seed their enterprises with money taken from us in taxes. Give me an honest villain any day. As to Trump's alleged shenanagins with hotel bookings, I daresay this was some sort of tax fiddle: an enterprise which, in light of the above, can be seen to have considerable justification.
    1
  13943.  @annalieff-saxby568  And thereby fail in their endeavours.
    1
  13944. More desperate floundering by this channel. This gets funnier by the day.
    1
  13945. Hooray! (I just felt like cheering.) That's telling 'em!
    1
  13946.  @emm_arr  Well, this bloke just did. And very well too.
    1
  13947.  @vrrdt342  Ground-to-air defence missiles have been developed to deal with weapons like Storm Shadow. As far as I can judge we're only donating a couple of dozen, so if about a quarter get through, at best, it's hardly going to be a "game changer."
    1
  13948. God, you people! The country is being over-run by REAL extremists who want you dead and you bleat on about the far right. Wankers!
    1
  13949. The first in a fault of character, the second an insult. Back in the day calling someone a liar in public would have meant pistols at dawn.
    1
  13950. Unfortunately for your argument the highest death levels in Sweden by far have occurred among the very elderly (90 plus in many cases) who has been living in large community care homes.
    1
  13951.  @johannageissler  I agree that comparing ANY two countries must be an inexact procedure. It remains a fact, however, that it doesn't matter so much how you get infected as the condition you are in when you do. Covid 19 is essentially a culling disease. Sweden and the UK have both had large populations of very elderly people who have survived previous flu seasons; "dry tinder" is the term which is used. Many of them have not survived Covid 19. Far more care should have been taken to isolate such people instead of wasting energy on the impossible and useless task of preventing healthy younger people from becoming infected.
    1
  13952. These photos seem to be appearing like cards in some political version of whist. Boris is being strung along and blackmailed into behaving according to the wishes of those holding the strongest hand. We've had a rapid abandoning of covid restrictions. Rapid backtracking on net zero will probably be next.
    1
  13953.  @pjhgerlach  That is completely untrue. All leaders of new administrations have the right to reviews, amend or reject treaties made by their predecessors, and frequently do so.
    1
  13954.  @romazone101  You wish. Why wouldn't the democracies negotiate with Russia over Budapest then?
    1
  13955.  @sleepbetraysme  You mistake me. I have no romantic notions about Red Indians. I was merely pointing out how the US used treaties as part of the process of eliminating them. Setting one tribe against another was, of course, another tactic.
    1
  13956. @ No. I have a brain and the ability to discern and analyse. Unlike some.
    1
  13957.  @eleanorwittering3126  Calm down dear.
    1
  13958.  @melissa7041  Should I communicate with the spirit world, as you obviously do?
    1
  13959. How about an optimistic picture? Covid cases are rising but death and hospitalisation rates are falling. Covid 19, like its predecessor SARS 1, seems to flourish in warmer weather. The current death rate from all causes is much lower than last year - largely because Covid has already culled a chunk of the elderly and frail. This winter's deaths will be lower than usual for this very reason.
    1
  13960.  @CMI2017  Do you have a link for this?
    1
  13961.  @CMI2017  Both scenarios are true at the moment then. Long term damage could be a problem in some cases, as it appears to be in all severe infections of this type. Herd immunity, achieved either with or without a vaccine, should obviate this. I'm pretty convinced though that the big bad beast is going to turn into nothing much more than a nuisance now that its initial tantrum appears to be over.
    1
  13962. Russia won't agree to a ceasefire without major guarantees. It seems Ukraine has lost Kursk now, and that's set them back considerably at the negotiating table.
    1
  13963.  @sebastiaanl9876  That was Yeltsin. Putin thinks differently.
    1
  13964. The opposite. The authorities want us to LOVE Islam since it encourages compliance, and backs this up with a fear of hell, as Christianity once did.
    1
  13965. Russia lost men and equipment while edging towards Berlin. The fact is that Russia - entirely predictably - is well on its way to winning this war. The West can only add to its shame by further prolonging it.
    1
  13966. Every time the West does this it prolongs the war. A peaceful resolution is entirely possible. Russia wants it. Washington doesn't. Meanwhile the corrupt and foolish Western media cons us into believing there is some high moral purpose behind this warmongering.
    1
  13967.  @kellyraymond7582  Have another go: Every time the West does this it prolongs the war. A peaceful resolution is entirely possible. Russia wants it. Washington doesn't. Meanwhile the corrupt and foolish Western media cons us into believing there is some high moral purpose behind this warmongering.
    1
  13968.  @kellyraymond7582  I've got all day. Just carry on. Every time the West does this it prolongs the war. A peaceful resolution is entirely possible. Russia wants it. Washington doesn't. Meanwhile the corrupt and foolish Western media cons us into believing there is some high moral purpose behind this warmongering.
    1
  13969.  @JeroenvanHaren  So it is! I hope your eyesight's better than his was!
    1
  13970. My parents were racists. Most of my teachers were racists. It was the prevalent attitude of mind back in the '50s and early '60s. My generation fought against it and quite frankly I think we won. It's very telling that all the examples of racism in this presentation have to hark back to the past. I'm sorry, but it will take more than this to convince me that anti-racism today is actually about race as such. The left has lost the support of the working class as a whole and therefore has a vested interest in securing the support of minorities. The success of those many black and brown people who have made their mark while at the same time espousing conservative values must be galling , I know, but it exists and there are many examples of it. Examples of contemporary systemic racism, on the other hand, seem pretty thin on the ground.
    1
  13971.  @ChrisPage68  It'd be useful to have a couple of firm examples dating later than 1980 say. Do you have anything in mind?
    1
  13972. Nope. They are presenting a view of the world which is entirely out of step with reality. And it's paid for by bullying the public.
    1
  13973.  @20quid  Whose claims?
    1
  13974.  @20quid  Whose?
    1
  13975. Why?
    1
  13976.  @margaridacosta270  And many others will come across when the time is right.
    1
  13977.  @buschtaxi75driver55  And the same to you, fellow purveyor of unpalatable truths!
    1
  13978. Trump would bring the war to an end immediately, simply by refusing to continue to arm Ukraine. It is insane cowboys like Bolton who have created this tragedy. A year ago Putin would have been content with Crimea and an ostensibly independent Donbass. Now he will want Crimea and all four annexed regions. They are already represented in the Russian Parliament.
    1
  13979.  @bluecanary9417  To engage the enemy on its own territory, that's all. Russia doesn't want the bulk of Ukraine, other than to use it temporarily as a killing ground.
    1
  13980.  @bluecanary9417  It's going badly if the war going on inside Western heads is the true war. But that isn't the war being fought on the ground. If Russia wanted to take Kiev etc permanently it would have done what it is doing now in Bakhmut and did previously in Soledar and Mariupol: constant bombardment and gradual occupation, trench by trench. Instead the Russian forces rolled down the road in a column and invited the Ukrainians to come out and fight. It then poured in raw troops and antiquated armour to soak up the Ukrainians. In his peace proposals and in his essay on Ukrainian/Russian relations published in the Summer of 2021, Putin made it clear that Ukraine could join the West if it wished; but it could not take Crimea and Donbass with it. Real fighting troops, such as Wagner and the Chechens, have remained in the Donbass area and are now assaulting the northern defences installed by Ukraine in the period following the false Maidan treaties. Their success depends on how much Ukraine has left after a year of bitter attrition. The ultimate objective will be to create a new heavily fortified border, incorporating all of Donbass and some adjacent territories providing a land corridor to Crimea. This will be strongly defended until such times as Ukraine can be persuaded to accept this new reality.
    1
  13981.  TJatAW  Live with what you've done. That's all I'm saying.
    1
  13982.  @timothysullivan84  It's exactly the same. Just shorter.
    1
  13983.  Kaiser Wilhelm  Mob rule is when jurors have to pass through a howling mob on their way to the courtroom and when people can't drive to work because the roads are blocked by ignorant, virtue-signalling college kids. The 2020 election was riddled with malpractice and downright fraud from top to bottom. This is in no way unusual in American elections, but this time the job had an edge of professionalism seldom seen before. The CIA and other agencies have considerable experience of fixing elections in other countries. In 2020 they seem to have put that expertise to domestic use.
    1
  13984.  @timothysullivan84  You really should try to hone your analytical skills a little more, you know. This huffing and puffing is no substitute for reasoned discourse.
    1
  13985.  @haroldjones8521  I'm really looking forward to this. I confess it does puzzle me sometimes why I do it. I mean, it's not as though I enjoy torturing small animals or anything.
    1
  13986. Only in partnership with Big Pharma.
    1
  13987. I don't think he was so foolish as to expect Ukraine to welcome him -only the Eastern provinces, which have. That's where the real war is, not around Kiev.
    1
  13988. Doesn't it rather depend upon the nature of that foreign influence?
    1
  13989.  @theimperialist2686  But what is the nature of Musk's influence? If it is to help rid us of the present government ASAP , then it has to be good.
    1
  13990.  @theimperialist2686  If this mythical person said something similar they would have a similar political ideology, wouldn't they?
    1
  13991.  @verystripeyzebra  Glad to see you've broken your New Year resolution! But yes, it's the only way; but waiting five years to get rid of this lot without any real viable alternative in the offing in a pretty terrifying prospect. There must surely be a short cut somehow.
    1
  13992.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  I don't think that is quite fair. Musk has a work ethic, sure, but it's nothing like that. Four days of long hours followed by three days off with plenty of relaxation seems to be his ideal.
    1
  13993.  @DavidMoxham957  I really think we are taking the Musk thing too seriously and too literally. There is every chance that he is employing reflexivity techniques in order to manipulate the market for profit. But, having said that, if he can help by financing a proper and effective anti-globalist, anti-socialist, anti-woke party of opposition - and hopefully of future government - then he can very much be forgiven in my book.
    1
  13994.  @MrVuvuzaala  I really think you need to back up such an extreme attitude with a more considered argument. I suggest you cut back on the pejorative adjectives and try explaining why you think what you do.
    1
  13995.  @theimperialist2686  I'm not quite sure what "the sovereignty crowd" is. Sovereignty is a word I rather dislike since it can mean many things to many men.
    1
  13996.  @theimperialist2686  It's just he's money they're after, I suppose. If he can finance a right-wing party capable of overthrowing the present system, then he could be from Outer Mongolia or the planet Zog and we'd be happy to have him!
    1
  13997.  @irminschembri8263  I am anxious to be educated by such an expert on this matters as you undoubtedly are. Perhaps you could answer these two questions? 1)What policies of the EU could and did Britain ever constrain? 2)What leads you to suppose that any offers of influence made by Elon Musk must be accepted without constraint?
    1
  13998.  @irminschembri8263  I take point 1), while suggesting that perhaps several more policies could well have been vetoed in the national interest. Point 2) is far less clear. I personally do no not regard democracy as the be-all and end-all of decision-making. Two cheers for it, as E. M Forster once wrote. It is not the engine by which a state ought to be governed, but a brake or gearbox there to prevent excess. Furthermore it has been increasingly subject to manipulation on many levels. In this particular, if Elon Musk were to invest his billions in the creation of a sustainable right-wing party, supported by intense social media coverage, then I and many others would be all for it, and democracy could have its final say at the ballot box.
    1
  13999.  @irminschembri8263  Nor would I, on balance. But it is foolish to be blind to its failings.
    1
  14000. This government is not only corrupt and dishonest but mind-boggling stupid. Socialism finally died when it took office.
    1
  14001. These figures are absurd fantasies. Russia's losses are heavy - but so are Ukraine's.
    1
  14002.  @mjwilliamsb2676  Thank you. The only reservation I have is that, in terms of competition, any variant which already exists and which already has a more efficient and faster-acting system of transmission might well become more successful in a situation where the number of available hosts is reduced compared to previously. The fact that it actually exists might outweigh the fact that reducing the number of people infected will prevent the arrival of future variants in terms of overall impact. If for example there had been no form of restriction would it not be true that these inevitable variations would either have occurred long ago or would not have occurred at all since earlier forms would have infected all those liable to be infected? I cannot in my own mind determine whether or not this latter course of action would have resulted in more or less fatalities and serious hospitalisations. I suppose it must depend on how many potential subjects of serious outcomes are available. Sorry to burble on. I'm just thinking out loud really!
    1
  14003.  @mjwilliamsb2676  Thanks again. I fully realise that the virus has no evil intent and that in fact the less damage it does to hosts the more it can reproduce. I think I'm right in saying that while viruses do generally mutate into less virulent forms there have been some influenzas which have turned out more deadly second or third time around. Fingers crossed!
    1
  14004. Ever heard of the nuclear deterrent?
    1
  14005. Put another record on.
    1
  14006.  @colmquinn7860  Well, war hasn't been declared by either side. But if it walks like a duck......
    1
  14007.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  If they do they aren't showing it. They are selecting information. They are propagandists.
    1
  14008. Do you think Labour's cupboard is free of rattling bones?
    1
  14009.  @tombranch2261  The referendums are pretty meaningless, I agree. Nonetheless pro-Russian sentiments in both Crimea and Donbass undeniably exist. Murdering those who hold such views is probably a mistake, however.
    1
  14010. I'm not a religious person, but if I were I would truly believe that many of the people on the left are now possessed by the spirit of evil.
    1
  14011. How can you find ANYONE in America who is impartial when it comes to Donald Trump?
    1
  14012. Once Russia has gained all of Donbass and expelled the Ukrainians from Kursk, that will be the time to talk. Donbass - and indeed much of Eastern Ukraine - are Ukrainian in name only and were only appended on to the former SSR of Ukraine for administrative purposes, partially to allow the extensive Russian populations of these areas to hold enough seats on its governing body to outvote the more nationalist-minded elements living in the west. Returning such areas to Russia - where they really belong and where much of their resources remain in Russian hands - is the only viable route to peace. One can only hope that Trump sees this and can find a way to sell the idea to a public which has been sold the false notion that Ukraine is somehow a coherent, oppressed country invaded by brutal Russia.
    1
  14013.  @shamrock141  I dispute that Russia is any way "expansionist" . Its actions in Ukraine, and indeed in Georgia and Chechnya, have been entirely to protect its existing interests.
    1
  14014.  @shamrock141  I don't see how. Russia's relationship with these three entities is long established and all that has persuaded Russia to take military action is the prospect of these interests being subverted by foreign intervention.
    1
  14015.  @richardkey1678  According to the United Nations around 7,000 civilians had been killed by the date you mention. The attack on the railway station was almost certainly carried out by the Ukrainians in a clumsy bid to blame Russia, and to discourage civilians from leaving the area since civilians are regularly used by Ukraine to act as human shields, their presence supposedly preventing attack on military locations.
    1
  14016. Not an isolated case either.
    1
  14017. Not when it's going to be Russians who are writing the the history.
    1
  14018. Once again a Western puppet nation has failed to keep its promises. Echoes of Ukraine.
    1
  14019.  @jamesmorrow1646  Don't be such an arsehole. You can be better than this.
    1
  14020.  @johnhenryshammer67  Georgia, Chechnya and Crimea prove the point. Putin has no wish to do any other than to protect Russia's borders - which is ALL the war in Ukraine is about.
    1
  14021.  @jamesmorrow1646  Once again, the idea that Putin sees himself in this light is utterly ridiculous. He is on record as saying that while the idea of a return to imperial greatness is superficially attractive, it is impossible to achieve. Which it is. Within a few months we should see whether or not Putin's actual objectives are realised. He does not want Kiev or Western Ukraine, much less other former Soviet territories. Why should he? "Swallowing a porcupine" is the current metaphor, I believe. He wants Crimea and he wants Donbass and he wants Russia's borders to be secure. This is what he did in Georgia and Chechnya, and this is what he will in all probability do in Ukraine - whatever the cost.
    1
  14022.  @stonem0013  One shared by more objective observers who are not moronic enough to fall for pathetic propaganda.
    1
  14023. Right now, thanks to Trump and Putin, the world is edging further away from World War III.
    1
  14024.  @cmasseylynch  That we shouldn't be shocked or surprised, as seems to be expected of us.
    1
  14025.  @RazorMouth  You seem to be under the impression that war is some kind of point-scoring computer game where victory is judged by the population size of captured cities. It isn't.
    1
  14026.  @marshallmintz7564  The ten million or so Russian soldiers who died did make some slight contribution, however.
    1
  14027.  @nc4928  There are 33 million men of military age in Russia,
    1
  14028. That other loveable left wing loonie Max Robespierre is today featuring the fact that food is rotting in the fields due to lack of labour to harvest it. I think I can see a sort of solution here......
    1
  14029. I bet they were all vaccinated. Wouldn't t be funny if Omicron was the virus's evolutionary response to vaccines and only vaccinated people can get it? I'd laugh anyway.
    1
  14030. The West is outgunned and outmaneuvred. Time to quit.
    1
  14031. And the Dems broke it.
    1
  14032. You forget that most people who die are on their last legs anyway. And Omicron fatalities are minimal. Covid will be over soon, but people will go on dying.
    1
  14033. These were not answers, merely opinions and anecdotes. You must try harder.
    1
  14034. TDS rots the brain. There are many examples in this comments thread.
    1
  14035. An increasingly false reality, I'm afraid. These once respected media outlets have largely been bought up by Blackrock, George Soros and other globalist entities.
    1
  14036. The debacle of the retreat from Kabul opened the world's eyes to American military incompetence. The eventual failure of its proxy war in Ukraine will further add to the conviction among the world's emerging economies that the gig is well and truly up for the Great Satan and its lapdog allies.
    1
  14037. The Democrats cheated like hell and they are panicking. Inheriting chaos will be their reward.
    1
  14038. Won't be the first time.
    1
  14039. They've certainly been trying very hard to demonise Trump and promote the Democrat cause.
    1
  14040. NATO lost its purpose with the collapse of the Soviet Union .It only exists now as a commercial enterprise and to provide career opportunities for the military.
    1
  14041.  @martinwoollett8468  Buggins turn.
    1
  14042.  @Bigboy664u  It's the West which has been expanding - well America really -not Russia, The level of brainwashing we are subjected to is shameful.
    1
  14043.  @rafstrayhorn5772  How do you pronounce Strayhorn? I might need to know for future reference.
    1
  14044.  @jorgepeterbarton  It sticks out a mile.
    1
  14045.  @yowie369  Putin just isn't that scared by anything we do. He regards Western leaders as effeminate and ineffective. All this bluster is just going to end in tears, believe you me.
    1
  14046.  @nymez6968  And the next day Russia hit Dnipro with a new weapon no-one knew anything about which can apparently cover a thousand miles in fifteen minutes. I think it was a message.
    1
  14047.  @geoffhaylock6848  I get sick and tired of uneducated people comparing the present situation with the situation in Germany in the 1930s. There are no parallels. It's just because that seems to be about the only history you get taught in school these days.
    1
  14048.  @geoffhaylock6848  What's new IS THAT HE'S USED ONE! Don't you get it? This is a warning - and we'd do well to heed it.
    1
  14049.  @tomfurmby88  War is a nasty business, but it is sometimes necessary. In this case Russia attempted for decades to redress the anomalies resulting from the creation of the new country of Ukraine. Peaceful solutions were available, but these were rejected - by the West. Faced with the build-up of Ukrainian forces, financed by the West with the clear intention of removing the mineral riches of Donbass from its historic Russian ownership, Russia had little choice but to take extreme measures to prevent it. This is not a fairy tale and I am not a parrot. The solution has always been available - regional autonomy for Donbass.
    1
  14050.  @Kingcarparpeggio  I can't make up mind whether people like you who make this absurd accusation believe it is true, or are just teasing. I imagine you are around twelve years old, so such childishness is perhaps excusable in either case.
    1
  14051.  @77Format  It doesn't. At least half of it belongs to Russia.
    1
  14052.  @77Format  It is Ukrainian soil in name only. It is the soil of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, itself a Russian creation. Before that it was the soil of the Russian Empire and before that it was the soil of the Ottoman Empire.
    1
  14053.  @julianmansell2379  History never repeats itself. It is very dangerous - and intellectually weak-minded - to believe that it does. It just saves you the trouble of thinking things through and almost inevitably leads you into serious error.
    1
  14054. @ History never repeats itself. To imagine that it does is dangerous because it leads to lazy thinking. The idea that the situation we face in Ukraine is "the same" as the situation in Europe in the late 1930s immediately leads to the drawing of a series of conclusions which are fatally incorrect. One you realise the truth of this you will, indeed, have learned from the past.
    1
  14055. 82.5% of the UK population over the age of 16 has been fully vaccinated. As you are aware controversy still exists over the wisdom and necessity of vaccinating pre-pubescent children.
    1
  14056. The thing is they don't think they lost the election. They think they were cheated. It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong. It's enough that they think it.
    1
  14057. @Anthony M A common sense narrative, I think. The Arctic is a major focus of meteorological research and the "octagonal" shape of the latest UFO sounds very kitelike. The first one may have been some kind of Chinese spy-thingy though, but since they own about 30% of the farmland it flew over, one wonders why they should bother.
    1
  14058.  @neilflavelle1  He often wears loafers. He could even have slipped them off to be more comfortable. Who knows?
    1
  14059.  @JayneSpring  Very expensive loafers, I gather!
    1
  14060.  @mikeyo4406  Donbass was stuck onto the Soviet |Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Russians. But the SSR was never a country it was a subsidiary if the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.
    1
  14061.  @twalk263  Donbass was stuck onto the Soviet |Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Russians. But the SSR was never a country it was a subsidiary if the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.
    1
  14062. As a pensioner I feel entirely comfortable with the idea that my winter fuel payment may be cancelled in order to help offset the cost of accommodating and feeding illegal immigrants, or undocumented welcome guests, or whatever they are now called in Newspeak. My grandchildren won't be getting any presents this Christmas as a result, but I have explained to them that the amount of money saved will be in excess of the costs of providing sustenance and succour to these brave unfortunates, and there might be almost as much as a million pounds left over to provide outreach centres for sexual deviants and other worthy causes and, as educated young men and women, they too approve the policy.
    1
  14063.  @fredplat467  You are too kind. I really like "rancid squabble."
    1
  14064.  @emsleywyatt3400  Canada doesn't want to sell them to Russia. Analogies are tricky customers so let's just say that Donbass and Crimea are Russian, sitting on trillions of dollars of mineral wealth, and Russia doesn't want to see them sold off to foreigners.
    1
  14065.  @ketotamz5815  I enjoy teasing them though.
    1
  14066.  @taefravis  But Ukraine was not a country. It was a Soviet Socialist Republic, subservient to Moscow.
    1
  14067.  @taefravis  At least I don't have to resort to ridiculous analogies to prop up what passes for a brain.
    1
  14068. Just like Trudeau and Zelensky, Arden is a con-artist who relies on superficial charm to delude the weak-minded into believing in their moral worth. Fan club mentality.
    1
  14069.  @Abracadabra1111  Its also used for arthritis and lupus among other things. It works by immediately turning cells into hostile environments, so that invading organisms cannot reproduce. The only reason a coronavirus gets into your cells is to utilise that cell's resources to reproduce, which it cannot do on its own. Hydroxychloroquine, especially if used in conjunction with a strengthening agent such as zinc, ramps up the cells' defences so the viral RNA cannot reproduce. Hows that for a bit of mansplaining?
    1
  14070.  @Abracadabra1111  And yet many people clearly do. People with arthritis or lupus one imagines.
    1
  14071. No intern. The BBC are liars and cheats from top to bottom.
    1
  14072. The UK is in the North Sea.
    1
  14073. WHy can't we let it go? There's a British tradition whereby you can't talk politics or religion in the pub or club. Let Facebook deal with trivia. Serious talk can go elsewhere..
    1
  14074. China's long term plans for world domination are subtle and very considered. There can be little doubt that the CCP has basically bought America via the election of Joe Biden as President. Any anti-China noises his administration makes can be realistically assumed to be mere diversions.
    1
  14075. As an observer from Britain I have to say that I believe the US electoral system to be deeply flawed, and greatly subject to manipulation. The people who REALLY rule your country will simply nor allow the interloper Trump to regain office. Unless the Deep State has got Trump onside, the Dems could field a dead cat and it would still get in.
    1
  14076. I do hope Ukraine realises before long that America is only your friend as long as there's something in it by way of profit.
    1
  14077. How can Americans POSSIBLY trust the FDA? The covid episode and the continuing emphasis on highly suspect vaccines shows that this body is closely linked to the pharmaceutical industry, with profit being of far, far greater importance than health.
    1
  14078. Jojo Jojojo You just went let it gogo, will you?
    1
  14079.  @derekscanlan4641  Maybe Ukrainian shills should learn a bit of history. The Kievan Rus was utterly destroyed by the Mongols in the 15th and 16th centuries and never extended much east of the Dnieper anyway .
    1
  14080.  @derekscanlan4641  Maybe Ukrainian shills should learn a bit of history. The Kievan Rus was destroyed by the Mongols in the mid-13th century and even at its height in the mid 11th century did not include much of the territory (if any) currently in dispute in Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  14081.  @derekscanlan4641  Maybe Ukrainian shills should learn a bit more history...
    1
  14082.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  I assure you I am British born and bred. What's so difficult to believe about that?
    1
  14083.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  No the world doesn't. Russia doesn't and nor do its allies. And many countries who are forced to say that they do recognise it as such will immediately change their minds when and if Russia gains dominance.
    1
  14084.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Born and bred. Why do you find this hard to believe?
    1
  14085.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  True! The bastard got me again!
    1
  14086.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Not all the world. And many of those countries who do recognise it as such only do so to appease America.
    1
  14087.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Many do, for some reason. I have be forced to issue a contradiction, which you can access by clicking on my red dot. You will then be in the enviable position of being able to insult me for my appearance.
    1
  14088.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  I don't think the whole world recognises this, and even if the whole world did, that wouldn't make it true.
    1
  14089.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Click my dot.
    1
  14090.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Why impossible? Look to your left and find yourself in the enviable position of being able to insult me for my appearance!
    1
  14091.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Only because America currently rules the roost. And it doesn't alter history.
    1
  14092.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Which one? Lines on paper don't make a country a country.
    1
  14093.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  It won't take much for others to change their minds.
    1
  14094.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  True enough. That's why there's a war on.
    1
  14095.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  True enough. That's why we have got to the dreadful stage we are now at. It was all totally unnecessary. If the West had allowed Ukraine to abide by the agreements hammered out in Minsk in 2015 there would be no invasion and no war and Ukraine could have even become a proper country at last, instead of being forced to jump the gun.
    1
  14096.  @peterfox3989  Once ALL of Ukraine was Russian. But it wasn't a country. The idea of Ukraine as a country only came after the collapse of the Tsars and even then what the area did become was not a country, but a Soviet Socialist Republic, largely governed by Russia.
    1
  14097.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  There were minor infringements of the ceasefire by both sides, but the main thrust of Minsk was for Ukraine to find ways of granting regional autonomy to the two Donbass republics in order that their immense mineral wealth should not be transferred out of Russian hands. This Ukraine completely ignored and instead accepted billions of dollars in military aid from the US and other NATO counties. The civil war which preceded this was obviously supported by Russia, but there was considerable opposition to rule from Kiev from within the territories. The army and the police went over to the Russians almost to a man. The Russians who supported them were the Wagner Group, but while some inhabitants may have regarded them as invaders, many others welcomed them as liberators. Donbass had not done well following Ukrainian independence. Attempts at nationalisation of the Russian owned industries had resulted in huge drops in profits and wages, and this was not helped by Kiev's attempts to "de-Russify" the area with infringements on the use of the Russian language and religious practices. You, like many others, seem to have swallowed Western propaganda pretty wholesale. There are two sides to this and it is my considered opinion (as an Englishman) that Russia has far more right on its side than we in the West are generally allowed to know.
    1
  14098.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Name one lie.
    1
  14099.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  There were minor infringements of the ceasefire by both sides, but the main thrust of Minsk was for Ukraine to find ways of granting regional autonomy to the two Donbass republics in order that their immense mineral wealth should not be transferred out of Russian hands. This Ukraine completely ignored and instead accepted billions of dollars in military aid from the US and other NATO counties. The civil war which preceded this was obviously supported by Russia, but there was considerable opposition to rule from Kiev from within the territories. The army and the police went over to the Russians almost to a man. The Russians who supported them were the Wagner Group, but while some inhabitants may have regarded them as invaders, many others welcomed them as liberators. Donbass had not done well following Ukrainian independence. Attempts at nationalisation of the Russian owned industries had resulted in huge drops in profits and wages, and this was not helped by Kiev's attempts to "de-Russify" the area with infringements on the use of the Russian language and religious practices. You, like many others, seem to have swallowed Western propaganda pretty wholesale. There are two sides to this and it is my considered opinion (as an Englishman) that Russia has far more right on its side than we in the West are generally allowed to know.
    1
  14100.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  "There were minor ceasefire violations by both sides, but the main goal of the Minsk agreements was for Ukraine to grant regional autonomy to the two Donbass republics. This was largely ignored in favor of receiving military aid from the US and other NATO countries. The civil war was supported by Russia, and there was significant local opposition to Kiev's rule. The Wagner Group supported the local forces, and while opinions varied, some saw them as liberators. Donbass struggled post-independence due to attempts at nationalization of Russian-owned industries and efforts to 'de-Russify' the area, impacting language and religious practices. It's important to consider different perspectives on this issue. In my view, Russia's position is often misunderstood in the West."
    1
  14101.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  My reply to this has been rewritten by the bot, Bing, in order to get it past the nameless YouTube bot. Nonetheless it is, broadly speaking, the view of this particular unbiased Englishman.
    1
  14102.  @JonSmith-wg8mr I think the statistics prove pretty conclusively that civilian deaths in this war are collateral - from the Russian side at least. Russia has the capacity to cause many, many civilian deaths but concentrates its attacks on infrastructure. Both sides have been guilty of what might be described as war crimes, UN reports on the original Donbass conflict clearly show this. As I said earlier, Russia had little choice, really, but to take this conflict to its extreme. Donbass is sitting on an estimated $13trillion in mineral wealth and nobody would sit by and watch that being snatched from under their nose.
    1
  14103.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  I'm not lying. The minor violations could have been ignored but Ukraine's obvious refusal to carry out the main thrust of Minsk, while at the same time accepting billions of dollars in order to rebuild its army, backed Russia into a corner.
    1
  14104.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  What extremists? Russia co-ordinated the rebellions in Donbass and indeed promoted the cause. That's what counties do. The US is well-known for attempting to undermine regimes which stand in is way.
    1
  14105.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  In Ukraine, as in Georgia and Chechnya, rebellions have been fomented by outside influences in order to weaken Russia. Russia has responded. This is regrettable, but the prime cause is the activities of those outside influences.
    1
  14106.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  It's not "everybody else's fault." It's everybody's fault. What gets my goat is this goody v baddy thing we're all supposed to swallow. The raw material for rebellion was there. Extreme economic pressures existed. There was outside influence from the West which wants to lay its hands on the loot which Russia says it has more of a right to. In my view though, the blame isn't equally distributed. The blame lies mainly with those who aren't getting hurt - namely those outside agencies motivated by greed for something which isn't theirs.
    1
  14107.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  What better life? Life in Russia is better than life in many Western countries in many important respects. That isn't the point though. This "better life"-along with "freedom and democracy" are just the shiny objects greedy Western companies and agencies wave under the noses of people in foreign countries in order to get them to rebel against their rulers - and accept US hegemony instead.
    1
  14108.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Extremist what?
    1
  14109.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  They are not Ukrainian resources. The companies which own and operate them are largely Russian. they are the result of hundreds of years of effort and investment by Russia and by Russians. Compromise was possible, and indeed existed, but Ukraine being "persuaded" by Western agencies to take them over and pass them on is obviously too much to expect their traditional and actual owners to accept without protest.
    1
  14110.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  The companies which own and operate the mines and industries in Eastern Ukraine are largely Russian. The resources have been developed with Russian investment and Russian labour over very many decades. That makes them Russian.
    1
  14111.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  You have to define what you mean by extremists.
    1
  14112.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  I feel it is my duty to protect my fellow citizens from globalist propaganda. And I like a good argument. You are now letting yourself down a bit though. Just accept - if just for moment - the idea that you might have been lied to.
    1
  14113.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  It doesn't. That's the point. The resources of Eastern Ukraine are largely owned by Russians, and worked by Russians, as has been the case for decades. That makes them Russian.
    1
  14114.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Opposite of what?
    1
  14115.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Owning a business that was in existence many years before the country came into existence does imply a certain consideration though.
    1
  14116.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  But it what respect were they "extremists"?
    1
  14117.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  He is. His "extremism" in this instance was in attempting to bring down the Russian state. His function in Donbass and Crimea was that of a provocateur and co-ordinator of the separatist forces.
    1
  14118.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Ghirkin's function in Donbass and Crimea was not really any different to that of US agents in Ukraine, Georgia and Chechen.
    1
  14119.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Now you're just letting yourself down.
    1
  14120.  @terryhand  Why do you think the pro-Russian Georgian government is banning foreign donations to opposition parties? Why was Victoria Newland handing out sandwiches during the Maidan revolution? Who were the snipers on the rooftops?
    1
  14121.  @terryhand  The war in Ukraine and the wars in Georgia and Chechnya. Do you really think these events were spontaneous? Do you really think the CIA hasn't had agents in Afghanistan and Syria? It's not exactly a secret!
    1
  14122.  @terryhand  The overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Ukraine in 2014 didn't happen by accident. Twenty years ago, when American was a villain, the media was full of stories about its interference in the affairs of other nations.
    1
  14123.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Shame on you. You're the one descending to insults.
    1
  14124.  @terryhand  I'll try. But you could just use your common sense and a little knowledge of history.
    1
  14125.  @terryhand  Ever heard of the CIA?
    1
  14126.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Ghikin put his hand up to MH 17 - although denying moral responsibility. The guys were drunk who did it. As for the ICC it is an institution for which I have no respect. It is just another arm of US hegemony.
    1
  14127.  @terryhand  Have you heard of an organisation called the CIA? The one with the agents working in foreign countries?
    1
  14128.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Ghirkin put his hand up to that - even though he had no direct involvement. The ICC is a joke.
    1
  14129.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Be more specific. I don't lie. I may make mistakes. I very often say things many disagree with. But that is different to telling a deliberate untruth.
    1
  14130.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  You really ought to specify what lies and what mistakes though, don't you think?
    1
  14131.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  The first claim is unprovable either way. I think it unlikely though. And Russia does have claims on Ukraine - historical claims and claims based on financial ownership. This means that it is not in the wrong.
    1
  14132.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  But Russia created Ukraine in its present form. The whole area of what is currently considered to be Ukraine was divided into an ever-shifting jigsaw of provinces, run by distant empires or local lords, until Russia took it over in the late 18th century. How does this affect Russia's size? I'm puzzled.
    1
  14133.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  The Russia that signed those documents is not the Russia of today.
    1
  14134.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Showing Ghirkin's direct involvement? If you can direct me to these I will be pleased to reverse my current opinion.
    1
  14135.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  So do you.
    1
  14136.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  This is very true that there have been all sorts of territorial claims and counter claims over the centuries.. But we are talking now about a situation occurring just over 30 years ago.
    1
  14137.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Putin's Russia is not Yeltsin's Russia, and there are numerous precedents for new administrations overturning decisions made by previous ones. As I said in previous posts, the deaths are the result of Ukraine failing to negotiate a compromise.
    1
  14138.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Putin's point is that the SSR of Ukraine was a creation of the Russian Bolsheviks. But it was NOT a country which was created. It was an administrative unit of the Soviet Union. But as I repeatedly try to point out, it is not these historical precedents which purely affect the situation. The maps drawn and the papers signed do not make a country in themselves. There must be some unity of purpose and a general agreement on alliances and policies. This does not exist in Ukraine.
    1
  14139.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Internationally only means those countries under direct or indirect US control in this context.
    1
  14140.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Buyers' remorse set in pretty quickly though. And no election or referendum in Ukraine or Russia is ever totally reliable anyway.
    1
  14141. The coral around Bikini Atoll was destroyed when atomic tests were carried out there in the 1950's. It has now completely replenished itself.
    1
  14142.  @karentanner4002  No. The fact that however bonkers they are they represent no real threat to the system of administration stops them from being dangerous. The Glorious Revolution really was quite glorious, you see.
    1
  14143. If he had been re-elected The Afghanistan withdrawal cock-up wouldn't have happened. Think on that.
    1
  14144.  @peterwright5311  Wriggle as much as you like, the Trump plan if enacted would have prevented much, if not all, of the dire, immediate consequences of the Biden debacle. There were 80,000 named civilian helpers guaranteed safe withdrawal. The token force was there simply to administer this; from both Kabul AND Bagram. Biden, by ignoring the May deadline, blew this out of the water. As far as equipment is concerned there is no way of saying at this stage whether it would have been left behind or destroyed. An intelligent analysis of the Afghan army's reliability in the first few months of this year would clearly have shown the latter to have been very much preferable. Trump is an intelligent and cunning negotiator, capable of making rational decisions. Biden is a senile buffoon.
    1
  14145. It seems to have escaped your attention that Russia and China are founder members of the rapidly increasing BRICS + alliance which aims to end American hegemony and the dollar as reserve currency.
    1
  14146. This woman should stay in the kitchen.
    1
  14147.  @johnadey3696  But what IS his country? That's what's being decided.
    1
  14148. @ Deciding what his country consists of is at the root of the problem.
    1
  14149. Prediction: as the refugees leave they will be fired on by their own people who will blame it on the Russians.
    1
  14150. You're wrong. A number of experiments have shown that using the type of rifle the shooter had would result in the bullet passing through the upper ear and leaving quite a small hole. Either explanation is possible, but if the shooter was aiming at Trump's head it is unlikely he would have been so bad a shot that he would have hit the teleprompter.
    1
  14151. His biography.
    1
  14152.  @markwitt9299  How?
    1
  14153.  @Thestorminator89  There is another possibility.
    1
  14154.  @TonyM540  Not like AK47s are at all popular, is it?
    1
  14155.  @kasperbolding18  True enough.
    1
  14156.  @Doing_Time  Vote Trump 2020? It's a big step but you should take it.
    1
  14157.  @Doing_Time  So pleased to hear it. By any objective standards the Dems' behaviour has been disgraceful beyond measure. Perhaps even evil. Let's hope enough people show your common sense and decency.
    1
  14158. The plot to destabilise America and to replace capitalism is centred on Democrat controlled cities and has little to with who's in the White House -although having a mutton-headed weakling like Biden shoe-horned in is a bonus. You know that Mr White, as Ron Johnson knows that and I know that. To pretend otherwise is not only disingenuous but is an insult to the viewers of this channel. Many of them seem not to be the brightest lights on the Christmas tree but they deserve better than this level of contempt.
    1
  14159.  @joebeetz1832  Exactly. As when an election is stolen through manipulation of the voting system. As in 2020.
    1
  14160. No. He's trying to stop it being rigged. Do try to keep up.
    1
  14161. Our nation is on the verge of collapse. Until this is recognised, no solutions are available.
    1
  14162. I have looked into the future of journalism and it is grim.
    1
  14163. A complete reversal of the US leadership has meant since World War II is EXACTLY what is needed. The world has been stuck in that rut for far too long. Now the US and Russia can form a productive partnership which will herald a new age of peace and prosperity.
    1
  14164. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a pre-emptive strike. America and its NATO allies had spent billions of creating a new Ukrainian army which was poised to retake Crimea from Russia and the rebel Donbass republics from the Russian-Ukrainian insurgents. Attempts by Russia to arrive at a peaceful solution were rebuffed by Zelensky on instructions from his NATO masters. Putin had little choice but to invade. His tactic was to thrust deep into Ukraine, thus drawing the Ukrainian army into battle on its own territory instead of that occupied by Russia and Russian sympathisers, as NATO had originally intended. This has largely worked and the much-reduced Ukrainian armed forces are now falling back as Russia heads towards the Donbass border. As to your other point I append a rough list of countries which have been invaded by NATO or had coups supported by NATO in recent years. In many cases the conflicts that already existed had been deliberately inflamed by outside interests, often American. In all cases the consequences of these interventions can be seen as of benefit to the US economy in one way or another. America is the policeman of the world, yes. But it is a bent cop. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Philippines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine
    1
  14165. I fully endorse the post by @pjblackham8554. I would also like to add that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a pre-emptive strike, designed to prevent the multi-billion dollar army created for Ukraine by NATO from attempting to recapture the Donbass republics from the insurgents and Crimea from the Russians. His tactic was to take the battle to the enemy by drawing the Ukrainians into their own territory, away from the borders, and reducing them there through a campaign of attrition and sacrifice. This way all the serious fighting and subsequent damage has taken place on Ukrainian territory, not Russian or Russian -leaning. This tactic has been successful and the much-reduced Ukrainian army is now being forced back to the Donbass border, at which point I am sure Putin will sue for peace.
    1
  14166. The Russians pushed towards Kiev in order to draw the Ukrainians into battle on their own territory, and there to reduce them by attrition and sacrifice. This has been successful, and the much depleted Ukrainians are now gradually being forced back to the Donbass border. It is worth noting that the Ukrainian army was largely paid for by NATO to the tune of at least $25billion.
    1
  14167.  love is my religion  He deserved it for spreading lies. That's what makes it funny. If the rioters hadn't been there rioting away the police wouldn't be shooting rubber bullets and tear gas, would they?
    1
  14168.  love is my religion  Nor has tried to inflame it for political purposes, as have BLM and the Democrats.
    1
  14169. How about when people have deliberately put themselves into mock distress in order to illegally enter a country? These laws are being abused and when good laws are abused it poses a threat to the very purpose for which those laws were created.
    1
  14170. What would be the point?
    1
  14171.  @WHS_reviews  Who's Ivan?
    1
  14172.  @jonsid6628  Norway has no city like Stockholm and far fewer very elderly people and African immigrants into which categories the vast majority of Sweden's deaths fall.
    1
  14173. The EU caused this war to happen.
    1
  14174. Take comfort. Early signs are that the Omicron variant , while many times more contagious than Delta, is actually far less severe in its effects. It seems that none of the patients so far identified have even had to be hospitalised. If true this is really great news because it means people can become immune at the cost of just a runny nose.
    1
  14175.  @docostler  I agree. Optimism can be dangerous, but things have been so tiresome lately I've decided to indulge. Yes omicron has around 37 mutations in its spike protein but the vaccine manufacturers say they can adapt their stuff to suit - which would be a pity really if omicron does turn out to provide a glimpse of freedom. As far as the immunity it provides is concerned it seems thusfar that a general rule more or less total immunity is gained to the variant contracted, but you can catch another variant, although the symptoms will be mild.
    1
  14176. Labour only got in because the Tories were so bad. But the Starmer government is quite mind-boggling incompetent and even dangerous. It is quite clear to me that it is little more than the paid creature of foreign entities, notably globalists and and asset management companies. Every single one of the policies it has introduced, or plans to introduce, points to this. I feel immensely sorry for all you good-hearted Labour supporters who have allowed this cancer to enter into the body politic.
    1
  14177.  @anglonorse2943  Open your eyes.
    1
  14178.  @anglonorse2943  More cliches?
    1
  14179.  @MIEJ4  I think the evidence speaks for itself. Government faculties are being passed over to private enterprise, mass immigration is being encouraged, money is being diverted into supporting Ukraine while pensioners are being deprived of benefits, the countryside is in danger of being overwhelmed by cheap housing to cater for the young immigrants who will replace our ageing population; Islam, which uses the fear of death to encourage compliance with authority, is being supported as a potential state religion and free speech is being quashed. Our Prime Minister is hand in glove with the asset management companies which dictate policy worldwide and the farming industry is being taxed out of existence. This is a revolution. This is not what we voted for. This is not Socialism. This is something new and terrifying.
    1
  14180.  @MIEJ4  All evidence points to its truth. You've been conned. You thought you were getting Socialism. You're getting asset-company financed globalism.
    1
  14181.  @MIEJ4  All evidence points otherwise. You thought you were voting for decent Socialist values. What you got was globalist fascism, run by profiteering asset-management companies which can buy their way into anything.
    1
  14182.  @MIEJ4  The evidence points otherwise. Whatever you've ended up with you can't call it Socialism. It is something far more sinister.
    1
  14183.  @MIEJ4  What's my lot? Aren't you a tiny bit suspicious that Starmer has taken money from a prominent hedge fund manager and had dinner with the CEO of Blackrock where he has welcomed the prospect of Britain joining with a multi-trillion firm of asset managers? Does it not concern you that the elderly and the vulnerable are being neglected in favour of thousand upon thousand of healthy, young male immigrants? That British farming is under threat and that there are plans to cover fields with cheap housing? Who for? Have you heard of replacement theory? Does it no worry you that our lives are being put at risk by supplying missiles to Ukraine in whose victory asset management companies have a profound financial interest? This has nothing to do with socialism or the well-being of the British working class. It is globalism, raw and terrifying.
    1
  14184.  @MIEJ4  Erosion of free speech, cuddling up to asset management companies, sending missiles to Ukraine, undermining farming, neglect of the elderly, facilitating mass immigration, promotion of the religion of Islam....... All useful routes to the creation of a new world order where a subservient population provides for a mega-rich elite.
    1
  14185.  @MIEJ4  It is rather difficult to share the evidence since YouTube's globalist/fascist algorithm bot is in on the conspiracy. Several of my replies have been deleted, but I might keep trying. It's great when you beat the thing.
    1
  14186.  @MIEJ4  I'd love to. But the YouTube algorithm is seemingly reluctant to allow me to do so. I will have to come up with a Cunning Plan.
    1
  14187.  @MIEJ4  My Cunning Plan was to get a friendly bot to rephrase one of my original replies in a language which the YouTube bot might allow. Here goes: "I'm concerned about several issues in the UK right now. For instance, Keir Starmer's interactions with financial entities like BlackRock raise questions about his commitment to working-class interests. Additionally, the elderly and vulnerable seem to be neglected in favor of young, healthy immigrants. British farming is under threat, and there are plans to use farmland for housing. This makes me wonder who these houses are for. The idea of 'replacement theory' also comes to mind. Furthermore, supplying missiles to Ukraine, where asset management companies have financial interests, seems risky. These issues don't align with socialism or the well-being of the British working class but rather with globalism."
    1
  14188. I am so pleased that no Democrats have died from covid. I think' I'll join.
    1
  14189. Ali Castro and the 40(+) thieves?
    1
  14190. Good job this isn't actually what Badenoch is saying then, isn't it?
    1
  14191.  @DavidMoxham957  Including Labour of course. Is there no escape?
    1
  14192.  @catherinewilson3880  Don't you dare call me a Tory!
    1
  14193.  @DavidMoxham957  The insane YouTube algorithm is giving me even more grief than usual today, but I suppose you must be referring to me suggesting that Labour will just as easily bin the pensions system as the Tories might? The fact is, of course, then the proportion of non-productive old buggers like me, draining the national purse is now so large that there isn't enough coming in from taxes in younger workers to keep us in crisps and thermal underwear. Labour is no longer a socialist party, but a mere tool of the globalists and quite capable of, say, colluding in introducing a deadly virus which targets the elderly or reducing pensions to such a degree that we either starve or freeze to death.
    1
  14194.  @marvintpandroid2213  He's fighting dozens of cases. I guess your referring to the bent City of New York trying to bust him on ludicrous made-up charges. Not the IRS,
    1
  14195. Presumably their job is to agree with everything you say.
    1
  14196.  @davidcolin6519  You are assuming a great deal from a ten word comment. (The press is the 4th estate, by the way, not the 3rd.) And yes, the MSM is total crap for the most part. One really has to try to get to sources and view channels such as this one - and those on the opposite end of the political spectrum - to be able to get any idea of what is going on in the world. The legacy media is becoming increasingly irrelevant, which is a very good thing.
    1
  14197. What accident? It was clearly sabotage and America is the obvious culprit.
    1
  14198. Because he has done nothing wrong?
    1
  14199.  @octavianpopescu4776  The fraud didn't amount to a hill of beans and the rape was a stitch-up. Compared to the crooks who run America Donald Trump is a choirboy.
    1
  14200.  @octavianpopescu4776  The fraud was merely a bit of creative accounting and the rape didn't happen except in the mind of the woman concerned.
    1
  14201.  @gregc.5684  No. Because that's the way any objective assessment makes clear.
    1
  14202. American politics is a world of fantasy.
    1
  14203. OK Boomer You are insane. Not even the craziest of the crazy scientists says anything like this. You're having a laugh.Please tell me you're having a laugh!
    1
  14204. Pohaku Mana It really saddens me to see the way these probably entirely decent young people have had their minds twisted by cynical propaganda.
    1
  14205. Davey Duff Runaway global warming hysteria more like.
    1
  14206. Pohaku Mana . Very hot and humid once when it was still attached to Mexico or whatever, but at the time of the Vikings it was probably pretty similar to northern Scandinavia today.
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  14207. Pohaku Mana Which itself followed the Dark Ages Cold Period which followed the Roman Warm Period.. I come at all this from a history buff's point of view. Michael Fuckwit Mann trying to wipe out centuries of human history annoyed me somewhat. The sediment proxy data is new to me. A 1,500 year cycle is a bit of a problem though. I think the procedure (solar forced mainly) is a series of cycles within cycles. with the cooling-off periods being quite rapid compared to the more gradual increases in temperature. Current work being undertaken on the actual nature of the sun and the solar system as a whole is proving very exiting. Bit harder to understand than this C02 Baaaad stuff though.
    1
  14208.  @pgr3290  Russia seems more to be trying to protect its existing interests than seeking to recreate an empire.
    1
  14209.  @RainerMichelle  Predominantly the vast mineral resources of the Donbass region. These were developed and exploited with Russian investment and by the sweat of Russian people. After the collapse of the Soviet Union these resources were still largely channelled through Russian agencies, but America and other Western entities have been after them for years. This has now come to a head. Other factors include the increasing expansion of NATO and the perceived oppression of the eight million or so Russian inhabitants of Ukraine by Ukrainian nationalists.
    1
  14210.  Take The Trash Out  You are completely wrong. The values and traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church have be re-instated since the collapse of Communism. Tens of thousands of churches have been re-opened or built.
    1
  14211.  @Katoshi_Takagumi  Putin is reputed to be a religious man, but that aside the point is that Christian faith is strong among many Russian people. It binds them together in a way that Communism ultimately failed to do.
    1
  14212.  @technobubba4  Not so. Eastern Ukraine was largely occupied by Tatars, These were not amenable to working in mines and factories and so were replaced by Russians. That is why there are so many Russians living there today. Kulaks are farmers. That is why you will find the Ukrainians, broadly speaking, occupy small towns and villages and the Russian population is concentrated in cities.
    1
  14213.  @candidbowyer4625  War is terrible. At the back of everyone's mind, I suppose we know this even when engaged upon it. There are other ways of settling our differences, and a ceasefire at Christmas might be a good way of reflecting what these may be.
    1
  14214.  @suburbia2050  The war is at a crux, certainly. I'm not sure what a troll is, but then I am a Russian bot on permanent hire to the Koch brothers, and such information has not been programmed into my databank.
    1
  14215.  @Purple_flower09  They have except for purely defensive purposes.
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  14216.  @suburbia2050  You're just thick. Christianity was persecuted under Communism but when the Soviet Union collapsed it returned and flowered big time. The Russian Orthodox Church binds the people together now much as it did in the time of the Tsars. Get a brain -or at least some knowledge of history before showing yourself up as a fool.
    1
  14217.  @candidbowyer4625  And the generals on both sides ensured that nothing like that ever happened again. Putin was merely acknowledging the re-emergence of the Christian faith in Russia. The fact that the West imagined he had a suspicious motive is just one more sign of the Russophobia which got us into this war.
    1
  14218.  @candidbowyer4625  The war is about Russia maintaining its territorial integrity and interests in the face of US fuelled expansionism, using NATO as a front. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, America has used the Russian Federation as the necessary enemy to keep its military industrial complex going. It has expanded NATO eastwards, despite earlier promises that it would not do so. The key to the present struggle though is the vast mineral wealth of the Donbass region. This was financed and developed by Russia, using Russian labour. The population of Donbass is roughly a third Russian, but in the industrial areas and cities the percentage is even higher. Like Russia, Ukraine is an oligarchy. As long as the Ukrainian oligarchs continued to channel the coal and steel and oil from Donbass through Russia, all was well. But then America stepped in and started making offers. Matters came to a head in 2014 when America manipulated concerns about Ukraine joining the EU to fuel riots which resulted in the Russian-leaning premier being replaced by an American-leaning one. It's all developed from there, as these things do. Russia fomented rebellions in Donbass which Ukraine tried to savagely repress. Thousands have died. Treaties were drawn up which were supposed to ease the situation but these were not adhered to and NATO used the breathing space to equip and train a large Ukrainian army. It became clear that this army was to be used to retake Donbass from the separatists and probably to try to retake Crimea from the Russians, but that's another story. In December 2022 Putin put forward a series of peace proposals which would have involved a promise by Ukraine not to join NATO, and recognition of the two Donbass regions as independent republics. They were rejected with scorn by Zelensky, on America's instructions. Russia then amassed a large army on the border and invited him to think again. He refused. "Bring it on," he said, more or less - and Russia did with the results we see today.
    1
  14219. You guys have really let TDS rot your brains. What Trump and Musk are doing is utterly brilliant and long, long overdue. It might not be enough to save America, but it will certainly slow its decline.
    1
  14220.  @andrew30m  Get you, Mr Superior!
    1
  14221.  @andrew30m  Do you know the story of the Gordian Knot?
    1
  14222.  @tw25rw  There are many different forms of intelligence. Trump's comes pretty close to animal cunning, which is why he tends to confuse and irritate more conventional thinkers.
    1
  14223.  @tw25rw  He's not very verbal. He's more of a conceptual thinker.
    1
  14224. Soviet-style tactics on Tucker. Biden has let the bad genie out of the bottle. The "deep state" is real and it needs more than four years of Trumpism to kill it off. Evil lurks in Washington. Real evil.
    1
  14225. How can you blame them? In their eyes democracy died in the belly of a Dominion voting machine in November. Platitudes and hypocrisy are no substitute. Disavowals are meaningless. Violence is all they have left.
    1
  14226. Whose street name was Little Homicide, an assassin chosen BECAUSE he was 13 and thus only liable for a short sentence if caught.
    1
  14227. Is it just me, or is there a teeny edge of desperation creeping into all these very positive statements lately?
    1
  14228.  @davefave4351  Fair enough- but considering the present state of the war does this not seem an act of desperation rather than anything else?
    1
  14229.  @mikechesh-nq9gj  My guess is that they're hoping for an extra bargaining chip in what would appear to be pretty imminent peace negotiations - but I am entirely open to other explanations.
    1
  14230.  @mickstape555  Are they such a huge deal though? I still don't get it.
    1
  14231.  @RavenFlight413  Yes, a sort of package. I don't think Russia will need to take much away from the Donetsk front to deal with it though. Perhaps it is a sign that peace may be around the corner.
    1
  14232.  @davefave4351  Well no. Kharkiv definitely caused Ukraine to deploy considerable forces to defend it, thus weakening their position on the Donetsk front. It remains to be seen if Ukraine's present incursion will cause Russia to remove forces from Donetsk, but the scale of the operation would seem to make this unlikely. I would imagine it could be counter-acted by bringing in forces held in reserve. There seems to be only about a thousand men involved at this stage. I am more and more convinced that this is a token gesture, designed to humiliate Russia in the eyes of the world but without any great strategic or operational purpose. It is, in fact, a sign that all is up for Ukraine. They might as well go to the conference table in a blaze of glory.
    1
  14233.  @Kodakcompactdisc  A dubious claim.
    1
  14234.  @seanlander9321  Throughout the war so far Russia has been accused of using untrained conscripts and antiquated equipment. You can't have it both ways.
    1
  14235.  @MrNoClueAtAll  You seem somewhat confused. The people of these regions certainly have been Russian for many centuries, but Putin is probably using total annexation as a bargaining ploy in future negotiations. He will not give up Luhansk and Donetsk and really only requires those parts of Kherson and Zaporizhia on the Russian side of the Dnieper to provide a land bridge to Crimea, which he will not give up either. I seek not to muddy the waters but to clarify matters. It is Western propagandists who seek to withhold relevant details in order to further advance a false narrative.
    1
  14236. And a good thing too.
    1
  14237. Here is another view: the Russians are using their relatively untrained troops to draw in Ukraine's relatively untrained troops to territory they don't want or need much as yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ps-juXNCTU
    1
  14238. America is no longer a democracy - if it ever was. The faceless figures who really rule the country are laughing at you all.
    1
  14239.  @GrandmasterFU666  For how much longer though?
    1
  14240. I don't see why. They only did what most governments did - and made the same mistakes.
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  14241. @Robert Townrow I have no time for this government, but the errors they made initially were commonplace across the world. A universal pandemic was planned for, indiscriminate in its effects. Instead covid turned out to be a different creature entirely - but despite this the initial responses were still trotted out quite mechanically. That mindset still persists to a great extent. Expert opinion has been so varied that it is difficult for politicians to choose which courses of action to follow.
    1
  14242.  @arturobianco848  Many did. Including Sweden. It was a pretty universal error.
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  14243.  @carlpeberdy9086  Until the discriminatory nature of the disease was fully known, isolation of the elderly was neglected in many countries - as well as US States.
    1
  14244.  @arturobianco848  I have to disagree. Most measures taken against the disease are only of very limited use. The UK's high death toll is more than anything due to the high proportion of extremely elderly in its population.
    1
  14245.  @ab-ym3bf  It depends how you classify "old." The UK has one of the highest proportion of over 90s in the world for example. This category has accounted for around one fifth of all covid deaths in the UK and is the category with the highest number of deaths. Most covid deaths occur in people over 80. I would imagine your figures relate to the proportion of population over 65 which is not all that relevant in the present instance - and possibly not even correct either.
    1
  14246.  @arturobianco848  The UK has one of the highest populations of people over 90 in the world. Per head of population it is probably only second to Japan. Deaths in the over 90s have accounted for about one fifth of all covid deaths in the UK. Most deaths occur in those over 80, so comparing the number of over 65s, as I presume you are doing, is not particularly relevant
    1
  14247.  @hannahdyson7129  Sounds dreadful. Do you have a source?
    1
  14248.  @jmolofsson  Yes, the numbers in all countries are relatively small in under 65s in comparison with older age groups so there might not be an actual trend, as such. Ethnicity and general health may be factors but it would be perhaps foolish to take guesses at this point.
    1
  14249.  @geoffreyduckworth6062  I don't think it as much life expectancy as the actual number of extremely elderly people with broken immune systems on hand to die which is important. About a fifth of the covid deaths in the UK have been among those in the 90 plus age bracket, for instance.
    1
  14250.  @hannahdyson7129  I am genuinely shocked. I must investigate further.
    1
  14251.  @errorswillmultiply1697  But rewarding and educational in many ways.
    1
  14252.  @carlpeberdy9086  Well, only with the benefit of hindsight. The thinking was that they would be safer that way. Totally wrong , as we now know but in the early stages it wasn't realised that covid was so fatal to the elderly. But you are right, there is really no excuse. The politicians made the first of the big mistakes - listening to the wrong "experts".
    1
  14253.  @scottbarrie1303  I hold no brief for Johnson or his approach. As for Sweden; after that initial and common mistake regarding care homes they seem to have got things as about as right as anyone could.
    1
  14254.  @stephanguitar9778  I wouldn't disagree. The UK's response to the pandemic has been an utter shambles. That is not to say that the countries you mention have not been assisted by factors over and above the dynamic excellence of their political leaders. I don't understand your reference to "herd immunity." It is the only way out of this mess and - more by luck than judgement - the UK is now rapidly approaching this threshold.
    1
  14255.  @kardy12  I meant in the broadest sense, with plans filtering down from the WHO. The government has dithered and contradicted itself throughout the whole procedure but the original concept was flawed - a universal pandemic, not one which is as selective as covid turned out to be.
    1
  14256.  @kardy12  Which makes them selective. Covid is entirely selective in whom it kills - namely the elderly and others with compromised immune systems. It is also probably selective in whom it infects in the first place, certainly in terms of severity of response.
    1
  14257. Might be a good time to buy roubles while they're going cheap.
    1
  14258.  @Marc98338  A punt on Russia coming out on top strikes me as a very reasonable risk.
    1
  14259.  @Marc98338  Why? Taking a punt on Russian victory doesn't seem so crazy.
    1
  14260.  @Marc98338  You would be amazed at the recovery if Russia is granted official access to the wealth of Donbass. Money talks. And the Russian casualty figures - while depressingly large - are nothing like as bad as we are told in the West. A win for Russia will alter the global economy quite dramatically.
    1
  14261.  @Marc98338  A perceived win for Russia - which is very much on the cards - will have a very marked result. And many of the things you now believe will prove not to have been true.
    1
  14262.  @Marc98338  A settlement in Russia's favour will have a marked effect upon the value of the rouble. The economy will recover in time and the number of Russian casualties has been vastly exaggerated.
    1
  14263. Not even just advertising. Sky is owned by the Vanguard group ,which also owns most of the vaccine manufacturing pharma companies.
    1
  14264.  @jordanblake5916  Exactly so. One gets the feeling that those sectors in which Murdoch retains a considerable interest are more resistant to globalist/ left wing influences, but not when immediate profit is clear, as with vaccines.
    1
  14265. It is far from obvious that the Russians did it. It was more than likely the result of weakness caused by long-term Ukrainian shelling and at least one missile attack. As for Bucha there is every likelihood this was a fake.
    1
  14266.  @zeeninetynine  It should be over before the year is out. You make the mistake, as so many do, of believing that Putin wants the whole of Ukraine. He doesn't. He just wants Donbass, and the border is now within reach.
    1
  14267.  @julianova8931  Donetsk
    1
  14268.  @julianova8931  Donetsk
    1
  14269.  @zeeninetynine  The Donbass border is now within reach. Once that is done Putin's war aims will have been achieved.
    1
  14270.  @julianova8931  Just look at a map.
    1
  14271.  @julianova8931  Donetsk.
    1
  14272.  @zeeninetynine  All Putin ever said he wanted was Donbass and Crimea. He's got Crimea, and the way things are going he'll get the rest of Donbass before the year is out.
    1
  14273.  @zeeninetynine  I doubt those parts of those regions north of the Dnieper figure largely in Russia's long term plans. That would depend upon the position it finally finds itself in following negotiations.
    1
  14274. They are in regular use by the Ukrainians in their war against the separatists of Donbass.
    1
  14275.  @valenrn8657  It was. From HRW: A NATO airstrike on the airfield in Nis last week went off target, hitting a hospital complex and adjoining civilian areas. In an earlier incident on April 24, five boys were reported to have been killed and two injured when what was evidently a cluster bomb submunition exploded near the village of Doganovic, fifteen kilometers from Urosevac in southern Kosovo.
    1
  14276.  @valenrn8657  You are quoting @|A balloon, not me.
    1
  14277.  @valenrn8657  Oh, that's all right then.
    1
  14278.  @errorswillmultiply1697  So considering contrary points of view is a waste of time is it?
    1
  14279.  @KTo288  I am tired of this absurd analogy, as well as comparisons with blackouts in the Blitz. A neater comparison would be to suggest that men carrying red flags should walk in front of motor vehicles, and the lanes on roads be divided by ten feet high reinforced concrete walls.
    1
  14280.  @PanglossDr  To extend it. I loathe and despise Boris Johnson and all he represents.
    1
  14281.  @errorswillmultiply1697  An education?
    1
  14282.  @stephenconway2468  How reasonable? They have been a complete hodge-podge created for reasons of political expediency and - even more egregious - almost certainly in order to prepare a path for a vastly profitable vaccines marketing exercise. It's just as easy to deduce that great harm has been done by many of them, as it is to see benefits. It's going to be essential that a fully detailed examination of all that has gone on is carried out . But I don't hold out much hope. (I am not an anti-vaxxer per se, but profit comes streets ahead of public health in the corporate mind of Big Pharma.)
    1
  14283.  @stephenconway2468  Of course you can - if by validity you mean effectiveness. We were told that these rules were for our protection. If the people who instigated them chose to ignore them it can only mean that they had no faith in their effectiveness - either that or they were completely indifferent to their fate and the fate of their families and loved ones. The first is far more likely, don't you think?
    1
  14284.  @stephenconway2468  Your faith in masks is deeply touching but entirely misplaced. Only a fully fitted mask of N95 standard or above is any use, and that is pretty limited. They are just a psychological prop designed to give you the illusion that you are doing something to help -as indeed are a great many of the measures that have been put into place. No real-world study of mask usage has shown a statistically significant reduction in transmission due to their use.
    1
  14285.  @stephenconway2468  I'm afraid you need to make yourself clearer.
    1
  14286.  @stephenconway2468  I understood you exactly. Masks other than those of the highest standard protect neither the wearer nor those around them Even the CDC now says cloth masks are ineffective and other experts include the commonplace blue disposable masks in this category. It was you who introduced the topic of masks.
    1
  14287.  @stephenconway2468  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNI2ocgosgA
    1
  14288.  @stephenconway2468  I fully accept your quote, which clearly implies that cheap cloth masks are virtually useless. I have tried to provide links to the studies which Prof Henegan mentions, as well as others which actually use science to come to their conclusions, rather than the meaningless waffle in the CDC quote. All are removed by the YouTube algorithm and only Prod Henegan's video has got through. "Conclusions: We did not observe association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states. COVID-19 mitigation requires further research and use of existing efficacious strategies, most notably vaccination." The above from one such study. Frustratingly I can only try to direct you towards it by subterfuge, which I will attempt in another post.
    1
  14289.  @stephenconway2468  International Research Journal of Public Health.
    1
  14290.  @stephenconway2468  Lead authors David and Damien Guerra.
    1
  14291.  @stephenconway2468  But where is the science which backs up the CDC claim that any mask is better than none? How can this possibly be so? Only close fitting masks of N95 standard and above are of any use, and these have to be worn more or less all the time. The CDC is backpedalling because there is no study which demonstrates that cloth masks or disposable masks have any effect on viral transmission. They are comfort blankets - no more.
    1
  14292.  @stephenconway2468  Your interpretations seem far wider of the mark than mine. My case remains that only high standard masks worn semi-permanently have any effect worth speaking of. There is no evidence to the contrary. The CDC's position is entirely clear from the quote you yourself supplied and the Guerra paper simply proves that masking, as it is generally practiced, has no effect. I resent being accused of lying. The CDC has backtracked and the Guerra paper and several others, finds no evidence of efficacy in real-world situations. Your interpretation is facile and childish and takes no account of the political and financial background to the authoritarian insistence on masking.
    1
  14293.  @stephenconway2468  You're floundering. The CDC case is clear and so are the results of studies based on real world data. I think you are getting confused between what science says OUGHT to happen and what actually does happen in reality. A good recent example of this is the recent UK Dept of Education report on masking in schools. After a lengthy preamble assessing various studies and opinions which point to the benefits of masking it references an actual real world study in October which shows no statistically significant reduction in infections in the masked group. Needless to say, masking has been introduced. It is beginning to look more and more like an obsession.
    1
  14294.  @stephenconway2468  And nor will you. As I think I said earlier we can but hope that a properly objective and detailed assessment of the response to the pandemic will take place. In my mind there is no doubt that knee-jerk reactions and strategies designed to make profits and to reduce individual liberties have taken precedence over considerations of public health. We will be suffering from the consequences of the measures taken long, long after the effects of the virus itself have been absorbed and forgotten.
    1
  14295.  @stephenconway2468  The conspiracies exist. Are you so naive that you believe the authorities' actions are motivated purely by altruism? Experience says otherwise. The vast profits being made from vaccines, facemasks et etc say otherwise. The fact that people are prepared to accept all sorts of inconveniences and indignities based on guesswork pretending to be science says otherwise.
    1
  14296.  @stephenconway2468  Isn't that what most people do? You seem to. We can each find evidence to support our instincts. As I say, your instinct seems to be that science is being objectively and benevolently used. Mine is that it is being used to manipulate and make profits.
    1
  14297.  @stephenconway2468  As are you, of course. Do you agree with me then that science is not necessarily being used benevolently in this instance?
    1
  14298.  @stephenconway2468  To try to give them meaning? To learn?
    1
  14299.  @stephenconway2468  I thought it was a perfectly simple question. You obviously needn't answer it if you don't wish to. It doesn't even require a yes or no . Your point about assessing information puzzles me somewhat. If one has enough information to reasonably convince one of something, then one should try to assess contrary views. This is why I go to channels, such as this one, where I can meet holders of such contrary views. It is then up to them to convince me of my errors, should they wish to. You seem to support these various attempts to mitigate the spread of the pandemic and I assume you have some justification for doing so - other than a natural tendency to comply with authority, that is. I am curious to know why. Lectures on semantics and philosophical rigour are not particularly helpful in this regard, especially when you appear to insist that none of your statements are capable of interpretation but are, like the ten commandments, set in stone and hold rigid meanings of which you are the sole arbiter.
    1
  14300.  @stephenconway2468  Wriggle wriggle.
    1
  14301.  @stephenconway2468  How do you reconcile the accusation of my narrow-mindedness with my declared willingness to consider views which conflict with my "preconceptions"? Or is that a leading question?
    1
  14302.  @stephenconway2468  It seems impossible for you to deal with the concept that I understand what you say - but disagree with it. If I reframe your questions it is simply in order to discover if I have understood them. Normal procedures of discourse would next involve you in confirming or denying whether or not I have understood you correctly.. Instead you simply deny me the right to seek further clarification. A similar lack of understanding on your part is to refuse me the right of contradiction. A normal dialectic sequence is for one party (you) to make a statement of a position and then another (me)to offer a refutation. Thesis and antithesis, in other words; a synthesis whereby an approximation of truth might be reached is impossible when you describe the first stage as "binary" and refuse to go beyond it. How can you possibly hope to enter the realms of complexity and nuance when you won't open the door? AS to the mask debate - I do not ignore my own evidence but merely disagree with those parts of it which are unproven and which can be attributed to political and financial expediency. This is about the 3rd or 4th time I have explained this.
    1
  14303.  @stephenconway2468  My word you are conceited! Not ready for discourse?! I'm beginning to think you are incapable of it. What do you mean "the wrong channel"? As I've already said I come here in the hope of having intelligent and fruitful conversations with people whose views are contrary to my own - perhaps to our mutual benefit. It doesn't happen very often and it doesn't look as though it's going to happen with you.
    1
  14304.  thoraadam9049  You've got a brain?
    1
  14305. But anyone can buy the cheap stock, can't they?
    1
  14306.  @UdumbaraMusic  Do you really think that stock-market manipulation for personal profit is at the root of Trump's behaviour though? Do you not consider it likely that what he is trying to do is to basically re-structure the way markets operate so that financing value-added processes returns as the root of investment, rather than gambling on esoteric outcomes?
    1
  14307.  @UdumbaraMusic  I admit it's got me puzzled! But the problems were there before and have certainly contributed greatly to America's need to borrow more and more and print more and more money. I think it possible - if not obviously likely - that Trump is somehow trying to break the system in order to rebuild it.
    1
  14308.  @UdumbaraMusic  Could you possibly embellish your final paragraph? I'm not quite getting it. Without coming across too much as a Trump apologist (which I suppose I am, though) it strikes me that Trump uses the greed of others to make money for himself, and might well be using the greed of others to cushion America's inevitable collapse. What countries do you categorise as enemies of the USA? Making deals with Russia, for example, is going to be of enormous benefit to the world.
    1
  14309.  @christopherhogg8364  There is nonetheless a substantial Russian population in Crimea and Donbass - up to 70% in some areas - which resents the way they have been treated by the nationalists in Kiev. Russia developed these regions using Russian investment and Russian labour. The rebellions in Donbass had widespread support and could have been contained if Ukraine had heeded the Minsk accords which effectively superceded Budapest. But the West wants to lay its hand on the vast mineral wealth of the disputed regions and is currently spending billions on getting them - wickedly spilling Ukrainian and Russian blood to do so..
    1
  14310. Well, I bet you're glad you got that off your chest.
    1
  14311. It was. The courts refused to hear it.
    1
  14312. Yes you are.
    1
  14313. "We is all pink inside, just same Queen Victoria." A quote, but I forget its origin.
    1
  14314.  @bretedwards2899  Utterly ridiculous. Russia is a prosperous, well-fed nation. Its people are now doing better than at any time in their history.
    1
  14315.  @petersouthernboy6327  Why should the Germans - or anyone else -be expected to suffer in order to help crush America's enemies? It's bad enough the poor bloody Ukrainians having to do it.
    1
  14316.  @КристинаЙорданова-р8л  There's a chance that when this is all over the Germans can save their crumbling economy by buying gas from Russia again. Selling tanks in a futile attempt to defeat Russia would be a very foolish thing to do.
    1
  14317. ​ @petersouthernboy6327  They don't even want all of Ukraine! It is you who is naive - or perhaps I should say brainwashed. Do you think that after twenty years Putin woke up one morning and decided to head west? His army in an army of defence, not of aggression which is why he has had to bring in mercenaries. He only want what he believes are rightly his - those parts of Ukraine inhabited by Russians and which owe their wealth to Russian sweat and Russian investment. It is America worming its way into Ukraine which has caused this war.
    1
  14318. Why god help us? Sound like a good get-out plan to me.
    1
  14319.  @gbphil  No reason why it should be if the S Africa figures are anything to go by. The crunch will come when it hits our elderly population though.
    1
  14320. That's unless of course this is a deliberate attempt to spark another never-ending, highly profitable war.
    1
  14321. It's going to be a great test, isn't it? If there's no second wave after this, we'll know we're in the clear. If there IS then it will be entirely the fault of the selfish bastards who broke the rules.
    1
  14322.  @TheHoveHeretic  I think I would draw my line some time in the late 1970s. I'm sure there must have been some beneficial legislation after that, but I can't think of any offhand.
    1
  14323.  @TheHoveHeretic  So you can't think of any either?
    1
  14324.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  There should be sufficient reserves available if this incursion is as relatively small as it appears.
    1
  14325. These sanctions will backfire bigly. They will plunge us into a world recession which Russia is better equipped to deal with than the West.
    1
  14326. What reassuringly sane people.
    1
  14327.  @jimbop4499  You'll be laughing on the other side or your emoji a year or so from now, believe you me.
    1
  14328.  @jimbop4499  Why so? Afghanistan is Saigon, the Bay of Pigs and the Iran hostage crisis combined - and then some. Confidence in American military superiority upon which its status largely depends has been utterly shattered. America is being held hostage by a gang of cave-dwelling religious fanatics. Unlike Saigon etc this one will run and run. The Taliban are selling the Yanks aviation fuel so they can ship their people out and selling the attack helicopters they left behind to the Russians. It's not a good look. It will look even worse when the Taliban start executing everyone who has worked for the Americans and the Americans either do nothing about it or start another war they won't win. The gig is up for Uncle Sam.
    1
  14329.    It was to a certainly extent, but the Biden administration's failures also result from conceit and duplicity.
    1
  14330. Maybe he should have taken bribes from the Chinese and the Ukrainians while he was in office. It all adds up, don't it Joe?
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  14331. I think you make the mistake of attributing a great deal of intelligence to those on the sharp end of these riots. They are just having fun in their own anarchistic way. Seeing sinister foreign forces behind these activities is paranoid. It's a dangerous route to go down.
    1
  14332.  @chris6559  Perhaps it takes someone as stupid as I am to recognise the stupidity of others. (You need to work on your sarcasm, by the way.)
    1
  14333.  @chris6559  Perhaps it takes someone as stupid as I am to recognise the stupidity of others.
    1
  14334.  @joshuabetts2484  They'd have known all right. His record was available to them on scene I'm sure. It seems he might have skipped bail, or that there was an arrest warrant out for him. I'm sure the cops didn't have their guns out for no reason! I think he was clearly drugged-up, just from his incredibly reckless behaviour. I also hear that he had been tasered and pulled them out, though I don't know if I believe that. Yes, we'll just have to wait and see - but like the George Floyd case this goes to prove how foolish it is to jump to hasty conclusions based on fragmentary evidence - unless of course you deliberately do so for political reasons.
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  14335. I'm 76. My parents and most of my schoolteachers were unashamed racists, much along the lines of your uncle. I really genuinely think that their kind of attitude is very much on the decline nowadays.
    1
  14336.  @unusedsub3003  Batchelorette of Modern Dance?
    1
  14337. Not much money in planting trees. Subsidised useless gizmos on the other hand should yield the kind of profits climate warriors expect.
    1
  14338. It is a propaganda process, designed, as you rightly say, to keep children fearful of the nasty bogeyman - but not too fearful because big, brave General Hodges and his chums are on hand to protect us all.
    1
  14339. Hang on, the Ukrainians have got a 2%chance at least!
    1
  14340. What is behind all these lies though? Is it China trying to take over the world or traders making millions from the carbon futures market? And why do all the politicians buy into this crap?
    1
  14341. Tests down 13%, positives down 30% I know it must break your heart, but you really must think ahead and start getting all fearful about climate change again.
    1
  14342. I would imaging that those oligarchs who own the immensely rich mining areas of Donbass are very grateful to Putin for preventing the clown Zelensky nationalising them and then selling them off to the Americans.
    1
  14343.  @yurilytviak9066  Another vote for Stalin - that's all that was.
    1
  14344.  @danjohnson6800  Except in Crimea and much of the country east of the Dneiper where town still have streets named after Marx and Lenin.
    1
  14345. Why didn't this woman just bang on the ceiling with her broomstick?
    1
  14346. See a doctor. Even if it's Ronny Jackson.
    1
  14347. KamilC But these things only happened in the minds of the deluded.
    1
  14348. Sam Lowry It reads like a bunch of little kiddies making up fairy stories.
    1
  14349.  @drakashrakenburgproduction5369  She was scared - but delighted to be there.
    1
  14350.  @tharunsat  There is testimony and video evidence on Patrick Lancaster's YouTube channel, among others. It is unquestionably true.
    1
  14351.  @PeterA650  Are you suggesting that his videos are fakes? He supports Russia, sure; but he tells the stories the corrupt Western media doesn't want you to hear.
    1
  14352.  @PeterA650  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  14353.  @tharunsat  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  14354.  @mr.metallic5310  Reserves of what though? Fictitious gold?
    1
  14355.  @buschtaxi75driver55  No such thing really. This particular territory seems to be inhabited mainly by woke schoolchildren anyway.
    1
  14356.  @barrywebber100  It isn't a question of "support". This isn't a football match. It's about working out WHY this dreadful war has been allowed to occur. And that is a little more complicated and demanding than playing heroes and villains.
    1
  14357.  @barrywebber100  Which decent Russians do you have in mind? Putin is not a monsters. He's tough, sure, but he has to be in his job. He has dragged Russia from the evils of Communism and the chaos of its collapse. He is just not a man to mess with, that's all.
    1
  14358.  @barrywebber100  One in which the Minsk agreements were adhered to by Ukraine and the process of enforced Ukrainisation of the Russian population of Donbass and other regions was halted; in which Ukraine promised not to allow NATO to exercise military annexation and in which the industries and mineral extraction rights of Donbass should be retained in the hands of the people whose parents and grandparents sweated blood over them. And one in which there would not be a war.
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  14359. Vaccines are not the silver bullet. In fact, once a certain point is reached, a population will become over-vaccinated because they are far from 100% effective and the immunity -such as it is - wears off very quickly. This is clearly reflected in the seemingly paradoxical fact that states with the highest vaccination levels (ie Vermont) are experiencing higher levels of infection than those with the lowest levels ( ie Wyoming.) The same phenomenon is being experienced even on a county level, and an international level too. Purely as an aside the presenter of this piece does come across as a a mouthy simpleton; a bit like Alex Jones, but without the charm and common sense.
    1
  14360.  @LoveOldMusic808  And yet case numbers are dropping in Wyoming and increasing in Vermont. That's the anomaly. Vaccinations clearly reduce infections and reduce symptoms but do not maintain a constant level of protection.
    1
  14361.  @TheOverproof151  In fact what I have said is backed by serious research, including papers deposited at the US National Library of Medicine and similar institutions in Europe. We simply have to look at the implications of the fact that vaccinations only provides partial protection and is temporary in nature and that therefore to rely upon it as away out of the pandemic is perhaps a little foolish - especially since it reduces the rate at which herd immunity through infection might be reached. I'm not an anti-vaxxer - but over-reliance could make things worse.
    1
  14362.  @dustigenes  I do not dispute your figures, nor am I an anti vaxxer. All I am pointing out is that while a vaccination programme initially reduces spread it reaches a point where it begins to fail, and so case numbers continue to increase, whereas in areas with lower vaccination rates a point is reached at which they begin to fall. This is clearly shown by comparing the current graphs for these two states. In addition, a recent study of 68 countries and 2,947 US counties has shown no correlation between vaccination rates and rate of spread in the long term. In fact - as most dramatically illustrated by Israel - high vaccination rates are often accompanied by high infection rates. Obviously these facts are subject to considerable misinterpretation which is why the government is keen to tuck them out of sight. You have misinterpreted me, I think, but it was probably my fault for expressing myself badly. I will try to provide links to evidence in other replies but, for reasons just stated, YouTube is quite keen to see the official line is toed. ,,
    1
  14363.  @dustigenes  I have tried to provide the direct link to the Harvard study but, as anticipated, YouTube immediately wiped it. It can however, be found in the description box to this Jimmy Dore video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD9YmiGVEkA&t=465s
    1
  14364.  @goemboeck  As anticipated YouTube wiped direct links to the Harvard study pointing out these anomalies but it can be found in the description box below this Jimmy Dore video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD9YmiGVEkA&t=465s
    1
  14365.  @cecilbrisley5185  You miss the essential point that while polio and smallpox vaccines work almost 100% and last practically forever, the covid vaccines do not. They wear off after a few months and you can still become infected anyway. Around a quarter of cases in the UK occur among the fully vaccinated, for example. Booster shots are already required. So while the drug companies rub their hand with glee at the thought of never-ending income, covid just goes marching on.
    1
  14366.  @cecilbrisley5185  I don't think we can be talking about the same research paper. If we are, have you actually read it and what do you find to disagree with? Of course Big Pharma will find reasons to disparage anything which might lessen their profits, they always do; but that doesn't mean that the study does not make very valid points, backed with actual data. What did you Google to get to the actual paper, by the way? I can get it by Googling, but YouTube won't allow me to pass on the link and it even wipes the names of the lead authors when I try to get it across that way! What are they afraid of?
    1
  14367.  @cecilbrisley5185  I do wish you could stop being so patronising! I scarcely know who Jimmy Dore is and I've never been on Facebook and of course I've read the paper and, incidentally, found Dore's presentation of it quite intelligent. Why my efforts to pass in on to others without the slightly embarrassing fact of having to have it carried under the wing of a stand-up comedian, as it were, I simply cannot say. You have managed it well enough and I will try your description when further passing it along. I have read some of the critiques and found none particularly convincing. The essential conclusion: that mass, mandatory vaccinations are not the long term solution and may, in fact, be counter productive on the long run still stands in my view.
    1
  14368.  @cecilbrisley5185  Sorry, I'm experimenting here: Subramanian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  14369.  @seymourskinner2533  Not really. If you Google this you may find something of interest, particularly in the concluding paragraphs. Subramanian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  14370.  @seymourskinner2533  None whatever - other than an ability to understand English and follow processes of thought. I welcome the chance to consider rebuttals, but so far the critiques seem somewhat slanted towards protecting the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies, which is much as would be expected.
    1
  14371.  @seymourskinner2533  I don't know what you mean by pointing to a comment, but since providing profits for pharmaceutical companies is one of the prime driving forces for medical research and practice, it's obvious that anything which aids that objective is highlighted, while anything which may detract from it is pushed into the deepest recesses of hell. It was ever thus. And I don't think at all that this "revelatory document" does what you say. It merely points out that a strategy focussed exclusively on mass, mandatory vaccines may not provide an answer and that a broader approach is required. That makes sense to me, given the figures we are now experiencing. The document itself is quite hard to find - unsurprisingly enough. My algorithm offered it up via, of all things, The Jimmy Dore Show, if I remember correctly. I'm British and have only vaguely heard of Jimmy Dore. I guess some keywords on his presentation must have triggered this welcome response. My interest is mainly in the deceits practiced upon the general public through official propaganda.
    1
  14372.  @TheOverproof151  Subramanian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  14373.  @goemboeck  Subramanian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  14374.  @seymourskinner2533  I don't understand why you are being so defensive. Now I come to think of it Jimmy Dore came up because he recently featured a piece by Dr John Campbell, who does daily coverage of covid developments and to whom I subscribe. Jimmy Dore recently featured a piece of Campbell's in which he slated the current practice in the US of providing injections without first "aspirating" the needle, ie drawing back to make sure a blood vessel has not been hit. This can lead to blood clots. Talking of clots, why do you and your sort always run away whenever your comfortable ideas about the nature of your world are called ever so slightly into question?
    1
  14375.  @goemboeck  Well, not so much mask-wearing but obviously yes it does these things. I support vaccination too, within certain limits. The point is that, as I said in my original post, vaccination is not the silver bullet and believing that it is can lead to all sorts of trouble. It can be argued, very justifiably, that all these healthy, fit firemen, police officers etc who decline to be vaccinated are in fact doing the community an invaluable service by risking becoming infected, recovering, and thus becoming immune and so helping set up cordons of protection which will lead to eventual herd immunity.
    1
  14376.  @seymourskinner2533  Oh dear. Dunning Kruger! Must you really sink that low? I apologise for the "clot" but honestly must you be so predictable? Messrs Dunning and Kruger have provided stupid people with the excuse fore believing they are more intelligent than they are for far too long. Citing them is, sorry to say, a sure sign that you are a victim of the Effect! "Cognitive bias"!!?? This is another well-worn cliche with no real meaning. A suggestion: learn to criticise what a person is saying before daring to criticise what you believe their motives are for saying it. The world is run on conspiracies. Always was. Always will be. Every bite of food you take, every move you make, is the result of a conspiracy designed to make you eat that bite or take that step. There is nothing essentially wrong with this, but it is well worth keeping a sharp eye open for the motives behind the conspiracy, don't you think? In this instance is a mandatory mass vaccination programme the result of a benign conspiracy to rid the world of covid - or is it perhaps the result of a more sinister conspiracy to provide drug companies with a semi-permanent source of considerable income? Whatever the answer, it's a question worth asking, don't you think?
    1
  14377.  @dustigenes  We are not too far apart, but the point remains that over-reliance on vaccination inevitably prolongs the pandemic and makes the herd immunity threshold more distant. There seems to be an enormous difference between the length of immunity provided by vaccines as opposed to that provided by infection. In fact there is every evidence that natural immunity is more or less total when it comes to the strain originally contracted and while a new strain may be caught, symptoms are mild. This contrasts sharply with the protection proved by vaccines, which now seem likely to require booster shots every few months and leave people uncertain whether they are protected or not, thus making it difficult for them to judge their behaviour accordingly. A balance between the two approaches is clearly needed and giving healthy people the opportunity to either take or refuse the vaccine -which is what is happening - might be the best way to achieve it. In the light of this, as well as being morally suspect, vaccine mandates could well be counter-productive.
    1
  14378.  @dustigenes  The overall point remains: vaccinations are not the silver bullet and over-reliance could be counter productive. Incidentally on your point about hospitalisations, the number of unvaccinated in hospitals in the UK is now only 35% and the percentage of deaths even lower, since most deaths occur in the very elderly still, the majority of whom HAVE been vaccinated, alas to little avail.
    1
  14379.  @dustigenes  I know. I think you may have jumped to the conclusion that I am an ant-vaxxer. I am not, but the conclusions of the report are very pertinent: we have to review strategies in the light of current figures and should not demonise those reluctant to be vaccinated. Personally I would go even further and suggest they may be doing a great service to the community by perhaps catching covid, recovering and so increasing the cordons of protection surrounding the vulnerable.
    1
  14380.  @dustigenes  Those of the 23,374 who do survive will certainly serve the freedom of their countrymen and women by adding to the number of immune individuals blocking viral pathways to the vulnerable. As to who gave it to them -who can tell? Was it some selfish, unvaccinated person in the first 3 or 4 days of infection before symptoms appeared, or some conscientious vaccinated person walking about for days and weeks on end believing themselves to be doing no harm, and yet puffing out viral aerosols because they were asymptomatically infected, the vaccinations having worn off and merely reducing symptoms to an indiscernible level?
    1
  14381.  @goemboeck  I repeat, I am not an anti-vaxxer but it has to be acknowledged that vaccinations do not provide a solution, and can actually be counter-productive in certain circumstances. To suggest that protection via vaccination is superior to protection via infection is utterly ludicrous. In the UK, for example, 65% of hospitalised cases occur in the double-vaccinated and probably none in the previously infected. All evidence point to the fact that infection provides extremely robust long-term immunity to the strain involved and while a new strain may bypass that immunity, symptoms will invariably be mild. Up until July there were just 53 such cases recorded in England. Unfortunately up-to-date figures are not available, but at that kind of level they cannot be statistically significant. Reliance on vaccination alone leads to situations where people are walking about believing themselves to be non-infectious but who are actually transmitting the disease because the vaccination has worn off and they have contracted covid in an asymptomatic form. Whether or not to protect yourself and others through vaccination or by risking catching covid and hitting it on the head with a palliative cocktail is a personal choice. There are pros and cons to either decision.
    1
  14382.  @dustigenes  As I pointed out: vaccinated or unvaccinated you can still be infectious, but if vaccinated the chances are you will be infectious for longer - or rather you will be unknowingly infectious for longer. For this and several other reasons it should be a matter of personal choice whether to be vaccinated or not. This isn't some kind of high-school football game between the vaxxed and unvaxxed. Either way you will be protecting yourself and others to varying unquantifiable degrees and each point of view should be respected. You can be ultra cautious, as you appear to be, or follow the example of Dennis Prager who, at 73, deliberately set out to catch covid, did so, knocked it on the head with a cocktail of palliative drugs, and is now both immune and part of the defensive wall against the spread of the disease to others. On the matter of masks I am, as you may suspect, something of a heretic. Their value is largely symbolic and unless of N95 standard, fitted properly, and worn more or less permanently they are of little practical value. Now that it has been discovered that covid is largely spread through aerosols rather than through droplets or hand contact this is even more the case. Masks have certainly helped kill quite large numbers of people due to over-reliance on their magical properties. People have sat together in enclosed spaces for lengths of time believing themselves to be protected by their masks when they would have been better off opening a window and putting a fan on. People who spend time in enclosed spaces while visited by a succession of other people have been especially vulnerable to death even if comparatively fit and young. Categories include bus drivers, university lecturers and those conducting interviews, such as probation officers. Follow the science, certainly but often the $cience has motives other than ensuring safety. Money and politics come into it too.
    1
  14383. Many middle-class people know in their hearts that the "family money" which one way or another gives them advantages in life originated not only in slavery as such, but also in forced labour in mines, mills, factories and on the land. Hence their guilt.
    1
  14384.  @gillianshimwell4984  I don't think I can be that specific, although I don't think it's a purely upper middle class phenomenon. I come from a working class background and am really quite indifferent to a person's race. Many of the middle class people I've met do seem to have a "positive discrimination" attitude towards black and brown people though;sort of going out of their way to be extra nice to them and so on and of course supporting things like BLM. It just struck me that subconsciously they realise their privileged status has an historical dependence on the sufferings of slaves and menials.
    1
  14385.  @ChristyBermingham  It is. Be very, very thankful.
    1
  14386.  @ChristyBermingham  They aren't that powerful and there aren't many of them, but they could be directed at civilian targets which will give Putin the green light to step up Russia's bombardment. Difficult to see what the Americans want to achieve with this. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    1
  14387. Not a ceasefire - a complete withdrawal of Russian troops. Hardly the same thing.
    1
  14388. Pot, kettle, black?
    1
  14389. Islamists may not be in charge - but they've got their feet well under the table and are scaring the snowflakes half to death.
    1
  14390. Because YT's owners have decided that free speech is a commercial liability.
    1
  14391.  @mile_high_topher  No. Because they are Russian and the government in Kiev has let them down pretty badly.
    1
  14392.  @mile_high_topher  This difference of opinion is what the war is all about, On the one hand you have 300 years of history, on the other a couple of signatures on a bit of paper.
    1
  14393.  @mile_high_topher  It's not your fault you've been so brainwashed. Putin has no desire to re- establish the Russian Empire. He's in his 70s, he's got a crap army and he knows from personal experience how trying to rule foreign countries helps cause the collapse of a nation. This myth is necessary to the US and NATO because the US is a war-based economy which needs a permanent enemy, and has to give its more dim-witted citizens a hate figure and a fear-filled scenario in order to justify its constant warmongering.
    1
  14394.  @mile_high_topher  This is a myth. Putin is in his seventies, has a crap army and know from personal experience that trying to rule foreign countries leads to the collapse of your own. Sadly though the US needs a permanent enemy and hate figure to sustain its war-based economy and needs people like your good self to believe such nonsense in order to justify its continued aggression and interference in the affairs of other nations.
    1
  14395.  @mile_high_topher  The population of Crimea and the industrialised areas of Eastern Ukraine is substantially Russian. They were imported to work the mines and factories to replace the original Tatar inhabitants.
    1
  14396.  @mile_high_topher  I think the people involved care quite a lot.
    1
  14397.  @mile_high_topher  No. They are reasons. And it worth remembering that if Russia's proposals to end the difficulties had been accepted there would have been no war and thousands who are now dead would still be alive.
    1
  14398.  @mile_high_topher  Greed is to blame. Russia could have stood by and allowed a vast fortune to to be taken away from it, and there would have been no war. Ukraine could have agreed to allow Donbass to become independent and there would have been no war. America could have given up hope of getting hold of the vast fortune and there would have been no war. All in all, of the three greeds I think America's is the most blameworthy.
    1
  14399.  @mile_high_topher  He might want to in a dream world, or in the world of fantasy our leaders sell us in order to encourage war fever, but not in reality. He may be a tyrant and a dictator but he is far too sensible to embark on anything doomed to failure. You should read an essay he wrote just before the invasion. It is available on the Internet and makes his position very clear. It was written purely for internal consumption and is therefore not propaganda in any form. He says that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are the same people, from the same stock, but if the Ukrainians want to turn to the West and split the family then, as sad as this is, it must be allowed. But they cannot take the family silver with them - or in this case the $14 trillion of mineral wealth lying beneath the soil of Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  14400.  @mile_high_topher  Putin has no such desire. He is far too sensible to embark on a course which would be doomed to failure, and he said as much in many essays, articles and interviews. What you have to realise is that constantly representing this as a threat the West's war machine stoke war fever and justifies its existence.
    1
  14401. Most of the footage the media have shown is fake. There seems very little real stuff about.
    1
  14402. "Sorry Volodymyr, I've got a bit of bad news. Now about all those tanks and planes and missiles you ordered. The thing is, see......"
    1
  14403.  @mfredholm  What will the charges be, do you imagine?
    1
  14404.  @bakamaka5479  To slightly misquote Mandy Rice-Davies: "They would say that, wouldn't they?" Records in existence before the scam clearly show temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period being - to a high degree of probability - higher than they are today. Expunging these records, as with expunging records of higher temperatures recorded in the late 19th century, is another clear indication that what is happening here is not an objective scientific investigation, but a conspiracy designed to profit from manipulating energy prices.
    1
  14405.  @bakamaka5479  I do think that. Their agenda is survival and keeping their jobs. As for the fossil fuel industry it is, of course, one of the main investors in alternative energies and a big player in the highly lucrative carbon futures marked. That's why there are so many big cars and private jets at COP conferences.
    1
  14406. Er, no. Sending people to concentration camps is fascist. A polite suggestion with ??? question marks and immediately withdrawn does not count as fascism. There will be fraud on a massive scale and whoever loses will have every right to question the result. And they will.
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  14407. Farage's show actually does better than the BBC and Sky programmes put out at the same time. His viewing figures are sometimes more than both their 7pm shows combined.
    1
  14408.  @Mr.Monta77  Merely an opinion, dear boy.
    1
  14409.  @a5cent  How about the coup of 2014? In any case my remark was in reference to American interference in Ukraine in a more immediate sense. It has been admitted that the Minsk accords were used by the West as a cover for a multi-billion investment in a Ukrainian army. That army was created in order to take back Crimea and Donbass. Putin has been forced to respond and now half of Europe is flying the Ukrainian flag and cursing the very name of Russia. If that isn't interfering with ever-improving ties, I don't know what is.
    1
  14410.  @a5cent  I keep trying, but YouTube's new fascist/imperialist algorithm deletes my arguments. Nonetheless I will, with circumspection, attempt a further reply. For a start I make no particular case for the unwarranted expansion of NATO causing more than inconvenience. I wasn't talking about the situation pre-2022. But you cannot help but admit that by backing Ukraine heavily in a proxy war America has created a situation whereby a romantic support for poor little Ukraine has turned Russia in general, and Putin in particular, into demons from the pit. Those ever-improving relations are now scuppered forever.
    1
  14411.  @a5cent  You're right, I can't . YouTube's new fascist algorithm won't let me. This rather proves my point and gives me great comfort.
    1
  14412.  @boink800  No, it was trying to get out of their relationship which has created all the trouble.
    1
  14413.  @a5cent  Indeed they do - unfortunately the choice of those in the Western part of the country is greatly different to that of many of those in Crimea and the heavily Russianised parts of Easter Ukraine. Following the coup of 2014 a viable solution was put forward to resolve the difficulty but this was rejected for reasons which I doubt the YT algorithm will allow me to expand upon.
    1
  14414.  @a5cent  I will quote from Josef Stalin; "It isn't who votes which counts, it's who counts the votes which count." Until recently Ukraine and Russia vied with each other for the title of most corrupt country in the world. It is no coincidence that under Ukrainian governance elections and referendums have results which heavily favour the Ukrainian interest, whereas when the Russians are in charge by some miracle the results always favour them. I don't live in America and I dislike historical analogies. I will, however, point out that in the present real-world situation the civilians who have fled Eastern Ukraine have largely fled to Russia, where they have friends and relatives to stay with. This is perhaps indicative of the fact that support for the separatist movements in Donbass was and is more widespread than you would like to believe. It was begun largely by the police and armed forces transferring their allegiances from Kiev to Moscow almost to the man, as was the case of course in Crimea.
    1
  14415.  @a5cent  I said once. Around 15 years or so ago both countries vied for the number one spot in that index I think you'll find. Even today you can't get a driving licence in Ukraine without slipping money under the desk.
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  14416.  @christianevanherck6023  A fair enough assessment. Nonetheless one leader (who favoured Russia) was replaced by another (who favoured America and the West) through acts of violence and not through any pretence of democratic process. A coup, in other words. Semantics aside, are you genuinely suggesting that in today's Ukraine bribery is not the norm? That corruption and nepotism no longer exist? In any case, these arguments are not much to the point. The fact remains that a substantial number of people in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, both then and now, look to Moscow rather than Washington and these Russians living in Ukraine were being effectively disenfranchised by a regime which wished to deny their very existence.
    1
  14417.  @christianevanherck6023  I don't know how you know all this, and some of it may well be true. Civilian casualties, such as they are, are very regrettable but of course the Ukrainians are just as responsible as the Russians for these. On the other hand, by way of contrast, very many Russians living in these areas appear to have welcomed their liberators with open arms. As for the damage caused it has, of course, been extensive but it has given the opportunity for grim Soviet-era architecture to be replaced by something more light and modern, as is the case in Mariupol which is currently being rebuilt in a garden city fashion. Former residents, who escaped to Russia temporarily (neither abducted nor deported, by the way) have now returned and appear to be delighted with the way their city is shaping up. I am sure that in time other towns and cities destroyed in the fighting will receive the same treatment.
    1
  14418.  @christianevanherck6023  And what misinformation would that be? YT's new ultra fascist censorship algorithm is so strict that I doubt anything at all heretical has got past it.
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  14419.  @christianevanherck6023  And what misinformation would that be? YT's new fascist algorithm is so strict that I doubt any heresies or departures from the imposed narrative can pass it.
    1
  14420.  @christianevanherck6023  What misinformation? My views have passed YT's new censorship algorithm which vetoes all heresies.
    1
  14421.  @christianevanherck6023  Go right ahead.
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  14422.  @matthewbishop9342  This incident gives Putin an excuse to upgrade the "special military operation" into a full-scale war with aerial bombardment of cities. Combined with the fact that the Ukrainians are now invading Russian territory in the East he has a certain spurious justification in terms of international law. I'm not even sure this wasn't a false flag operation. Zelensky has had a bit of a giggle but there is every sign the bridge will be back in full operation very swiftly.
    1
  14423.  @Altair885  This incident gives Putin an excuse to upgrade the "special military operation" into a full-scale war with aerial bombardment of cities. Combined with the fact that the Ukrainians are now invading Russian territory in the East he has a certain spurious justification in terms of international law. I'm not even sure this wasn't a false flag operation. Zelensky has had a bit of a giggle but there is every sign the bridge will be back in full operation very swiftly.
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  14424. Russia's demands seem simple and reasonable and are, in effect, already a reality. Ukraine just needs to acknowledge that reality. Crimea is now part of Russia. The Donbass republics are in Russia's hands and their independence is therefore far closer to full realisation than before. NATO doesn't want Ukraine any more.
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  14425. So America's mad adventure in Ukraine has brought about an alliance between two heavily armed opponents. What a surprise. Is their no end to the idiocy, incompetence and greed of US foreign policy?
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  14426.  MrHattley  I suppose it depends on what you mean by "catastrophic". I don't doubt for a minute that Russian losses have been very heavy by Western standards, but then so have Ukraine's. Given the relative population figures I think it probable that Russia can cope with the losses much better.
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  14427.  @teresas8173  Russia has a male working population of 37 million. At the very, very worst they have lost 300, 000 in the war. They need more people, but only to help produce more weapons.
    1
  14428.  @ThePedroski007  And these are entirely objective sources, of course? The US says its just over 300,000 and you can bet even this is vastly exaggerated. Personally I doubt it can be much more than 100,000.
    1
  14429.  MrHattley  Only in the sense that it can afford to lose more than Ukraine can.
    1
  14430. woolyimpage They actually have a youtube channel which brings in plenty, plenty dosh. Their little passenger can only add to their views - and good luck to 'em in that regard.
    1
  14431.  @richardsmith1161  The approximately 30 hours of state senate hearings dealing with various allegations of voter fraud and electoral mismanagement contain quite a few facts. This extract is relevant to the material in the Sky News abortion of a news story above. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKiyAy9vjrk
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  14432.  @hesuspeek7557  The distinction between fact and opinion has puzzled people for thousands of years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKiyAy9vjrk Trump won. Biden cheated.
    1
  14433.  @richardsmith1161  Well, the possibility that these numbers may, in fact, be factual has been sufficient to persuade the state senate to institute a last minute audit of postal ballots in Fulton County. Meanwhile in Pennsylvania... https://yournewsnet.com/report-election-totals-dont-add-up-200000-more-votes-cast-than-voters-voting/
    1
  14434.  @richardsmith1161  Any ONE of the 6,000 in Antrim County?
    1
  14435.  @richardsmith1161  I just did.
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  14436. Who says sovereign ?
    1
  14437. ​@mauritsvanoranje6725It just means the Americans offer bigger bribes.
    1
  14438.  @AGAMetah  The 'civilised world' will be very different place once this is over.
    1
  14439.  @t34r  That's what the Russians said more than thirty years ago when they abandoned Communism.
    1
  14440.  @t34r  But scarcely anybody's red any more. There are probably more Communists in US universities than there are in Russia.
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  14441.  @georgedorn1022  Ridiculous paranoia! Putin isn't a genocidal dictator. He 's just a patriotic nationalist.
    1
  14442.  @iandennis7836  Childish beyond belief. Are you old enough to vote? Please say you aren't.
    1
  14443. @ Are you old enough to vote? Please tell me you aren't.
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  14444. @ I support Russia because I believe a Russian victory in inevitable, and the fastest way to bring an end to this needless war. But I am English, not Russian. I find it extraordinarily depressing how people cannot grasp the fact that you don't have to be a paid Russian bot to see through the flim-flam which our corrupt leaders and media throw out in order to gain popular support for this sordid venture.
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  14445. @ I support Russia because Russia has a good case and because a Russian victory is the quickest way to end the carnage. But I am British, born and bred.
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  14446.  @jovelo902  There is no Russian empire.
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  14447.  @fintonmainz7845  I thought the threat would be enough, to be honest. I was also very surprised that the Russians went in without softening the Ukrainians up with the sort of air attacks they're doing now. I conclude that the object of the first phase if the SMO was to destroy as much of the Ukrainian armed forces as possible before securing Donbass and also Crimea. The big unknown factor is just how many military resources Russia has left.
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  14448.  @Ratkwad  I can't see it myself. Ukraine has lost too many men and too much equipment to even think of such things.
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  14449.  @unworthy42  If Russia retains Donbass and Crimea then its military objectives will have been achieved. Who is it likely to want to threaten, anyway?
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  14450.  @Abulb99  But at what cost? It's army is severely depleted and it is running out of support from the West.
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  14451.  @fintonmainz7845  Do you mean my faculty for swallowing Western propaganda wholesale without investigating the facts for myself? That's you, that is.
    1
  14452.  @ultonian63  The evidence points that way. And it is an effective one so far.
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  14453.  @AquaticAbomination  On most forms you put your surname first and your first name second as in Crocker, Dale. Try saying it out loud. As a Nom de Guerre it isn't too bad. (I'm English, by the way.)
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  14454. Net Zero is a recipe for disaster. Virtue signalling is no way to run a country.
    1
  14455. Why? How much simpler it would be to reject the idea of Russia as some kind of ravening beast and instead seek to find common ground?
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  14456. The evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election is actually quite immense. The Dems cheated like hell.
    1
  14457.  Yoo toobe  The fact is the Dems cheated.
    1
  14458.  @goodvibes5220  Sadly it is you who is living in a media-induced fantasy. There is a site called Here is the Evidence which contains many hundreds of videos and sworn statements all pointing towards massive fraud - and proving beyond doubt that the election was improperly conducted in many areas. There are also 70 hours or so of similar evidence presented to state senate hearings. I will try to send you the links on a separate post, but they will almost certainly be deleted - further proof of crime and cover-up. Otherwise you owe it to yourself to get Googling before history is wiped clean.
    1
  14459.  @myriola  There is considerable evidence on the Internet if you are prepared to look. There are over 70 hours of state senate hearings into electoral malpractice and a site called Here Is The Evidence which provides access to many hundreds of hours of further evidence enabling you to judge for yourself. I cannot provide the link since if I did this post would almost certainly be deleted - further evidence of criminal conspiracy.
    1
  14460.  @kal-elofkrypton252  They didn't say By Any Means Necessary but it's there. Democracy destroyed by guile, false idealism and voting machine. And the sheep still don't see it.
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  14461. According to UN statistics US deaths are up 1.120% this year on 2019. This is exactly the same as the increase on 2019 over 2018. Makes you think, don't it?
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  14462. Obviously they have planned for this contingency. Harris will be more of a problem than bumbling Biden though.
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  14463. They have never, ever been buddies.
    1
  14464.  @goonerboz6023  I was hedging my bets!
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  14465. I think that probably when the full inquest is completed in a few years time it will reveal that lockdowns killed many more people than were saved, and excessive reliance on masks as a preventer of infection was also extremely counter-productive.
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  14466. Meanwhile Boris is ignoring the proven prophylactic effects of hydroxocloroquine. Tiny quantities taken twice a week in conjunction with zinc provide an effective barrier against lung infection by the virus, Greedy pharmaceutical companies have conducted false trials of the drug using vast doses on patients whose condition is too far advanced for it to have any effect. They then claim the drug is useless and even dangerous. Make no mistake Sinister forces have a vested interest in prolonging and exaggerating the effects of this pandemic. Boris is either complicit in this or too stupid to see it.The same applies to the BBC.
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  14467. I am going to steal this from you. Thanks.
    1
  14468. Only if she asks nicely. Trump is under no obligation to give any details, in which case the Scottish government could take over the money-losing golf courses. Trump grins again,
    1
  14469.  @jimmcloughlin  Trump will be dead and Sturgeon in an old folks home before anything can get to court. And what is there to go to court anyway? There are umpteen different ways in which Trump can refuse to hand over documents and at the end of the day all that can be done is that he might lose the golf courses. Which are losing money anyway.
    1
  14470.  @jimmcloughlin  And Trump goes grinning to his grave before any of this happens.
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  14471. Jack Richardson O crikey Jack, there you go again!
    1
  14472. A much maligned man who has learned the disadvantages of street protests through bitter experience.
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  14473. https;//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  14474. Susi M I must admit my knowledge of the complexities of Australian politics is somewhat limited, but I don't think this excellent guy was necessarily giving the greens a capital letter. What he was saying was that good intentions often go awry. The road to hell is paved with them, as the saying goes. Leaving the whole question of AGW aside it must surely be true, must it not, that if traditional methods of bush clearance had not been apparently abandoned to the degree that they have, then these horrific fires may have been contained a great deal more effectively than has been the case.
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  14475. RikJ I find it hard to understand how much of a part climate change has played in all this. Hot is hot and a flame is a flame. Once a fire is lit it's lit . A difference of a few degrees in temperature can surely make little difference. What must make a difference is the apparent abandonment of traditional bushfire prevention and control methods as so graphically outlined by the guy in this video. I don't think he was giving the greens a capital letter necessarily. He was probably just referring to the interference in rural affairs by virtue-signalling do-gooders. That's a worldwide problem. Your current tragedy is just a particularly horrific example of good intentions going very much astray.
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  14476. Susi M I'm afraid I am going to have to disagree with much of what you say. For a start, how can we possibly assert that global temperatures have risen by 1.6c since 1880? There were no weather stations outside of America and Europe, apart from a handful in Australia. These stations all recorded considerably higher temperatures than today on many occasions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.These records have now been obliterated or adjusted downwards. Even if we accept that they were somehow "unreliable" for one reason or another it still remains a fact that we have no records to compare today's records with. All the climate scientists have done is assume a trend based on what ought to happen and worked backwards from there. There is no evidence of any increase in the frequency or severity of extreme weather events. Once again, this is a made-up story designed to bolster the alarmist claims. Once again, data is being adjusted to fit the narrative, but the old, and true, narrative still exists. One can pick sources almost at random. The investment market and the insurance market have no reason to play down such threats that I can think of and most responsible studies show that, if anything, natural disasters have declined. It is unanswerably true that the loss of human life and reduction in GNP due to such causes is far, far less today than it has ever been. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/despite-what-you've-heard-global-warming-isn't-making-weather-more-extreme/ This 99% peer- reviewed nonsense is just a cheap trick to fool the unwary. As I say, I don't think this bloke was being political. He was just saying things as he saw them
    1
  14477. Susi M Ignore the report and just look at the graphs and figures.You'd better hurry up though, the climate crisis Mafia is busy expunging the truth with all the diligence of a Stalinist correcting grain production figures for 1954. I repeat: there is no evidence for ANY record breaking local weather events. Dramatic occurrences have been filmed more frequently and fed to the gullible masses as representing some vast change in climate but they are just WEATHER! How do you know how many typhoons, hurricanes and droughts there were in the recent past? You don't. And even when alarmists try to pretend that such and such an event is the "worst since records began" you can bet your bottom dollar they've made sure records began AFTER the last time a similar event occurred. You really don't want to believe what the TV tells you. You're the one sitting under a rock watching your screen. I'm out in the real world, desperately trying to find out what's REALLY going on.
    1
  14478. Susi M Once again I urge you to just look at the graphs in the article, which are from official government sources, not from journalists. The body of scientific evidence is far from entire. Many hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers questioning various aspects of global warming have been published since 2017. Several may found in their entirety at https://climatedepot.com/2019/01/04/consensus Australia's DOM is doing your country a great disservice by expunging the nation's past. Official records begin in 1910, conveniently airbrushing such massive calamities as The Federation Drought and other 19th century tragedies. You will add to your education by looking up the work of Dr Jennifer Marohary.
    1
  14479. Susi M "Debunked" is just a buzzword climate scientists use when they mean "disagree with." All these paper are peer-reviewed and stand up to objective scrutiny. As to the "vast amount of evidence" you cite, this amounts to little more than lots of good little boys and girls handing in their homework. Or, to use another analogy, if you gave a lot of chefs the recipe for chocolate cake, the ingredients for chocolate cake, and some nice ovens to bake them in, you'd expect to get chocolate cakes,wouldn't you? As to the motives behind this magnificent scam, they are mostly financial. There are huge amounts of money being made by cashing in on green industries. Trading in carbon bonds allowing industries to exceed carbon footprint allocations is just one aspect of this colossal market. All kinds of people are jostling for their share of those lovely chocolate cakes. For information on Greta's role in all this try: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com https://www.pjmedia.com/trending/climate-industrial-complex-financiers-aim-to-cash-in-on-greta-thunberg
    1
  14480. Susi M Oh dear, you have swallowed the partly line, haven't you? The scientists producing the papers I mentioned are all highly qualified, to at least Masters and many to Phd level. There is actually no such thing as climate science. It is an amalgamation of other disciplines. You mentioned that Jennifer Marohasy is a biologist. You reaiise, don't you, that much of the "evidence" climate science uses comes from proxy data derived from biological sources: tree rings, mollusc shells and so on? Climate science would do well to recruit more biologists to its ranks to prevent it from misinterpreting this data in such a crude fashion. They could do with a few more statisticians and solar physicists as well. To describe renewable energies as "fledgling" is utterly laughable. Literally billions of dollars are being poured into their development and they are subsidised up to the hilt. The fossil fuel industry isn't at war with green industry, it is largely financing it. A considerable number of delegates to COP25 were from the fossil fuel industry, you know. One of the reasons it broke up was because the oil men and the hedge-fund types couldn't agree on how to dvvi up the chocolate cakes. If the fossil fuel industry is so determined to undermine AGW why does it make such a bad job of it? Who do you think pays for all the expensive videos and scientific studies promoting the AGW creed? Governments and investors will continue to profit from fossil fuels and they will add to their profits and incomes by promoting green industries too. The climate crisis is a racket. Greta Thunberg is a prime example of how that racket operates, Your good nature is being taken advantage of.
    1
  14481. Susi M I am sincerely sorry to have upset you as much as it appears I have. I am neither delusional nor evil; I simply have a radically different assessment of the situation to the one you hold. My arguments may be repetitive - you may say circular - but that is because I am trying to make the same point over and over again. I am neither lying nor being dishonest. I sincerely believe that deliberate strategies are in place to manipulate us into accepting an untruth: namely that present upward trend in temperatures is as consistent and as severe as is claimed, and that the way to "cure" this is to restrict energy production. Many entirely reasonable people also hold this view, as I have tried to explain. Best Wishes.
    1
  14482. Susi M I know who I am better than you do. There is no action to be taken against climate change. It's just there. If anthropogenic carbon emissions have added to it and continue to add to it adversely then it is far, far too late to do anything about it. I am not twisting information, I am merely offering you information that has been withheld from you until now. You choose to reject it - well that's up to you. I am not a liar. I sincerely believe everything I have told you. By the way, before your somewhat shambolic DOM decided to obliterate all records before 1910, the hottest day in Australia was recorded at Mildura on January 7, 1906. It was 52c. That is not a lie. Check with the DOM yourself - if they'll let you.
    1
  14483. Liverpudlians bear grudges forever, It's the Irish in them.
    1
  14484. Some journalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxPUjc-C9o
    1
  14485. Quite right too. Let's hope all the other attempts to sabotage Trump before the election go the same way.
    1
  14486. Russia's case has been effectively set out by Vladimir Putin, in essays and TV interviews. I happen to agree with his analysis. Do you even know what it is?
    1
  14487. Trump is basically ordinary. Which is why ordinary people like him.
    1
  14488.  @mycide  But he is not a career politician. When is comes to "us" and "them" Trump is one of us.
    1
  14489.  @gjthomas9770  But he is not a career politician. When is comes to "us" and "them" Trump is one of us.
    1
  14490.  @Nannyirene  Very probably.
    1
  14491.  @Pikaling3408  I can't help thinking there's a difference between individual acts of paedophilia and condoning the mass rape, torture and exploitation of tens of thousands of children for reasons of political gain though.
    1
  14492.  @Notalloldpeople  Don't you mean Labour Party protection legislation?
    1
  14493.  @theimperialist2686  So no worries there then.
    1
  14494.  @neilmchardy9061  Duh!
    1
  14495.  @the0ne809  Does it matter?
    1
  14496.  @ausbrum  The Great British Public (including, by now, several thousand who were daft enough to vote Labour.)
    1
  14497.  @tonymcfeisty2478  I wasn't aware that I was.
    1
  14498.  @tonymcfeisty2478  Oh it's you again. I told you to give up on the jokes!
    1
  14499.  @tonymcfeisty2478  Stream of consciousness doesn't suit you either.
    1
  14500.  @stephenelkington4971  An end to globalism.
    1
  14501.  @stephenelkington4971  My £200 heating allowance back!
    1
  14502.  @Noel-ji8nm  Absolutely!
    1
  14503.  @TonyLinden51  What's yours?
    1
  14504.  @BassandoForte  I tend to mistrust analogies, but you could have a point. Mind you, taking money off pensioners to supply Ukraine with armaments doesn't seem to be working too well for Starmer. If he REALLY wants votes he should create an armed Task Force to arrest Moslem child molesters and all those police officers and councillors who have covered for them over the years. That would work.
    1
  14505.  @BassandoForte  These figures are of no great importance in the general scheme of things. Who wins wins, and who loses loses.
    1
  14506.  @trevellyanblack4101  Sovereignty is a fairly loose concept without any need for further lubrication.
    1
  14507.  @Geffo555  Then it is time to alter this sorry state of affairs ASAP.
    1
  14508.  @andygillett9999  Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
    1
  14509.  @scooby1992  The report was a mere cover up which does in no way address the specific problem of industrial scale child abuse by Muslim gangsters.
    1
  14510.  @petefl1818  The British Public.
    1
  14511.  @abbersj2935  Born and bred.
    1
  14512.  @dankenneallycardiff  Hypocrisy doesn't come into it. "We" means people who think like me, and we are many. Whether or not we are the majority doesn't come into it either. We are right and you are wrong and that's an end to it. Sloppy diversionary tactics and false comparisons do not alter this unavoidable fact either. Elon Musk is saying what is right and his nationality is of no consequence.
    1
  14513.  @PortmanRd  Nigel Farage might be a means to an end. Almost anything would be preferable to Airstrip One becoming a globalist-controlled dormitory for Islamist refugees.
    1
  14514. All parties have their extremists. Some of Labour's nuttier acolytes are frequent guests in the channel's comments section.
    1
  14515. Trump, being a pragmatic man of sense, has to let Russia win the territories it has regained. At the same time he has to make the right noises to convince he brainwashed idiots that, in fact, Ukraine has actually won, and that he helped it do so.
    1
  14516. NATO has outlived its usefulness. It is now little more than a glorified protection racket. As for Britain, our leaders have made the huge mistake of believing that the war in Ukraine was some kind of moral crusade instead of the egregious US takeover bid it actually was. We are now high and dry. Only a seismic shift in attitude and policy can save us from economic ruin and possible annihilation.
    1
  14517.  @1202burton  I just had a vivid image of a helicopter leaving the roof of the US embassy in Saigon with desperate Vietnamese trying to cling to its runners - plus of course the more recent chaotic abandonment of Kabul, with billions of dollars of military equipment left behind.
    1
  14518.  @1202burton  Memories rather than hallucinations. Precedents, you might say.
    1
  14519.  @1202burton  Well there aren't actually any American boots on the ground in Ukraine, are there? Not officially anyway. It looks as though this particular proxy war is going to be abandoned as a poor investment before we get to that stage.
    1
  14520.  @nataliescott1914  That's not going to go very far.
    1
  14521. No. It's Joe Biden who's doing that.
    1
  14522.  @rickbaines1977  You are somewhat out of touch. Trump Derangement Syndrome is very much on the decline as people begin to realise that they may have been duped. It took me two years to realise that I was being conned. There was so much overkill there had to be an ulterior motive. And there was. Trump is a steep hill to climb, but he is not a "disgusting human being." He is a rather ordinary human being in many ways, with many faults and some virtues. His greatest virtue, of course, is that he is not a career politician. This is why the politicos and the journos hate and fear him and why they have gone to such lengths to denigrate him. It's all starting to ring a bit hollow now though, don't you think?
    1
  14523.  @run2cat4run  All in the cause of patriotism.
    1
  14524. Labour so-called is being what it is: an instrument of WEF globalism. Repression of dissent in any form and the destruction of those who do not contribute to economic growth are staples of the creed. You have been mightily conned.
    1
  14525. George Monibot is an insane egomaniac.
    1
  14526. And CO2 is very probably not a cause of global warming after all, but instead part of a sophisticated mechanism for regulating temperature.These conceited morons are likely worshipping a false god.
    1
  14527. Unlike the mugs in this comments section, Muscovites are too clever to believe such BS.
    1
  14528.  @ALCRAN2010  Most American politicians earn their money through the corrupt distribution of favours, invariably at the taxpayers' expense. They are also in a position to manipulate the value of shares and indulge in other financial chicaneries. Whatever money Trump has earned as a property developer and entrepreneur it is separate from this system - which is why the establishment hate and fear him. Putting it simply: he is more used to handing out bribes than taking them. He is not a career politician.
    1
  14529.  @stevec6427  Politically conscious perhaps - but not a career politician. He hasn't climbed the greasy poles of office-seeking nor, as far as I am aware, has he sought votes or favours in order to advance some political ambition, apart from seeking the Presidency. He has certainly held no other office. This is what marks him out from the general run of US politician - whose routes to office invariably involve various chicaneries which make them vulnerable to manipulation by financial or other vested interests, particularly those embedded in the security and intelligence services.
    1
  14530.  @stevec6427  There is probably no political figure in the USA who could not be stitched up in this way. The threat of legal action is a weapon hanging over the heads of most of them. It has merely been brought to bear against Trump because he has refused to bow down to the entities who REALLY rule the country. Nepotism is rife in the USA and considering the siege conditions under which most officials operate it is entirely understandable. Most Americans live in a fantasy world where democracy is revered, and moral behaviour is rewarded. It really isn't like that, you know.
    1
  14531.  @TimeTheory2099  You are missing the point. Trump is a politician now, but he was not before he became President. For "poorly-trained" you might substitute "uncorrupted."
    1
  14532.  @StephenKershaw1  It can't have been. Because he isn't.
    1
  14533.  @StephenKershaw1  This is becoming a purely semantic argument. I would define a career politician as someone who has entered the political fray at a comparatively young age and worked their way up. Trump, like Eisenhower say, or any number of other politicians, has sought office later in life after establishing a name for himself in another field.
    1
  14534.  @StephenKershaw1  You are living in a world of fantasy. As far as opinion polls go the latest show that the Jan 6 commission farce has had little or no effect on Trump's popularity. All politicians lie and at least Trump does it with a twinkle in his eye. Incompetent? I give you Joe Biden who, in less than two years, has caused economic crisis, raised the price of gasoline to unsustainable levels, got the country into over $30trillion of debt, donated several billions of dollars of military hardware to the Taliban and allowed the Washington warmongers who shoehorned him into office to push the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. And that's just for starters.
    1
  14535. We now have a government at war with a substantial proportion of the people it is supposed to protect.
    1
  14536.  @annewalden3795  That's a bit harsh.
    1
  14537.  @arturobianco848  That's nice.
    1
  14538.  @annewalden3795  You are a silly person.
    1
  14539. Utter BS. If Russia wanted to kil civilians they would be killed in their thousands- not the odd handful of collateral deaths largely caused by air defences going astray.
    1
  14540. I have hope. I just watched a video taken by two girls inside a flat while the police were trying to break the door down. They were both laughing their heads off.
    1
  14541.  @nicholasflynn5376  This is a total myth. Why has he waited all these years? And the Russian army is clearly not up to this anyway. All Putin wants is Crimea and Donbass. Let him have them and this whole bloody mess will be over.
    1
  14542. Why?
    1
  14543. It is rumoured that later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire. So far, Russia has refrained from massive bombing or missile attacks, nuclear or otherwise. That may well now change. The Russians seem to care very little how many troops or how much materiel they lose on the ground - but they are far from stupid. They are not playing the role we have assigned to them. Their current losses are entirely predictable and must have been anticipated - as must the response. This will certainly include the nuclear option and the more they are pushed the more likely it becomes.
    1
  14544.  @grief1  No. It was a reasonable assessment. It will be a long haul and in any case I doubt the Arabs will have the sense to get shot of the extremists anyway anytime soon. When and if they do the situation will be entirely different to what it is today. So without a crystal ball no-one can actually predict the future with any accuracy.
    1
  14545.  @Bunnyroo7  That is , of course, another possibility but even with Hamas gone I imagine the two-state solution will be considered dangerous to many Israelis. A greater Israel, including Gaza, would probably make them feel safer.
    1
  14546.  @Bunnyroo7  I agree. One can only hope that future generations of Muslims will be able to become de-radicalised and so integrate more fully into Israeli society. Christianity was in a similar position in the Middle Ages and just as trapped in a death-obsessed mindset. Perhaps Islam needs an Enlightenment of its own.
    1
  14547. Cat meets mouse.
    1
  14548. And yet again another "conspiracy theory" turns out to be true. "Climate crisis" anyone?
    1
  14549. So not so crazy after all, then?
    1
  14550.  @SupertzarMetal  He had good reasons. Ukraine was set to break promises and set up missile sites pointing at Moscow.
    1
  14551.  @bilgyno1  And what about the civil war in Donbass? Towns and cities blasted by Ukraine artillery and Nazi death squads murdering civilians just because they are Russians? As with Crimea the majority of the population believe themselves to be Russian, not Ukrainian. Promises of autonomy have been broken and Russia is now determined that those promises be kept.
    1
  14552.  @SupertzarMetal  Treaties have been broken on all sides, many times. Far more relevant are the Minsk Agreements regarding the independence of the breakaway republics in Donbass on the Eastern border with Russia where a war has been fought for eight years. The invasion is in great part designed to bring an end to this war and grant the two republics the autonomy they have been promised under the terms of those agreements.
    1
  14553. Let's face it - this is just Buggin's Turn. Labour didn't get in because people were suddenly fired with passion for its policies. It got in because people wanted to punish the Tories for being so greedy and incompetent. The real revolution lies with the number of votes cast for Reform.
    1
  14554.  @stoufer2000  Whatever the percentage the figures are statistically irrelevant. They show that very few people die in police custody in this country and that even fewer are black or brown. That is all that needs to be said.
    1
  14555. Mask stop covid. Masks stop covid. Masks stop covid. There, I could go on but you already believe it, don't you?
    1
  14556.  @jimjones813  I'm not sure what point you're making. You need a respirator mask of some sort in order to be able to breathe and it has to be fitted really tight to be any use at all, otherwise the aerosols just pour out in all directions. There's no getting out of this; even back at the start of the pandemic when it was thought infection was primarily through droplets masks were pretty useless. Now it has been revealed that most infection is via aerosol they are purely cosmetic. They seem to be be turning into badges of political affiliation, which is really weird.
    1
  14557.  @tenguayaqa7116  His big friends had already given the little guy an army costing $100billion.
    1
  14558.  @popnorbert8465  What massacre? Soldiers are killing soldiers and civilian casualties are incidental. The invasion was Russia's fully understandable pre-emptive response to NATO's militarisation of Ukraine. The war will continue until the bitter end as long as the West continues its mad course of continually resupplying the Ukrainian nationalists. Only when this stops can peace be attained.
    1
  14559.  @hnnsy  Indeed, plunging one's country into a destructive and needless war is just the sort of example which pleases US and European businessmen.
    1
  14560.  @hnnsy  It is Ukraine which is ruined. Russia is doing quite well, all things considered.
    1
  14561.  @hnnsy  Ukraine will take a hundred years to pay back the debts it has incurred. Russia meanwhile is forging new alliances and setting up partnerships which will eventually result in the collapse of the US dollar and an end to Western hegemony.
    1
  14562.  @PNH-sf4jz  It isn't a question of barracking. It's a matter of establishing facts.
    1
  14563.  @hnnsy  The Americans started this one, and the Germans the other two. All Russia wants is to protects its borders and its geopolitical interests. If the West backs off all will be well. If not - who knows?
    1
  14564.  @davidford3115  What facts do you imagine I have confused with opinions? Thanks to a corrupt media we are constantly presented with opinions masquerading as facts. In addition, a great many facts are ignored. To understand the war in Ukraine it is necessary to examine history and to separate the real motives of those concerned from what we are TOLD these motives are. This war isn't a question of Russian aggression. The invasion was an act of defiance - of desperation if you like. It is impossible to understand it without understanding Russia's fears for its future in the face of constant Western antagonism. You are being sold a pup. Your "facts" are propaganda. Try reading Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations, or the text of his two latest state of the nation speeches. You may not agree with him - but you will certainly be presented with any number of facts which have been deliberately withheld from you.
    1
  14565.  @PNH-sf4jz  Between 2014 and 2021 America and NATO spent between $60billion and $120billion on creating a new Ukrainian army. You can confirm this through NATO press releases and the US Congressional Research Services. Russia, along with China and other countries in the BRICS + consortium are on their way to creating a new world currency based in gold which is designed to replace the dollar in world markets. A simple Internet search will direct you to a number of articles on the subject. Anything else you want to know?
    1
  14566.  @PNH-sf4jz  NATO, the American Library of Congress, Reuters and the Financial Times?
    1
  14567.  @PNH-sf4jz  You said you wouldn't count on INFORMATION from sources I use. I gave you some. If you are incapable of REFERENCING these yourself I could, if asked nicely, direct you to specific references to any of the points I have made, and about which you may have doubts.
    1
  14568.  @PNH-sf4jz  You are living in a world of utter delusion. Wake up! I am a retired British journalist, living in the south of England and old enough to be suspicious about official narratives of all kinds. We have always been lied to - but it's getting much, much worse lately. Do yourself a favour and try to resist.
    1
  14569. Lord Ali is quite rich.
    1
  14570.  @judykinsman3258  That simply isn't true. The situation was resolvable, but fanatical Islamic extremism has prevented all efforts at a peaceful solution.
    1
  14571.  @SadaK-tr6dm  The Zionists, from the late 19th century onwards, transformed the land from a neglected desert into productive farmland. The madness comes from Islamic fundamentalists who have refused to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.
    1
  14572.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Because they first moved there at the end of the 19th century and bought the land from its Ottoman owners, piece by piece. They transformed it from underpopulated desert into productive land and this attracted Arab immigrants from neighbouring countries. Their efforts were set back by two world wars and the descendants of these neighbouring Arabs, now called Palestinians, are claiming that they have lived there from time immemorial and that the land is theirs.
    1
  14573.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Because it is their country. Much of it bought and paid for.
    1
  14574. The Russians are just cleverer than the US "intelligence" services and analysts. Which isn't hard.
    1
  14575. Will there be a vote?
    1
  14576. Silly old tosser, as ever. Signs are we should be welcoming Omicron with open arms.
    1
  14577. The death rate in the UK is currently more than 18% above the five-year average for the time of year. Interestingly, more than half the "extra" deaths (around 1,000 a week) are from causes unrelated to covid. Why should that be, I wonder?
    1
  14578.  @carlossaraiva8213  I cannot myself decide if the NHS has been overwhelmed by the pandemic, or if the measures we have taken to contain it have not created more problems than they have solved.
    1
  14579.  @DrMcMoist  You have been misinformed. All the evidence -including on the spot testimony from civilians under attack - points to the Ukrainians carrying out these atrocities. The fact that the Russians HAVE been reluctant to incur civilian casualties has meant that the Ukrainians have been keen to keep civilians in areas under attack to use as human shields. They have even kept civilians bottled up in cellars and bomb shelters, using snipers to shoot anyone who ventures out for food and water. In at least one instance a group of elderly people in Mariupol were actually cemented into a cellar and their cries of distress broadcast on loudspeakers to dissuade Russian-allied troops from advancing. I have archived videos of all the above, but of course Western censorship prevents me from sharing them with you. Some may be found on Patrick Lancaster's channel. or pro-Russian channels tom and anonymous, among others.
    1
  14580. These working class employees will obviously have to be from a racial minority, homosexual and disabled. If the BBC were to employee Tommy Robinson that would indicate true diversity.
    1
  14581. @Myname Isunavailable You have absolutely no idea what weaponry Azov has purchased on the black market. A considerable amount of the weaponry sent to Ukraine is stolen and sold to the highest bidder.
    1
  14582.  @paulinemasters9125  He is saying that when it comes to the deliberate targeting of civilians, Ukraine wins hands down.
    1
  14583.  @stevenmartin8828  Try thinking it through, why don't you?
    1
  14584.  @rickywright1264  You really rather make my point.
    1
  14585.  @vrrdt342  I think you mean liberated it from Ukrainian tyranny.
    1
  14586. What substance?
    1
  14587.  @karowak1  Sorry. Since Hunter is so good at running Ukrainian oil companies and gives his dad half his wages I just thought he might be a perfect fit.
    1
  14588.  @billybobbocephus2177  Are you sure you don't mean necrophilia?
    1
  14589.  @billybobbocephus2177  Eating crayons and glue has no place in politics.
    1
  14590.  @billybobbocephus2177  Never touch the stuff. Sometimes though ole Joe seems to have suspicious-looking stains at the corners of his mouth. Could just be drool though.
    1
  14591. A lackwit who is already on the way to heralding a new era of peace and prosperity.
    1
  14592. @ In my dreams at the moment. But I am feeling dangerously optimistic.
    1
  14593. @ Doesn't that apply to all of us? (Incidentally, why is that almost everybody these days writes "loose" when it should be lose? Genuine question.)
    1
  14594. All published by Western trolls, and hardly any of it true.
    1
  14595.  @gsomethingsomething2658  Indeed.
    1
  14596.  @stream2watch  Not just me, and it simply isn't a "demographic time bomb" The estimated number of Russian losses at 355,000 is probably a grotesque exaggeration but granted that it is true it represents around one sixth of Russia's standing army, and that isn't taking conscripts into account. Russia rarely publishes casualty figures but in the past they have been around a quarter of the Ukrainian claim. This is a tragedy, but when you think how the world recovered from the immense losses sustained in World War I it becomes clear that the effects of these losses will disseminate fairly rapidly.
    1
  14597.  @stream2watch  Demographic problems are a far cry from a "demographic time bomb", old thing. Edify yourself on the nuances of the English language before spouting advice, please.
    1
  14598.  @stream2watch  I didn't say I believed the Russian figures any more than I believe the Ukrainian ones. The true answer is probably something in between. You're a bit of a one for jumping to conclusions. ain't yer?
    1
  14599.  @stream2watch  It is, in this case, an inaccurate figure of speech, however. A demographic damp squib would be more appropriate.
    1
  14600.  @stream2watch  I know that a problem isn't a time bomb. That's a piece of knowledge I'm fairly certain of In this instance, the problem of the tragic loss of x amount of young Russian men is going to dissipate, not explode, as it did in both World Wars when the number of losses were considerably higher. If you find this is a problem, try not to explode. It could be messy.
    1
  14601.  @stream2watch  What shape does this disaster take? I can't see how a population with more older women and fewer young men than in some other countries can constitute either a "catastrophe" or a "disaster." If anything the UK is heading for disaster with a surge of uninvited immigrants breeding like rabbits, often with their first cousins and thus producing children with consequent health problems.
    1
  14602.  @stream2watch  Because it does - as demonstrated in the situations following the two World Wars, as I have previously pointed out.
    1
  14603.  @stream2watch  You really must learn to acquaint yourself more thoroughly with the English language before going of on one of your little rampages. The second statement is not a contradiction of the first, it is a qualification.
    1
  14604.  @stream2watch  How relevant is all this talk of pyramids? Russia continues to function whether or not there is a disproportionate amount of women in the population.
    1
  14605.  @stream2watch  Put it down to British diffidence if you like then. But it is still a qualification. Unlike you, apparently, I'm prepared to admit I could be wrong, but not in this case, as it happens.
    1
  14606.  @billy2807  I don't understand the question Russia is clearly under a great deal of pressure, but is coping magnificently. Belarus and Russia are close allies, and their oil industries are closely linked. Buying weapons from other countries is a common practice. What's your point?
    1
  14607. Yet another example of the manipulation of the legal system by lefty lawyers intent of destroying western civilisation.
    1
  14608.  @SuperRede4u  If the "experts" on this channel can do it - so can I!
    1
  14609.  @michaeldunham3385  But I AM Russian. I'm a Russian bot. Everyone says so!
    1
  14610.  @101wildgoose  Not very hard. The land is virtually worthless.
    1
  14611.  @josephberrie9550  There was never any such thing.
    1
  14612.  @robertshiell887  Look at a map. Russia isn't all that bothered about Kursk, but since the ground position will be important in peace negotiations they have stepped up activities.
    1
  14613. Russia doesn't want Poland. Poland wouldn't mind having Ukraine though.
    1
  14614.  @Dogman580  He simply doesn't - and has said so many times in articles and interviews. He says that while it may be a fine, romantic idea to recreate the Russian Empire it is is neither practical nor desirable to do so.
    1
  14615.  @silverforest4682  With a very large Russian population. And what is Ukraine anyway? It has never really existed as a country separate from Russia. Independence for the two republics would have been a good and viable answer to the difficulties - and it could well come to that in the end.
    1
  14616.  @catc8927  Which lasted for about five minutes before the Bolsheviks moved in from Russia.
    1
  14617. @João P K I really don't think there's much in it.
    1
  14618. @João P K I mean there's not much between the two countries when it comes to acts of cruelty. Perhaps it's got something to do with suffering under Communism, or even just an ethnic thing.
    1
  14619.  @emm_arr  Don't speak a word!
    1
  14620.  @mark-ish  They do if they're being shafted by a corrupt judicial system.
    1
  14621.  @Kimm.J  You are assuming that this trial is based on truth and justice. It isn't. It is based on revenge and political manipulation.
    1
  14622. It is produced all over the world. The patent ran out years ago and you can buy 100 tablets for $37,50. You only need to take two tablets A WEEK to reduce Covid symptoms enough to stop you dying. One major manufacturer is donating 100milion doses for free. Not a profitable business, which is why this potential lifesaver is being banned. Bill Gates' vaccine and the other contenders need to keep this pandemic going untreated so they can rake in trillions.
    1
  14623.  @naomineal1785  Biden is incompetent.
    1
  14624.  @sublime7617  Pick a couple of examples.
    1
  14625.  @sublime7617  I think you may have won! It was only reported that he said it but it sounds like him.
    1
  14626.  @harold9394  As far as I can tell a "lie" to the Left is just something they disagree with.
    1
  14627.  @bmullin96  Good for you.
    1
  14628. The latest sickening response from those who deny that these crimes are cultural and religious in origin is to ask "what about the priests and vicars who abuse children"? It seems they want to make child abuse a sort of competition, and that because Christians sometimes are paedophiles, Moslems should be allowed to rape very young girls.
    1
  14629. One wonders how extensive this investigation will be. Covid provided such wonderful business opportunities.
    1
  14630.  @moniquea2643  With reason
    1
  14631. It depends whether you want a country run by no-nonsense businessmen, or a bunch of warmongering weirdos who somehow manage at the same time to support sexual deviation, abortion and undermining the stability of foreign nations for profit.
    1
  14632. This is horrifying. The defeated left seems to be transitioning from mere delusion into raging paranoia. The oligarchs (whoever they are) don't need fake news to undermine socialism. Ordinary sensible, uncomplicated people are sick to death of its patronising self-righteousness. Us "poor people", as you toffee-nosed Commies call us, know our lives will be safer and richer when we are governed by people who know what they're doing, rather than by a bunch of half-arsed intellectuals with grandiose ideas. You are living in a dream world. You'll just have to accept that we don't want to enter into your fantasies. Its game over. Get used to it.
    1
  14633. Racism comes in many colours.
    1
  14634.  @MicroageHD  Compared to Joe Biden????
    1
  14635. Russia invaded Ukraine only after years of provocation by US/NATO imperialism. The good people of Russia know this. It's a pity more good people in the West don't. The BBC certainly won't tell them.
    1
  14636. @Anthony M In much the same way as you might choose to buy something offered by a glib salesman. NATO is a protection racket and Russia is the necessary bogeyman.
    1
  14637. @Anthony M It scarcely matters what worries and benefits motivated these nations to join NATO, although one can safely say that fear of the bogeyman was one of them. Ukraine's flirtation was a step too far, however. NATO and American influence in that country posed an existential threat to both Russia's security and economic well-being.
    1
  14638. @Anthony M Only very partially. To Russia, Ukraine is part of Russia far more than any of the former soviet republics and satellites which have joined NATO. It's defection to the West is genuinely heartbreaking to some. The fact that its membership of NATO could mean nuclear missiles within seven minutes flying time of Moscow is, however, secondary to the fact that NATO/America has spent billions on providing Ukraine with a large, fully trained and equipped conventional army.
    1
  14639. @Anthony M These were minor irritations. The Ukraine situation is a gross insult.
    1
  14640. @Anthony M The "missiles next door" is clearly just one of several provocations. Who are the Ukrainian people, by the way? Close on 20% of them are Russians and a good percentage of them want to stay aligned with Russia. There is a huge difference in ethnicity, economics and character between Western and Eastern Ukraine. They are practically two different countries. As to "wanting" to join NATO, NATO offers many financial inducements to those countries it wishes to have join. NATO , as well as being a protection racket, is also a commercial organisation contributing to America's commercial interests.
    1
  14641. @Anthony M I'm not making much sense of this, I'm afraid.
    1
  14642. @Anthony M Russia has actually tried to join NATO, you know. Any idea what the motives for that might have been?
    1
  14643. @Anthony M The approaches were entirely genuine, but instead of welcoming them NATO made it quite clear that obstacles would be placed in the way of a formal application. With Russia as a member, NATO would no longer have a function, and that would never do. I entirely agree that former USSR nations would need little persuasion to join NATO, but that is not the point. I also repeat myself: in Russia's eyes Ukraine is a unique case. If you have time I suggest you read Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published in the Summer of 2021. It makes his position very clear and explains many historical facts of which most in the West are ignorant. In any event, membership of NATO is only one issue. The conflict really revolves around access to the vast mineral wealth of Donbass. America wants it and Russia, which discovered it and mined and developed it, regards this an act of piracy which must be prevented at all costs.
    1
  14644. @Anthony M There were no formal applications, but that overtures were made by Yeltsin, Brezhnev and Putin at various times is widely accepted. Although Russia was the senior partner in the USSR, as it were, its people suffered just as greatly under its regime. The fact is clearly that without Russia as the replacement bogeyman for the USSR NATO has no point or purpose, and the business and careers opportunities it offers would be lost. As you are aware from reading his essay, Putin regards the Russian people and the Ukrainian people as one, but he fully accepts that those living in the West of the country wish to ally with Europe and America and, however regretfully, he accepts their decision and wishes them well. He does not think they should take people in the East with them, however. This, really, is key to the dispute and I believe it could have been settled without bloodshed if NATO/America had not selfishly intervened.
    1
  14645. @Anthony M NATO wouldn't have a function with Russia as a member, that's the point. It would have to find a new enemy. In any case, it's all water under the bridge now and whether NATO comes out weaker or stronger after this remains to be seen. Appeasement is perfectly acceptable in its place. You can call it intelligent compromise if it makes you feel any better.
    1
  14646. @Anthony M Come now! Every treaty ever signed has involved give-and-take. It's only called appeasement when it doesn't work. In this instance there us every reason to suppose that making concessions to Russia will bring a rapid end to this dreadful war - a thing most earnestly to be desired.
    1
  14647. @Anthony M But Russia's requirements are entirely reasonable. The use of the word "appeasement" is merely designed to draw false parallels between Putin and Hitler. Recognition of Crimea as Russian and a measure of autonomy for the two Donbass oblasts, allowing them to continue to deal with Russia, would have entirely satisfied Putin's concerns. Instead it is being falsely portrayed as the first stage some kind of senile attempt to recreate the Soviet Empire! This is clearly American propaganda designed to disguise their avaricious intentions towards the vast mineral resources of Donbass, intentions with which their puppet, Zelensky, is in full accord. The situation has now moved on. At least a quarter of a million people have been killed and Putin has annexed not only Donetsk and Luhansk but also neighbouring Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Even now he will probably call off the attack and allow the remainder of Ukraine to go its own way to a great extent if peace can be agreed. If not, the war will continue and will only end when one side or the other becomes exhausted. That side is very likely to be Ukraine, since America and Europe will not be prepared to exhaust their own resources in its support for very much longer.
    1
  14648. @Anthony M As I have explained, autonomy for both Western and Eastern Ukraine is the objective. The interests of the two areas differ and there is a feeling that the West has been taking advantage of the East's industrial output without due recompense. Once again, as already stated, Putin has no wish to subjudcate the Ukrainian people. He wants freedom for the Russian occupants of Ukraine but, perhaps more importantly, he wants Russia to have access to the riches of Donbass. There are close similarities to the situations in Georgia and Chechnya, certainly. The creation of buffer regions and a semblance of autonomy for the main areas of territory are the ideal solution from Russia's point of view. Personally I can't see Western aid going on for much longer. Billions and billions have been spent already, and so far with no return on the outlay. The West is like a gambler on a slot machine. How long will it go on putting money in the slot before it gives up hope of the jackpot?
    1
  14649. @Anthony M I don't know how much pressure Putin will be able to place on Western Ukraine when this is all over, but reading between the lines I would suggest that he will not wish to interfere greatly in its internal affairs once Crimea and Donbass have been hived off. As with Chechnya and Georgia he will want, obviously, to exercise as much control as he can, but being eminently pragmatic this will not, I think, be as rigid as is the case with these other two countries. As I have already said, increased membership of NATO is an annoyance, but little more - as long as Ukraine is not included. I know little about Mr Vucic's views on this topic, but I expect you are quite familiar with them. Your English is excellent but I have already got you down as hailing from somewhere in the Balkans. Am I right?
    1
  14650. @Anthony M Apologies for the intrusion. It was mere idle curiosity. We seem to be at something of an impasse though. This is why there are wars, I suppose. When agreements cannot be reached, trial by combat becomes the answer, and the victors write the history. No need to go that far! We will just have to agree to differ.
    1
  14651.  @johnbates4004  When used in a newspaper column. Or indeed in any context you like. They are accurate observations and if anyone should take offence, too bad. They are pleasant enough jokes which, even if they did cause offence, that offence could not be attributed to racism in any sense. Some black kids do have big grins and very charming too. And Islam is not a race. Mocking burkas is no more racist than mocking Anglican bishops for wearing funny hats.
    1
  14652.  @abbersj2935  No. The large foggy areas in the minds of brainwashed fools convince them to see things which are not there.
    1
  14653.  @abbersj2935  I glimpse a glimmer of political acumen through the fog. Keep working on it.
    1
  14654.  @willshaman2128  The word "piccaninnie" is, I think, West Indian patois and is very much a term of endearment, although rather old-fashioned now. The trouble is you language fascists turn reasonable discourse into a minefield. You are like a bunch of Victorian ladies policing speech with your "dos and don'ts" and your eternal pearl-clutching. Go somewhere else and whisper behind your fluttering fans. Islam is not a race it is a religion, and while mockery of religious apparel might be considered by some to be in poor taste, once again putting a racist slant upon it reveals the racism inherent in you, not in Boris Johnson. They might well be white faces hidden behind the veils, you know. Either converts or Muslims from the Balkans for example. Racism in this country is only an issue when people like you try to make it one.
    1
  14655.  @AuntyEsther  You're not explaining it very well. Picaninnie is a term of endearment applied to children in West Indian patois. If racists have appropriated the term then you too are a racist for condoning their interpretation. Islam is a religion not a race and therefore any comments made about its prescribed apparel cannot be racist. Plenty of white women wear burkas; converts and Moslems from Balkan countries for example. It is you and people like you who are keeping racism alive by constantly misreading the behaviour of people more liberal-minded than you are.
    1
  14656.  @peterspowage5752  Racism is not what you seem to think it is. In fact the ability to gently mock people of different nations or ethnicities than oneself is a sign of a healthy society. It is virtue-signalling lefties who see racism in every remark, or political opportunists who use race as an issue who are responsible for stirring hatred.
    1
  14657.  @peterspowage5752  Racist crimes have increased because the definition has been altered and because our police forces are jumping on the diversity bandwagon. Compared to even just a few decades ago racism in this country is virtually non-existent.
    1
  14658.  @3373just  What is this horrific abuse? Who is Tyrone?
    1
  14659. Err, is this irony? They are MPs. They were therefore elected. (Forgive me if you are a master troll and I have blown your cover.)
    1
  14660. Not so much. These people can be bought.
    1
  14661. The NHS crisis and the sewage crisis have one obvious thing in common - they are both the result of excessive immigration placing too great a burden on limited resources.
    1
  14662.  @johndean1634  Even Gary Linaker hasn't made mistakes resulting in the deaths of thousands and the destruction of his country.
    1
  14663.  @ascgazz  What ARE you babbling about? Zelensky got the part of President in a TV series . He was hand-picked by top Ukrainian oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky whose personal political ambitions were held back by his lack of good looks and somewhat sinister personality. Charismatic little sexpot Volodymyr fitted the bill nicely, for Mr K had realised that extensive TV exposure was even more effective than the traditional methods of intimidation and bribery in persuading the voters to pick your man. Something seems to have gone wrong though. If you know anything about actors you will realise that they are often rather excitable and Mr Z has clearly let the role go to his head. He thinks he IS the President, rather than the front man for a crook. The consequences have been disastrous. Mr Z has heeded Hollywood's call and been seduced into standing up to that nasty Mr P on behalf of the Americans. A set of circumstances worthy of a request for divine intervention, I feel.
    1
  14664.  @jeanclaudejunior  Credite posteri
    1
  14665.  @bonnie7898  You can see it in his eyes.
    1
  14666.  @emm_arr  Still no arguments then?
    1
  14667.  @emm_arr  And STILL no argument - only another pathetic, childish insult.
    1
  14668.  @verystripeyzebra  But I arrive at my views quite independently. That they may coincide with those of the Russian government is exactly that - coincidental.
    1
  14669.  @lr6633  PMQs is hardly the Parliamentary process, it is? It's just points scoring game for those who are so politically immature they actually think politics is nothing more than a point-scoring game.
    1
  14670.  @lr6633  Early days yet. She is certainly showing great sense in steering clear of the media and not letting herself get drawn into the PMQs charade.
    1
  14671.  @lr6633  I don't think my opinion of her carries a GREAT deal of political weight!
    1
  14672. The US has forest cities, so called because inhabitants are taxed to pay for the upkeep of the surrounding woodlands. Trump was using the same terminology to refer to European cities in forest areas I suppose. And some species of pine ARE very explosive! The sap expands so violently under heat that they go off in a big way. So Trump, as ever, not the most articulate of men but some reality buried in there somewhere.
    1
  14673.  @susanhonegger9987  How do you know? Are there ever any forest fires there?
    1
  14674. I hope when Trump gets back in all these crooked lawyers and bent judges get a taste of their own medicine. They deserve to suffer the full weight of the law they have so egregiously abused.
    1
  14675.  @mooseheadjack1  What's ridiculous about it? I'd be very, very pissed off if I was in Trump's position. You could be right about him not getting back in, though. I guess the Dems will just have to cheat again.
    1
  14676.  @JimEnger  The Electoral College has a rationale which postal voting, bulk buying votes from poor blacks and fiddling with dodgy voting machines just doesn't.
    1
  14677. Floyd's death was simply the trigger the Marxist BLM was waiting for to start up a previously conceived plan. He won the martyr's lottery - but only because the video was so gripping.
    1
  14678. Ban everything!
    1
  14679. On the contrary anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are capable of thinking for themselves, rather than blindly believing everything they are told. That's why many of them are Trump supporters. He thinks for himself too.
    1
  14680.  @josephrunnion1473  I know that it is a principle of law that jurors should not be prejudiced either for or against a defendant. Given Trump's position and the constant barrage of hatred directed against him in the media I would contend that it is unlikely that a jury of twelve impartial people can even be found. What's "Legally Blonde", by the way?
    1
  14681. Not if he gets found out he won't.
    1
  14682. Pretty well?
    1
  14683.  @nathanadler6991  Better than using the law as a political weapon. The Democrats have brought this upon themselves.
    1
  14684.  @johnkitching2248  And a good thing too.
    1
  14685.  @helpingeachother7007  There are some people who will do anything for money. Absolutely anything.
    1
  14686.  @jvlaina  Currently being carried out on 40,000 health care workers worldwide. I don't hold out much hope though. It's being done under WHO auspices with money provided by Bill Gates. Have you seen this, by the way? https://c19study.com/
    1
  14687.  @jvlaina  Any ideas about this? I need to make sure it's genuine. https://c19study.com/
    1
  14688. You are wrong about China. China was scared and there have been massive lay-offs and crashing profits. That's sort of the idea. The same with the EU. It just beats me how people can't seem to understand the game Trump is playing. It's entirely reasonable to believe his tactics aren't going to work, but it is utterly childish to allow yourselves to be so blinded by TDS that you believe the man is a fool who doesn't know what he's doing, or that abrupt reversals of policy are "climb-downs" or "defeats."
    1
  14689.  @emm_arr  There is nothing silly about this opinion. What is remarkable is how so many people confuse the apparent confirmation of their prejudices with reasoned thought.
    1
  14690.  @emm_arr  My opinions are neither silly nor are they feigned. I suspect that you suffer from some basic character deficiency which cannot cope with the notion that you could be wrong.
    1
  14691. Why not? Covid is just a sniffle to kids.
    1
  14692. Just goes to show how much Russia is under threat - Islamic fanatics on one side, NATO warmongers on the other.
    1
  14693. Boris is shooting up in my estimation minute by minute! His refusal to be bullied by media thugs marks him out as a man who will continue to defy them when in office. The media, even the reasonably benign Ferrari, have not yet got it into their fat, conceited heads that they no longer represent "the people" but only themselves.
    1
  14694. Maybe Putin isn't so mad after all.
    1
  14695. But the experts have led us down a path which has led to damage to our health almost certainly far in excess of the damage caused by the disease.
    1
  14696.  @rebeccalouise4567  Point taken
    1
  14697. Later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire.
    1
  14698.  @PlanetaryCitizen  It simply isn't. Russian soldiers are rewarded with large salaries to volunteer.
    1
  14699.  @PlanetaryCitizen  It's enough of an incentive. They are told too that their dependents will be provided for should they fall. This might even be true.
    1
  14700. @ Because they are cheaper?
    1
  14701.  @joshuapaul2022  Seems that way/
    1
  14702.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Still living in your fur-lined vacuum I see.
    1
  14703.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I don't actually believe you are capable of thinking for yourself.
    1
  14704.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Ah. Thomas Aquinas meets Jung and the Group Unconscious. We are indeed all one under the guidance of God. Such a relief that our thoughts and opinions are so irrelevant in such circumstances. The Bomb will end all sin and bring us to the Seat of Judgement afore long. Aaaa, Jim Lad!
    1
  14705.  @errorswillmultiply1697  So if you want a serious discussion, do you actually believe it is tenable or appropriate that poor old Britain should provide sustenance and shelter for tens of thousands of chancers from foreign lands? Are you happy to see a decent culture, grown through the centuries, destroyed on the altar of progressive globalism?
    1
  14706.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I'll take that as a "No" then, shall I?
    1
  14707.  @errorswillmultiply1697  These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.
    1
  14708.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Not at all. Your "current consensus" merely exists in the little bubble you inhabit. I am by no means "a lone free thinker". If I choose to express my views on platforms more amenable to my opinions, I collect hundreds and sometimes thousands of "likes". What' s the point of that though? Far better to attempt to convert the indoctrinated, such as yourself or - failing that - to amuse myself by taking the piss out of you all. (My previous post was a direct Groucho Marx quote, by the way.)
    1
  14709.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Ok Mr Picky! What EXACTLY are the differences then?
    1
  14710.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I am as thickskinned as the crockerdale. Honestly though, is this disparagement of me and my motives truly worthy of you?
    1
  14711.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Well aren't you a clever little thing!
    1
  14712.  @rocketscience4516  Hi Rocket! I've only just accessed the little orgy of mutual self-congratulation between yourself and Errors. You are a puzzle, both of you. I honestly don't see how I am "broken" in any way. I am toying with the idea that by finding me guilty of behaviour which actually pleases me you actually imagine I am hurt and offended. Can this be so? Stay safe. Dale.
    1
  14713.  @rocketscience4516  How positively Medieval. I had a sudden horrifying image of you clad in a hooded black robe exhorting a sinner to repent before burning him at the stake.
    1
  14714.  @rocketscience4516  Indulge?? There you go again.
    1
  14715.  @rocketscience4516  Thanks Rocket. You never fail to disappoint.
    1
  14716.  @rocketscience4516  You're actually not far wrong - but what of it? I am pretty bored most of the time and having an exchange of ideas can be refreshing. You have the choice of arguing back logically or exposing yourself to ridicule. Either course of action provides me with entertainment.
    1
  14717.  @rocketscience4516  Oh dear. You have let yourself down again with silly insults. For a moment there I had hopes for you.
    1
  14718. Can you explain why when Russia bombs Ukraine it is supposed to strengthen Ukrainian resolve, but when Ukraine bombs Russian soldiers, Russians are supposed to turn on Putin?
    1
  14719. Donald is living in their psychotic little heads. They will never be free of him.
    1
  14720.  @Nic1Moreno  Are you feeling quite well?
    1
  14721. It wasn't a debate though. It was a stage-managed piece of political theatre designed to humiliate Trump. I reckon he has gained more sympathy from people who realise this than Harris might have done for "winning the debate."
    1
  14722.  @michaeldunham3385  It's not in Ukraine.
    1
  14723. Him and his Churchill complex, the warmongering turd.
    1
  14724.  @echobay5040  Sit back and consider for a moment the dreadful state America and the world has fallen into since Trump was evicted from power.
    1
  14725.  @jeremymanson1781  Believe that and you'll believe anything. And it isn't just the economy by which a country may be judged. America is degenerating into social chaos, as all empires must. The economic well-being of the privileged is being artificially stimulated in a process which will inevitably and suddenly result in collapse, while an increasing number of ordinary Americans experience hardships and stress not seen since the 1930s. Drugs fill the role alcohol did then.
    1
  14726.  harrysatchel  The election remains very much in dispute. At the very least procedures were not properly followed - to say the least of the fact that entities ranging from the FBI to the media and the arms industry conspired against Trump in various ways. To my mind this counts as eviction more than it reflects proper democratic process.
    1
  14727.  @echobay5040  It's water under the bridge now, but as a relatively impartial observer I have to say that an election with as many gross faults as this one is very much open to question, especially since there seems to be no legal mechanism to properly examine the results. If it was fixed - or even simply badly conducted - those responsible are broadly the same people charged with the process of investigation.
    1
  14728.  @taefravis  Funny, I don't remember any wars worth speaking of during that period. High levels of employment and fiscal security also come to mind as well as at least some restrictions on the tide of immigrants currently staggering in drugged comas around the streets of major cities.
    1
  14729.  @scottkrater2131  ...or inadequately brainwashed.
    1
  14730. Education is dead in America.
    1
  14731. Zelensky isn't laughing. He's lost tens of thousands of his best troops.
    1
  14732.  @boink800  And not a single Ukrainian life was lost!!!
    1
  14733. @@karmakazi101 These were the mindless frontal assaults which ended up taking the city then?
    1
  14734.  @TTTzzzz  You either get it or you don't.
    1
  14735.  @sakha2349  We are both providing versions of the truth. The difference is one of emphasis. Prior to the Zionist movement the whole area of what became "Palestine" (a name invented by British map-makers with a classical education) was a thoroughly neglected part of the already crumbling Ottoman empire and very underpopulated. No more than a million people and perhaps even half of that lived there, according to most estimates. Jews , Arabs, Christians and others inhabited the few small cities that there were, while the countryside contained run-down villages and pasture utilised by tribes of wandering Arab herdsmen. The Zionists bought parcels of land from their Ottoman owners and within a few decades large numbers of Arabs arrived from neighbouring countries to take advantage of the new farming methods and modern systems of irrigation and organisation introduced by the Zionists. The two World Wars disrupted this process greatly and by the time the survivors of the Holocaust began to arrive in large numbers much of the land was occupied by Arabs. This led to conflict and tragedy, the consequences of which are still with us. It is not true to claim, however, that the Jews "stole" the land from the Arabs. Neither is it true to say that a country called Palestine existed in any meaningful sense of the word. Israel, however, did come to exist. History is written by the victors, but in this instance no victor has yet emerged. Personally I think the fact that the conflict has gone on for so long is mainly due to the intractability of a succession of Arab leaders whose behaviour has been guided by religious conviction, rather than a pragmatic desire to create a prosperous nation state where people can live together in harmony.
    1
  14736.  @sakha2349  History, as they say, is written by the victors and since as yet there is no victor here, the history must remain in dispute. I'll have another go at getting my viewpoint across in another post, however. If it does get through it will, of necessity, sound somewhat stilted.
    1
  14737.  @sakha2349  My version of history is that until Zionism came along at the end of the 19th century the whole area which the British later called "Palestine" was a neglected and under-populated corner of the decaying Ottoman Empire. There were only a million or so people living there, if that, and these were Jews and Arabs and various others also. It could not be called a single country since it was split into various provinces, each owned by an Ottoman nobleman. The Zionists purchased parcels of land from these Ottomans and set about transforming them into viable farms and orchards. This attracted large numbers of Arabs from neighbouring counties who were generally welcomed as workers and even business associates. The process was greatly disrupted by the two World Wars and when the survivors of the Holocaust began to arrive much of this land had been occupied by Arabs and conflict ensued. That conflict is still going on today, for reasons I hold to be true, but which I imagine YouTube and you will probably disagree with, but I'm sure you can guess what I think they are.
    1
  14738.  @sakha2349  The population of the area was a million at most before the Zionists arrived. It was greatly swelled as more and more Arabs arrived to take advantage of the prosperity the Zionists had created.
    1
  14739.  @sakha2349  Much of the land currently in dispute was originally purchased by Zionists from its Ottoman owners.
    1
  14740.  @sakha2349  Alas, I do not think there can ever be peace as long as Muslims continue to be guided by their more extreme religious leaders.
    1
  14741.  @sakha2349  Incidentally, how many of today's "Palestinians" do you think are descendants of Syrians, Jordanians etc etc who only arrived in the area a couple of generations ago to take advantage of the prosperity created by the Zionists?
    1
  14742.  @kieranharwood7186  Only as a form of social cohesion, nothing to do with religion . At least 40% of Israelis are admitted atheists and most of the rest just pay lip service. In any case, Judaism isn't death-obsessed, unlike other religions one could mention.
    1
  14743. This has nothing to do with ideologies, or how countries choose to rule themselves. It is purely about the distribution of wealth and resources. America is a failing nation. Countries which have been forced to bow to its supremacy over the years now sense its forthcoming demise and are working together to hasten it.
    1
  14744.  @Sam-xe1om  Never said. Casualty figures grossly exaggerated. Twenty percent (or thereabouts) is all Russia wants or needs.
    1
  14745.  @richiecooke69 The losses are open to dispute. The gains are not. Russia is now well on the way to retaining control of territories sitting on many trillions of dollarsworth of mineral riches. Writing on a piece of paper that an area of land is a "sovereign territory" doesn't make it so. The country of Ukraine created in the early 1990s is not a true, united country. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, on on the footprint of which it is based, was entirely a creation of the Bolsheviks and much of its eastern part is essentially Russian, with a large Russian population and the considerable resources of which are still largely owned by Russian companies. Russia has been forced into the grim necessity of war by the prospect of these resources being transferred to the control of Western agencies, and by Ukraine's continued attempts to repress Russian language and culture in these areas.
    1
  14746. @ You are under the false impression that Russia wants all of Ukraine. It does not. It only wants those Eastern, Russianised parts, which it now largely has gained.
    1
  14747. @ Plenty of butter in Tescos.
    1
  14748.  @ChristyBermingham  That just isn't true. Butter has shot up in price, certainly, but is still on open sale in Russian supermarkets. I have just watched a video to that effect, posted by an American now living there.
    1
  14749.  @ChristyBermingham  Well I daresay both are true.
    1
  14750. @ I'm not quite sure what you mean. Russia certainly tries to maintain that it is only there to protect the human rights of its citizens - and it is the greedy Americans who want all the loot - but anyone who knows anything knows it's the loot that the war is mainly about.
    1
  14751. @ All I've said is that it is possible that some shopkeepers might be locking up the butter. I doubt this is generally the case though.
    1
  14752. @ I don't know what you mean. The war is about control of the vast mineral resources in Eastern Ukraine, currently largely owned and operated by Russians, as they have been for decades, if not centuries. Russia is reluctant to highlight this, insisting that it is the West which being greedy, while they are merely concerned with the human rights of the many Russians living there. But everyone who knows anything knows that this is only part of their motivation, and a relatively small one, at that.
    1
  14753.  @brucehodgson4303  Anything he can get his hands on apparently!
    1
  14754. Biden is exactly the right President for America at this stage of its history. Corrupt, incompetent, clumsy, conceited, drugged up to the eyeballs and very, very close to desth.
    1
  14755. Time for the CIA to step in then.
    1
  14756.  @polla2256  Russia has more friends than America or Europe and the number is growing. Ever heard of BRICS?
    1
  14757.  @binagatramedia6258  Blame America.
    1
  14758. Is she all that black though?
    1
  14759. Labour lost its way many years ago and Starmer is just the latest in a series of false guides. He and his team are globalists, not socialists, and their loyalties are the Blackrock and the like and not to the British people.
    1
  14760. The people of Ukraine have been conned by America. They're not the first and they won't be the last.
    1
  14761. It's Big Pharma that's panicking. Omicron could destroy their vaccine scam for good.
    1
  14762. If Europe is paranoid about Russia, then Europe will have to supply the peacekeeping force. In point of fact there's more chance of a re-equipped Ukraine starting to get aggressive again than there is of Russia seeking more territory.
    1
  14763. In the 1920s both the Soviet Union and Canada made plans to exploit the new lands then being exposed in the North. Surveys were undertaken and roads and railways mapped Then the tundra froze over again. Man-made climate change is crap. And I ain't no Russian troll.
    1
  14764.  @itspeekaboo  Not if you rely on the Western media. Spread the net a bit further though and you will find a world of difference.
    1
  14765.  @itspeekaboo  I don't know that I have an opinion as such. They could certainly simply be getting destroyed, as we are constantly told, but there is another theory worth thinking about. Putin has no interest in conquering Ukraine. He simply wants Donbass and Crimea. To this end he has launched a massive attack, deploying generally weak troops with old equipment. The best troops and the best equipment are concentrated in Donbass, preparatory to defending it. The poorer troops, now supplemented by equally ill-trained reservist are being driven back. This doesn't matter. They are there simply to ensure Ukrainian resources are used up. Even if a dozen Russians get killed for every Ukranian, it is a good deal as far as Putin is concerned. There will doubtless soon be a Russian counter-offensive to the present Ukrainian advance. If this theory holds water what is left of the Ukrainian army will find itself with supply and communication lines cut, facing the superior Russian and battle-hardened separatist armies. In addition, Belarus with his large army will invade from the north, forcing the Ukrainians to fight their way back north to defend Kiev etc. Well, you did ask!
    1
  14766. Nor is one controlled by the State.
    1
  14767. Ukraine is going down. Do we really want to Britain to go down with them?
    1
  14768. But what if it isn't a lie, but an honest opinion?
    1
  14769.  @tthomas184  People generally are, are they not?
    1
  14770.  @gphunkera8731  I don't know about "irrefutable". If the election was fixed (and I mean if) then it was done very professionally by people who have been fixing elections all over the world for a number of years. They are as good at handling the cover-up as they are at the deed itself. I watched some very disturbing videos during the election which convinced me that very many votes were improperly cast, and that postal voting was abused and that bulk-buying of votes from poor black neighbourhoods was rife. Unfortunately none of these activities are illegal, or at least very difficult to prove in a court of law.
    1
  14771.  @tthomas184  Well not bamboozled if, like me, you believe the election probably was fixed in various ways. Pretending you think it was fixed when really you don't might make you a snivelling sycophant, but that's not an unusual stance to take in a job interview, is it?
    1
  14772.  @Joe-Dead  I have to disagree. In my opinion the election was fixed in various ways and in the very unlikely event of my applying for a job with the RNC I could say so without lying.
    1
  14773.  @elypevets5633  Then you are referring to me, and I don't think I lack critical thinking skills. Bothe the political system and the judicial system in the US are bent to buggery. They feed off each other to present a view of America which is both false and dangerous. There were innumerable instances of malpractice during the election which if the rules had been properly applied would have meant discarding hundreds of thousands of votes, if not millions. Just because none of this could proved, or because - astonishingly - such malpractices, while breaking electoral rules, are not criminal offences, the whole charade continues and will doubtless continue this year too.
    1
  14774.  @tthomas184  I believe the evidence of my eyes and the evidence supplied by logical thinking, not the conclusions of a corrupt judicial system. The cases brought forward to the various state senate subcommittees immediately subsequent to the election provided a series of very disturbing facts - the fact that Republican observers were prevented from observing counts is just one of them. Another is the widespread use of bulk vote buying from poor black communities. The postal voting system is very open to abuse, as are Dominion voting machines. Boxes and boxes of votes disappeared from sight - the list goes on and on. At the very least hundreds of thousands of votes failed to meet the criteria demanded and should have been rejected.
    1
  14775.  @tthomas184  I trust the evidence of my eyes and my thought processes, not the conclusions of a corrupt and inefficient judicial system. Did you watch any of the State sub-committee sessions immediately after the election? I summarised some in a previous post, but of course YouTube deleted it. You've been stitched up like a kipper, and you don't even know it.
    1
  14776.  @tthomas184  I've had five goes at answering you, but YouTube won't let me. Pretty significant, don't you think?
    1
  14777.  @kevinvelasco6167  But I have not ignored the facts. Apparently I know more facts than you do and my assessment of the situation, bearing in mind all the facts at my disposal, leads me to the conclusion that the election was fixed in a variety of ways. This is my opinion. It may be wrong, as indeed may yours, but neither of us is lying. I am just less brainwashed than you are.
    1
  14778.  @michaelmorningstar8645  Not if my opinion is based on observed facts. Which it is. I am saying that there was a great deal of malpractice during the election, and this could have been sufficient to alter the result. This is not a lie. It is a rational statement leading me to a rational opinion.
    1
  14779.  @tthomas184  Should we just accept it ? Does it not show an unacceptable level of censorship?
    1
  14780.  @tthomas184  I have facts at my disposal. YouTube just doesn't seem to want to allow me to share them with you. All I can suggest is that you access the admittedly lengthy but nonetheless fascinating videos of the State Senate sub-committee hearings which took place immediately subsequent to the election. I was in a position at the time to watch many of them as they were produced - it was a revelation. The very valid accusations made now seem to have been swallowed up by .. well, presumably the same sinister forces which swallow up my attempts to paraphrase them for your benefit.
    1
  14781.  @tthomas184  I return to my original point. (Or perhaps it didn't get past the censor?) So, choosing my words with care I simply say that the judicial system is simply not geared to deal with electoral misbehaviour. The facts are as they are, and are as damaging and as worrying as they are. But they do not apparently amount to provable criminal acts. There is no police involvement. There are no precedents. Attempts to utilise existing laws to punish what is clearly electoral malpractice are doomed to failure. But what was done was wrong just the same.
    1
  14782.  @tthomas184  I'm quite happy with my critical thinking skills, thank you very much. After all in this instance it is I who is being critical, whereas you are accepting what you are told, apparently uncritically. I accept that YouTube is a private company and can do what it likes, but it does seem to me that its new algorithm is utterly bonkers. Either the programmers aren't quite with it or, as in the case of Stalinist Russia, the idea is simply to crack down arbitrarily in order to keep us all in a state of mild terror.
    1
  14783.  @tthomas184  You're not doing too great a job yourself, if I may say so. If by critical thinking you are in some way referring to a dialectic process, you are failing miserably. You are all thesis without antithesis. Mere repetition never got no-one nowhere. I take on board what you say, chew it over with what else I know, and come to the conclusion that what you say is incorrect for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is the fact that you are clearly doing little more than reiterating some received wisdom foisted upon you by political hooligans. I, on the other hand, am bringing a priori knowledge and a process of logical assessment to bear on the situation. This is why I reject the official narrative, whereas you swallow it hook, line and sinker.
    1
  14784.  @tthomas184  Darling, your slip is showing.
    1
  14785.  @tthomas184  They tried against the odds. Use yours.
    1
  14786.  @tthomas184  I admit nothing of the kind! Stopping putting words into my mouth! I do say, however, that electoral malpractice seems to be so endemic in the US that it is practically built into the Constitution. It can be proved by a simple process of observation and deduction - the fact that it cannot apparently be proved in a court of law nor even detailed on YouTube is in indication of things being wrong with the judicial process and with Big Tech, not that electoral malpractice does not exist- which it clearly does.
    1
  14787.  @tthomas184  Can you prove the election was fairly conducted?
    1
  14788.  @tthomas184  You make my point exactly. From my point of view there is a presumption that the system is often corrupt and when I point to apparent anomalies it is up to those who defend the system to explain them. But they do not. You do not. You simply repeat and repeat that the system has arrived at such and such a conclusion, and therefore that conclusion must be correct. Yes, this is how the law and courts work, and this is why the world is full of injustice.
    1
  14789.  @tthomas184  It isn't a question of proof, it's a question of having strong doubts based upon evidence. As I have explained, the opportunity to ratify or dismiss these doubts does not exist under the present system. This is, in itself, very revealing. I have come to the conclusion that democracy in the US is something of a sham, and perhaps always has been. They do say, after all, that JFK would never have made President if Mayor Joe Daley had not opened up the graveyards of Chicago.
    1
  14790.  @tthomas184  1.
    1
  14791.  @tthomas184  Yup. It's done and dusted - but you still don't get the issue about proof, do you? It doesn't matter how much proof you've got if the courts won't allow it to be heard. The issue now is whether or not the same thing is going to happen this year - and on such a scale. Make no mistake, elections in the US aren't about whether the government is Democrat or Republican. They are about ensuring that the politicians who gain office do as they're told by the people who really rule the country.
    1
  14792.  @tthomas184  Not much point having proof if the courts won't admit it as evidence.
    1
  14793.  @tthomas184  Not all of it. Have you never heard of inadmissable evidence?
    1
  14794.  @tthomas184  Not so. It has the potential to be proof, but the opportunity is denied by the system.
    1
  14795.  @tthomas184  I ignored nothing. I chose 1 - but bizarrely it seems that was too much for the algorithm! I think most people realise the 2020 election is a lost cause and the big worry now is whether there will be similar chicanery this year.
    1
  14796.  @tthomas184  You still don't get the point, do you? The judicial system is geared to protect the political system. There was no way, really, that the abuses of 2020 could be rectified through a judicial procedure - but it was thought to be worth a try.
    1
  14797.  @tthomas184  That's just silly. I'm sure Trump believes with all heart that the election was stolen from him. As you know, I'm pretty sure of it myself and I'm not lying about that. Why should I? It's a perfectly reasonable belief considering America's past history and its present dangerous state.
    1
  14798.  @xavierfelix2567 A sweet, childish fantasy..
    1
  14799. It's nice to hear a voice of sanity in this comments section for once. Some of the things people post here leaves me dumbstruck with amazement. Are these people actually allowed to vote? It sends shudders down my spine to think of it.
    1
  14800.  @paulybeefs8588  I stand corrected. What I mean that directing you towards it is often made very difficult. Now though you have enough information to Google these hearings -which are often very tedious and repetitive but should certainly cause any intelligent person some concern.
    1
  14801.  @phoneapps7351  I have tried several times, but my replies have been deleted. Try Here Is
    1
  14802.  @phoneapps7351  ...The Evidence
    1
  14803. I'm afraid Ukraine's front lines are crumbling fast. And if NATO goes to war with Russia it will be due entirely to Western territorial and commercial ambitions.
    1
  14804. And having a President whose son is up to his eyes in dirty dealings with Chinese communists and Ukrainian oligarchs ISN'T a threat to democracy???!!!
    1
  14805. Somewhat less that Ukraine's, as it happens.
    1
  14806.  @GreatKingsFightClub  At least he knows who's there when he looks in the mirror. Joe Biden keeps wondering how this old guy got in his bathroom.
    1
  14807.  @carollund8251  Someone obviously in the early stages of senile dementia versus someone with a limited vocabulary and poor grammar? Doesn't seem a difficult choice.
    1
  14808.  @carollund8251  It wasn't a statement. It was a cruel and heartless joke of which I am utterly unashamed. Perhaps I should have said someone who thinks black people are all the same as each other and often doesn't know which town he's in.
    1
  14809.  @uintaj  I don't know how to pronounce it. Why should I? I've only ever seen it written down. Trump should get a phonetic app of some sort. Problem solved How do pronounce uintaj by the way?
    1
  14810.  @GreatKingsFightClub  A. Same as before: deregulation, tax adjustment and trade deals leading to a booming economy.
    1
  14811.  @carollund8251  I'm a bit older than Trump and a bit younger than Biden and I know what it's like to start a sentence and realise the word you had in mind at the beginning is no longer there at the end. Joe does seem a bit further down the prickly path than me though, I have to say. Trump's mangling of words comes from his unfamiliarity with them. Joe hits a barrier and then gets angry about it. I don't suppose it matters much though. He won't be running the country even if he does get in.
    1
  14812.  @carollund8251  Donny is no intellectual giant, it's true but he is a much maligned man. He expresses himself poorly but half the myths about him are just created by the MSM. The injecting bleach thing is a good example. If you watch the whole press conference you will realise that he was merely confused because the guy who spoke before, from Homeland Security I think, used the word "inject" several times in the sense that I might say I am trying to inject a little rationality into this debate. This confused poor Trump, who like millions of others associates the word with sticking a needle in your arm. Same goes for "disinfect". The guy was using military terminology in the sense that soldiers say they "disinfect" a building occupied by the enemy. There are many other examples of Trump being made to look more foolish than he is by clever editing. It's a shame that the political debate should have been reduced to deciding which of the two candidates is the dottiest, but there it is. At least Trump is his own man, not a front man. This is unusual in US Presidents which is why this nonsense about him being beholden to Putin in some way is put about. As for Joe - well who knows who's pulling his strings?
    1
  14813.  @carollund8251  Well obviously you are not a fan, but did you not see the Homeland Security guy injecting "injecting" and "disinfectant " into the briefing and Trump's look of puzzlement and consequent blundering attempts at elucidation? I agree he made an utter mess of the Axios interview. All politicians lie and Trump is usually quite good at it, but he was wrongfooted several times there.
    1
  14814.  @verystripeyzebra  Sleep well!
    1
  14815.  @Withnail1969  But Mariupol is.
    1
  14816. @user-ze7vb5cx3y What point have I missed? Mariupol is of far greater importance to Russia than Kharkiv.
    1
  14817.  @Withnail1969  You are wrong. Recent surveys have valued the untapped mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine at an estimated $13trillion, including an estimated half a million tonnes of lithium discovered in the neighbourhood of Mariupol shortly before the invasion. The area which is being fought over is thought to contain an estimated 6% of the entire mineral wealth of the world. This includes vast quantities of gas available from the shale left behind by centuries of coal-mining activity. This is easily verifiable with an Internet search.
    1
  14818. @user-ze7vb5cx3y What mysterious point have I missed? Putin is eminently sane and I flatter myself that I am pretty rational too.
    1
  14819.  @Withnail1969  Check for yourself. What IS there is mainly what this war is all about. $13trillion is a lot of money.
    1
  14820. I image he is immensely sorrowful seeing the uter degeneracy into which this once great country has now fallen.
    1
  14821.  @Robert-cu9bm  If they vote for it an fight for it, certainly.
    1
  14822.  @elegantpaws4650  So two sets of angry young fools fighting and possibly killing each other is good, is it?
    1
  14823. Apparently this "child" was a notorious gang member with the nickname "Li'l Homicide." This would explain a great deal as apparently it is a common practice in Chicago to get under-aged kids to kill opponents, since they will receive very light sentences if caught.
    1
  14824. This is a welcome surprise, although slimy left-wing lawyers will doubtless find way to impede the decision.
    1
  14825. This money is basically bribes and the "relief" aspect merely a cover.
    1
  14826.  @hanimazen5717  Beats me. But there it is..Previous versions are still available. This one has been taken down and then re-uploaded.
    1
  14827.  @ВадимСтецюра-й7о  Noble sentiments. But the death of thousands is surely a high price to pay to have your country run by America instead of in partnership with Russia.
    1
  14828.  @ВадимСтецюра-й7о  I really don't think Russia wants to rule Ukraine. It would be letting itself for years of civil strife. It will be content with Donbass and Crimea where at least a good portion of the population are of Russian ancestry and prefer to look to Moscow than Kiev for support and governance. I think you are naive if you don't realise that this war is of America's doing. Your country, like Russia, has been in the hands of oligarchs ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some have formed alliances with Russia, and some with America. Ukraine is a honeypot for both of these evil empires and America has, I think, gone too far in both pushing for membership of NATO and in supporting the war against the Donbass separatists. Many American crooks and politicians (often the same thing) have huge financial interests in your country and alliances with your own crooks and politicians. Zelensky himself is (or was) the creature of Kolomoisky who cleverly engineered his election and who launders his ill-gotten gains in the US and who has several very prominent American politicians in his pocket. Ukraine's entirely understandable desire to escape its often unhappy past and become a liberal democracy, with less corruption, has been harnessed by dark forces whose motives are entirely financial. This is the way of the world, but none of this is sufficient to plunge a country into a bloody and destructive war. Compromise is possible. It needn't necessarily mean Ukraine becoming another Belarus either. Putin is eminently pragmatic and I am sure he would be content with Donbass as a buffer state while allowing Ukraine to go its own way as long as it stays out of NATO.
    1
  14829.  @sarah-janelambert8962  A myth. That was what some officers told their raw troops to encourage them.
    1
  14830.  @rmdomainer9042  I'm a man on a mission. I just hate the dangerous propaganda spewed out by the Western media.
    1
  14831.  @rmdomainer9042  You should welcome an antidote to dangerous propaganda.
    1
  14832. What utter silliness. You should get a job on Times Radio.
    1
  14833. Russia is not the Soviet Union. It is not our enemy.
    1
  14834.  @SlosII  Yes.
    1
  14835. Rapid U turn on net zero with luck.
    1
  14836. This bloke has the political acumen of a drugged-up hamster.
    1
  14837. Bahkmut "a rather insignificant town"??!! It's a key fortification in the system of defences built by the Ukrainians to keep the Donbass rebels penned in. This man is either a fool or an absurd propagandist.
    1
  14838.  @bilboriches7216  No. It's Russia, temporarily occupied between 1991 and 2014. The population is 70% ethnic Russian and there are more Tatars and Greeks than Ukrainians.
    1
  14839.  @dmitry_dev  As I say, made part of Ukraine only in 1954 for purely administrative reasons. Like the rest of Ukraine it was still controlled by Moscow. Like Donbass and other areas east of the Dnieper this was steppe, inhabited largely by tribes of wandering Tatars. Since then the Turks and the Greeks have claimed it and the Russians took it back at the end of the 18th century. The population is largely ethnic Russian, descendants of many imported there by the Soviet Union to replace the Tatars who were considered unsuitable as workers. It was developed by Russia, with Russian blood, Russian sweat and Russian roubles - as indeed is so much of Ukraine. (No agreements last forever. They must be abandoned when circumstances change, as they have now.)
    1
  14840.  @ekope6396  What independence? Ukraine's oligarchs were being bribed by the Americans to sell off its mineral wealth. Since this mineral wealth has largely been developed and invested in by Russia and Russians Putin's desire to prevent this is entirely understandable. And Crimea was merely lent to Ukraine as recently as 1954 as a matter of administrative convenience.
    1
  14841.  @dmitry_dev  Any country can.
    1
  14842.  @dmitry_dev  This is often a matter of dispute and such disputes can lead to war, as in this instance. I am British. We are quite expert in the mechanisms of decaying empires.
    1
  14843.  @dmitry_dev  It isn't a question of being fair or unfair, it's a question of likelihood. None of these scenarios is possible, but it is entirely possible that Russia will retake those parts of Ukraine to which it feels entitled.
    1
  14844.  @bilboriches7216  History is history. And history makes Crimea Russian.
    1
  14845.  @dmitry_dev  International agreements and recognised borders have brief shelf lives. If they didn't there would be no wars and the Sioux and the Apache would still rule America. In this instance over 200 years of history and the investment of billions of roubles far outweigh a piece of paper signed by a drunkard in the aftermath of the collapse of an empire.
    1
  14846. That is completely and utterly untrue. Although vaccinations vastly improve the chances of survival in younger age groups, the elderly and infirm continue to form the largest section of those who die, vaccinated or not.
    1
  14847.  @qjtvaddict  More or less irrelevant.
    1
  14848.  @EdJames-tb9oz  Is the international price of oil really decided outside the USA though? As both a large scale exporter and a large-scale importer the USA's position must surely affect prices? And prices can be undercut anyway. Look at Russia. It largely ignores the official price and exports to whoever can make the job reasonably profitable. A survival tactic, sure. But it seems to work. There's plenty of Russian oil in US gas tanks, you know.
    1
  14849.  @rogerstarkey5390  Certainly future interchanges between the US and BRICs countries are going to be very interesting and might even result in lowered prices as they battle things out. I would hope that this would become rather a formalised struggle, however. BRICS should win in the long run, but it might take decades.
    1
  14850. Peter Edwards Please Let Me be in Charge Now
    1
  14851. Maybe they don't want to fund luxury hotels for illegal immigrants and million-pound missiles to prolong the war in Ukraine.
    1
  14852. This election, like most US elections, will be decided on which side cheats the best.
    1
  14853.  @toddwentz  I think he stopped at adultery.
    1
  14854. Lockdowns create the variants. Fact.
    1
  14855.  @matbritton6816  Herd immunity is the only solution, whether aided by vaccines or not. The NHS won't crumble under the strain because the pandemic is over. This is just the endemic stage and although severe covid infections are harder to deal with than severe influenzas new treatments are being found all the time.
    1
  14856.  @matbritton6816  Many studies have shown that a healthy body and a healthy mind have far more effect on reducing the impact of Covid 19 than the nonsense of lockdowns. I'm not surprised to learn that Siva's medicine is of help in this regard.
    1
  14857.  @matbritton6816  It's a question of matching one thing against another. Lockdowns have terrible widespread effects. The WHO estimates 1.6 billion people in the poorest countries of the world will be pushed over the line into untenable poverty as a result of the economic effects of lockdowns in developed countries. That means malnutrition. That means babies starving to death. How many dead babies are worth an extra month or two of life for a senile and incontinent Western 90-year old? The equation is even more grotesque when you realise that lockdowns are probably not having that effect anyway. They often mean more social contact between carriers and the vulnerable elderly, rather than less.
    1
  14858. Fossil fuel elites, as you call them, are among those making the most money from the climate crisis scam.
    1
  14859.  @PurpleWhirple  But masks, other than possibly high-standard fitted masks, don't prevent spread, do they? Aerosols not only pour out through the weave but billow out of the the sides and top in vast clouds, with the possibility of containing literally tens upon tens of millions of viruses. Masks are just a psychological prop, designed to make us all feel we are actually DOING something. On top of this, over -reliance on their magical powers has caused people to neglect other more effective safety measures - which is why ventilation is now being promoted as a more efficient way of slowing spread. Many people have died through working with other people in closed rooms, all thinking they were safe because they wore masks.
    1
  14860.  @Steve_Coates  Yes , but all the specialists are far from in accord. And some surgeons don't wear masks in theatres and of those that do, many only do so because they feel it is expected of them. Also, when it comes to large numbers, such as the large numbers of coronaviruses expelled in a single breath, mathematicians would suggest that once you get over a few million. proportional risk does not increase or decrease in terms of percentages. Overall the risk ratios involved don't to any significant degree pan out in favour of masking, and this is clearly borne out by real world experience where mask mandates cannot be show to influence infection rates in any way.
    1
  14861.  @atomiccritter6492  Of course I don't! All I ever get is people trotting out the same cliches and soundbites. On channels such as this one anyway.
    1
  14862.  @Steve_Coates  But I am none of these things! All I can do is assess the opinions of those who are. Unlike you apparently, I do try to spread my enquiries further than the pontifications of those hired to give a semblance of credibility to the official, politically motivated doctrine.
    1
  14863.  @Steve_Coates  I insist upon them. I would not dream of making an assertion unless backed by qualified expert opinion. The difficulty is, as I have pointed out, that the experts disagree on most issues.
    1
  14864.  @Steve_Coates  But according to your logic the discrepancies between states which mask and those which do not should be immense. But they are not. Follow your own advice and check the mortality and hospitalisation rates and you will find it impossible to discover a direct correlation. The same with European countries where Sweden, with no mask mandates, currently has close to zero deaths and cases. It just doesn't wash. Among all the factors - demographics, climate, population density etc - which affect a country, state or region's "performance" it is impossible to detect masking as a significant factor any more than political affiliation. At the beginning of the pandemic Republican states had lower death rates as a rule, now Democratic ones do. Why? Probably because voting patterns and viral distribution patterns have nothing whatsoever in common. I don't know where you get the 99.9% from. Until the first few weeks of the pandemic every medical advisory body in in the world, just about, offered guidance advising against the use of masks by the general public. Then it suddenly changed, and it had nothing to do with some sudden scientific insight. It was a purely political decision which scientists who know which side their bread is buttered on found it convenient to support. Many old-school professors, retired or tenured beyond removal, and people who run private clinics, continue to sign wearily at the nonsense.
    1
  14865.  @davecole7795  It scarcely matters now. With vaccines reducing symptoms the more people who are infected and recover the better.
    1
  14866.  @judet5426  The vast majority do, but according to a survey published by the Royal Society of Medicine in 2015 4% of surgeons do not wear masks and 20% said they only did so to respect tradition and 40% complained of problems with fogging up their glasses etc. All pretty irrelevant now anyway. If you're double vaxxed getting a dose of covid will give you a huge level of immunity at the cost of a runny nose. If you're fit and healthy, throw the damn thing away.t
    1
  14867.  @clivedunning4317  The biggest bully in our playground is the USA which which, very unfortunately, this country happens to be allied. The war in Ukraine is a direct result of American avarice. I can live with my conscience very easily. I expect too you are entirely happy with being ignorant and misinformed.
    1
  14868.  @concernedrabbit9075  Russia is not committing genocide in Ukraine. What genocide there is comes from Ukraine trying to get rid of the eight million Russians who live there.
    1
  14869.  @clivedunning4317  What question?
    1
  14870.  @keithmorgan3295  So what is the answer? It's certainly not obvious to me.
    1
  14871. Sympathising, more like. America is full of people who have been stitched up by the system.
    1
  14872. I fart in your general direction, you silly BBC persons
    1
  14873. America has sold Ukraine billions of dollars of sophisticated military equipment which doesn't work. This poor country has been suckered, and now ordinary citizens are having to defend the streets with Molotov cocktails and cheap automatic rifles. The US military/industrial complex sure knows how to do business.
    1
  14874. The age band is as it is because the numbers of deaths from covid in those under 19s in N Ireland, Wales and Scotland are so small that it would be possible for the victims to be traced. They are all lower than ten. Figures are available for England alone where 32 people aged between 10 and 19 are recorded as dying from covid between June 2020 and June 2021.
    1
  14875. Jack Richardson Too busy.
    1
  14876. Sven Tempest Engage away. Before you start I warn you that I believe that models of the atmosphere used in climate research are outdated and that NASA and other agencies regularly rig data to fit the AGW narrative.
    1
  14877. Sven Tempest Chicken
    1
  14878. Sven Tempest If this the level of debate one can expect from the Church of Warmism then I am comfortably assured that your idiotic claims will soon be exposed for the errors they are. Man-made global warming is based on bad science backed by financial greed and the desire for political ascendancy. Extremely clever people are behind the scam, using extremely foolish people like you to keep the gravy train rolling.
    1
  14879. To have any hope of gaining power Farage has to keep his extremists under control - just like Labour.
    1
  14880. America has war-addicted economy. Trump, for all his faults, seems genuinely to be a man of peace, and might possibly break the mould if re-elected.
    1
  14881.  @nhmooytis7058  I may have got that wrong. There was a warrant for his arrest I think. The best summary comes from this guy I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Sp8EIHu1A&feature=youtu.be
    1
  14882. It will be difficult for Ukraine to have a Russian "puppet government" when the majority of Russian voters will be in Russian-controlled Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  14883. A myth.
    1
  14884.  @МихаилЗарецкий-ь9ч  Untrue. All were under control of Russia and could only be fired from Moscow.
    1
  14885.  @howardj602  So what? That was then and this is now.
    1
  14886. @ Putin was against signing that particular document - which was of no great significance anyway.
    1
  14887. The chief fault with your argument is that in all the examples you mention the "scapegoats" were actually resident in the country at the time. You blame the Tories for all the country's ills I expect. What's the difference?
    1
  14888.  @timelwell7002  Credit must go where credit is due and blame apportioned with caution. Conflating issues in order to arrive at a simple, broad stroke, black and white solution gets us nowhere. There are too many immigrants in the UK, plain and simple. Resources planned according to projections made in the 1970'sand 80's are incapable of dealing with the influx. Restrictions are necessary and attempts to illegally evade such restrictions must be curtailed. I concede your point about the government; it's just that too many people seem to regard the Tories with the same rabid hatred with which the Germans regarded the Jews, or the Turks for the Kurds. This hatred is not returned. Tories regard their political opponents with a kind of bemused contempt as a general rule. Mind you, if socialism goes down the current wokeist path and replaces workers' rights with the dangerous nonsense of intersectionality, identity politics and so on things might change quite rapidly.
    1
  14889. Caution over vaccinating pre-pubescent children is wise and understandable. Already the lipid shells which contain the vaccine element are showing unexpected signs of building up in ovaries and bone marrow. This may be nothing to worry about, but since children in this age group neither die nor suffer severe symptoms, and since immunity is being created in adults anyway, there is a good case to be made for holding back until more is known. (What any of this has to do with Brexit my poor, addled brain cannot possibly compute.) PS. I have noticed that Katie Hopkins is now copying Phil's off-one-shoulder black tee-shirt look. Just sayin'
    1
  14890. He's not far wrong by all accounts, is he though? Still, you never know.Things may pick up soon.
    1
  14891.  @thomasherrin6798  It seems to be doing what it intended to do -retaining Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine while crippling the Ukrainian army sufficiently to prevent them retaking these essentially Russian territories.
    1
  14892. Only if you haven't got a brain in your head.
    1
  14893. I thought it was Putin who was supposed to be Hitler? Have we got TWO of them?? Cripes!
    1
  14894. It both inhibits a Ukrainian attack and gives them a good excuse not to risk one.
    1
  14895. Ukraine will have little choice if Western aid dries up.
    1
  14896.  @NZobservatory  Putin thought it through very carefully. The invasion was very much a last resort and a carefully calculated risk which could well pay off.
    1
  14897. On the contrary, this failed proxy war will likely be the final nail in America's coffin.
    1
  14898.  @walterweddle7644  How about if they've already had it and are immune? If I was a secret service chief selecting staff for the job that's who I'd choose. Anyway, the more healthy young people who get it the better. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  14899. If you want to do a video about covid why don't you do one about mounting evidence for the total uselessness of lockdowns and the increasing evidence for Ivermectin in reducing covid mortality? The pandemic has been treated as a business opportunity, not a health issue. Wise up.
    1
  14900.  @jiversteve  I don't have to. There are plenty of proper experts out there already. You could start with John Campbell.
    1
  14901. Science is all Greek to Boris. That's why he lets his instincts be swayed by the lab rats.
    1
  14902.  @paddington1670  The list of invasions and interferences in the affairs of other nations carried out by NATO countries is as long as your arm.
    1
  14903. About right. Russia only wants Donbass and Crimea. The other Ukrainian territories are just killing grounds.
    1
  14904. The idea that Russia wants to build an empire is utterly, utterly ridiculous. All the Russian Federation has ever wanted to do is to take its place in the world alongside other independent nations. The collapse of the Soviet Union was due in great part to over-extension. Empires just don't work. They are more trouble than they are worth. Russia fully realises this, and one of the many, many myths this channel is taken in by is the one which justifies US and NATO warmongering, which is carried out for capitalist and profit-making purposes, and which needs Russia to be an eternal bogeyman in order to do so. I am sure that Musk and Cummins are both eminently pragmatic men and that their objective is solely to rid the world of this misconception in the hope that a profitable and peaceful future is open to us all.
    1
  14905. If it DOES come down to a nuclear staring contest I'm afraid it is America which will blink first.
    1
  14906. Black people in America are clearly tired of being black - that is to say defined purely by their colour.
    1
  14907. No. They say Israel should not exist. Apartheid (so-called) is the result of Islamic intransigence. The thousands of Arabs who are Jewish citizens were granted full equality in the early days, and Parliamentary debates were conducted in both Hebrew and Arabic. But decades of abuse by Muslim fanatics have hardened the hearts of Israel's leaders.
    1
  14908. Biden IS America - in terminal decline while continuing to fiercely deny it.
    1
  14909. If the Russians wanted to kill civilians they would die in their thousands - not just in numbers like this.
    1
  14910. This is called escalation. When will people realise that this war is purely about America stealing Ukraine's mineral resources from Russia? Zelensky must go. This childish support for his corrupt puppet regime must end and we must leave the Slavs to sort their own problems out.
    1
  14911. A very viable scenario. At least someone is thinking for himself and researching the facts instead of swallowing ridiculous propaganda.
    1
  14912.  @KK-qi6mt  All these wonders have been replaced by Russian versions, virtually indistinguishable from the originals. Many Russians actually prefer them.
    1
  14913.  @KK-qi6mt  Nobody wants to put the USSR back together. And while some Russians fancy Western ways, most are happy enough with the dramatic increase in living standards under Putin. As for being integrated with world trade, Russia and the other BRICS countries, along with 20 or so wannabees, are currently forging an economic alliance designed to demolish American dominance and to replace the dollar with their own joint currency.
    1
  14914.  @KK-qi6mt  I think there's every chance he can win - despite his dysfunctional army. And I am sure he has no idea of putting the USSR back together again. He has said on many occasions that while the collapse of the USSR is a matter of great regret, it would be impossible to recreate it. Which it is. This war is about survival for Russia, not expansion. It's a gamble, as all wars are, but one which Putin had little choice but to take. And the end of the day it could lead to a huge re-alignment in the way the world is run. If it becomes clear that, despite the West pumping billions and billions into continually re-arming Ukraine, Russia just keeps on coming then the West's hegemony is severely threatened. It already rests on pretty shaky ground.
    1
  14915.  @riversidegardenradio9070  In war, so they say, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. All the same , that's the way it's always looked to me.
    1
  14916.  @KK-qi6mt  The outcomes you predict are possible, although not probable. The reasons for this war are principally commercial, as is the case with most wars. They centre upon the vast mineral wealth of Donbass where there is coal, iron, gas, oil, lithium and other rare and costly metals. America wants these and Russia- which discovered and exploited them, is reluctant to give them up. The results of the war depend almost entirely upon how much money America and its allies are prepared to spend on continually re-arming Ukraine. I think they are already throwing good money after bad, and know it. Russia has no wish to take the whole of Ukraine. Putin knows this will mean a permanent and costly civil war. He just wants Donbass and Crimea. It is impossible, really, to say how much objection there is to the war among the mass of the Russian people. I tend to think not much. Younger people in the larger cities, students and so on, resent it and the high casualty rate does not go down well but when you start to analyse these numbers they are only a relatively small percentage of the country as a whole. The war so far has largely been about reducing Ukraine's army. After the Maidan unrest of 2014 the West spent billions on creating a new, large Ukrainian army. To Russia it was clear that this army was intended to be used to retake Crimea and Donbass. It therefore launched a "special operation" aimed at destroying this army, whatever the cost. This has now been largely achieved and round two has begun. So far Russia has thrown mainly inexperienced troops and ancient equipment into the fray. What reserves it has one cannot say, but I suspect they are considerable. I predict a very heavy bombardment soon, followed by a mass invasion of at least 500,000 men. If Ukraine does not surrender Russia will seek to take and hold much of Eastern and Southern Ukraine and to defend it against all comers.
    1
  14917.  @KK-qi6mt  The Russians are already making considerable advances on the eastern and southern fronts. And they haven't recruited half a million new men just for show. I agree totally that the West(ie America) have set Slav on Slav and that a weakened Russia is one of the desired results. I don't think it's panning out quite as intended though. We tend to judge Russia by our own standards, and when it doesn't do what we think it ought to do, we say it's failed. This applies to both the situation on the ground and the economic war. A huge shift in the distribution of power in the world is happening. This war will only hasten it and America will be the loser, not Russia.
    1
  14918.  @KK-qi6mt  Exactly so. Thankyou for a civil conversation. Best wishes,
    1
  14919. And taking others down with it.
    1
  14920. @ Russia's main objective has been to retain control of the mineral-rich Donbass region, which has been heavily and bravely defended by the Ukrainians. Despite these brave efforts Russia has now within sight of this goal. Russia's losses have been substantial, but nothing like as severe as you claim.
    1
  14921. @ I'm English.
    1
  14922.  @briangriffiths937  That's a big conclusion to draw. Pokrovsk is the heavily fortified hub of Ukraine's extensive defence systems in Donbass. Drone swarm attacks on oil facilities are disruptive, certainly, but once Pokrovsk falls it's more or less game over.
    1
  14923. The gesture was made out to be a white power gesture by 4Chan - just to troll ignorant lefties - and you keep falling for it!
    1
  14924.  @Joe-d4s4x  You'll have to. YouTube wouldn't let me make one, even by way of illustration.
    1
  14925. In fact the same thing happened at the end of the first wave last summer. Death rates dropped below the five year average for a few weeks. I had the same thought then and expected Covid 19 to emerge as the dominant respiratory disease in the winter, as predicted by several epidemiologists. It did so, but the winter death rate was the highest for around 17 years. This winter's deaths need investigating in considerable detail. There are several seeming anomalies which I can find no immediate explanation for. It may well be that the death rate has been pushed up from below, as it were, by those people who died because their existing conditions, such as cancer and heart disease, were not properly treated. They may well also have tested positive for covid and covid recorded as an underlying cause of their deaths but it was really the lack of treatment for their existing conditions which actually killed them.
    1
  14926. Full vaccination in Indonesia rose from 3.9% of the population at the start of the Delta spike in June and rose to 5.9% in mid to late July when the spike peaked and then dropped rapidly. Whatever caused the dramatic drop I doubt it had anything much to do with vaccinations.
    1
  14927.  @harukrentz435  Ivermectin at all, legal or smuggled in from India?
    1
  14928. Listening to this pompous tart is enough to turn anyone into a misogynist.
    1
  14929. But Hamas has weapons. And uses them.
    1
  14930. Yeah, what happened to that?
    1
  14931. There is no real "far-right extremism". Sunak just has to say this to appease the Islamists, who are the major source of violence and intimidation in this country.
    1
  14932. You take about Trump's petty-mindedness -and then go on about him missing Melania's cheek with his kiss, and forgetting to put his hand on the bible. Hypocrisy or what?
    1
  14933.  @timrpbrown  You have no idea how his wife feels about him. In any case my point was that Phil one minute accuses Trump of being petty and then is very petty himself.
    1
  14934.  @timrpbrown  Of course they're petty - certainly compared with renaming a mountain.
    1
  14935.  @chrysalis4126  Aren't you the cocky one!
    1
  14936.  @timrpbrown  So renaming a mountain is petty and drawing attention to a failed kiss isn't?
    1
  14937.  @timrpbrown  Perhaps Trump was too! I think Melanie knows what side here bread is buttered on. You have to feel sorry for politician's wives. Look at what poor Victoria Starmer has to put up with.
    1
  14938.  @ANH-1977  In this example under DEI a black person who is disabled in some way would get the job even if his/her qualifications and abilities were inferior to those of the other two applicants. That's the trouble.
    1
  14939. That has been the driving force behind policies from day one.
    1
  14940.  @treehugger8846  Harder to achieve, but once spread is slowed down mutations become more infrequent. At this stage it appears very much as though immunity to one strain offers considerable immunity to new strains and even if they do win through, symptoms are mild.
    1
  14941.  @EricBlair-jg2ux  And in fact limited vax immunity will considerably slow down the approach to herd immunity, will it not?
    1
  14942.  @mirianakovachevic748  Exactly. Those likely to die from covid are readily identifiable and every effort ought to be made to protect THEM instead of constantly returning to this half-arsed blanket protection which is no protection at all.
    1
  14943.  @mikeb5664  No. The Russian military is pretty crap! Good thing there's a lot of it!
    1
  14944.  @JasonBoyce  Wasn't me!
    1
  14945.  @JasonBoyce  But I'm British. Who this flaming bloke is I have no idea. Do you REALLY think the Russians bother to try to seduce the minds of commentators on YouTube comments threads?
    1
  14946.  @paulscountry456  Chernobyl exposed the idiocies of Soviet administration, not the failings of the Slavs. It was a major factor in the collapse of the USSR.
    1
  14947.  @bonnie7898  Militarily, you may have a point. But in most respects the RF is very different to the SU.
    1
  14948.  @justinwallace390  The military position has nothing to do with Russia's internationally acknowledged position at the forefront of nuclear technology and supply,
    1
  14949.  @justinwallace390  You really must stop believing your own publicity. The Russian economy is riding along with ease and the war has, in fact, accelerated a process of international re-alignment which will in all probability lead to the collapse of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Russia has received scarcely a scratch, so it is Ukraine which will need rebuilding. America and Europe too will have to do some serious re-evaluation when they realised that Western hegemony has finally come to an end.
    1
  14950.  @justinwallace390  Chicken.
    1
  14951.  @bonnie7898  On the contrary, Putin has made it what it is. He is now defending it - and curiously enough his way of compensating for the inadequacies of the hidebound military has been to find an entrepreneurial oligarch to create a private army to do the job better!
    1
  14952.  @justinwallace390  We thank you for your service.
    1
  14953.  @justinwallace390  Incidentally, as a military man how do you react to the idea that far from losing this war, Russia has taken it to enemy territory, in order to destroy their army on its own ground?
    1
  14954. It seems the UK Lamestream media has learned nothing from their US counterparts' treatment of Trump. Every pathetic smear attempt on Boris is another point in his favour. As for bringing on the war criminal and professional liar Campbell to spit and splutter and bully us - well with friends like that, who needs enemies?
    1
  14955. They kinda work, capisce?
    1
  14956. We don't need a name - but we need information about his background, just to prevent wild speculation.
    1
  14957. Biden will win. The FBI and the CIA will see to that.
    1
  14958. I presume you are referring to the FBI and the Democrat party?
    1
  14959.  @MrFoffof  Depends how bent the judge is, don't it?
    1
  14960.  @csm2455  That's what friends are for.
    1
  14961. When did we declare war on Russia? Please remind me.
    1
  14962.  @JakeLuesby  Is Russia an enemy of the King? Has he said so?
    1
  14963.  @chrissouthgate4554  Obviously. Has Charles III actually declared Russia to be an enemy?
    1
  14964.  @pittarak1  A great deal more than you have, I daresay.
    1
  14965.  @wolfen210959  That is surely a gross misinterpretation. In any case these acts do not constitute, surely, a state of war. It is not illegal to express support for Russia in the present conflict with Ukraine, nor to accept money from Russia for using your position as a journalist or politician to do so - as would be the case if a state of war actually did exist.
    1
  14966.  @pittarak1  I understand fully that ordinary people in this country, as well as in Europe and America, have been conned into supporting Ukraine by a variety of propaganda methods. Russia is not the enemy here. The enemy is greed - the greed of various Western agencies which wish to syphon off the vast mineral wealth of Donbass and to colonise Ukraine for the purpose of profit.
    1
  14967.  @pittarak1  Russia is not our enemy.
    1
  14968.  @pittarak1  Actually if Russia does become our enemy and punishes us, it will be a fate of our own making.
    1
  14969. ​ @Andrew-ob5ij  US security forces have fixing elections in foreign countries for decades. They did a good job at home last year, but dedicating unpicking is now revealing the methodology. You can already smell the panic and the fear.
    1
  14970. Why worry? He's out of power and he'll never be back as long as George Soros and Dominion Voting Machines decide elections. You're safe. You're being looked after by some very clever people who know exactly what's best for you.
    1
  14971.  @karene.7014  You are very wise on both counts.
    1
  14972. Time Radio is all about cheating. Quite amusing really.
    1
  14973. Using naughty words and making silly jokes which obviously are not to be taken seriously are far lesser crimes than supporting Hamas terrorism, or policing people's thought and choice of language, like the Left do.
    1
  14974. Maybe MSNBC?
    1
  14975. This will do next to nothing to save Ukraine. Time is running out. Ammunition is running out. Manpower is running out. By the time the UK has the first instalment ready the war will probably be over.
    1
  14976.  @olorin4317  Not good enough. Democracy is dying. The nuclear weapons weren't Ukrainian, they were just stationed there and Russia is only demanding what is rightfully its own.
    1
  14977.  @stephenvaissiere9402  By giving Ukraine weapons. Simple enough.
    1
  14978.  @robgoodson4483  What's it got to do with us?
    1
  14979. The Russia/Ukraine conflict has changed everything. We may as well tear up everything we thought we knew and believed and start from scratch. Brexit is a total irrelevance.
    1
  14980. Your wait is over. There is a BLM poster in one of the windows of the house he was living in.
    1
  14981.  @kirstysinclair9021  He committed crimes in the cause of truth and justice: refusing to be used in a plot to overthrow the democratically elected President of the United States. Lying to Congress was very much the lesser of two evils. Far, far greater crimes have been committed by his accusers and we can but hope that Trump is re-elected so that these REAL criminals are brought to justice.
    1
  14982. As I heard it he was asking NOT to be cheated!
    1
  14983. A lot of people will be shot.
    1
  14984.  @thisbarb  Only because they have been brainwashed into doing so.
    1
  14985.  @stevenbaer9061  I'm 74 and my mummy is long dead. It is you who is showing signs of extreme immaturity. What is the answer, by the way?
    1
  14986.  @Sempapax  On this case the freedom to be ruled by one set of crooks as opposed to another - after tens of thousands have been killed, of course.
    1
  14987.  @stevenbaer9061  Does the concept of protecting your borders against foreign aggression enter YOUR mind? The Russian-speaking Donbass region of Ukraine has been subject to invasion by ultra-nationalist Ukrainian forces for eight years. Thousands have died. Ukraine is fully entitled to "chart its own independent path", even though this path means swapping one boss for another. It is not entitled to so, however, when it means dragging a large percentage of its population and its territory into a deal which is not to the advantage of that percentage. This is especially true when this re-alignment adversely effects a powerful neighbour who can only be expected to react angrily to such a move. Define: unprovoked. Define: sovereign.
    1
  14988. Zelensky's flame is flickering - and not before time.
    1
  14989.  @jacqdanieles  Who is namur?
    1
  14990.  @strictlysport3624  That might be a trifle optimistic.
    1
  14991.  @dpelpal  It isn't quantity, it's quality. Russia was quite happy to lose thousands of acres of farmland as long as Ukrainians were dying on it. The land they're holding on to now has $14 trillion of minerals underneath it.
    1
  14992.  @boink800 Not at all. The land and what's beneath it belong to Russia.
    1
  14993.  @cog600  Russia is making substantial advances even now. If Ukraine wants to force them back it must act very quickly and forget such mad schemes as attempting to recapture Crimea.
    1
  14994.  @boink800  The mineral extraction and steel-making industries in Eastern Ukraine have been developed and run by Russians ever since salt was found there well over 300 years ago. That's why there are so many Russians there and that's why Russia won't allow Ukraine to sell it off. You can see their point. It was mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine because it happened to have been included in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. That mistake is now being rectified.
    1
  14995.  @boink800  I was talking more about the last couple of weeks. And it isn't square miles that count it is, as I said, what's underneath it that counts. Russia doesn't need any more farmland. That was just used for fighting on. It does need what it's holding on to now though. As you rightly say the Donetsk border is still some way off but the main line of defence is crumbling and Ukraine will have to make pretty rapid use of the somewhat limited extra resources donated by America if it is to stop Russia reaching it very soon.
    1
  14996.  @cog600  Yes. This whole line is heavily defended. Russia has broken down the fence and is now in the garden. Kharkiv could fall very soon unless Ukraine can quickly gain some benefit from this rather vague new gift of weaponry and cash from America.
    1
  14997.  @cog600  Size isn't everything! Russia wants what's under the land, not the land itself. And it wants it permanently and it wants it to be populated by Russians. They just won't stop until they have control of all the mineral riches of Eastern Ukraine and they will destroy everything in their path to get it. This was always going to be a war of attrition and Ukraine is near exhaustion. This new aid package - whatever it amounts to - had better start having an effect very quickly if that isn't to happen.
    1
  14998.  @cog600  You have to admit that Russia has made more advances in the past couple of weeks than it has for months - as you rightly say at a time when Ukraine has been starved of munitions. The question now is whether or not this advance can be stopped. The size of the villages isn't of great importance, it's their tactical positions that are important. And because its taken 9 months to move 5km doesn't mean that Russia can't move 30km in nine weeks if the Ukrainians have nothing left to defend them with.
    1
  14999.  @cog600  I said nothing about destroying people. Very many have fled the war zone, and most to Russia. I suppose the plan is for them to return and to help rebuild once the whole area is secured. Progress has certainly been slow. The Russian army is not very competent and this whole stretch of land is very heavily fortified with deep trenches, tank traps and bunkers, put in place long before this present stage of the conflict began. This phase of the war has clearly been predicted by both sides. Realistically though there is no way Ukraine can withstand Russia's steady progress without a considerable injection of both men and materiel. Whether this new aid package from America fits the bill I don't know, but I tend to doubt it.
    1
  15000.  @boink800  On the other hand being stolen from by clever lawyers is just as bad.
    1
  15001.  @boink800  The Russian army is not the best in the world, I'd freely admit, but this whole area has been heavily fortified in anticipation of what is happening now. As in World War I there have been many months with very little progress on both sides but, as was the case in that conflict, the losers will the side which runs out of support first. It is hard to judge the impact of this latest package from America but I tend to doubt it will do more than needlessly extend the suffering.
    1
  15002.  @cog600  I'm not aware of having changed my argument. What do you mean exactly?
    1
  15003.  @boink800  What's the USSR got to do with it? Ukraine was a SSR but included parts of Russia, purely for administrative reasons. The fact that these areas were allowed to be integrated into the new country of Ukraine is the root cause of the present problems.
    1
  15004.  @boink800  International law, so called, was created after the Second World War to protect American interests. It has no validity and can be safely ignored.
    1
  15005.  @boink800  I'm sure you know by now that this is a complete myth. Russia news show hosts are just as dim as ours.
    1
  15006.  @boink800  Well no-one can know for certain, but I think it's very much the other way around.
    1
  15007. This clearly illustrates how COP has nothing to do with "tackling" climate change, but everything to do with making money out of it.
    1
  15008. I sincerely hope you are right.
    1
  15009.  @0Kimm.J  I think the idea of an invasion being "permitted" is quite a stretch. A contradiction in terms, really. The fact is that Ukraine is an anomaly and the boundaries of the former Soviet Socialist Republic should never have been considered to be those of a country. Fair enough, Yeltsin stupidly agreed to them back in 1991 but a drunkard's signature on a bit of paper does not make something real which is not real.
    1
  15010.  @0Kimm.J  Not a particularly good analogy, if I may say so. Analogies are slippery customers, but to play you game: the property in question is very much a family property which has passed into the wrong hands because of a will signed by an old man not in his right mind. You've kept your "stuff" there over the years though, and have gone back and forth using it, as in the days before the old man died. Now the owner of the property, your brother, say, wants to join a motorcycle gang and has agreed to sell them your stuff as part of his membership fee. You are understandably annoyed and try to take your "stuff" back. But then the motorcycle gang turns up armed with clubs and shotguns and tries to stop you. What do you do? Give in or take them on?
    1
  15011. At the end of the day lockdowns will have killed far, far more people than covid.
    1
  15012. He's actually fighting to let America steal Russia's lithium, but don't let that worry you.
    1
  15013. This is all a bit like kiddies realising that Father Christmas doesn't exist.
    1
  15014. When this "aid" is turned to weapons which kill people, whose hands will their blood be on?
    1
  15015.  @karsten11553  Is that Karsten or Karen?
    1
  15016. Well, wearing Trump out was always the idea, wasn't it? Nothing to do with justice or anything as old-fashioned and silly as that.
    1
  15017. I half wish the Tories would ditch Badenoch - then she could go over to Reform and take a few of her mates with her. She and Nige would make a formidable team.
    1
  15018.  @annphillips1086  Fantastic? Fruitful? Fascinating? First-rate? Forceful? Fabulous?
    1
  15019.  @annphillips1086  Already been there!
    1
  15020. I thought Tommy Robinson was in prison for repeating a libel, in contravention of a court order? Furthermore, he has consistently appealed to his followers NOT to indulge in violence and threw people out of the EDF for doing so. I find it utterly disgusting that Starmer and the Labour Party are trying to wriggle out of their responsibility for the continuing horror of the grooming gang scandal by attempting to divert attention in other directions. This is not some sort of competition. Pathetic attempts to sling mud on others does not remove the mud that sticks to the Labour Party in general, and to Keir Starmer in particular.
    1
  15021. It is widely known. Millions of people are on such low doses as a prophylactic against malaria.
    1
  15022. Such a pity all the expensive equipment the Americans sold them doesn't work. They'll have to get by with Molotov cocktails and army-surplus automatic rifles.
    1
  15023. Only if it voted Tory.
    1
  15024. And the Soviet Union requested three times to join NATO and was rejected.
    1
  15025. I only care because our stupid government might get us all killed by giving it military support.
    1
  15026. .. and the money starts rolling in! What would the arms industry do without Big Bad Russia on its sales leaflets?
    1
  15027.  @pansepot1490  No. Of course not.
    1
  15028.  @FYCH45  Putin doesn't want the whole of Ukraine -just the Eastern provinces, which of course have welcomed him.
    1
  15029.  @avoidconfusion  Why not? It's the simplest way and the one less likely to invite censorship. My sources are several too. If you want a bit of help with this simple task I can give you the names of the principals concerned and you can check their biographies in Wikipedia or any other site you might regard as reputable. Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of Opposition Platform – For Life, the second-largest party in the country’s parliament, was detained by security officials earlier this year on charges of conspiring with Moscow to disrupt coal supplies to Ukraine from South Africa in 2014. He has now been given bail but remains under house arrest awaiting trial. Victor Porochenko, the PM before Zelensky, and who we see on TV looking all manly and supportive in his flak jacket, arrived back in Ukraine shortly before the war to answer charges relating to the coal scam plus a few other bits and pieces which, if he is found guilty could lead to 15 years in prison. Viktor Yanukovych, PM until 2014, is currently in exile in Russia having been found guilty in his absence of mass murder, among many other things. I would have thought the other matters were easy enough. Zelensky closes TV stations will get you immediate results as will "corruption in Ukraine". The prisoner business is a little more difficult since anything directly detrimental to the sainted comedian is getting airbrushed out of history. I've tried to send direct links and key words but the YouTube algorithm has me beat Therefore I append this article in full from the journal of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group 03/09/21. If there is any other help I can give you feel free to ask. (No. It's being blocked. Will try to get something through in another post.)
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  15030.  @avoidconfusion  Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a decree envisaging the possibility of pardons for people convicted of corruption and drunken driving, while failing to address any of the critical failings of the present system for presidential pardons. This is despite the ongoing absence in Ukraine of any system of judicial review in the case of people serving life sentences for crimes they probably did not commit. It is two years since human rights NGOs turned to Zelensky asking him to pardon Volodymyr Panasenko, who has already spent 16 years in prison although nobody ever believed that he was guilty. He remains imprisoned, as to many other life prisoners whose sentences also arouse very serious concern. Oleksandr Pavlichenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (and one of the authors of the appeal regarding Panasenko) has expressed his frustration regarding the Decree on Amendments to Provisions on Pardons, issued on 20 August 2021. The amendments do not remove any of the major flaws, which he, as a member of the Commission on Pardons, has seen first-hand. There remains no clear methodology nor regulation of the work of the Commission and its members. There are no regular meetings, and it is at the discretion of the Chair of the Commission that a meeting is called. Pavlichenko notes that in 2020, the Commission met only twice, without passing any real decisions. There has yet to be any consideration of applications submitted between June 2020 and the beginning of September this year. There need to be clear time frameworks, and applicants also need to know what to do if they receive a rejection. As mentioned, the amendments envisage pardons in the case of people convicted of corruption; of road offences; and of driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. It should be noted that there are some restrictions on this, with the decree stipulating that such a pardon may only occur after a person has served the part of the sentence needed to apply for release on parole. In the case of a corruption offence, this is, according to Article 81 § 3 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, at least two thirds of the sentence. The same applies in the case of an particularly grave crime committed by accident. For other crimes up to medium severity, and for an accidental grave crime, a pardon (or early reason) can be applied for after a person has served only half of the sentence. It would depend on the charges that a person was convicted of, however this would presumably mean that a person who killed somebody while drunk could hope for a pardon either after half or after two thirds of the sentence. This is in marked contrast to the present situation regarding life prisoners, which the decree has not even tried to address. Pavlichenko explains that any applications for a pardon are rejected on the grounds of the gravity of the crime. This has been the case up till now and is unaffected by the new decree. In Ukraine at present a life sentence really does mean life behind bars. One of numerous problems with such sentences is that there is little consistency as to who is sentenced to life imprisonment, who to 15 years, or less. This already makes the argument that specifically life prisoners should be deprived of the chance of a pardon fundamentally flawed. There are other, even more compelling, reasons for rejecting such an argument. Ukraine took an important step forward in 2012 with a revised Code of Criminal Procedure which specifically prohibits the use in court of evidence obtained through torture, where the person was deprived of his right to a lawyer, etc. This was the only positive move with respect to the justice system under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych who almost immediately removed most of the powers of the Supreme Court, including its right to review criminal cases under extraordinary procedure. Such procedure had enabled review of a conviction in cases where there had been violations of material or procedural law, for example, where evidence had been fabricated or falsified. Ukraine’s legislators have had ample opportunity to rectify this situation since the first bill was tabled in parliament in 2015 yet have failed to do so. There are a significant number of people, including life prisoners, who were arrested and tried before 2012 and whose convictions give serious grounds for concern. In some cases, it seems very likely that the person is totally innocent, in others, that the life sentence passed was disproportionate to the crime committed. It is for the court to decide in each case whether a miscarriage of justice has taken place, not for journalists, yet the courts in Ukraine now have no mechanism for doing this, and legislators are in no hurry to resolve the situation. Given the disinformation campaigns that accompany every attempt to get legislation passed that would provide the strictly regulated opportunity for judicial review, it seems very likely that the resistance is coming from high places. The reasons are not difficult to guess. Such judicial reviews must identify those who took part in torturing people for a ‘confession’ or in falsifying evidence, as well as prosecutors and judges who turned a blind eye to clear irregularities. While a Presidential pardon might be the answer where a person received a disproportionately harsh sentence, a judicial review would, in theory, be preferable to a pardon in the case of men like Panasenko who should probably never have been convicted at all. That is, however theory when men have been imprisoned for 20 years or more. Yaroslav Mysyak On the day of Zelensky’s meeting with US President Joe Biden, the International Religious Freedom Roundtable addressed a public appeal to President Biden asking him to intercede on behalf of one of the Ukrainian life prisoners whose guilt is in serious doubt. Youth Pastor Yaroslav Mysyak has been imprisoned since 1999 after he was accused of killing his grandparents and uncle. There are very serious grounds for believing that his conviction was on the basis of a ‘confession’ that he was tortured into giving. The letter and its many signatories can be found (in the enclosure) here. Volodymyr Panasenko As mentioned, the case of Volodymyr Panasenko is particularly shocking in that nobody ever believed he was guilty. Those who have spoken of a grave miscarriage of justice have included Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk and first Human Rights Ombudsperson Nina Karpachova, as well as prominent human rights lawyers and NGOs. See: Ukraine’s most malicious miscarriage of justice Maxim Orlov There a clear need for judicial review of the life sentence against Maxim Orlov who was 21 when arrested in May 2009, after the police discovered the bodies of an elderly couple in the town of Taromske, on the outskirts of Dnipro. His life sentence appears to have been because the police initially seized 14-year-old Oleksandr Kozlov who had, together with his mother, done gardening work for the couple the morning before their brutal murder. Since he was of slight build, the police needed him to have had an accomplice. Kozlov, who was legally still a child, was interrogated alone, without a lawyer although the fact that the crime was one that can carry a life sentence meant that the presence of a lawyer was mandatory. He ‘confessed’ under torture to the killing and said that he had committed it with Orlov. See: Maxim Orlov - zero evidence but sentenced to life for good statistics Mykola Slyvotsky 22 and a young father when arrested in 2003, Mykola Slyvotsky has now spent 18 years in prison, with no end in sight. His case is of concern, not only because of his consistent assertion that he signed a ‘confession’ under torture and the threat that the ‘investigators’ would bring his wife and mother in and do the same to them. Without any other evidence, he was convicted of two murders although another man had already confessed to one of the crimes and had given detailed information about how the crime had been committed, what the victim had been wearing, etc. See: Life sentence for a crime somebody else admitted to The list could be continued, except that for some any justice will be posthumous. Oleksandr Rafalskyy [or Rafalsky] died in the Lukyanivsk SIZO [remand prison] on 20 October 2016, aged just 46. He had spent 15 years imprisoned despite strong grounds for believing that all ‘confessions’ in the case had been extracted through torture, as well as other concerns. On 27 May 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (in the Case of Debelyy and Others v. Ukraine) found that there had been a violation of the European Convention’s prohibition of torture (Article 3) through the use of police torture and lack of effective investigation into it (details here).
    1
  15031. More nutty ramblngs from this Fast Show refugee.
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  15032.  @paxundpeace9970  We'll see Near zero at the moment.
    1
  15033.  @slinkymotion  And Uganda and Chad.
    1
  15034.  @paxundpeace9970  And less old people to die. Most deaths in Sweden were people over 85/90 who had survived several flu seasons due to top-class health care.
    1
  15035. This is such an obvious stitch up only brainwashed Orange Man Bad loonies can possibly take it seriously.
    1
  15036. Could this be an internal plot against Hegseth? Does Walz have a down on him?
    1
  15037. I hope this comment lasts. Mine in a similar vein has now been removed.
    1
  15038.  @mrb.5610  Too right. Viruses usually mutate into forms which are more infectious but less deadly. At the moment it isn't the fatality rate which is a problem it's the fact that many people - a small proportion but still too many - develop severe symptoms and have a really bad time. Lockdowns are supposed to give governments time to gear up health services to deal with such eventualities - instead of which THIS government has done next to nothing except faff about.
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  15039.  @Serahpin  Not unquestioningly. I do not regard Hitler as the embodiment of evil: he was, as all his generation, a product of The Great War and this formed his beliefs and personality. But there is no question that his actions had truly terrible consequences.
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  15040.  @Serahpin  Well he isn't in a position to sue, so we shall probably never know the truth of the matter.
    1
  15041.  @fredkumar8569  But at least 90% of the charges against Trump are blatantly untrue.
    1
  15042.  @cynicalidealist2301  It was either off target, or more likely shot down.
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  15043.  @jools2323  Very few.
    1
  15044.  @bobbytookalook  There is a power station less than two miles away. That was probably the intended target. Civilian deaths are incidental. The main objective is to destroy military movements and infrastructure.
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  15045.  @markusrother5577  That is a different issue.
    1
  15046. It's not so much what was done but HOW it was done. Trump would gave greased the wheels with judicious bribery and kept up air cover. Biden and his gang of crooks and incompetents cheated to gain power - and cheats never prosper.
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  15047. Absurd Western propaganda! How anyone can fall for this just beats me. Hundreds of thousands of Russians living in Eastern Ukraine have been forced to flee from Ukrainian Nazis and are housed in temporary camps. Russian children in orphanages in Eastern Ukraine have also been rescued. Towns and cities all over Russia then take these refugees in. There is no kidnapping, and far less indoctrination than American children are subjected to!
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  15048.  @davefave4351  So you'll be voting for Tommo if you're still around then?
    1
  15049.  @markwelch3564  In my vision of the future that will be the Labatory Alliance, with three seats in Parliament.
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  15050.  @davefave4351  In my vision of the future Ireland will have left the EU and become part of Great Britain again. So that won't apply.
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  15051.  @markwelch3564  Old Holburn.
    1
  15052.  @Zuluknob  Isn't it strange how memory plays such tricks?!
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  15053.  @Zuluknob  The Mandela Effect I suppose.
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  15054.  @Driver2616  Duh!
    1
  15055.  @thenavigateur8460  It has to be totally perfect, and that is unattainable.Half measures are often worse that no measures at all.
    1
  15056.  @thenavigateur8460  Which proves they don't work, since infections increase rapidly once they are lifted. This implies that only a permanent totally observed worldwide lockdown for a sufficient period of time for the virus to die out can be effective. And that is clearly absurd. I believe that the only way of keeping this disease under control is that outlined in my original post, namely a prophylactic or instant treatment regime involving drugs which deny the virus the conditions in which to replicate. And there is no evidence that the summer months are a less favourable time for the virus. The reverse may actually be true. Australia beware.
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  15057. Funny, I don't remember Putin condemning the US for the death of Jeffrey Epstein either.
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  15058. Zelensky wants rid of Trump. The FBI and the deep state want rid of Trump. It looks like a deadly combination.
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  15059. Which will hopefully be a good one, acknowledging the facts and bringing peace.
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  15060.  @pinkfloyd870  Not quite. In Russia's view Donbass and Crimea are not parts of Ukraine. It is a view which has considerable merit. They were attached to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Russian-run Soviet Union and were never part of a country called "Ukraine."
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  15061.  @pinkfloyd870  Not quite. In Russia's eyes Ukraine is Russian - as indeed it was for hundreds of years until 1991 when the foolish decision was taken to make the new country of Ukraine occupy the same footprint as the Russian-run Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine.
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  15062. Nice car.
    1
  15063. @ Articles in Economic Times and Hindustan Times today.
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  15064. Just see how they support Russia in this conflict! No, hang on a minute.....
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  15065. Normal people contstantly showing their willingness to be ruled by psychopathic terrorists.
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  15066. Once again the elites seem convinced that ordinary people should not be allowed to decide for themselves what is true and what is not. We are sliding into a Stalinist-style fascist totalitarianism, escape from which makes extreme measure necessary.
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  15067. Couldn't agree more. Dr Lee knows what he's talking about - and because he's retired he can speak the truth without fear of blighting his career.
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  15068.  @mikeoglen6848  I thought the Prof just gave some of them?
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  15069. I would rather Russia wins, but I'm not a troll. Russia can win quickly and bring an end to this madness. Ukraine cannot.
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  15070. This is a fantasy.
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  15071. Wattle Juice Drs Michael and Ronan Connolly.
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  15072.  @jamesprice4647  We managed very well, in fact. Immigration creates problems which need more immigrants to cope with. It's a spiral.
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  15073. Why though? How much simpler and more civilised to seek to establish friendly and mutually advantageous relations with Russia. Exchanging one protection racket for a considerably less effective one doesn't make much sense to me.
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  15074.  @andrewglitz1  Russia is actually trying to establish its true borders. Giving the new country of Ukraine the same borders as the Russian-created Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was a huge mistake.
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  15075.  @bad_dog4648  I think that history has been tainted considerably by its tragic brush with Communism. I see no reason why the Russian Federation should be demonised because of this.
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  15076.  @vincentvangogh8092  I can't tell how much it gets on my nerves to hear this constant ridiculous comparison. Try thinking instead of rushing for an absurd analogy.
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  15077.  @drummingtildeath  But Russian is in no way hostile.
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  15078.  @andrewglitz1  Cities and people were due to be flattened anyway. Russia just chose which ones, instead of America.
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  15079. @ Nothing I say is false. It just jars with your conditioning, that's all.
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  15080. Rumour has it that Musk is going to bung him a few hundred million to start up his own party, possibly including UKIP and a few other odds and sods.
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  15081. Very easily -with Musk money to keep him going. I woke up this morning with a vision of a future in which Tories and Labour are both finished and Tommy and Nige lead parties fighting to take over the government.
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  15082. I'm no expert, but I think it would be a relatively easy if time-consuming exercise to weed out these "bots" if any.
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  15083.  @easymoney8535  The facts suggest otherwise. The Ukrainians have been doing the same sort of thing with the same sort of weapon for eight years.
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  15084.  @celebrim1  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
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  15085. You're wrong about the way this missile works too. The booster section drops immediately the warhead section parts company with it and velocity means the warhead section continues for some distance before opening and releasing its load. Thus the booster section falls BEHIND the point of impact, and does not somehow fly across and beyond it. The booster section of the Kramatorsk missile landed some 60 metres west south-west of the railway station thus indicating that it was fired from that direction. Paradoxically enough this exact logic was used to prove that the March 14 sister-rocket which hit Donetsk came from the southeast, and thus was fired from Russian territory as some kind of false flag, The DPR say that since they shot it down before it exploded it tumbled in the air and was not on course -but that's another issue.
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  15086.  @pgabrieli  It might get to keep its bases without having to deploy troops, which can be transferred to the Donbass front.
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  15087.  @accc9090  Has is crossed your mind that there might be some sort of overlap here? The sort of people who have died from Covid - the elderly, those with lung and heart conditions - are exactly the sort of people who die from influenza. We can therefore expect the flu deaths this coming winter to be much reduced. Covid got 'em first.
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  15088.  @accc9090  How do you know they have long lasting effects to their pulmonary system etc etc?And how many of them are there? Very probably, as with practically all conditions, there will be a small percentage who will suffer anomalous long-lasting side effects. It is very unfortunate but that's the way it is. It's obvious that the fewer who catch it the better -but there has to come a cut-off point. There has to be a time when we can say:look the deaths are dropping drastically, the number of people suffering from serious long term effects is small. Let's come out of hiding. A lot has been learned about the best ways of dealing with this disease. Unfortunately it has become politicised by some and seen as an opportunity to make money by others. There is an incredible amount of misinformation around. Personally I think the fact that deaths from ALL causes in the UK are now running at a figure below a five year average is a strong indicator that Covid has harvested practically all it is likely to. For this reason one can predict that flu deaths this winter will be lower than normal. .
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  15089.  @accc9090  Then you must give me links to these studies so I may assess them. I would be grateful if you would do so.
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  15090.  @accc9090  Newspapers tell lies; now more than ever before. I was a journalist myself for thirty years and saw standards drop. They are even lower now. Back in the day the joke was "never let the facts interfere with a good story." Bad enough, but now the deceptions are often politically motivated. I have gone to a few primary sources as you suggested and - as I expected - all the "might", "may be" and "scientists fear that" stories you have presumably read all have very shaky foundations. The simple and obvious fact is that we are at too early a stage to predict long term outcomes. That is not to say that there won't be any. There certainly will. Influenza, for instance often has severe long term effects. Reduced lung function persists in the majority of cases, Crippling depression and exhaustion can persist not just for months, but years. There is considerable evidence that schitzophrenia can result in later years in people whose mothers had the flu while pregnant. It has been cited as a cause of Parkinson's disease in later life. It is important to remember that all these things - and indeed the symptoms themselves - are not actually caused by the virus itself, but by our bodies' reactions to the invasion. This is why prophylactic precautions are just as important, if not more so than trying to keep the disease at bay by wearing a shred of cloth on your face. I have evidence for everything I say. When I speculate I make it clear. I am afraid that propagandists posing as journalists you have read in publications such as the Guardian do not adhere to these standards.
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  15091.  @Paul-eb2cl  It's pointless arguing In fact doctors often have great difficulty in determining the cause of death when a number of factors is present, but they are told in a pandemic to include the pandemic disease on the certificate if they have any suspicion that it may have been present. In the case you mention the doctor, if he was doing his job, would have put the cause of death as myocardial infarction, but included on the certificate that Covid 19 was present. That death would have been entered as coronavirus related and would have appeared in the daily "death toll" figure. This injunction was made very shortly after the outbreak was discovered and it is false to suggest that deaths in care homes would not have had coronavirus entered as possibly present on their death certificate, and thus they too would have appeared in the official figures. No test would have been necessary. The fact the deceased was running a temperature and was coughing would have been enough. All this suggests that the actual number of deaths attributable to Covid 19 are probably LESS than the official figure, but it seems churlish to argue the point. What interests me more is why people find it necessary to exaggerate and amplify a situation which is bad enough as it is. This mindset seems to occur in people who have some deep inner need to take as many precautions as possible, to regulate as much as possible, to find someone to blame and to try to apply rules of juristiction to what is a manifestation of cruel nature, rather than any fault of man.
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  15092.  @Paul-eb2cl  Sorry for being so defensive then. You were , however, attempting to provide information in support of a falsehood. I'm afraid I am getting increasingly riled by the quantity of misinformation being accepted as gospel by so many people.
    1
  15093.  @Paul-eb2cl  Covid deaths now in single figures almost every day. Deaths from all causes now below the five-year average for the sixth week running. Total official death figure now reduced as new stricter criteria applied. I think you must be including excess deaths from causes other than from Covid itself, but indirectly caused by panic (not pandemic) ie cancer and heart patients not getting treatment, excess suicides etc etc. Anyhow. It's all ancient history now. We must look to the future. If there IS a second wave it will be entirely due to our failure to deal properly with this one. Lockdowns and facemasks are all very well, but the virus is still out there when we ease lockdowns and stop wearing masks. Prophylactics and very swift treatment with viral reproduction inhibitors are the answer I think. And the drugs are out there, tried and tested and usually very cheap. What I fear most is the introduction of new untried vaccines, created with profit in mind.
    1
  15094. You really are daft.
    1
  15095. I don't think negotiations will involve the withdrawal of Russian forces.
    1
  15096. Since he has been denied trial in court there are historical precedents.
    1
  15097. I protest! They enjoy the whimpering!
    1
  15098. I agree. It is difficult not to think America is stage managing this final stage of its failed proxy war.
    1
  15099. Wonder what put that spring in Zelensky's step?
    1
  15100. @ Pompous ass.
    1
  15101.  @maryfountain4202  He probably will.
    1
  15102.  @mustafamajid7794  Because, technically, he was guilty and he knew it.
    1
  15103.  @ancietman  Sad but true.
    1
  15104. Not for much longer. He's lost his public pulling power and that was the only reason he got the job.
    1
  15105.  @davefave4351  This rule existed long before Brexit was even thought of - or the EU for that matter! Journalism should never be taken seriously.
    1
  15106.  @baldyslapnut.  I can't seem to watch RT any more, because of political repression. Which is a pity, because it is quite a good channel.
    1
  15107. The opposite. He's got China on the run.
    1
  15108. It shows the exact opposite.
    1
  15109.  @danielreed5199  But the tariffs have put China on the ropes and it is begging for new deals!
    1
  15110.  @arwing20  Nothing absurd about them. Tucker's revelations were a surprise to many, but not to me. I have a friend called Russell who has lived in a small town in Russia for well over a decade, and another called Anna who lives in Siberia. They both have YouTube channels and vlogs. You should pay them a visit.
    1
  15111.  @user-rv8wb1nl1b  Not from the multi-billion$$ spanking new Ukrainian army, paid for by NATO? Now in ruins, by the way.
    1
  15112.  @jim2376  They were ready to roll into separatist Donbass to take it back from the locals on behalf of their American overlords. Russia simply stopped them and is now capitalising on that. With NATO on one flank and Islamist lunatics on the other, Russia is indeed attacked from all sides.
    1
  15113.  @richardmarsden.5610  It's what you make of it. I think you're talking about Siberia anyway.
    1
  15114.  @lorenzcassidy3960  It's got NATO breathing down its neck from the West, and ISIS breathing down its neck from the East. You need to be hallucinating yourself if you don't see that.
    1
  15115.  @ukie5130  Too bloody cold!
    1
  15116.  @emm_arr  The fact that I am NOT a Russian troll but a somewhat bored, elderly Englishman looking on in horror at the stupidity of the younger generation makes ALL your opinions somewhat suspect.
    1
  15117. The covid death rate in Florida is currently one of the lowest in the country, averaging nine a day at present.
    1
  15118.  @olgerddobrowolski6441  Personally I think the whole campaign has been designed to drain Ukrainian forces while setting things up for a total takeover of Donbass and possibly a land corridor to Crimea. There was no intention to conquer - just to cause the Ukrainians as much grief as possible over as long a period as possible. Sometime soon the Russians will be defending territory - not attacking it.
    1
  15119. @Erling Braut Håland He is often clumsy with words. It is true though that children are highly resistant to the disease and practically immune to death from it. Everything he said is substantially correct.. And US media stinks.
    1
  15120. @Erling Braut Håland A hard job for a man with a limited vocabulary. Most people will have understood him though. The misuse of "immune" was qualified several times. He may have done it deliberately of course. He is a very cunning fellow in his way.
    1
  15121.  @desoliver9712  Trump has a limited vocabulary but in this instance his statements were repeated and qualified enough to make his meaning clear, I think. Children very rarely suffer severe symptoms. They don't die without a pre-existing condition and the chances of them passing the virus on to an adult seem very limited too. There was no evidence of a single case of this happening during the peak of the infection in April and those cases cited since are suspect. An adult stands a far greater chance of catching it from another adult.
    1
  15122. @Erling Braut Håland Probably far less than those who think there is a real chance of dying from it or passing it to adults.
    1
  15123. Forget absurd analogies.
    1
  15124.  @TheJrr71  Of course it's absurd. The list of disparities between the two situations and the personalities involved is as long as your arm and easily outweighs any spurious and facile simarities.
    1
  15125.  @TheJrr71  It simply doesn't.
    1
  15126.  @TheJrr71  Mere similarities do not constitute an analogy when they are vastly outweighed by numerous dissimilarities.
    1
  15127.  @TheJrr71  The danger is that this slight similarity is vastly outweighed by the numerous dissimilarities. This makes the analogy a false one.
    1
  15128.  @benwalker3068  Not EVERYTHING. But quite a lot.
    1
  15129.  @eugene7145  You're welcome.
    1
  15130.  @benwalker3068  I think I do understand to some extent - and I am entirely sure that the situation is being exacerbated and exploited by US agencies in the cause of American expansionism.
    1
  15131.  @callumjohnston858  Just take the timing into account. And check the similarities with the Maidan riots. If it looks like a duck etc....
    1
  15132.  @DarkRoomAmbience  Russians do. And so do many Westerners who have gone there to live. The shops are full, housing is cheap and the streets are safe. It is far from being the repressive hell-hole depicted by Western propaganda.
    1
  15133.  @callumjohnston858  There is clear evidence of US involvement on Maidan. US officials were on the streets handing out sandwiches and US military contractors were very probably those on the rooftops shooting into the crowds. The US puppets who replaced the Russian puppet were and are equally as corrupt as their predecessor. Ukraine is a kleptocracy and an oligarchy, just like Russia. America isn't much different behind the facade.
    1
  15134.  @lupiniii7025  A combination, I think - in the same way that the Donbass and Crimean revolutions were organised by Russian-Ukrainians with the help of Russia.
    1
  15135.  @lupiniii7025  And both sides playing the same sort of game.
    1
  15136. I'm afraid Biden will win. As Josef Stalin once said: " It isn't votes that count, it's who counts the votes that counts." In this case the whole operation will be run by the deep state, as ever, And we all know whose side they're on.
    1
  15137. Net zero was never anything other than a campaign slogan for climate crisis nutjobs. No-one in their right mind can believe it to be either attainable or desirable.
    1
  15138. This is looking more like an ideological war than a trade war. Trump has got instant positive responses from those countries threatened by tariffs - and none have anything to do with trade, other than the illegal trade in drugs. What he might want from Britain is anyone's guess.
    1
  15139. Children never die, never suffer serious symptoms and rarely infect adults. At the same time the vaccines are showing a worrying build-up of chemicals in both bone marrow and ovaries. Is this pure financial greed at work again?
    1
  15140. Mad and unstable? Have a look in the mirror.
    1
  15141. US election results seem more and more to be manufactured internally, with the voting figures being a mere cosmetic addition. Presumably the country is actually run by some internal agency, while the politicians are mere figureheads, variously bribed and blackmailed into fulfilling their appointed tasks.
    1
  15142. It is Biden's incompetence and failure to stand up to Washington's warmongers and expansionists which has led to this. The more Putin is boxed into a corner, the more likely he is to exercise the nuclear option. And he will if necessary
    1
  15143. You forgot to mention vast influxes of fighting-age males from the third world and the introduction of sharia law as a cornerstone of British democracy.
    1
  15144. Covid 19, like its close relative SARS, like the Spring and Summer. Australia beware. "Analysis of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Taiyuan found the optimum environmental temperature associated with the SARS cases was between 16 to 28 degrees Celsius, which may encourage virus growth. A sharp rise or decrease in the environmental temperature related to the cold spell led to an increase of the SARS cases because of the possible influence of the weather on the human immune system. This study suggested a higher possibility for SARS to reoccur in spring than in autumn or winter. " Centre For Evidence Based Medicine - Oxford. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the name given to the 2019 novel coronavirus. COVID-19 is the name given to the disease associated with the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans. Genome sequence analysis has shown that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the Betacoronavirus genus, which includes Bat SARS-like coronavirus, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV [6].
    1
  15145. Crimea and Donbass are far more Russian than Ukrainian. Putin just wants them back.
    1
  15146.  @netrunner36  I don't disagree with you - apart from the last bit! Vaccination has a clear role to play in slowing down the pandemic but it is foolish to imagine it is a real solution. In fact it could well be counter-productive in the long run since while slowing down the pandemic it also slows down the process of reaching herd immunity -which is the only long-term and hopefully permanent solution.
    1
  15147. People will only take so much of this bullshit. Biden is a cheat and a liar who stole the Presidency and millions of Americans know it. This will not end well.
    1
  15148.  @barbthegreat586  Facilitating the inevitable demise of this shoddy government.
    1
  15149.  @emm_arr  Ta
    1
  15150. @Henry Callow No, because they can.
    1
  15151. The more the Western war trumpets sound, the more likely Putin is to reduce Ukraine to a pile of dust and rubble. Time to get out while the going's good.
    1
  15152. The only reason Labour was successful was because it isn't the Conservative Party. The only reason Reform didn't gain more seats is because those protesting the failures and deceits of the Conservatives didn't wish to risk wasting their votes. Next time round it will be a different story for, contrary to Mr Monboit's assertion, there is absolutely no desire for left-wing policies in this country among the great mass of the populace, and nor will there ever be.
    1
  15153.  @IwasBraveFor2WholeSeconds  It will be interesting to see what Ukraine gets, and when they get it.
    1
  15154.  @rogerwilco5918  I take it you are not from Britain. An allowance of between £100 and £300 paid every year to elderly people at the start of winter has been cut by the Labour government.
    1
  15155.  @rogerwilco5918  It was a joke. Are you a robot?
    1
  15156.  @sergiytokio7295  Russia has no territorial ambitions. It merely wishes to retain control over territory over which it exercises an historical influence.
    1
  15157.  @bonnie7898  You are sadly wrong. Ukraine is a divided country with a substantial Russian population, mostly living in Crimea and in the east. Many of these people feel cheated by the Ukrainian nationalist government based in Kiev. Their concerns came to a head in 2014 when America fomented a revolution which overthrew the then Moscow-leaning President. The result was Crimea becoming part of Russia and a civil rebellion in Donbass which the Ukrainians attempted to put down most cruelly. It was clear from all this that the position established in 1991 did not reflect the true situation and a truce was eventually agreed, ratified by the Minsk treaties which effectively superceded the Budapest accords of 1991 to which you refer. The plain fact of the matter is that Russia and Ukraine were well on the way to resolving these difficulties but the West, led by America, intervened because they had set their sights on wresting the immense mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea away from Russia which had mined and developed it for centuries - which is why there are so many Russians living in these regions. This war is not a result of Putin wishing to take what is not his, but of retaining what his country has always possessed. As is the case with a great many conflicts since World War 2 this war is a direct rest of American imperialist.ambitions.
    1
  15158.  @zzztefanos  What are you babbling about?
    1
  15159.  @zzztefanos  What does productive policy-making mean?
    1
  15160.  @zzztefanos  Different approaches by different forces, I suppose. Even if if is true (as may well be the case) that more black youths are represented in the knife-carrying communities of London and Manchester, the fact that the approaches are dissimilar cannot surely be due to racial prejudice? Racial realism, perhaps, since it is undeniably true that racial groups behave in different ways according to ethnicity and custom. Certain groups specialise in particular crimes and have a particular attitude towards them. As little time as I have for the British police they seem generally to be bending over backwards to appease the perceived requirements of minority groups and I would imagine the only reason such conciliatory measures as are employed in Glasgow and elsewhere are not favoured in cities with larger young black populations is because the feeling is that they wouldn't work. Having said all that I feel that this disparity might possibly be categorised as an example of systemic racism in the broadest and loosest sense of the term. Thankyou. Well done. Got any more?
    1
  15161.  @zzztefanos  There are considerable differences, I agree, between natives of various African countries and indeed between people from different Caribbean islands. This is why it is so foolish to designate the colour of a person's skin as the most important thing about them. The discrimination that exists is generally that exercised by authority against people who won't do as they're told. This is why the current white liberal obsession with "racism" is so dangerous. Black people should not allow themselves to be drawn into it. It is extremely divisive.
    1
  15162.  @zzztefanos  I think it was Malcolm X who said something about white liberals being the most dangerous people in the world. He was probably right. Racism was dying a death until it was revived by the left for political gain. I resent this because my generation was the first to really fight back against it - and we pretty much had won until socialists discovered that the working class didn't want them and decided to create a new oppressed proletariat as the beneficiaries of their self-righteousness.
    1
  15163.  @zzztefanos  Just a PS and perhaps a helpful hint for the day. Back in the late sixties and early seventies I found it useful to carry around a DS cop's card and also put a couple of station numbers in my address book. That way if you get shaken down they think you're a grass and let you go. Worked for me twice.
    1
  15164.  @JourneyLT  Ashkenazi Jews have a distinct genetic profile.
    1
  15165.  @robertscott961  No-one living in the real world.
    1
  15166.  @ChuckyRed06  Ah Diddums.
    1
  15167.  @marktrotter8971  None of these wild figures are "facts". They are propaganda designed for children and fools.
    1
  15168.  @batmanonabike3119  I have a fair idea of what he is - and a pretty firm idea of what he isn't: namely the devil in human form "news" channels like this constantly try to make him
    1
  15169.  @lilyj8420  Why? Because I can still see no evidence of serious wrongdoing by this man, despite years of constant efforts by highly paid professionals to find it?
    1
  15170.  @ericgranberg8893  Wealthy American narcissists (aided by a highly partial "security service") have been entirely unsuccessful in getting rid of this interloper, whose "misdeeds" have so far eluded the burden of proof and will, I think, continue to do so. The object of the exercise seems merely to blacken his name, and this has not worked very well either. What exactly has he done wrong that other businessmen in his position have not?
    1
  15171.  @andrewfrancis3591  I don't think the Dirty Digger is even a major player in this debacle. He is just one of the more obvious manipulators with an axe to grind.
    1
  15172.  @lilyj8420  Then lift the scales from my eyes and tell me what he has done wrong which compares in any way with the procession of errors committed by his successor.
    1
  15173.  @andrewfrancis3591  Murdoch is motivated purely by a need to make money. He has no ethic other than that.
    1
  15174.  @ericgranberg8893  Trump believes (and with some justification) that the security services fixed the election in order to replace him with yet another of their puppets. He may be right, or he may be wrong, but it is a view which fits the situation. Democracy in the US is something of a myth.
    1
  15175.  @ericgranberg8893  What nonsense. What had Trump to do with abandoning billions of dollars of military hardware to the Taliban? Or allowing Washington hawks to spark the current war in Ukraine? Or increasing the price of fuel to such levels? The list goes on and on. Biden is a senile incompetent who is merely the puppet of villains.
    1
  15176. Nothing sadistic about it. If you are double vaccinated and get infected you will achieve near-total immunity at the cost of a runny nose. And NZ is heading for big trouble. Although it is true that vaccinations reduce symptoms in the fit and healthy they offer very little protection to those whose immune systems are seriously compromised, such as the very elderly or those with long-standing medical conditions. This means that NZ, like Australia, will face an onslaught of infections in a population protected only by the inadequate immunity provided by vaccination alone. The virus will reach the elderly and the vulnerable and they will die.
    1
  15177. More material harm than Nick Sandmann- who trousered millions after far less a degree of defamation?
    1
  15178. One can only hope this is last-ditch move by the CIA and US war pigs before Trump comes in to stop their evil nonsense.
    1
  15179.  @petervanwyngaard4788  Come off it. They've got worse!
    1
  15180. Why does the MSM have so much 'traction'?. Because we let them! Lies and smears go unchallenged by the normie media. Cut them off. Infiltration is pointless. We must present alternatives.. Is it beyond the power of speakers of truth to create and support platforms which as well as allowing anti-establishment views, enable them to be presented to the poor, deluded.brainwashed masses?
    1
  15181.  @sinenomine2681  But he is telling the truth, Deregulation and other measures led to a booming economy until the Kung Flu hit. You really must try to get over the Orange Man Bad syndrome you know. Hydroxychloroquine doesn't make you high as far as I know, but it is a proven prophylactic against Coronavirus, as of course Trump said many months ago.
    1
  15182.  @JoeyBlogs007  Similar to Ukraine then.
    1
  15183.  @chaoscorsair  Eskimos manage. And within a few days the trenches will be as hard as concrete. The Russians will then stop lying down and advance across ground as hard as concrete until they reach the borders of Lugansk and Donetsk where, unless Zelensky surrenders, they will probably build new trenches. Of concrete.
    1
  15184.  @jdocean1  Trying saying my name surname first.
    1
  15185.  @Kingcarparpeggio  Are you suggesting that Russians never go outside in winter? That they don't know how to light fires? That the Ukrainians have superior underwear which will allow them to survive while the Russians won't? Try thinking instead of swallowing ridiculous propaganda wholesale.
    1
  15186. Covid in anything like a threatening form is not happening in young children either. Bubbles and isolation are panic measures with no healthcare foundation whatsoever.
    1
  15187. The right what, twit?
    1
  15188.  Potato Wavez  Another lie. The cells are from placentas.
    1
  15189.  @brianfreeman8290  I'm beginning to regret it now. Usually the grammar karma means I will make a howler myself before long!
    1
  15190.  @brianfreeman8290  I'm beginning to regret it now. Usually the grammar karma will mean I'll make a howler myself before long!
    1
  15191.  @brianfreeman8290  Sadly, grammar karma means I'll probably make a howler myself before long!
    1
  15192.  @brianfreeman8290  "I'm beginning to regret this now. Knowing my luck, grammar karma will probably make me commit a howler myself soon enough!"
    1
  15193. Or else whar? There is no threat here - just the promise that if he does the decent thing and attempts to right the wrong he has been a party to, history might just forgive him.
    1
  15194. Am I banned?
    1
  15195.  @ADifferentBias  I dunno. YouTube seems to be removing my heresies with startling frequency. I know you wouldn't do that. My post was simply part of a strategy to determine who exactly is out to silence me.
    1
  15196.  @altheogre  Should anyone?
    1
  15197.  @thomasselle1110  I'm English and I don't - at least not politically. This notion of the Tories aligning with Russia is a bit of an absurdity though. One of the biggest contributors to Tory funds is a Ukrainian nationalist.
    1
  15198.  @thomasselle1110  The Ukrainian concerned, Alexander Temerko, is a member of the Conservative Party and is thought to have donated around £1.6 million to party funds. He also paid close on £100,000 for a bronze statue of David Cameron to be placed in London's Carlton Club. He hates Putin, and recently described him as "utterly mad." He is also a keen advocate for a no-fly zone above his beloved homeland. I have no idea whether or not he anticipates a peerage as a consequence of his support. In the meantime he seems content with government aid given to his various business interests, especially those in the north-east of England.
    1
  15199.  @thomasselle1110  I don't think that there can be any doubt that Alexander Temerko is a firm Ukrainian patriot, and therefore a nationalist in the broadest sense. He has strongly condemned the Russian invasion and comes from the Donbass area and bitterly resents the Russian occupation. He is on Ukraine's side, not Russia's, without question. He is also of course a firm supporter of the European Union and fought against Brexit. All this must surely counter-balance the ridiculous notion that Russian money influenced Brexit and still somehow affects British foreign policy.
    1
  15200. Here we are! A load of daft rules no-one takes any notice of. Britain at its best.
    1
  15201.  @andrewwotherspoona5722  No guarantee of that. I suppose it depends on how you define "elites". The sons of the wealthy and privileged died in their thousands in the wars of the twentieth century and Biden's son Beau served in both Bosnia and Iraq, just as an example.
    1
  15202.  @keithlohmeyer  Comparisons between the situation now and the situation in the 1930's are foolish and a sign of mental weakness.
    1
  15203. @markmierzejewski9534 Many Americans want him back, it seems. Very sensible of them. And Putin will win in Ukraine whoever is in office in the US. The victory will just be easier and less bloody if Trump is returned.
    1
  15204. @markmierzejewski9534 Trump in office will certainly end the war more quickly. It will also slow down America's inevitable decline.
    1
  15205.  @keithlohmeyer  The situation bears no meaningful comparisons whatsoever.
    1
  15206. @markmierzejewski9534 I hadn't realised the election had already taken place.
    1
  15207.  @malcolmstockbridge2569  How so?
    1
  15208.  @brianferguson7840  Then your dogs would be a political party. Many people would vote for them in preference to Labour, I'm sure.
    1
  15209.  @brianferguson7840  Then your dogs would be a political party. They could well be preferable to some other parties already in existence, although I don't think it would be possible to actually vote for them.
    1
  15210. But the last rally he organised went off perfectly peacefully.
    1
  15211.  @aaronhooks6258  Perfectly sane, often witty. Not the greatest orator in the world by any means but compared with Kamala and Joe he's a Cicero.
    1
  15212.  @aaronhooks6258  I see no evidence for this whatsoever.
    1
  15213.  @aaronhooks6258  What vacuum? He has had a very busy speaking schedule.
    1
  15214.  @aaronhooks6258  Not in this election. I'm British.
    1
  15215.  @aaronhooks6258  I'm not altogether surprised!
    1
  15216. Here's a fact: Police arrested more than 9,000 foreign nationals for sexual offences in the first 10 months of last year, making up 26.1% of the total sex crimes. Analysis by the Centre for Migration Control, of official figures, said foreigners were 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex offences as British people, with nearly 165 arrests per 100,000 of the migrant population against 48 per 100,000 for Britons.
    1
  15217. He'll probably get an Emmy.
    1
  15218. But the war in Ukraine IS America's fault. If the US and its NATO stooges had kept their noses out of it, Ukraine and Russia could have settled their quarrel without this horrendous death toll.
    1
  15219. It's difficult to see what advantage can be brought to either side by this action. If it was done by the Russians to forestall a Ukrainian advance - then why now? There is even a suggestion that it will AID such an advance by making crossing the Dnieper easierfor waterborne troops . Like Nordstream there is a chance we will never get to the truth It could even have been an accident as the result of earlier missile damage or,quite possibly, been carried our by saboteurs in the employ of a third party.
    1
  15220.  @dpelpal  Put another record on!
    1
  15221.  @p.strobus7569  Apart from potentially flooding Russian defences, cutting off water supplies to Russian-held Crimea, threatening the safety of a Russian-held nuclear power station, being great PR and even potentially making a waterborne crossing easier, that is
    1
  15222.  @angrydoggy9170  But why do it now? I entirely accept it could be as simple as that but if so it's pretty inept and pretty bad timing
    1
  15223.  @richardkey1678  Not Putin. He's all there - but he is cursed with some really dumb generals, it seems.
    1
  15224. ​ @superhumantrueman They put themselves there largely. The Russian army is riddled with corruption and incompetence so ingrained that even Stalin couldn't eradicate it. Putin, fearing a backlash, largely lets them get on with it while relying on mercenaries to do the real fighting.
    1
  15225. But it won't be done by force. Grow a brain!
    1
  15226. Russia leads the world in nuclear technology.
    1
  15227.  @dpelpal  You are a trier,ain'tcha?
    1
  15228.  @three-eyedbro  Not only the rods but entire power stations. The latest is in Hungary.
    1
  15229.  @anyaharris5617  What mistakes? Be specific. "They don't much exist" - if that's what you're on about - is perfectly good English
    1
  15230.  @RepublicaSindicalista_doBrasil  And it wasn't a mistake! The fact that this twit thinks it was one means, according to her logic, that SHE'S one!!!
    1
  15231.  @bonnie7898  I didn't mean to imply that you were.
    1
  15232. It's not hate. It's love. Love for your country.
    1
  15233.  @MichaelReaddin  It just happens to be true. The idea that support for Reform is based on racial hatred is a myth.
    1
  15234.  @MichaelReaddin  There's more hate from the Left than there is from the Right. The idea that Reform supporters are all racists is simply wrong.
    1
  15235. A senile crook and probable puppet of foreign influence cheats his way into the White House while attention is directed to a few hundred good ole' boys who had the nerve to get upset about it. The misdirection is masterly. Whoever is behind this sinister conjuring trick they're really, really good at it. Boy are you being suckered!
    1
  15236.  Ricardo Shillyshally  It passes the time. I'm laid up and can't go out hunting for a week or so. The squirrels on my estates have gone into hibernation and shooting rats is a bit of a bore. Taunting braindead lefties is a poor substitute, but it'll have to do for the time being
    1
  15237. @Quote Leading to escalation and much, much more death and destruction. Giving in to Russia's entirely reasonable demands would be a preferable solution, don't you think?
    1
  15238.  @matsmith5800  Followed immediately by a nuke on Washington. Their paths might even cross!
    1
  15239. @ "Didn't feel like it" is probably reason enough.
    1
  15240.  @ChrisSmith-mu1we  Even if true - so what?
    1
  15241. @ Russia has already won the war in Ukraine.
    1
  15242.  @Noel-ji8nm  Tell me more.
    1
  15243. Ah, the typical leftist buffoon's view of history.
    1
  15244. Which will hopefully be crushed with the full force of military might.
    1
  15245. So BLM supporters, for instance, who set fire to buildings would be far right according to Starmer, would they? And Muslims who assault policemen or stick knives in people?
    1
  15246. Sexual degeneracy and moral turpitude. Just what a collapsing empire needs.
    1
  15247. What a dreadful mistake it was giving these ignorant provincials their illusion of independence.
    1
  15248.  @RudolphoAqui  You don't really believe such tripe, do you? Russia has no borders - and nor does any civilisation. That's the quote. Want Alaska back? Possibly - but not enough to go to war over it. These scare stories are just excuses for profitable military spending.
    1
  15249.  @RudolphoAqui  Oh dear. How can you give credibility to such nonsense? Russia has no borders - but nor does any civilisation. That's the quote. Alaska? Well, why not? The people there might do worse.
    1
  15250.  @nooboftheyear7170  The Budapest Memorandum is history. It was a bad treaty and circumstances have changed to such a degree as to make it totally irrelevant.
    1
  15251.  @nooboftheyear7170  So what? Treaties are invariably broken or overtaken by events. The law doesn't come into it. What "law" anyway?
    1
  15252.  @nooboftheyear7170  Well done! Now up to bed, it's time for your milk and cookies.
    1
  15253. They don't work. They just put off the inevitable.
    1
  15254. He is on the right track. It is you who is being brainwashed. "Subramian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology." Google the above and also the current infection rates in states where vaccination rates are highest and lowest. You might get a bit of a shock.
    1
  15255.  @vinsonche9088  Don't be an idiot. You must know that YouTube wipes direct links. All you have to do is Google the title of the paper, which is published by the US National Library of Medicine as well as by the European equivalents. The good old days of blue writing are gone. Do it. This is real.
    1
  15256.  @markbriten6999  It's published in most international science libraries. including the US National Library of Medicine. It is quite new and the peer-review process (for what its worth)is current.
    1
  15257. Dead parrot.
    1
  15258. Define "sovereign" and why it means you can't invade a territory which claims to be it.
    1
  15259.  @icu17siberia  No. Probably Putin would have stepped up his actions and it would all be over - with Crimea and Eastern Ukraine returned permanently to Russia, where they belong.
    1
  15260.  @righanrook476  What about the second part of my question?
    1
  15261. Fauci is a fraud and a charlatan.
    1
  15262.  @john7787  All civilians were offered the opportunity to get out. Many who tried were shot by the Ukrainians. Even now there are very many citizens of Mariupol who look upon this war as a war of liberation. As for casualties - we just don't know. But we do know that at least 1,400 people of Donbass have been killed by Ukrainian forces over the past eight years.
    1
  15263.  @Zerox_Prime  It fits the facts.
    1
  15264.  @john7787  There are several videos showing fleeing citizens saying they were shot at by the Azov Battalion while they saw others actually killed -and it certainly fits the behaviour of these Ukrainian Nazi fanatics.. As to the Donbass casualties there are war memorials to the slain, including the Alley of Angels which commemorates the children killed.
    1
  15265. Time Radio provides a serious rival!
    1
  15266. Give this a look, just out. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  15267. But they are not a native population.
    1
  15268.  @compassroses  Suffering fools is, alas, a necessary concomitant of decency. Gladly or not.
    1
  15269. Why should anyone allow their opinions to be judged by a pink-haired, self-satisfied git of indeterminate sex with a mickey mouse degree from an obscure university?
    1
  15270.  @tonysherrard  I know my own - more or less. But there are many now whose belief in their country was a prop against being at the bottom of the pile. That prop is pulled away when they see hundreds of thousands of foreigners being treated better than they are by governments they don't understand.
    1
  15271.  @tonysherrard  I know mine, but I feel very sorry for those who thought they were privileged Britons despite their low social position - and who now realise they are lesser than dirt in the eyes of their rulers.
    1
  15272.  @sunsun6877  Some of the very real affidavits are readily available. The rest are being sensibly withheld until the appropriate court hearing and to protect the signatories and their children from threats from Democrat thugs.
    1
  15273.  @MaskOfAgamemnon  That's what courts are for. Which is where they will end up.
    1
  15274.  @MaskOfAgamemnon  You, on the other hand, do not know the difference between "unsubstantiated" and "not yet substantiated." In order for an allegation to be substantiated or otherwise it has to pass through a process of substantiation. Your opinions, or the opinions of media numbskulls, are by no means adequate for this purpose.
    1
  15275. No he doesn't. All he has ever done in over 20years in power is to protect Russia's existing borders and economic and security interests.
    1
  15276.  @sensi6457  These countries were invaded not for reasons of conquest, but for security. Russia simply cannot allow them to fall into the US sphere of influence.
    1
  15277.  @zoomeraygun1  Entirely serious.
    1
  15278. The BBC are scum.
    1
  15279.  @brynleytalbot778  Actually the Greenland ice cores show a similar event at the end of the 19th century. Anecdotal evidence suggests conditions were similar in the 1920s but apparently ice core data is no use that recently. Something to do with the snow not impacting enough, I believe.
    1
  15280. ​ @arnehofoss9109  Thanks! Many of my links get blocked by YouTube but I'll try one in another post.
    1
  15281. Anyone who believed the lockdown BS was a mug anyway.
    1
  15282. What evidence?
    1
  15283.  @hs342  They are hard to make happen and much less harmful in their effects than you might suppose.
    1
  15284. There is not one single scrap of evidence that any of these events are related to so-called man-made climate change. (which doesn't exist anyway) Be careful Africa. You are being colonised again. Carbon futures traders are on the way to buy your allocations for a handful of beads and some nails. They will appear on the markets next day priced at millions.
    1
  15285. Hosni Mubarak Careful. We have before in a previous existence.
    1
  15286. Anyone who has ever fallen foul of America's corrupt and inefficient judicial system will now have a good reason to vote for a fellow victim.
    1
  15287. If only it was that simple.......
    1
  15288. Tdey will probably come with pre-trained Polish crews in Ukrainian uniforms.
    1
  15289. Why is the Left's answer to everything? Lock 'em up and all will be well.
    1
  15290. And if we rely on renewable energy we will die.
    1
  15291.  ger du  Sweden's main sources of energy are hydroelectricity and nuclear. Are you suggesting that it's OK to die as long as you do it in a carbon-free atmosphere? Or have I misunderstood you, and this is purely a metaphysical assertion?
    1
  15292. @UCPTygZE6jyblCvSTyejFiLw Nuclear fine. Renewables -largely a waste of time and resources. Emissions? Who cares?
    1
  15293.  ger du  No. Merely unintelligible.
    1
  15294. Thank you for your profound political insights.
    1
  15295.  @markmierzejewski9534  I think he was showing entirely justified contempt for the proceedings.
    1
  15296.  @markmierzejewski9534  Farts stink. So does American so-called justice.
    1
  15297.  @markmierzejewski9534  Farts stink. So does this court case.
    1
  15298. Paul Cooper But surely the predictive accuracy of AGW has been extremely poor? To the layman it seems that really NONE of the disasters have actually occurred thusfar, especially with regard to sea levels. To make matters worse hysterical journalistic claims (starving polar bears, disappearing glaciers etc etc) are regularly debunked. The "science" is more and more beginning to look like intellectual conceit. I suppose if you spend years and years learning stuff and being tested on it and getting better jobs the more stuff you can repeat, then the pressure to believe the theories you have been taught must be pretty immense. Prediction is dangerous - especially in the case of AGW when there are clear political and financial motives for placing a premium on carbon emissions.
    1
  15299. loathz "Settled" in theory and by laboratory experiment. The real atmosphere, however, shows many signs of refusing to conform.
    1
  15300.  @ADifferentBias  A cretin who doesn't understand words but who has somehow managed to write twelve extremely readable and well-reasoned books. How many have you written?
    1
  15301.  @alphanumeric9793  I think J.K. Rowling also criticised it on stylistic grounds, which says something. Mind you, I think it probable that Moggy is being castigated for his outdated attitudes more than for his literary performance.
    1
  15302.  @timothyharris4708  I doubt Moggy would compare himself with your first tranche of recommendations - nor even with the second, I daresay. Still the books wot he wrote are books just the same, and their existence refutes Phil's claim, do they not? ( I have to admit that Enid Blyton's works have given me far greater pleasure than any of the authors you mention, by the way.)
    1
  15303.  @mikeborsos8621  No. But they would be entertaining. Or controversial. Or both. And they would be books. And you would have to have some idea how words work to write them.
    1
  15304.  @timothyharris4708  It says you don't need "style" to be a best-selling author. When it comes to the effective use of language Enid Blyton has both Rowling and Moggie knocked into a cocked hat. (And most of your revered authors also!) She has both style and narrative ability. Rowling is good at creating imagery, which is why she has succeeded in a world where visual imagery via film and TV has become paramount. Her language is often quite wincingly leaden though. As for your great thinkers, the complexity of their ideas often makes lucidity a challenge. Ae someone who reads for entertainment more than in the hope of erudition, many of their apparently penetrating insights are, alas, beyond my scope.
    1
  15305.  @timothyharris4708  Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
    1
  15306.  @timothyharris4708  The quote was from John Stuart Mill of course, which you may have recognised since he did also remark that the liberty of the individual must be limited to prevent him making himself a nuisance to other people- or something along those lines. Cheers!
    1
  15307.  @timothyharris4708  It was a tremendous strain. I don't think I'll be doing it again for a while.
    1
  15308.  @carlossaraiva8213  Many would say that the English language reached the height of perfection and elegance during the 18th century. Your post, by the way, contains very many mis-spellings and other errors. You clearly didn't attend Eton, but as your name suggests you are a foreigner of some sort I suppose you may be forgiven such infelicities.
    1
  15309.  @GeirRssaak  I'm so tired of this tired old fascist trope. Pull your head out of the 1930s, why don't you?
    1
  15310.  @GeirRssaak  Get your head out of the 1930s, why don't you?
    1
  15311. They have to tell the truth every now and again.
    1
  15312.  @atomiccritter6492  Restrictions are undoubtedly killing more people than covid itself. Here's another conspiracy site for you: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30229-1/fulltext
    1
  15313.  @lazytitan9987  "Our estimates are based on tentative assumptions and represent a wide range of outcomes. Nonetheless, they show that, if routine health care is disrupted and access to food is decreased (as a result of unavoidable shocks, health system collapse, or intentional choices made in responding to the pandemic), the increase in child and maternal deaths will be devastating. We hope these numbers add context as policy makers establish guidelines and allocate resources in the days and months to come." I draw your attention to the line "or intentional choices made in responding to the pandemic." And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Millions will die and suffer across the world - mostly young and mostly poor - as the result of our selfish efforts to give a few more months of existence to those who have already had a long turn at life, and many of whom scarcely know they are alive anyway.
    1
  15314.  @lazytitan9987  Restrictions are designed to allow governments time to get their healthcare service in order ready to deal with an influx of patients. And that's it. To conflate "food shortages" with Brexit is typical of the distasteful way certain people have sought to politicize this pandemic, and in no way comes within the remit of this study. Yes - let the disease run rampant. Now we have vaccines which can go some way to protecting the vulnerable, and the knowledge that the young and healthy will survive, to carry on hiding in our bedrooms pretending that death does not exist is both folly and cowardice.
    1
  15315.  @lazytitan9987  The health service managed perfectly well during the previous two waves - despite propaganda to the contrary. Remember the Nightingale Hospitals - never used but full of beds and equipment? Instead of wasting billions on test and trace the government should have organised rush courses to bring ward and theatre nurses up to an ICU standard sufficient to monitor covid patients, but even without that the health service coped. The shortage of lorry drivers and vegetable pickers which appears to be the prime cause of such food shortages as there are has nothing whatsoever to do with the pandemic and should be kept as an entirely separate issue.
    1
  15316.  @lazytitan9987  Restrictions only slow down the number of cases. Despite poor planning the health service coped admirably. Figures show that while some areas were under pressure, there was plenty of spare capacity in other areas. You are right in that the government should have ensured that the health services were geared up to deal with subsequent waves. Whether the present level of service is adequate we will just have to see. Given that symptoms are far less severe this time around it seems likely that it well may be. Another panic-stricken lockdown will merely put off the inevitable - as previous measures of a similar nature clearly have done.
    1
  15317.  @lazytitan9987  The utter stupidity of forcing them to isolate is the whole point. The chances of either of them passing it on to anyone else or even having it the first place are minimal. And even if they did have it it would be no worse than a cold and that applies to anyone they may give it to. The "pingdemic" is currently doing more harm than the pandemic - as indeed have been most measures taken to combat it.
    1
  15318.  @lazytitan9987  The knock on effects of lockdowns on world poverty are irrefutable. As for their effects in the countries where they have been implemented their cost is measurable, whereas their benefits are not. They have been called the biggest public health disaster in modern history by at least one highly reputable epidemiologist So yes, people are suggesting it. Your desire to twist everything into a political weapon against the Tories and Brexit does you little credit, if I may say so. I doubt very much we would have been better served by Labour, but once again this is imponderable. What is not imponderable is the effect of lockdowns upon health generally - both mental and physical - as well as creating pressures on the economy which will still being felt long after covid is forgotten.
    1
  15319.  @lazytitan9987  Before anything - I don't want to absolve this government of responsibility. Far from it. They have behaved appallingly, Johnson especially. I do not believe it is possible to extrapolate what the death toll would have been without restrictions. Epidemiologists and mathematicians are practically at daggers drawn. Computer modelling, it seems, can be tweaked to arrive at practically any conclusion you choose. I prefer to look at countries and US states where restrictions have been mandated and compare their results with countries and states where they have not been. And I can see no appreciable difference. So it cannot justifiably be claimed that thousands of lives have been saved. It can be claimed, however, just as one small example, that in 2020, after years of steady decline, half a million more people -mostly young - died of TB because resources were diverted to the pointless task of keeping 90-year olds alive. Dirt farmers are going bust and their children are dying because they cannot get their produce to market and cannot get it distributed anyway because firms in the UK and Europe are locked down. It's utter madness. We should have bitten the bullet months ago and now that the vaccines are here we have no excuse not to do so now.
    1
  15320.  @lazytitan9987  Since you're into the comparisons game, why not compare Brazil with neighbouring Peru where the death total by head of population is higher, despite rigid lockdown restrictions enforced by the military? If you want to look at Africa compare death tolls in countries where malaria is endemic to those where it is not. You might find that more interesting and worthwhile. You might need someone to explain factorisation to you also. And climatology and demographics. In the UK the average age of those who have died is above the average age of deaths as a whole. The largest single category of deaths is men in their nineties. Deaths below the age of 40 are statistically negligible and all deaths have occurred in people with pre-existing severe medical conditions. A good proportion of the deaths which occurred in the second wave happened to people whose care had been impacted by restrictions. Of that you can be sure. And to answer your question I am in my seventies and have type 2 diabetes and hypertension. And would jump off a cliff tomorrow if I thought it would give my grandchildren a greater chance of having a decent, fulfilling life.
    1
  15321.  @lazytitan9987  It is utterly absurd and meaningless to compare covid statistics purely on population numbers. Covid kills mainly old people, therefore the proportion of elderly in the population is going to be a major factor. (As indeed has been the case with the UK.) And malaria is far from extraneous or irrelevant. The countries where malaria is most prevalent show an astonishing low level of covid deaths. Your chosen example of Nigeria for example accounts for 23% of all malaria deaths and has a covid death rate of 1.06 per 100,000 of population. Other malarial countries Mozambique(3.63),Congo (.020) and Tanzania(.04) show the same trend. This is clearly of greater significance than the fact that Nigeria's population is similar to that of Brazil. And how about countries with similar populations to both, such as Pakistan (10.52) and Indonesia (26.50) what conclusions can you draw from these comparisons? None, that's what. With all due respect I really think you have to get it out of your head that "bad" covid results have anything much to do with nasty Mr Bolsonaro, or nasty Mr Johnson or nasty Mr Trump. Natural pre-existing conditions have far more to do with performance than any amount of human intervention. These may include climatic conditions, inbuilt genetic predispositions, demographics, population densities and -as is the case with Peru and Brazil totally crappy healthcare systems which preceded the outbreak.
    1
  15322.  @lazytitan9987  There are no such confluences - and Nigeria has done better because there is a clear confluence between countries where malaria is endemic and low covid death rates. This may be due to the widespread use of hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic or because resistance to earlier malarias has caused an inbuilt resistance to covid. The comparative excellence of the healthcare systems of Brazil and Nigeria is not particularly relevant, given these facts. As for leadership I don't think that the sterling qualities of the rulers of the Central African Republic or Papua New Guinea have had much influence on those two countries' low death rates any more than the fascist bastards who run Belgium and Montenegro can be blamed for their countries' poor performances. In many Asian countries genetic factors are now emerging as very significant factors in performance. As for Australasia, while it is entirely possible that isolation and swift imposition of strict controls may have saved them, other factors could well be relevant. The question remains: what do they actually expect to happen when they come out of their shells? How long are they going to stay there? As for New Zealand in particular, babies there are dying of colds and other usually mild infections because, thanks to lockdowns, their immune systems have not be allowed to develop.
    1
  15323.  @lazytitan9987  You have neither corrected me nor proved my logic to be in any way faulty. The reverse is true if anything. The substance in question does not cure covid nor prevent it. It merely strengthens the cells' resistance and reduces the severity of symptoms. It does this both for malaria and covid, as well as a number of other feverish infections. It is, after all, just a souped up version of quinine. The extremely low covid death rate in malarial countries is just as likely to be due to defences built up by many generations of responding to rapidly changing malaria variants. Although it seems important to your mindset to suppose that right-wing leadership has lead to disastrous consequences this is not so, as I have demonstrated by example. No-one has got this right, except through chance and favourable circumstances. No amount of leadership could have overcome the fact that there are many very elderly people in Britain, many very obese people in the US and many very undernourished people in Brazil.
    1
  15324.  @lazytitan9987  Nor it does. It's purely a prophylactic. It has to get into the lung cells before the virus arrives.
    1
  15325. I think she's fucking great.
    1
  15326. So what?
    1
  15327. Who pass it down through job creation.
    1
  15328. PMQ's are a theatrical farce. You might as well try to judge a politician's ability in a farting contest.
    1
  15329. More to the point -who's supporting NATO apart from NATO?
    1
  15330.  @greenredblue  OPEC?
    1
  15331.  @TheInfamousMrFox  Of course NATO is fighting. It is supplying weapons and training and incentives and support for the US, which is Russia's true adversary here. The Ukrainians are just doing the dying.
    1
  15332.  @TheInfamousMrFox  NATO is the adversary. Ukraine is merely the battleground, and its soldiers are NATO's cannon fodder. NATO created an army of 600,000 Ukrainians in order to intimidate Russia. That army is now decimated and Ukraine is having to supplement it with raw civilians. Russia has sent in its raw troops and its conscripts to soak them up and has retained its elite battalions of battle-hardened professionals and mercenaries to defend Donbass and Crimea in the next and hopefully final stage of the war.
    1
  15333.  @Muzakman37  Not a lot is it? NATO, the Anglosphere and a few American subsidiaries.
    1
  15334. Unlike you, obviously.
    1
  15335.  @claudiaxander  The largely Russian people have mostly got out of the way and moved to Russia for the time being. They are returning to places like Mariupol, which is being rebuilt, and will return to the rest of Donbass as towns and cities and industries are resurrected.
    1
  15336.  @claudiaxander  They're not there any more. They've mostly moved to Russia while the war goes on, and are returning slowly as the liberated territories are rebuilt.
    1
  15337.  @claudiaxander  They're not forced relocations at all. And since where they come from is now in Russia, then having a Russian passport seems only sensible. They could have headed West into Ukraine if they wished, as indeed many have.
    1
  15338. BLM fanatic and black supremacist according to his social media.
    1
  15339.  @lanamaksi8965  I think he was a surprisingly good President. I was quite amazed at how well he did, considering all the dirt constantly thrown at hm. Tump Derangement Syndrome is real. Trump's enemies have weaponised and focussed the natural hatred so prevalent in stupid people, and turned it to their advantage.
    1
  15340.  @AnonYmous-ew8mf  God is Heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
    1
  15341.  @AnonYmous-ew8mf  The words of the wise are as goads
    1
  15342.  @AnonYmous-ew8mf  Many kings have sat down upon the ground; and one that was never thought of hath worn the crown
    1
  15343.  @AnonYmous-ew8mf  The heart of kings is unsearchable.
    1
  15344. Unfortunately Joe Biden's tax returns didn't show the immense amount of bribes he has taken over the years.
    1
  15345. BBC lefties and race-baiting professionals can clutch their pearls as much as they like - but this report tells the truth. And everyone outside their bubble knows it.
    1
  15346. Putin is expected to announce that following the inclusion of Donbass in the Russian Federation the "special military operation" is over and he is now dealing with a military invasion of Russia, with all that this implies. America can throw money at this conflict, but not brains.
    1
  15347. In Europe more than 60% of people in ICUs with covid are unvaccinated as are more than 80% who die. None of this happens in America of course. Ha Ha.
    1
  15348. Money laundering by drug dealers, of course.
    1
  15349.  @stc3145  You just believe the state controlled Western media.
    1
  15350.  @stc3145  In that case I assume the Russian point of view is fully and fairly presented on major news channels?
    1
  15351. I rather think grooming gangs and opportunist immigrants being put up in hotels on our money are more responsible for this than anything these people may say.
    1
  15352.  @fitybux4664  A fine would be more appropriate.
    1
  15353.  @gettingannoyedquick  They don't decide the sentence though, do they? That's for the Democrat judge to do.
    1
  15354.  @gettingannoyedquick  You're joking! That sort of assumes the US judicial system is fair and honest- which it often isn't at the best of times, let alone in this case where it has been commandeered for political gain.
    1
  15355.  @gettingannoyedquick  I'm sure Trump will appeal and if he manages to beat the system and return to office (which I doubt) he'll be able to pardon himself I hope. That doesn't alter the fact that abuse of the system for attempted political gain debases the system.
    1
  15356.  @JustDucky-d9k  Eastern Ukraine is sitting on approximately 6% of the word's rare and valuable mineral deposits, including around half a million tonnes of lithium discovered near Mariupol shortly before the invasion began. These deposits are worth trillions of dollars. They are what this war is all about.
    1
  15357. I do Stuff How about if C02 doesn't actually do as much to the climate as it appears to do in laboratory experiments? How about if the "hot" computer models are skewered from the start and just become self- fulfilling prophesies? That would be nice.
    1
  15358. Paul Henry The cart is before the horse. Cap and trade is the primary purpose of climate alarmism. Whatever effects carbon emissions have upon climate they are NOTHING like those pretended or predicted at the "hot" end of the scale. Cap and trade does not exist to reduce carbon emissions. It exists in order to make vast sums by trading in permissions to exceed allocated limits. There can be no planned economy until this is realised. Hedge fund trading needs chaos to survive and prosper. This why hedge fund managers support liberal and socialist causes.
    1
  15359. Paul Henry Is there any evidence whatsoever that either of this incidents bear any relation whatsoever to global warming, man-made or otherwise? I think not. Mind you it wouldn't surprise me in the least if there was a computer model now in existence programmed to contain the information that both were entirely caused by AGW.
    1
  15360. Paul Henry Do we though? And even if we do, what proof is there that they are caused by AGW?
    1
  15361.  Justin Rolland  I will have long forgotten you by then. Within the next hour or two probably. But you will be able to see for yourself, won't you?
    1
  15362. That won' be necessary. The war is over.
    1
  15363. Plus the weakness and incompetence of the present US administration can do nothing but encourage Putin.
    1
  15364.  @user-zm5wr2zw2t  Not from Myanmar are you? Or Thailand?
    1
  15365. Where did you get that silly idea from? Every politician in every country in the world lies more or less constantly - but few with the wit, grace and charm of Donald J Trump.
    1
  15366. I keep saying it and I'll say it again - US elections are all fixed and this one will be fixed for Kamala.
    1
  15367.  @mikeholloway2625  Its an understatement if anything. He didn't mention the fleet of Russian tankers taking crude oil to India every day, or the second pipeline to China that's on the way. The sanctions ARE affecting Russia in many many ways, but Europe is suffering too and will end up suffering more in the end.
    1
  15368.  @TheRevan1337  Errr???? So Russia struggled and they didn't happen then? Sounds like they didn't work in that case.
    1
  15369.  @mikeholloway2625  Your little world. maybe. But Russia is not the enemy of India, China, most of the middle East and South America, most Pacific rim countries and chunks of Africa to name but a few million square miles and a few billion people. It is in this bloc where future world prosperity lies. Russia is suffering scarcely at all from this "blockade" and the Christmas lights are blazing in Red Square while Ukrainians huddle around candles. Anna from Russia is doing her Christmas shopping right now live on her YouTube channel. Pay her a visit to see how the other half lives.
    1
  15370.  @mikeholloway2625  No more than is the case with many other countries, I think. Alliances are generally based on economic and geopolitical realities. "Friendship" rarely enters into it.
    1
  15371. The vaccine just don't WORK - at least not like it says on the tin. Infections are slowed up, severe symptoms are reduced, but the virus just carries on - circumventing vaccines as it does ALL efforts to restrain it. Covid 19 is a force of nature. Man-made or not, it proves the truth that the force of sheer vast numbers outweighs all other considerations.
    1
  15372. The Arabs were given Gaza and billions of dollars in start-up money, as well as established businesses. They blew it on weapons, fancy uniforms and luxury lifestyles for their beloved leaders. Now it's time for civilised people to move in.
    1
  15373. But watching lefties foam at the mouth is really very funny.
    1
  15374. Silly old them.
    1
  15375. Do you realise how many innocent Trump supporters have been subjected to vile abuse and assault thanks the channels such as this? You should be deeply ashamed.
    1
  15376.  @m0dulo258 Can't say that about Antifa, BLM or Muslim fundamentalist though, because they are all such wonderful people. They are YouTube algorithm, honestly they are.
    1
  15377.  @rickdelatour823  Beyond counting. I'll try to send details, one by one in separate posts but YouTube and the owners of this channel with block them I'm sure. You're living in a communist-controlled police state and you don't even know it.
    1
  15378.  @georgereynolds2276  Why? He's all that stands between America and anarchy, to be closely followed by a Marxist-controlled police state which you will learn to love, or die.
    1
  15379.  @m0dulo258  See? You CAN say that, but there a lot of things I CAN'T say.
    1
  15380.  @m0dulo258  I have very clear definitions of both terms. Instigating a condition of anarchy under which civil control is dismantled is the first stage of the Communist revolution as outlined by Lenin and Engels in various of their writings. Order is then restored by the revolutionaries with the assistance of "useful idiots" who may subsequently be disposed of as the proletariat assume the task of running the state according to the principles of Marxism. Marxism is a theory of history which proposes(among many, many other things) that the labour of the proletariat should replace capital as the driving force behind economic expansion, and that the means of production should pass into the hands of the state, as representing the proletariat. Contemporary Marxism, developed by academics, recognises that the proletariat has rejected this idea but that despite this the principle of state control of all aspects of society should be maintained. To this end they are attempting to create a substitute proletariat, consisting of disaffected groups such as racial and sexual minorities, as well as college students and former college students who have passed through an indoctrination process laughingly referred to as "higher education." These are the useful idiots and the Democrat party is the chosen instrument of anarchy, as described above.
    1
  15381.  @m0dulo258  That's because it wasn't a fair election. Trump has emerged as an unexpected obstacle to the plans of the New World Order ( a slight inconvenience, in the words of George Soros) and has had to be disposed of. The billionaire elitists who run the NWO have applied Soros' techniques as outlined in his marvellous, clever book "The Alchemy of Finance" to directing the dismantling of capitalism and to replacing it with a new economic structure which utilises many aspects of Marxist and Leninist strategy, particularly the mobilisation of "useful idiots" such as yourself. The 2020 election was rigged in a variety of subtle ways, probably by elements within the secret services who have been rigging elections in foreign countries for decades, and know how to do these things. This has given the NWO four years to continue its restructuring programme. The shoeing in of a senile incompetent as President, economic damage through over-reaction to the pandemic, the taking on board of "green" policies with consequent economic damage, the importation of large numbers of foreign migrants and , more recently, clumsy foreign policy decisions, will combine to ensure the US passes into a state of ungovernable confusion concomitant with the state of anarchy required by Marxist/Leninism as a precursor to the institution of a single party state. You, unless you are culled, will own nothing and take no part in serious decision-taking processes, but you will be wonderfully happy. Only Trumpism stands in the way of this glorious future.
    1
  15382.  @georgereynolds2276  It's not a conspiracy theory. The New World Order exists. Under the title of The World Economic Forum it holds a meeting every year at Davos in Switzerland which is attended by world leaders and hedge fund billionaires where future strategies are discussed. The current state of America fits exactly with an existing strategy of destroy and rebuild called The Great Reset. Donald Trump, being an old-school venture capitalist and unindoctrinated in modern political philosophies, has upset plans slightly and has had to be eliminated. This had been done through an unprecedented brainwashing campaign which has led many simple-minded people into visualising him as a demonised figure of no moral worth (Orange Man). This is once again an established Marxist-Leninist tactic and has been employed to denigrate opponents many times, from Leon Trotsky onwards. When even this did not seem to work in 2020, more direct strategies were employed. All this may be checked by referring to independent sources on the Internet.
    1
  15383.  @ceasar8679  NATO was planning an attack on separatist Donbass, which is under Russian protection. The SMO was to forestall this.
    1
  15384.  @epicmonkeydrunk  Because its taking place on Ukrainian territory and Ukrainian forces are getting destroyed before they can enter Crimea and Donbass,
    1
  15385.  @morstyrannis1951  This would perhaps be true if the Russian Federation was the Soviet Union, or that it actually wanted Ukraine. Neither is the case. When it comes to corruption and state brutality there is little to choose between Ukraine and Russia. Both are oligarchies and corrupt to the core. Russia only wants to retain access to the vast mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea to which it feels entitled since it is Russia and Russians who have been taking it out of the ground for over two hundred years. The oligarchs of Ukraine have done deals with the Americans to sell them this multi-trillion dollar resource, and Russia isn't having this. This is the reason for the war, and the idea that Ukraine is fighting for freedom and democracy and the avoidance of tyranny is romantic twaddle, I'm afraid, designed for the consumption of credulous fools.
    1
  15386.  @putte2164  Multiple verifiable sources. Is there anything in particular you would like further information about?
    1
  15387.  @bonnie7898  NATO members, predominately America, spent around $100billion on providing Ukraine with an army. It was this proxy army which was commissioned to regain Donbass and Crimea. Why else would it have been created?
    1
  15388. PRAGMATIC
    1
  15389. Congratutations! A barrage of sound-bites aimed at the mentally defective seems to work very well. The Pavlovian responses in this comments section would make Goebbels and Lenin proud. Are some of these brain-dead fucks actually old enough to vote? Please tell me it isn't so.
    1
  15390.  @Whenitappensyoullknow  Touche! I am British and our political parties aren't even allowed to advertise, much less sell themselves as if they were shaving cream or luxury toilet rolls. I just find it weird. Trump is no intellectual giant, but he is very cunning. And why have the Democrats selected a senile grifter like Biden? And why are they supporting the Marxist BLM? Why are so many of their lies so transparently obvious compared with Trump's mere childish boasting?
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  15391.  @Whenitappensyoullknow  The essential difference of course is that Biden is a political grifter who has achieved office by negotiating the murky world of backhander politics. Trump's enormous advantage is that he is a businessman, not a politician. I always get the idea that when Presidents arrive at the White House for the first time they are taken off somewhere and it is explained to them that while they may think they are the leader of the free world debts accrued during the course of their careers will now have to be repayed - so here is what you have to do, Mr President. No such conversation was possible with Trump, which is why the establishment fears him so much and why the whole Russiagate nonsense was invented. Biden, if elected, will have a great many political debts to pay off, among which the millions given to him via BLM will be but one.
    1
  15392.  @bonnie7898  It absolutely does. No country can be expected to see the fruits of generations of labour and investment snatched from under its nose.
    1
  15393.  @EmmanuelMutinda-g3b  You mean I've got a loss of false propaganda to catch up on?
    1
  15394.  @bonnie7898  No parallel there I'm afraid. And joining a trading bloc which would take at least $13trillion away from Russia is certainly an excuse for trying to prevent it. Peaceful solutions were put forward and were on the verge of being accepted. Russia didn't start this war, America did when it pressured Zelensky not to accept the solution being offered, which was entirely fair and reasonable, and would simply have meant Donbass being declared an autonomous region and thus not subject to EU rules and regulations.
    1
  15395.  @bonnie7898  There were relatively minor infringements of the Minsk ceasefire on both sides, but the main thrust was surely that Ukraine should seek ways of creating regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics. This it patently did not do and instead colluded with the US and NATO and accepted billions of dollars with which to increase its army. It became clear by 2022 that this army was intended to clear the rebels out of the areas they occupied, and so Russia invaded in order to prevent this and to ensure the fighting took place on Ukrainian soil. A re-creation of Minsk was within grasp at Istanbul, but Boris Johnson was sent as an envoy to prevent Ukraine accepting its terms. Once again we see how the greed of Western agencies to lay hands on the mineral wealth of Donbass lies behind this needless and tragic conflict. I cannot see how this situation bears any real comparison with attempts by BRICS to remove the dollar as reserve currency. It will be up to the various nations of the world which currency they trade in, and if they reject the dollar then even at its most bellicose the US cannot go to war with all of them, although it will probably try to sow dissent among them in order that they go to war with one another. America is good at that kind of thing.
    1
  15396. @ There were infringements of the Minsk ceasefire on both sides, but the main thrust was surely that Ukraine should seek ways of creating regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics. This it patently did not do and instead colluded with the US and NATO and accepted billions of dollars with which to increase its army. A re-creation of Minsk was apparently within grasp at Istanbul, but Boris Johnson was sent as an envoy to prevent Ukraine accepting its terms. Once again we see how the greed of Western agencies to lay hands on the mineral wealth of Donbass lies behind this needless and tragic conflict. I cannot see how this situation bears any real comparison with attempts by BRICS to remove the dollar as reserve currency. It will be up to the various nations of the world which currency they trade in, and if they reject the dollar then even at its most bellicose the US cannot go to war with all of them, although it will probably try to sow dissent among them in order that they go to war with one another. America is good at that kind of thing.
    1
  15397. He has a couple of giveaway cards. The treaty terms offered in December might still hold.
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  15398. Islam comes into a different category to almost all other religions. I'd like to believe that the vast majority of Muslims are ordinary decent people - and they almost certainly are - but they have been indoctrinated from birth into a cleverly conceived mindset, based largely on the fear of hell and the promise of eternal bliss. Christianity was once like this, and in some corners it still is, but this doesn't alter the fact that these ordinary, decent people cannot be trusted to behave in an ordinary decent fashion when placed under pressure.
    1
  15399. Same difference.
    1
  15400.  @keza41  You're sucking up the bullshit like a good boy, ain't you?
    1
  15401.  @mick3839  No point. No court case could have come to a resolution before the Electoral College met. The allegations of fraud were put before state senate hearings instead. Here are a couple of examples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin The evidence of fraud is very substantial. However, it seems there is no court with the jurisdiction to hold a hearing.
    1
  15402.  @mick3839  Your attitude is simplistic. The states actually have acted upon the evidence brought before them, and have promised to review procedures in many cases. The fact that no court has been willing to take the case on board is hardly surprising. It is explosive. It has been easy to find excuses not to also. So the great mountain of allegation remains unanswered. It is this which is most important. It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what I think. What DOES matter is the fact that millions of Americans believe they were cheated.
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  15403.  @mick3839  The court transcripts do nothing other than to show the judges' unwillingness to take the cases on board. There is a case to answer. The evidence presented to the state senate hearings shows this very clearly. There is a thousand times more evidence of fraud by the Dems than there ever was for fraud by Trump in 2016. "Go home. Nothing to see here" will not suffice to dispel the very genuine anger felt by millions of Americans. Without a full judicial enquiry that anger will continue to grow and express itself in scenes such as those at the Capitol.
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  15404.  @mick3839  Of course I have read the transcripts. There is a common theme in that the judges, very understandably, are seeking every excuse not to allow the cases into their courts. I also detect a willingness on the part of the lawyers to allow this to be so since there would have been no possibility of any verdict being reached before the meeting of the Electoral College. The meat of the matter was presented to the state senate hearings. Have you yourself watched any of these in any detail?
    1
  15405.  @keza41  This is no laughing matter! The fact is that none of these very serious allegations have passed through any judicial process. The judges had every reason and plenty of excuses not to hear them, but this does not negate the fact that the allegations exist. There are around 1,000 statements from people reporting on everything from bullying observers and deny them access to detailed technical analysis of how Dominion voting systems appear not only be capable of assisting fraud, but were actually specifically designed to do so. The election appears to have been fraudulently conducted. If this is not the case then it is up to those accused to prove it was not so. The fact that a handful of judges refused to hear these cases on largely spurious or technical grounds is neither here no there. Justice not only has to be done, but it has to be seen to be done. And it simply hasn't been.
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  15406. Very well said. The BBC is an enemy of freedom and lost to all reason.
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  15407. I've always thought sportsmen were utter wankers. Nonsense like this confirms my prejudice.
    1
  15408.  @nobbynobbs8182  What lie?
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  15409.  @kitcat4512  That's about it!
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  15410.  @johnkitching2248  Name one thing.
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  15411. The EU was responsible for this war, even more than Zelensky.
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  15412. That's because it doesn't matter much.
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  15413. Very well said. It's about time these ignorant and uninformed Starmerites were given a few facts.
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  15414. Trump gets clicks. And votes.
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  15415. Paranoia.
    1
  15416.  @gloriak140  Secretaries of State, however appointed, cannot change votes. You need Dominion voting machines to do that.
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  15417.  @gloriak140  No. I'm pointing out that the 2020 Presidential election was almost certainly fixed - and even if not, then it was so badly conducted that a huge number of votes cast were invalid. It no longer matters of course, since the falsely elected President is making such a colossal mess of things.
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  15418.  @darrellrees4371  Point them out.
    1
  15419.  @darrellrees4371  What's false about it? It's not even a dichotomy; simply a statement of two differing states of affairs. 1)The election was fraudulently conducted. 2)The election was improperly conducted. In either event Biden was falsely elected, either through deliberate fraud or through improper and inadequate surveillance of votes. This is certain. All that remains uncertain is whether the travesty occurred because of 1) or 2) or some combination of both. The cases are not mutually exclusive, and therefore there is no dichotomy. Logical conclusion: learn logic. And stop using big words when you don't really understand what they mean.
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  15420.  @darrellrees4371  I suppose we might one day need court cases to define words or settle philosophical debates but not yet, not yet. In the meantime you cannot be both alive and dead. That is a dichotomy. You can, however, be both a cheat and a fool. That is not a dichotomy but a fairly commonplace combination, as clearly illustrated in the case of Joe Biden.
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  15421.  @darrellrees4371  No. The two states of affairs must be mutually exclusive to constitute a true dichotomy. They are not. The election could both have been fraudulently conducted and improperly conducted. There is no dichotomy. The premises are not opposed, or even entirely different. They both represent possible and not mutually exclusive interpretations of the causes of a particular event. The key word here is "entirely." It's been along time since I attempted a mathematical formulation of a proposition, and I do not propose to do so now, but I believe you have attributed a positive value to a negative - or possibly the other way around. In any case, may I say how refreshing it is to find someone on this channel who is not entirely illiterate, if a little pompous, even if you are wrong in this instance.
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  15422.  @gloriak140  There is channel called Here Is The Evidence which lists several thousand illustrations of potential fraud and malpractice in the 2020 Presidential election . There are many hours of proceedings of State Senate committees at which such evidence was presented. Then of course there are the ongoing state audits. The Maricopa audit has revealed the existence of 5,000 votes which are highly suspect for one reason or another and which would have been rejected, or at least subject to close scrutiny, in any other election. Your guy was shoehorned in by fraud in order to protect a state-run establishment threatened by Trump. Live with it. We can only be grateful to God's infinite mercy that he is proving to be such an utter abject failure. There's a sort of justice in that.
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  15423.  @gloriak140  You are merely accepting the official line. The Arizona audit showed the existence of 5,000 suspect votes. There will be plenty more elsewhere. What you have to realise is that US elections have always been fraudulent to some extent. It's a can of worms no-one wants to see opened. It's just that 2020 was a particularly egregious example. And there is no tribunal or other means of assessment by which the truth can be obtained because the system is entirely self-cancelling. There is no jurisdiction. The system has tottered along happily enough for decades with the political class and the administrative class dividing the cake up between them and the illusion of democracy comfortably maintained. Then along comes Trump; not a politician, not beholden to anybody. Panic ensues and the establishment and their media lackeys set about a campaign of denigration and when THAT doesn't work they have to fix the election. Trump was the only President ever to get more votes in his second election than in his first and Yet Joe Biden, a senile shoein who didn't even campaign, gets more votes. No way. As I say, it doesn't matter now. America is plunging into chaos as the Dems debts are being paid and Biden's utter incompetence is revealed. All we Trumptards have to do now is sit back and wait for nature to take its course and hope that some semblance of decency can be restored without too much bloodshed.
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  15424.  @darrellrees4371  Ah, an amateur psychiatrist as well as an incompetent logician, eh? The 5,000 suspect votes are merely the tip of the iceberg. There are hours and hours of testimony given to various state hearings after the election. They show, among other things, election workers surreptitiously passing memory sticks from hand to hand, vans arriving in the early hours and unloading crates of ballots with no chain of supervision, cases of ballots being dragged out from beneath tables after observers were told to leave because the count was over, Republican observers being denied access to counts and much more. Election officials can be seen demonstrating how Dominion voting machines can be configured to produce skewed results with a few simple manoeuvres. Statisticians detail the sheer mathematical unlikelihood of the results appearing in the manner that they did. I expect you get your view of the world from CNN or somesuch, so you will probably have seen edited highlights at most. There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence which will never be allowed to undergo a process of true forensic examination. America is rotten to the core and this current administration is not only corrupt but in league with forces determined to reconstruct western civilisation in a new and dreadful image. Resistance is inevitable and, as I say, we can only hope that true democratic process can be restored before it is too late. Civil war is far from being an unlikely prospect as things stand.
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  15425.  @darrellrees4371  I must bow to your expertise, but it remains a fact that such evidence has been presented, as you yourself admit. Not being a mathematician it is a controversy which I am unqualified to enter into.
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  15426.  @gloriak140  I think everyone has moved on. Hopefully some time in the future. under a Trump-style administration. the 2020 election will be investigated and the manner in which it was conducted exposed. In the meantime the state audits will lay the groundwork for this.
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  15427.  @darrellrees4371  You miss the point. The circumstantial evidence exists in great quantity, as illustrated in the many hours of testimony to state hearings and as collected on sites such as Here Is The Evidence. There are no real parallels with the theories you mention. The evidence CAN be objectively examined and evaluated, but the machinery of state prevents this. The 2020 Presidential Election was a travesty on many levels. To pretend otherwise really is an act of self-deluding blindness. No wonder the thought makes you so uncomfortable.
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  15428.  @darrellrees4371  If I was a judge, Trump-appointed or not, I would be extremely reluctant to appoint myself an arbitrator in such a potentially career-crushing matter. Fortunately for judges there is no tribunal with sufficient remit to make the necessary adjudication. Only a state-appointed commission will do and a future Trumpean administration will doubtless appoint one. (The pillow man is brave but foolish soul, and Fox has gone entirely to the dogs of late. If I dust off my tinfoil hat I can imagine an unholy collusion between two of the great men of our age, Rupert Murdoch and George Soros, in creating this transformation.)
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  15429.  @darrellrees4371  I resent the word "idolize". Like a great many Trump supporters I fully recognise his many personal faults and smile wryly at them. He may be a liar but we know when he lies and we don't care because he is not lying to us, he is lying to you. He may be a conman, but he has operated in the private sector and not been subsidised by the taxpayer, as have the crooks and charlatans who occupy Washington and state capitals across America. What you TDS sufferers do not realise is that it is YOU who have been conned: by the slavish establishment media. Trump is not a demon, he is in fact a pretty ordinary Joe who happens to have born with the advantages of great wealth and a considerable amount of innate cunning. He has utilised these advantages in ways in which many Americans recognise. He has done what many of them would have done, concluding by becoming President of the United States against all the odds. It is the American dream come true. They do not care about his spelling and syntax, especially those who have not undergone the process of Marxist indoctrination laughingly referred to as "higher education" in the US. We know plenty of people who don't read much but are still entirely pragmatic, capable and decent. Unlike many college graduates, to whom compliance and credulity have become essential concomitants of success, we question the official line. Always. This is why Trump warned that postal ballots and relaxation of signature verification, covid distancing etc would lead invariably to a crooked election he was merely stating everything we already knew. And he and we were right.
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  15430.  @gloriak140  And the same to you!
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  15431.  @darrellrees4371  Naturally I exempt the precise sciences and engineering from my critique of higher education. The humanities are irredeemably corrupted, however. I gather mathematics is accused of being racist though, so you could be in trouble if you're not careful.
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  15432.  @darrellrees4371  According to Napoleon history is the particular set of lies most people agree upon. The stream of lies foisted upon us is incessant and the ability to discriminate and decide which of the lies is potentially the more truthful is a useful talent. Most news in the mainstream media is fake news. It was ever thus to some degree, but never more so than at present. Globalism and The New World Order present a very real threat to civilisation as we know it and the MSM is largely in the pockets of these forces. CNN lies all the time. So does the BBC and most other outlets. You really have to question EVERYTHING and go back to sources to even get close to something which may resemble the truth. Cancel Culture is the very antithesis of this, and rejecting and demonising books and viewpoints which stray from doctrine is very much a characteristic of the Left, is it not?
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  15433.  @darrellrees4371  Books aimed at children need to be thoroughly vetted, especially when it is clear that they are designed to lay the foundations for the destruction of society in its present form Marxism is a cancer and CRT and transgender rights are vehicles of its spread, having nothing whatsoever to do with improving the lot of black people or people foolish or unfortunate enough to believe they are of a different sex to that indicated by their genitalia. Adults, on the other hand, are fully entitled to read what they like, watch what they like and listen to the views of whoever they like -whether or not you or anyone else considers them to be "batshit crazy." This was not the view in the Soviet Union and nor does it appear to be the view held in many of today's universities. AS for Trump and the pandemic, I am particularly disgusted by the way this dreadful occurrence has been used as a political weapon. Trump was wrong-footed -but so was everyone else. They continue to be so. A great many of the measures introduced to prevent its spread have been entirely counter-productive and America's high death rate owes itself largely to endemic obesity. Macdonalds has killed far more people than Trump, who cannot really be positively accused of killing anyone at all.
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  15434.  @darrellrees4371  More amateur psychiatry - and atypical brainwashed Faucist view of the pandemic. Masks, unless of N95 standard or above, close-fitting and worn at all times, are more or less totally useless at preventing the spread of covid. These "peer-reviewed studies" which pretend otherwise are lab-based fakes. You can buy these things by the yard. No responsible real-world study has been able to find any correlation. In fact masks are likely to have killed more people than they have saved since they induce a sense of false security. This is especially highlighted by the discovery that by far the majority of infections occur through aerosols, not droplets, much less surface contact. People have died through sitting in enclosed unventilated spaces, blithely imagining themselves to be safe because they were wearing their Magic Masks. Covid is only severe to a tiny proportion of the population; predominately the very elderly, although younger people with existing conditions, such as diabetes or obesity, are also at risk, The response to the pandemic has been utterly disproportionate. Far, far more people are dying because of the social and economic effects of the measures taken in attempts to contain the disease than from the disease itself. Once again there is no correlation between lockdowns and eventual case numbers. They merely put off the inevitable and then not for very long. You can find any number of graphs from any number of countries showing the progress of the disease and draw a line where lockdowns were introduced and you will be hard put to find an discernible effect other than a possible slowing down. The trends continue unabated. Sweden is of course the gold standard in this respect. Maskless, and with only limited restrictions in terms of minimising crowd sizes from time to time, it has fared no worse than other countries with similar demographic and a good deal better than some. As for Trump, I repeat I do not idolise him. He is very human with human failings but his responsibility for America's covid death toll is peripheral at most. He was right in many respects though. We should have met this head-on, assessed the risks intelligently and got on with life instead of hiding in corners like scared rats with bits of cloth on our faces.
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  15435.  @darrellrees4371  You can get scientists to prove that the moon is made of green cheese if you pay them enough. And Big Pharma pays well. There was an editorial in The Lancet a couple of years ago which said that about 90% of all published peer-reviewed papers in "prestigious medical journals" are shown to be wrong in the end. I also recommend "Bad Pharma" by Dr Ben Goldacre which shows with great thoroughness how the pharmaceutical industry buys research, rejects the data that does not suit its purpose and systematically supresses research which goes against its financial interests.
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  15436.  @darrellrees4371  Sleep well. A simple look at the graphs of Sweden's infection, hospitalisation and death rates compared with countries with similar demographics proves the point. The economic situation is complex due to Sweden's relationships with less successful countries but on the question of the effects of covid there can be no doubt. Many complex factors affect the spread of covid. It is currently being discovered, for instance, that a number of Asiatic ethnic groups have a built in resistance due to historical exposure to previous covids which did not reach Europe. Australia and NZ remain something of a mystery, but once they throw in the towel we can be fairly sure that a non-immune population will suffer greatly with nothing but relatively ineffective and short-lived vaccines to protect them. This is something I would like to be wrong about, but there we are. The mechanism for the transmission of the disease has now been discovered to be largely through aerosols, which survive longer and travel for greater distances than previously supposed. There really is no escape. When you crawl out of your bunker with your nappy over your gob covid will be there to welcome you. The only way out is - and always has been -for as many healthy people as possible to catch covid and recover, thus providing themselves with long-term immunity and setting up cordons of protection to isolate as far as possible those vulnerable to death and other serious outcomes.
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  15437.  @darrellrees4371  What on earth are you doing going back to April and citing an article which made predictions which didn't come true? And why are you drawing comparisons with neighbours? Do you suggest that geographical proximity is a significant factor in the spread of covid? It is demographics that count as much as anything and despite having a high number of extremely elderly people due to a series of preceding mild flu seasons, Sweden's death rate is far lower than that of the European Union, the US and the UK, to take just three examples. EU 1,836 per million UK 2,105 US 2,300 Sweden 1,485 Source: World in Data These facts speak for themselves. Heavy mitigation measures have very little effect on the long term consequences of covid in terms of deaths -which is really only the genuinely measurable criterion of effect in the long run.
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  15438.  @darrellrees4371  What do you mean a "link" you irritating simpleton? All you have to do is access the death rate graphs for Sweden and other countries with similar demographics and put them side by side. Does your mother still hold your hand when you cross the road? Does she feed you with a spoon while you sit in your high chair? The Lancet article in April clearly predicted dire consequences for Sweden in dealing with Delta. It didn't happen.
    1
  15439.  @darrellrees4371  There is no link because I have done the work myself and have not made any record of it. It is, however, a comparatively simple task to Google Sweden Covid or UK Covid or Germany Covid and look at the case rate and then line up the dates at which such things as mask mandates and lockdowns were introduced and see what consequent reductions there may have been. I can find nothing dramatic at all. You might expect a sudden fall some 2 or 3 weeks after such mandates, but as far as I can see this simply do not happen. Whatever reductions there may be do not affect the curve to any great extent, and even if they flatten it slightly the effect seems to be minimal. Similarly, according to the logic of a mitigation policy, Sweden's relaxed attitude should surely have resulted in disastrous results. But this has not happened. Sweden's performance does not stand out in any way. Education , like geographical proximity has little or no bearing on how a country may respond to a pandemic. Sweden, unlike the other countries you choose to compare it with, has two quite large quite crowded cities with quite large immigrant populations. Unlike these other countries Sweden's impressive healthcare system has led to a build-up of frail elderly people who have escaped flu in the previous 2 or 3 seasons. As elsewhere, it is this category which has suffered by far the greatest proportion of deaths. This is what I mean by demographics. The point is that the AVAILABILITY of people to die is of far greater significance that any broad measures we may take to prevent anyone from doing so. I'm not quite sure what you mean by your last paragraph. Are you referring to the delta variant? If not, what?
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  15440.  @darrellrees4371  What are you on about? Can you really not function unless someone gives you a line of pretty blue writing on a plate with a ribbon round it? You really do need someone to hold your hand when you cross the road, don't you? I told you how I came to my conclusions so if you want to disagree you must do the same. So get on with it and stop trying to act smart. There was no surge of deaths in Sweden after April. The delta variant was absorbed far more readily than in many other countries. The decline in numbers from the winter peak plateaued for a few weeks with 37 deaths on April 1 and similar numbers until mid-May when death rates dropped to minimal with no deaths and single figure deaths on several subsequent days. Sweden continues to have an extremely low death rate compared with other countries with similar demographics. Your comments on vaccination and herd immunity are curious. Currently those countries (and US states)with the highest vaccination rates are experiencing the highest case and death rates. In some countries the vast majority of ICU patients and deaths occur among the fully vaccinated. This adds to the point I made in my previous post that the most significant factor is the number of people available to die, not the measures that are taken to mitigate spread. The situation is currently being exacerbated because people are wandering about imagining themselves to be protected whereas in fact the vaccine has worn off and they are infected, asymptomatic and spreading covid like wildfire. The lessening of symptoms in the healthy is to be welcomed but since vaccines are of very little benefit to those whose immune systems are badly compromised it could be argued that a high level of vaccination does as much harm as good .It may even be true (although this is as yet far from certain)that infection in people who have been vaccinated does not lead to the robust level of immunity which occurs among those who have become infected while not vaccinated. This would be an important factor in slowing the progress towards herd immunity, which is and always has been the only way covid will be beaten.
    1
  15441.  @darrellrees4371  Sometimes half measures can be worse than no measures at all. This applies to both masks and vaccinations. Only high standard mask, N95 and above, provide anything like real protection. Individual virions can pass through holes in the weave of cloth and cheap disposable masks 5,000 at a time, as can aerosols containing virions up to that number. Aerosols can escape from the sides in vast quantities. People have died through being in unventilated rooms imagining themselves to be protected. If wearing a mask makes someone feel safe, that's just fine - but to imagine they provide much protection to the wearer is untrue. They may indeed prevent someone who is unknowingly infected from passing the disease on, but even that is only a small chance. It remains a fact that medical opinion was firmly against the use of masks by the general public during flu epidemics, and indeed at the start of the covid pandemic. Nothing has changed. Airborne viruses continue to behave as they always have done. Masks are largely cosmetic- as indeed are peer-reviewed studies recommending their use. Many factors enter into death rates; to simply select one factor out of context is absurd. You must realise that. Why, for instance, has Singapore experienced a sharp increase in deaths in recent days? People haven't suddenly stopped wearing masks. As for lockdowns -I must just go on harping on about Sweden, I suppose. As for Australia and NZ it is probable that a very early lockdown works. But once the virus is in, it's in. Even the WHO states very firmly that lockdowns should only be used to gain time for health services to gear up. And all this of course is apart from the terrible effects they have on economies across the world. The same principle applies to vaccinations. Relying upon them is dangerous, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that countries and states with high vaccination rates are experiencing high infection and death rates. Vaccines are only of very limited efficacy - and as to their possible long term effects, only time will tell.
    1
  15442.  @darrellrees4371  You surprise me. Since an infected person can exude several billion virions during their illness, and several hundreds of millions in the first days before severe symptoms set in, or for weeks on end if they are asymptomatic, at what point does a measure who might just possibly divert a percentage of them back into their own lungs have any effect on the potentiality of the disease being passed on? Is there an optimum percentage which might make such a measure effective or will anything do? Is there really a calculable probability? If so, what is it? In any event my view is that the more people who catch covid, recover and become immune the better. It's really the duty of every fit person to do so.
    1
  15443.  @darrellrees4371  I thought you were a mathematician. I genuinely would have liked an answer since, as you rightly said, this is all all about risk assessment. It's also about exactly WHAT we are risking, and a cost assessment of the policies we pursue in order to avoid whatever it is we have decided we want to avoid. There are plenty of epidemiologists and virologists who are horrified at the current strategies. They put forward the sadly ill-fated Barrington Declaration which, when it came along, gave me hope that sanity might prevail - but no: policies continued to be dictated by the financial ambitions of Big Pharma which have led us to the current situation whereby the pandemic has been artificially extended to allow the introduction of vaccines which, as far as one can see, it is intended that every man woman and child in the world is expected to take every couple of months or so for the rest of their lives, while at the same tie the elderly and the frail continue to die like flies. I'm rather disappointed that you have introduced my old friends Dunning and Kruger into the conversation. Their tinpot psychology is of great comfort to stupid people who are not as clever as they think they are, allowing them, as it does, to accuse others of the failings they themselves possess.
    1
  15444.  @darrellrees4371  I've seen it. The cunning hand of Big Pharma lies behind every sentence. The very fact that it denies the duration of post-infection immunity makes it utterly worthless.
    1
  15445.  @darrellrees4371  What nonsense. The lead signatories of the BA are all eminent epidemiologists and virologists who have nothing to gain financially from expressing their views. If you are referring to the financial sponsorship then perhaps you can tell me where this comes from, and what lies the backers (if any)have told and what relevance you think this may have to the present situation. As to your second point the following is the latest report from the Office of National Statistic in the UK, where I live: "The estimated number of reinfections in the UK between July 2020 and September 2021, is low overall (11.8 per 100,000 participant days at risk), and reinfections more likely to cause serious illness are even lower (5.5 per 100,000 participant days at risk). Between July 2020 and September 2021, the risk of reinfection was higher in the period after 17 May 2021 compared with the period before; this reflects a higher risk of reinfection during the period when the Delta variant of coronavirus (COVID-19) was the dominant strain. Participants who had a lower viral load in their initial infection were at a higher risk of reinfection compared with participants who had a higher viral load at their initial infection." As you can see this implies that infection creates a very high level of immunity to the original strain contracted, although there is a slight chance a victim may contract a new strain in a mild form. Either of the two infections, or both, will be mild. The percentages are in fact higher now than they were a few months ago when vaccination levels were lower. This may be purely the result of the delta variant but also leads to the somewhat worrying possibility that another major drawback to the vaccines is that they actually increase the chances of re-infection in those who have had them, as opposed to those who have not.
    1
  15446.  @darrellrees4371  "Moreover, the WHO says that the herd immunity component of the proposed strategy is undermined by the limited duration of post-infection immunity." About halfway down the intro. If the GBD had been implemented the pandemic would have been over long ago - but of course it would have prevented the drug companies getting out their highly profitable but rather ineffective vaccines.
    1
  15447.  @darrellrees4371  Did I say unlimited? It certainly seems to be fairly robust at this stage. It appears from the data that it is continuing to protect against the original strain contracted and to considerably reduce symptoms on those comparatively rare occasions when a new strain is contracted. This is in sharp contrast to the inadequate and short-lived protection provided by vaccines. They really do seem crap. Don't forget over 60% of those suffering agonies in the UK's ICUs are fully vaccinated. Over 80% of those who die are also fully vaccinated. As far as I am aware NO-ONE who has previously contracted covid is in such an unhappy condition. The situation is even worse in some other countries, I am led to believe. (PS. As far as longevity of immunity is concerned it is worth noting that those who recovered from SAR-Cov I are still immune almost twenty years later -which is an encouraging sign.)
    1
  15448.  @darrellrees4371  It is an opinion shared by others and supported to a certain extent by projections made at the time. Covid policy, and health policy as a whole, are inexorably linked to drug companies' thirst for profits. This thirst governs a great many public health decision and has certainly been a major factor in how the pandemic has been dealt with and continues to be dealt with. These people are a disgrace.
    1
  15449.  @darrellrees4371  Is what unsupported? Please be more precise. And who knows if post-infection immunity is unlimited? As you rightly say, it has only been two years. All we CAN say is that it appears to be extremely robust and thusfar provides protection against a recurrence of the original strain and limits the symptoms of any subsequent strain which may be contracted. Also, experience with SARS-Covid I suggests that immunity might well be very long lasting indeed. And what awkward position? The notion that immunity through infection is inferior to immunity through vaccination is very clearly untrue. It is also a cornerstone of Big Pharma's marketing strategy. (They spend more on marketing than they do on research, by the way.) Given that immunity through infection appears to be robust, the approach recommended in the GBS was, and is, a clear route out of the pandemic. Only by building up cordons of genuinely immune people can we ever hope to see the back of this, or rather to make it merely endemic.
    1
  15450.  @darrellrees4371  Don't start playing semantics again. It's dangerous. Here's the quote: "Moreover, the WHO says that the herd immunity component of the proposed strategy is undermined by the limited duration of post-infection immunity." The assertion by the WHO that post-infection immunity is of limited duration is the statement which is contentious. They do not know that, and thusfar the signs are that it is not. In any event even if it should last only a year or two and enough people achieve it in that time the herd immunity threshold would be passed. And achieving herd immunity is EXACTLY what the GDE proposers intended. The effects of your suggestion that people should continue to be regularly injected with an inadequate vaccine of undetermined and varied length of effectiveness can already be seen in the ICUs and morgues of the world. Great news for Big Pharma but pretty shitty for the rest of us.
    1
  15451.  @darrellrees4371  I am not an antivaxxer. Vaccinate away. But just don't imagine they are the silver bullet, because they are not. And there are inherent drawbacks which have to be taken into account. And no, I was not caught up in a logical contradiction. What was it? Again, please explain. The fact that medical opinion was against the GBD means that Big Pharma was against it, The terms are practically synonymous. You just don't realise the hold drug companies have over medical practice. They rule the roost. What they say goes. They control drug trials and manipulate results . They unleash great waves of disinformation and propaganda against anything which threatens profits. You cross them at your peril. And now look. Look where "medical opinion" has got us. Insane lockdowns, pointless facemasks and now ineffectual vaccines have caused this really relatively mild pandemic to rule the world. The measures taken to contain it have already killed, far far more people than the disease itself and will continue to do so long after the disease has had its fill of us.
    1
  15452.  @darrellrees4371  You call that logic? So there are only two possible conditions are there? Limited and unlimited? You can't have TOO limited? Or almost limited? If I say you are of limited intellect and you deny it, you're not claiming to be a person of unlimited intellect are you? I hope not anyway.
    1
  15453.  @darrellrees4371  I thought you were a mathematician? Since the vaccinated deaths have only recently overtaken unvaccinated deaths this figure has no relevance to the present situation. Push the start date back to January 2020 say and the odds will be even higher, won't they? Care to work out what the chances are between September and November? The figures are readily available on the UK Health Security Agency covid vaccination surveillance report. I'd love to know your answer.
    1
  15454.  @darrellrees4371  What 90%?
    1
  15455. Dominion has access to lots of money and money goes a long, long way in US court cases. My guess though is this is just a scare tactic. It worked with Fox News and OAN but it may not work with Giuliani and Powell.
    1
  15456.  @stephenhodgson3506  I hope it comes to court, that's all. And I think it will.
    1
  15457. Nothing to do with getting beaten in the First World War then?
    1
  15458. KB Peers What made him do this? Was it just to save money or were there other pressures?
    1
  15459.  @Chet-b1f  Why? What have the Times Radio interviewers done wrong? All of them???
    1
  15460.  @biddyboy1570  I just shared this with him. What a good old cackle he gave! Fine sense of humour, Vlad.
    1
  15461. Hydroxycloroquine works. How do I know this? Because all the left wing MSM say it doesn't and because all information regarding it is deliberately and systematically suppressed.
    1
  15462. Storm Shadows are fleabites. Russia hit Dnipro with an ICBM last night.
    1
  15463.  @CharlesBronson-w8n  Absolutely not! But that seems to be the fate our lords and masters have in mind for me.
    1
  15464. Kim Shepherd On the contrary, laws of libel in the UK are incredibly strict. Once you start conflating interpretation with fact you are on a slippery slope towards state censorship. But perhaps that's what you want?
    1
  15465.  @ccfary  Religion has tortured and killed throughout the ages.
    1
  15466.  @MostafaMa-go3bt  That's what worries me!
    1
  15467.  @MostafaMa-go3bt  For example?
    1
  15468.  @MostafaMa-go3bt  Destroyed?
    1
  15469. What's this about "invasion" ? All Musk said was "liberating the UK from a tyrannical government". That means getting rid of this shower of unspeakables which cruel fate has landed us with. It won't need US troops to do that.
    1
  15470.  @christianjensen952  I strongly disagree. America has degenerated in recent decades and become riddled with corruption and all sorts of nastiness. What Trump and Vance and Musk are saying is absolutely right. They cannot prevent the collapse of America. That is the inevitable fate of all empires; but they can slow down the process and make it hopefully somewhat more dignified.
    1
  15471.  @elizabethcsicsery-ronay1633  Compared to some! But what I meant, of course, was the nation as a whole. America being Great Again doesn't mean it being the world's top gangster/policeman. It means stop being a drug-raddled, sex-mad bureaucratic nightmare.
    1
  15472. He needn't worry - the CIA will fix it for Biden.
    1
  15473.  @merulapenning9612  The complexities of international relations have nothing to do with imposing a sexual morality. That is purely a domestic matter. Britons may rightly despise the sexual habits of other countries, but that shouldn't and doesn't prevent us from entering in trade agreements with them and protecting our interests while doing so.
    1
  15474.  @SkageXL5  There is more than a subtle difference between protecting a nation's interests through the practice of war than interfering with the social habits of one's neighbours.
    1
  15475.  @SkageXL5  Are you a dictionary? Do you see people falling under umbrellas very often? (You might feel better if you lie down before trying to answer these questions.)
    1
  15476. I'm sure we'd all much rather have ghettos built for illegal immigrants than boring old farms and woodlands.
    1
  15477.  @saorbhreatachocroimin8193  Eastern Ukraine is Russian soil.
    1
  15478.  MrHattley  It has won most of the land. It already had the hearts and minds of a great many of the population.
    1
  15479.  MrHattley  These claims were never made in real terms. Something like them may have been said by misguided officers to chivvy the troops along, and these were taken up by a couple of talk show hosts, but that was it.
    1
  15480.  @ugli88  And is being rebuilt better than before, thanks to Russian pragmatism.
    1
  15481. The way the Democrats have abused the justice system in order to attempt to defeat Trump shows how utterly corrupt and immoral they are.
    1
  15482.  @robert100xx  And look what happened then!
    1
  15483.  @damianeadie510  I'm pretty computer illiterate - how can I confirm this number? At the moment it is sounding rather like Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualty figures.
    1
  15484. On the contrary, his troops have broken through the Ukrainian lines and are advancing towards the Donbass border.
    1
  15485. But when I look at a map I see Russia pushing the Ukrainians back on all sides. Mr Ingram does seem to put wishful thinking ahead of reality.
    1
  15486. ​ @lukeamato2348 Try as I may I can't see Putin losing here.
    1
  15487.  @lukeamato2348  But Russia occupies much of the land to which it lays claim and the Ukrainian army is in apparent tatters. How is this losing?
    1
  15488.  @lukeamato2348  This is nonsense.
    1
  15489. I think it would be perfectly possible and economic to provide power through human effort. I have done few sums and I reckon you could build special cycling sheds a few storeys high at key locations and actually PAY people to produce pedal- powered electricity. My calculations are too extensive to put down here but the ratio of units of energy produced to the sums paid are similar to wind turbines.
    1
  15490.  @emperordalektardis  Obviously since there are so many allegations being made Biden has the duty to announce a full judicial enquiry. Otherwise his administration will be forever under a cloud. How can he expect to rule a country when between fifty and seventy million people believe he cheated to get there?
    1
  15491.  @topologyrob  What fantasies? There is considerable evidence of fraud and illegal behaviour. Biden owes it to the nation to deal with these allegations through a proper judicial enquiry. Failure to do so will add to the opinion that he is just a long-term corrupt politician, put into power as the puppet of sinister forces. How can he rule effectively if at least fifty million Americans continue to have these "fantasies"? He will have a civil war on his hands unless he acts quickly.
    1
  15492.  @topologyrob  They haven't though. Little of the evidence has actually been presented to a lower court and nor would anyone expect it to be. This is a political hot potato which no judge would want on his plate - but the motions have to be gone through. If any case it is the breaking of electoral law which is now the issue, rather than proving criminal activity. That electoral laws have been broken in many instances is painfully evident. Today's hearings in Georgia make this very clear. Laws which were put into place to prevent fraud were blithely ignored; therefore it is possible for fraud to have been committed. This is enough to call results into question.
    1
  15493.  @heckenprunzer  To be fair they'd have to do the same for the 60 million or so who agree with him. Wouldn't be room.
    1
  15494. It's a competition is it? Who wins?
    1
  15495.  @rollosinternet1853  Do you know that just a couple of days ago two men in London were convicted of trafficking minors for sex? They were sentenced to a mere two-and-a half years each.
    1
  15496. It's a grotesque exaggeration! There were a mere 22,000 at the last count and only a very small proportion had been sexually assaulted.
    1
  15497. The only "infectious disease experts" alarmed by Trump's comments are those in the pay of Big Pharma. Here are the views of independent epidemiologists who, like Trump, want to replace hysteria with courage and common sense. Read. Consider. Sign. Share. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  15498.  @doyouwanttogivemelekiss3097 Possession of Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  15499.  @telebubba5527  Putin wasn't even in power in 1991. It was the drunkard Yeltsin who foolishly recognised these artificial borders.
    1
  15500.  @doyouwanttogivemelekiss3097  There is a possibility that I am incorrect, but I am not lying. 1) Demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine are essential to the security of Crimea and Donbass. Azov is less Nazified than once it was, but the fanatically anti-Russian element is still strong enough to be cited as a reason for the invasion. 2)Crimea and those parts of Donbass under the control of the separatist armies were clearly being threatened by invasion by Ukraine's large, NATO-created army. The Russian invasion was a pre-emptive measure. 3) The areas of Donbass to the north are still held by Ukraine. It is these that are currently being so fiercely fought over. Depending upon the fortunes of war it is possible that Putin may wish to extend gains to include further territories in eastern and southern Ukraine, but this is not all that likely, other than to act as security for Crimea. 4) As stated above, the invasion was a pre-emptive measure designed almost exclusively to deplete Ukrainian forces. It has been carried out with characteristic Russian disregard for losses. Russia's proposals have been on the table for a long time. Only US/NATO meddling and expansionism have prevented them from being enacted.
    1
  15501.  @truthseeker6116  Who says he was trying to take the entire country? He was merely following the long established military principle of destroying enemy forces on their own ground. And he has.
    1
  15502.  @FrankWinchester  I can only refer you to Putin's essay on Russia/Ukraine relations published in the Summer of 2021. It is essential to any understanding of this issue. Ukraine is considerably less militarised now than it was before the invasion. It's large NATO-created army has been virtually destroyed -which was the object of the exercise. And the chances of it ever joining NATO are now reduced to close on zero. What else, specifically, do you need to know?
    1
  15503.  @FrankWinchester  It will in all probability be sufficiently demilitarised to prevent it retaking Crimea and Donbass. Which was the object of the exercise. As to the number of tanks, you have no more ideas of the numbers involved than I do.
    1
  15504.  @AK-ej5ml  Very much on the cards, but not essential.
    1
  15505.  @FrankWinchester  There are quite a few of them. Less now than before Mariupol, of course.
    1
  15506.  @michaeldunham3385  It was an essay, not a speech and there is no need for me to quote from it, since you can look it up on the Internet and read it for yourself. This is preferable to taking sentences and half-sentences out of Putin's speeches and quoting them out of context - which is what Western propagandists do in order to confuse the foolish.
    1
  15507.  @michaeldunham3385  What speech? What garbage? Are you actually capable of rational thought?
    1
  15508.  @FrankWinchester  Go on then.
    1
  15509.  @FrankWinchester  Oh yes. And Russia has run out of missiles too, don't forget.
    1
  15510.  @FrankWinchester  And you believe them without question? Anyway, while Russia has lost thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of men Ukraine has too. This is a war of attrition.
    1
  15511.  @FrankWinchester  On the contrary, there is every chance that this war will hasten the formation of a new, anti US, anti-dollar bloc which will bring Western hegemony to an end. Russia, with its reserves of oil and gas, self-sufficiency in essentials and stockpiles of gold, will be at the forefront of this new consortium of powers.
    1
  15512.  @FrankWinchester  I'm not changing my stance. All I'm saying is that no-one knows for certain how many tanks each side had before the war began, nor how many they have left now. Estimates vary widely. The same applies to the size of both armies. Losses of well over 100,000 on each side do seem credible, however. Russia has mobilised possibly around half a million new recruits from its available pool of around 33 million men of military age, most of whom will have done between a year and four years military service. Ukraine is sending schoolgirls and cripples to the front. Russia is producing weapons, including tanks, missiles and artillery, at full pitch while Ukraine is having to rely on handouts. The only thing that is certain in war is that nothing is certain, but if Ukraine finds itself forced to go on the attack rather than defence, then it's going to have a big job ahead of it.
    1
  15513.  @FrankWinchester  But Russia IS replacing its missiles. Arms production is clearly meeting demand, as repeated assaults on Ukraine's infrastructure demonstrate. And Iran and N Korea are providing further back-up. Russia also has some really big stuff which it hasn't even used yet. I think it has the capacity to reduce Ukraine to dust if it decides to do so.
    1
  15514. Ban everything!
    1
  15515.  @baba747baba2  not in the back. He would be dead. Disabling shots to shoulders and arms I bet.
    1
  15516.  @wintersolsticegn8385  This is an interesting piece from a former police officer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Sp8EIHu1A&feature=youtu.be
    1
  15517.  @ilv1  You've been double-bluffed. A Russian telling you that opposing views are created by Russian troll-bots, thus leading you to discount them. Think about it.
    1
  15518. There's only one way Biden can win after this - by manipulation of the electoral system, as almost certainly happened to get him to the White House four years ago.
    1
  15519. The Tories will crash and burn in the May elections - and they know it. Between now and then the wise among them will keep Johnson afloat while squeezing as much proper Conservative legislation out of him as they can. A new leader will have to carry the can after the forthcoming May disaster. The premiership is currently a poisoned chalice, so most Tories will want to keep Boris on for now - even those who loath and despise him.
    1
  15520. This isn't journalism. It's the BBC.
    1
  15521. Adam Dear me, you do have quite a chip on you shoulder, don't you old chap?
    1
  15522. A turf war between two sets of gangsters has spiralled out of control - and this is largely due to America and its vassals providing one gang with weaponry. To bring this dreadful conflict to an end the West must simply cease supplying arms to Ukraine.
    1
  15523. Why are British lefties such pearl-clutching, middle-class snobs? This piece of crap is little more than a list of social gaffes making the guy an unsuitable guest at one of your dinner parties.
    1
  15524. I'm hoping he buys MSNBC and gives Tommy his own chat show.
    1
  15525. You lot are just as bad.
    1
  15526. The longer this goes on, the more Russia will demand. Right now it might well be satisfied with simply what Putin asked for back in December '21 - recognition of Crimea as Russian, regional autonomy for Donbass and a firm promise that Ukraine will not join NATO. Temperatures are due to drop next week, and if this continues Russia will almost certainly re-invade and almost certainly take the whole of Donbass as Ukraine's depleted forces have to head north to defend supply lines. Putin will have obtained by force what he attempted to gain by negotiation. His army may be ill-equipped and often badly led, but it will do the job in the end. The Ukrainians and the governments of Europe have been extremely foolish in allowing themselves to be used by the Americans in yet another hawkish adventure on foreign soil.
    1
  15527. He's gaining support, rather than losing it. But it won't make any difference. The deep state will fix it for Biden, as they did last time round.
    1
  15528. And were all wiped out or fled during the Mongol invasions. Kursk has been predominantly Russian for at least 500 years.
    1
  15529.  @lauchlanguddy1004  It has not been part of Ukraine for centuries.
    1
  15530.  @betterdonotanswer  No. It is inside Russia.
    1
  15531.  @betterdonotanswer  But it is now.
    1
  15532.  @betterdonotanswer  No. By Poles, Lithuanians and others to the west, by Ottoman Turks to the south - and by Russians to the east. Broadly speaking.
    1
  15533. Why?
    1
  15534. Yes USAID was interfering in the free market economy of the energy industry in Ukraine, with a view to forcing Musk's Starlink to take an active role in the war. That's just the sort of dangerous behaviour which makes USAID such a threat.
    1
  15535. It wasn't such a big issue then. Talks were going on to find solution and there was an uneasy true in place. It wasn't such a problem for America as it has now become, thanks to the profligacy and perceived military weakness of the Biden administration.
    1
  15536.  @Captain-l-12p  Exactly. And they thought they were getting comfortable, middle-of-the-road Labour instead. But they aren't.
    1
  15537.  @davefave4351  The Tories failed to restrict the excess immigration which causes this. Labour actively encourages it.
    1
  15538.  @honberg193  Just you wait and see.
    1
  15539. Roger Antaramian She sounds like a keeper. Marry her and have children.
    1
  15540. What a ghastly old fraud
    1
  15541. They had a fully-equipped and trained army, paid for by NATO. They don't have it any more.
    1
  15542. A dotard spouting adolescent drivel. The US is doomed.
    1
  15543. Utter fantasy, Putin has neither the desire nor the ability to invade Europe.
    1
  15544. The truth is that people bring their prejudices to their judgements.
    1
  15545.  Tudi Zuno  Dead right.
    1
  15546.  @jacqdanieles  These people. And the millions of others disenfranchised by fraud and corruption.
    1
  15547.  @HappyValleyDreamin  Meaningless garbage.
    1
  15548.  @wheeliebeast7679  Takes too long. But it ain't what you think it is, I bet ya.
    1
  15549.  @Bio54633  Name one lie.
    1
  15550.  @Bio54633  Perhaps an alternative to YOUR reality might come close to the truth.
    1
  15551.  @HappyValleyDreamin  Listen, the only way Biden is going to win is if the Deep State fixes it for him, same as they did last time.
    1
  15552.  @chrimbus71  This is what I find.
    1
  15553.  @HappyValleyDreamin  Your delusions will either be upheld or they will be shattered, But they will still be delusions.
    1
  15554. Interesting that the "costs" of Brexit require a detailed analysis, whereas the costs of the present government are already clearly apparent in the loss of winter heating allowances to the elderly, wage increases to junior doctors and train drivers, £12billion of support to Ukraine and the arrest and imprisonment of teenage boys and elderly ladies for daring to voice doubts about the benefits of Islamic extremism.
    1
  15555.  @emm_arr  I derive some small comfort from the fact that many of the viewers of this channel are not quite the simpletons that you so obviously are.
    1
  15556.  @emm_arr  I meant to add weak and inarticulate,
    1
  15557.  @emm_arr  I'll try.
    1
  15558. A state united by faith, identity and purpose is a state most earnestly to be desired. We had it once in Britain - but it is now destroyed beyond all hope of redemption.
    1
  15559.  @obligatoryusername7239  "Empty" is not the point. A state religion, whether much practised or even much believed in, is a useful tool for social and political cohesion.
    1
  15560.  @ManwithNoName-t1o It can be argued that they were taking back territory taken from them by a flawed treaty.
    1
  15561. ​@pat dunne When you've gotta go you've gotta go. Seriously though it now seems clear that anyone under 60 has about as much chance of dying from coronavirus as getting killed in a traffic accident and that all these precautions are fairly ineffective anyway. I'm in my seventies by the way, so I'm not being particularly cold-blooded.
    1
  15562.  @gribbler1695  What's the alternative? Now that vaccination is with us most objections are countered, especially if fit, healthy people realise their social duty and become immune through infection.
    1
  15563.  @gribbler1695  It's not very practical to kill people by denying them hospital treatment. Lockdowns are the biggest public health disaster in recent history. Their knock-on effects will last for years. The billions which have been spent on pointless test and trace and financial support could easily have been better spent on providing protective cordons for the vulnerable - plus individual PPE. Even before vaccines healthy people could have been encouraged to become infected and therefore immune. Some would have gone through a bad time, but now with vaccines keeping symptoms to a minimum there's not even that excuse.
    1
  15564.  @hotchihuahua1546 Ukraine has been bombing Russian people in Donbass for eight years.
    1
  15565. Eating babies is no crazier than the Green New Deal. That's the point.
    1
  15566.  @nobbynobbs8182  I'll allow slightly optimistic. But there are deals taking shape on all sides.
    1
  15567.  @nobbynobbs8182  Russia isn't expansionist, as such. It is merely trying to retain control of resources it has developed over the centuries. If it gains Donbass and keeps it, this will be achieved and the war will end.
    1
  15568. You don't look so healthy in the upstairs department yourself, if I may say so old boy. And you certainly don't sound it.
    1
  15569.  @DoubleDragon539  No it isn't.
    1
  15570.  @DoubleDragon539  They are not the same. I have every sympathy with the rioters, as do very many people, If I publish this expression of sympathy I am not "enabling" the riots. The riots are going on anyway.
    1
  15571.  @roseanncampbell3168  But they're not inciting anything. In order to prove incitement you would have to prove that without statements made by a defendant the riot would not have occurred.
    1
  15572.  @christinerees50  It's both actually.
    1
  15573.  @robbiegrant4977  What incitement? Agreement isn't incitement. The incitement has to come first.
    1
  15574.  @markhackett2302  Hardly. Soccer hooligans are different to people who organise armed jihad.
    1
  15575.  @markhackett2302  No. Their actions.
    1
  15576.  @Cam-mo7gq  There are no fascists any more. It is a word without meaning, designed merely to focus the minds of the ignorant.
    1
  15577.  @Alanturner-c5x  Actions have consequences too. People in deprived working class areas arrive at the own conclusions simply by looking about them. It is an insult to their intelligence to assume they need the words of a politician to tell them what to think and what to do.
    1
  15578.  @Cam-mo7gq  Fascism is a spent force. The word is now simply used by ill-informed lefties to describe opinions with which they disagree. It is virtually meaningless.
    1
  15579.  @wleon4068  Understanding is not encouragement. The situation merits peaceful protest but none of those named has ever called for violence. Like me, they can understand the frustration that leads to it, however.
    1
  15580.  @kevonslims7269  Skin colour doesn't affect me. Islam does.
    1
  15581.  @kevonslims7269  Skin colour yes - but Islamification is a threat to the British way of life and the safety of our children.
    1
  15582.  @kevonslims7269  I think Islam might be slightly more worrying than skin colour.
    1
  15583.  @unworthy42  Ever shoot yourself in the foot?
    1
  15584. What's in it for us?
    1
  15585.  @bonvoyage5377  Britain.
    1
  15586. I do hope the fall of this dreadful, conceited, ignorant man marks a general trend towards to utter rejection of woke globalist policies in countries all over the world.
    1
  15587. Paranoia is addictive.
    1
  15588. Trump already knows this. Zelensky thinks he doesn't and has walked into a trap. The only accessible minerals are in the Russian-controlled areas in the East and Trump and Putin are already discussing deals. So much more civilised than going to war over them, don't you think?
    1
  15589. O the vile, VILE hypocrisy of the British ruling class! Please Mr President follow this slap in the face with a punch in the gut and OFFER ASYLUM TO TOMMY ROBINSON! It will go down in history as one of your greatest acts.
    1
  15590. Millions of Americans died because they were so fat and had diabetes. Kennedy will fix that. If Trump had stuck to his guns instead of listening to the "experts" far fewer would have died. Why do you think Biden pardoned Fauci?
    1
  15591. A clash of cultures has left us literally in the shit. On the one hand there is the Labour/WEF support for wholescale immigration, which has led to services being swamped by sheer numbers - and on the other Tory support for private enterprise as the solution to all problems. If this government survives for any length of time it should take steps to nationalise water companies and other service industries while at the same time making sterling efforts to assess the ACTUAL population of this country, since it is clear that current methods are providing estimates far below the actual number.
    1
  15592.  @bringitbex  I'm afraid some of your facts are out. The figures include all those who have died at all locations, including care homes and domestic residences. These are people who have died within 28 days of a positive test. Of these around 80% died with covid as the underlying cause. The 28 days was selected for a reason, since the impact of a positive test on the possibility of covid being a major contributory cause of death decreases with time. The majority of deaths (over 75%) occurred in the elderly and very elderly. The overall death rate from all causes in the UK in 2020 was around 10.3% - the same as in 2003 and less than almost any year in the previous century.
    1
  15593. Sadly immigration and a decline in moral standards due to the infiltration of our education system and other institutions by Marxists have led to this dreadful situation. Violent bloody revolution is probably the only answer.
    1
  15594.  @matbbm  I wish you hadn't called me an idiot. I was going along with you a bit until then, even though I don't know what caitian means. The issue is disputable. The population of the UK has increased vastly since the 1980's - due more to immigration than natural birthrate. This has placed enormous pressure upon our health system, infrastructure and social services which was not accounted for in the detailed planning of the nation's future begin in the 1960's under Harold Wilson's government as the second wave of socialist post-war rationalisation. The balance is now wrong because the UK is no longer a major industrial nation, in need of a large, largely unskilled workforce. The contribution of entrepreneurial immigrants to the nation's wealth cannot be emphasised enough, but the fact remains that this is a very small country with an artificially inflated population which its productivity cannot properly sustain. Social and economic decline is inevitable, as clearly witnessed by Mr Tsfaye in his original post.
    1
  15595. Are you quite well?
    1
  15596. I have some very attractive tinfoil hats for sale. Interested?
    1
  15597.  @fintanwardell  Not so. The "rules" are guidelines and subject to interpretation according to circumstances. Welfare of children is mentioned . Shagging your girlfriend or checking the family silver aren't
    1
  15598.  @chrisso871  This is getting a bit semantic.The point is that the guidelines, rules, laws or whatever are clearly subject to interpretation according to circumstances. How can you define "greater or lesser" breaches? Driving 260 miles to ensure your child's safety is clearly a lesser "crime" (if crime at all) than throwing a barbeque party, for example. Mind you I am now coming to believe that the steps taken to control the virus may have killed more people than the virus itself.
    1
  15599.  @oddsratio4070  It very much is just that, it seems. But the Cummngs didn't know that for sure at the time. Their's was a hard decision to take perhaps - but I think they made the right one.
    1
  15600.  @chrisso871  The government's enemies have clearly seized upon this trivial incident in a bid to undermine its authority. It's not much of a smoking gun though,is it? Travelling hundreds of miles in a car isn't going to spread the virus. As to the police version of events, that does seem rather confused at the moment. And not that relevant either other than that in taking no action against Cummings the implication that no offence was committed is pretty clear.
    1
  15601.  @chrisso871  Er, she wanted to be with her child? You clearly do not understand the imperatives of motherhood. They overrule practically all other human considerations.
    1
  15602. I'm afraid Donald has to take second place to Richard when it comes to crude rabble-rousing. Excellent performance!
    1
  15603. What about the Democrats who started the war in the first place?
    1
  15604.  @falconlewitteducation4941  In war soldiers get fed while farmers starve.
    1
  15605. That's an insult to tabloids. It's more like a child's comic!
    1
  15606.  @itsJPhere  Nuclear war?
    1
  15607.  @ericdpeerik3928 If NATO does any more than it's doing already Putin might well take up the nuclear option.
    1
  15608.  @itsJPhere  Would it though? I actually wonder what would happen if, say, Putin took out one small or medium sized city in the US or a NATO country. Would the Americans, in their present state of disarray, respond in kind or decide to sit down at the conference table pretty damned quick?
    1
  15609.  @itsJPhere  I don't know about delusional. I'm sure its a scenario that has to be considered a possibility. I don't know about "unprovoked" either. If Ukraine were to join NATO it could mean a US missile base within a seven-minute reach of Moscow. That leads to the possibility of a US strike before Moscow has time to respond.
    1
  15610.  @itsJPhere  NATO is the main commercial arm of the US military/industrial complex, nothing more. And what do you mean "always attacking its neighbour"? In its 31 year history the Russian Federation has only put down potentially dangerous ISIS-backed rebellions in Georgia and Chechnya and that was it - until now when the CIA puppet Zelensky has been conned into sacrificing his country on the altar of American imperialism. The greedy, savage Russia is a myth kept alive by America in order to justify arms sales. The current invasion is a self-fulfilling prophesy, that's all. It's worth pointing out that over the same 31 year period 13 countries have been persuaded to join NATO by the US deep state, despite earlier assurances that this would not happen. It is worth noting too that over that same 31 year period America and its NATO allies have been involved in a series of invasions and interferences in the affairs of other nations which have led to the deaths of millions and the impoverishment of millions more.
    1
  15611.  @itsJPhere  I know all about the history of NATO. You, on the other hand can't seem to grasp the fact that the Soviet Union ended in 1990 and the threat of Soviet aggression ended with it. The Russian Federation tried four times to join NATO but was summarily rejected for the reasons I outlined in my previous post: America's economic interests in war, which require a permanent hate figure in order to justify further arms expenditure. Russia was assured that NATO would not expand but the original membership has been increased by 13 since 1991. Odd that 13 countries which were not afraid of the Soviet Union, with its declared aim of spreading worldwide Communism, suddenly became afraid of the new Russian Federation, don't you think? No, whatever NATO might have been originally it is now an instrument of oppression, not defence. After more than thirty years of minding its own business, Russia has been provoked into retaliation. It is the result of yet another miscalculation by the current incompetent American administration.
    1
  15612.  @itsJPhere  1. This is not disputed. There are any number of news articles about these approaches. The first was made by Gorbachev in 1990 and two more were later made by Yeltsin. Putin himself made an approach in the first year of his presidency. This was revealed by film-maker Oliver Stone consequent upon an interview with Putin, and later confirmed by the the then head of NATO who explained that Putin wanted to fast-track his application, and this was not permitted. Four opportunities for world peace, turned down by a belligerent, expansionist NATO. 2. Here is a list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Philippines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine 3. Yes, it is a free world and diplomats have the freedom to break their word. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall NATO was supposed to "move not one inch further eastward" - a famous quote from a senior American general and widely reported at the time. No formal declarations were made, but it was widely understood to be true by the Russians. Since then, of course, a further 13 countries have joined, all militarised and all clearly having belligerent intentions towards Russia. 4. I don't fully understand this question. I suppose you must be referring to Putin's intention of freeing Donbass from Ukrainian oppression, which was economic from 1991 onwards, and became military after Donetsk and Lugansk declared independence in 2014. 5 There are many Nazis in Ukraine. The Azov Battalion and other units in the Ukrainian armed forces unashamedly hold up Nazi Germany as their ideal, and wear Nazi regalia. They also have Nazi-style youth training camps in which the racial superiority of the Ukrainian people is taught. They are vehemently anti-Russian as well as anti-Semitic, but they have toned down their attitude in this regard following Zelensky's accession. On this subject you might want to look up a man called Ifor Kolomoisky, who engineered Zelensky's rise. 6. I don't know. Upbringing, I suppose. 7. NATO has everything to do with it, since if Ukraine joined NATO it could become a nuclear missile base within a seven-minute range of Moscow, thus allowing for a pre-emptive strike, crippling Russia before it had time to retaliate. 8. This has nothing to do with "good guys and bad guys". That is an entirely childish attitude, and one which you should put aside. It is about survival and conflict of interests. Sweden and Finland are in a very difficult position. By making moves to join NATO they could actually bring down on their heads the very thing they are trying to avoid. Having said that, however, they do not represent the same existential threat to Russia as Ukraine does, and nor do they have the same very close historical relationship.
    1
  15613.  @itsJPhere  1. Twenty years ago, as one of his first acts as President, Putin made an informal approach to join NATO. He was rejected. The situation has now changed radically. NATO has made its belligerent intentions clear by extending its membership since then. Russia is indeed not democratic by Western European definitions - but then neither is any country in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. Whatever quibbles there may have been, there is little doubt that a golden opportunity was deliberately missed. 2. I merely point out that the US and its NATO allies have a far worse record than Russia when it comes to interfering with and invading other countries. 3. As I said, there is no evidence whatsoever that Russia has any belligerent intentions towards these countries. They have simply been bribed by the US into allowing them to become military encampments. 4. The people of Donbass and Crimea predominantly look to Russia. They were better off under the Soviet Union than has been the case under Ukraine. Ukraine is just a made-up country anyway. It has no history in its present form. Certainly Putin has taken advantage of the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants of Donbass and Crimea in their desire to free themselves of the corrupt and incompetent Kiev government, and Russian help in their struggle has been gratefully received. If Kiev had accepted these established facts, this dreadful war need never have happened. 5. As I think I pointed out, the Ukrainian Nazis have agreed to subdue their anti-Semitism in the light of Zelensky's accession to power, but it remains in existence. They are, as I said, more anti-Russian than anti-Jewish. To find out about them just Google Azov Battalion for starters, Numerous documentaries have been made about Nazis in Ukraine, often by news organisations which now have forgotten their earlier qualms and support Zelensky with great enthusiasm. 6. Not Russia, but Russians. The Azovs and others have perpetrated various horrors against the Russian inhabitants of Donbass. This again is well documented by Human Rights Watch and other bodies. (It has to be said though that the separatists have fought back and their revenge has been equally terrible.) 7. These countries are about 800 km from Moscow. Ukraine is about 450km. In a nuclear conflict every minute counts. As for Kaliningrad it is, of course, quite some considerable distance from Washington DC. 8. As I have already explained it is the proximity to Moscow which makes all the difference - plus the complex historical and ethnic ties between Russia and Ukraine which do not apply to Finland and Sweden. Ukraine is, after all, still referred to as Little Russia by many Russians.
    1
  15614. No. There might be seven or so other idiots.
    1
  15615. Davey Duff Sorry. What was the question again?
    1
  15616. Daniel Boy are you daft. If the fossil industry is funding the right wing media (whatever that is) - who is funding this giant Madrid beanfeast and all the other chummy get-togethers the climate change mafia go to in their Lear jets or fly to in business and first class? Who do the Mercs and Audies lined up in the car park belong to? Oil magnates? Stop and think and try to grow a brain will you? Climate scientists are either as conned rotten as you are or on the gravy train with the crooks who are running this scam. Climate change exists. The Earth is getting warmer. That's because it was cooler for a bit. Warmer -cooler. Warmer-cooler, geddit? We're now in a getting warmer period and when it gets warm enough it will start to get cooler again. In the meantime you and all the other mugs are getting your pockets picked and your brains fried by people who go back to their luxurious homes AND LAUGH AT YOU!
    1
  15617. I kerr He and his kind own everybody - including all the sad Lefties who dance to their tune..
    1
  15618. Lost Hero If only! If only! You, on the other hand, are putting out for free. It isn't love. Believe me. You're just getting fucked.
    1
  15619. Kalum Batsch It's just A Thing of Theirs. Them being the clever rich people who have created this massive protection racket.
    1
  15620. I .kerr I play the spoons and do an up-to-date version of The Executioner's Song from the Mikado. "I've got a little list They surely won't be missed..."
    1
  15621. Larry Cleveland I am feeling less than blissful -despite Boris Johnson's resounding defeat of the forces of conceit and evil in the UK today. What physics should I study? Nuclear? Solar? Cosmological? Perhaps I should stick to basics as you suggest. I will doubtless learn that the model of the atmosphere created by Arrenhuis in the 19th Century is Holy Writ and cannot be challenged. I will be told that laboratory experiments prove conclusively that atmospheric carbon instigates a process whereby infra-red reflected by the earth's surface is either retained or reflected back again. Simple stuff. It just so happens that in the actual universe, in the actual enclosed organism of the solar system, these conceits are often outweighed and contradicted by forces far more powerful than you can imagine.
    1
  15622. Plastic Ocean What for? For what? Is this a request or some sort of compliment?
    1
  15623. Plastic Ocean I am actually deply suspicious of much of it, so you may retract your apology if you wish.
    1
  15624. Then so does Ukraine.
    1
  15625.  @xyphoon5013  More like nine years.
    1
  15626. Ronald Davison Entirely so. I have no reputation to consider so I can be a little flamboyant, but obviously caution is required in others. I await developments with considerable interest.
    1
  15627. The reason they won't help is very simple. They think Russia's going to win.
    1
  15628. He has done pretty well, when you look at it. And without becoming another US lackey, like Britain.
    1
  15629.  @WillC-s5q  It didn't stay "stop" . It just said "don't".
    1
  15630.  @ChristianConrad  I think you're wrong. The US is indeed an empire, but all empires fall, and often quite rapidly. In some way Trump recognises this and is concentrating instead on national strength. This will slow down the collapse. As for Russia, it's empire has fallen not once but twice, and the idea that Putin wants to give it a third go is just a false flag put up by Western arms manufacturers and their lackeys in the military to justify their existence.
    1
  15631. @ The US is an empire in decline and the Russian empire has collapsed twice in the last century or so - the idea that Putin wants to give it another go is probably just something that keeps getting floated to keep the Western arms industry in business.
    1
  15632.  @ChristianConrad  I think you're wrong. The US is indeed an empire, but all empires fall, and often quite rapidly. In some way Trump recognises this and is concentrating instead on national strength. This will slow down the collapse. As for Russia, it's empire has fallen not once but twice, and the idea that Putin wants to give it a third go is just a false flag put up by Western arms manufacturers and their lackeys in the military to justify their existence.
    1
  15633. @ I think you're wrong. The US is indeed an empire, but all empires fall, and often quite rapidly. In some way Trump recognises this and is concentrating instead on national strength. This will slow down the collapse. As for Russia, it's empire has fallen not once but twice, and the idea that Putin wants to give it a third go is just a false flag put up by Western arms manufacturers and their lackeys in the military to justify their existence.
    1
  15634. Dead parrot
    1
  15635. The ballots were found in a ditch beside the Fox River in Outagamie County, Wisconsin. Look it up.
    1
  15636. The answer is that the formula is wrong. One very significant factor in the equation - the number of people whose needs must be attended to - is out by something like a third. Tory "neglect" is just piss in the wind.
    1
  15637. It wouldn't be a very good fraud if there was widespread evidence for it, would it?
    1
  15638. Nonsense. All Putin wants is for NATO to back off and to keep his hands on the vast mineral wealth on Donbass. Let him, I say.
    1
  15639.  @TimboTbagz  And has been for two years and yet somehow......
    1
  15640.  @TimboTbagz  Thanks.
    1
  15641. What I don't get is what the long-term plan is. NZ will either have to lockdown practically forever or open up and acknowledge that a certain number of people are going to get ill and die.
    1
  15642. He's not going to. So that means the war continues.
    1
  15643.  @tw25rw  Slightly bonkers old uncle maybe - but hardly the Antichrist.
    1
  15644.  @tw25rw  Not really. Not really bonkers, in fact - just paddling his own canoe in his own way. Trump can slow down America's inevitable decline because he is essentially a pragmatist with a simple philosophy, rather than being an idealist. He's probably not the best example of what America needs to enable it to escape from the grip of the blinkered, warmongering, money-printing neocons who have taken over the reins in recent decades, but at least he's available.
    1
  15645.  @ebannaw  He's by no means a career politician. The Presidency was the first public office he ever held. I don't think it is possible for a career politician in the US to get to the top of the tree without becoming tainted in some way and although Trump has obviously had a chequered business career he's more used to handing out bribes than receiving them. He's an outsider, which is why the political establishment hates him.
    1
  15646. Just as well Russia doesn't want it then.
    1
  15647. We're too busy wondering where the next meal is coming from.
    1
  15648. It's a question of character, surely? Hacking a computer for political gain shows a certain buccaneering spirit. Lusting after a better 'phone because you are jealous of those your colleagues have been given is just cheap.
    1
  15649.  @Notalloldpeople  Your sense of values is very different from mine , then. You would reward greed and avarice, but condemn actions which may well have been for the public good?
    1
  15650.  @geraldhewing329  It may have been. It depends what information was gained and what was done with it. The essential point, surely, is that a crime carried out to gain political advantage is capable of several interpretations, whereas one committed for personal gain has but one.
    1
  15651. It is worth remembering that slavery still exists in many countries in the world. Generally speaking these countries do not allow the erection of statues for religious reasons.
    1
  15652. How can Biden win after this? Hang on though.....
    1
  15653. Getting infected, but not becoming seriously ill, is a very good thing because it creates immunity. The more healthy immune people there are the more difficult it is for the virus to reach someone who is vulnerable and might die.
    1
  15654. Both NATO and the UN have outlived their usefulness.
    1
  15655. The FBI switched off the security cameras and planted false evidence.
    1
  15656. The same people who have run it since the 1950s - and who hate Trump because he defied them.
    1
  15657. Looks like Ukraine will be pounded to dust before the Patriot missiles are out of their boxes.
    1
  15658. Shooting at shadows! Surely these must be escaped weather balloons and kites, floating above the icy wastes of the Arctic perhaps for years. America grows more insane by the day.
    1
  15659. Not if you've got a lot of them.
    1
  15660.  @jonm7272  He's not be paid just for that. He's not the Citizens Advice Bureau. I daresay he'll pop by every month or so, same as most other MPs. I think you're getting MPs mixed up with parish councillors.
    1
  15661.  @RoofLight00  My only agenda is to try to make people realise that an MP is not a social worker, and that Nigel Farage - like all other MPs - can leave the nuts and bolts business of attending to local problems to subordinates while pursuing their broader interests elsewhere.
    1
  15662. @ravenmad9225 I agree. Reform could at least open doors.
    1
  15663.  @adamparker4585  The campaign is led by Professor Angus Dalgleish Consultant Medical Oncologist MD FRCP FRACP FRCPath Fmed Sci
    1
  15664.  @adamparker4585  By Professor Angus Dalgleish MD FRCP FRACP FRCPath Fmed Sci, among others
    1
  15665.  @adamparker4585  A number of cancer experts have voiced their concerns in various publications.
    1
  15666.  @adamparker4585  Cancer experts, actually. Real doctors and everything. Look up Professor Angus Dalgleish.
    1
  15667.  @gabs7506  Good effort. You have highlighted one obvious clumsiness of speech and an exaggeration. So far you are winning this contest. Well done.
    1
  15668. Climate change has become a vehicle of repression. The immigrants aren't coming here because it is suddenly hot where they live.
    1
  15669. "Climate change" is just another weapon in the globalist armoury.
    1
  15670. Johnson is a dangerous egomaniac who bears a considerable share of responsibility for the war in Ukraine, apart from anything else. But this doesn't alter the fact that the covid restrictions did more harm than good. If there is any other explanation for the current alarming increases in all-cause deaths, I would like to know what it is.
    1
  15671. QAnon is the right's answer to Fake News from the left. It is especially efficient against humorless lefties who can't meme.
    1
  15672.  @MrFoffof  Absolutely not! The worship of Moloch and the continuous slandering of the God Emperor Trump are just two aspects of the evil in our midst!
    1
  15673. Max Doubt Climate scientists have built themselves a box, climbed in and shut the lid. You are being used and they are being used by very clever people who realise that fossil fuels are finite and are acting accordingly. There's more money to be made trading carbon bonds than there is digging coal and drilling for oil.
    1
  15674. If it WAS blown and didn't just collapse.
    1
  15675. The Deep State will fix it for Harris - then civil war will follow.
    1
  15676. Although somewhat indelicately expressed, these views are actually based on a rational assessment of the situation Britain currently faces.
    1
  15677. ​ @autonomous1507 Not so.
    1
  15678. @TheBritishCousin Where would be the fun it that?
    1
  15679. @ What points? It's just propagandist drivel.
    1
  15680. @ But I enjoy being amazed and disgusted. Times Radio reinforces my conviction that the media is run by traitors and idiots.
    1
  15681. @ What points? The entire initial premise is at fault, and subsequent arguments fail automatically thereby.
    1
  15682. @ But I enjoy watching people making fools of themselves!
    1
  15683. It is.
    1
  15684.  @sososoprano1  This one does. More than 20,000 vaccinated people a day are being tested positive.
    1
  15685.  @sososoprano1  Actually it's rather good news. If you get infected after being vaccinated then your symptoms are going to be pretty mild - no worse than a cold on most cases. But you will become immune and with thousands of people becoming immune every day the viral pathways are continually being blocked. Herd immunity is on the horizon. Under these circumstances it is highly unlikely that a more vaccine-resistant and more virulent strain will come to the fore. If one was to emerge it would be at a disadvantage because its hosts might die or be hospitalised and so restricted in their capability of infecting others, whereas the delta variant can jump from host to host as they walk about the streets - or even go to nightclubs!
    1
  15686.  @sososoprano1  The trouble is there seems no likelihood of getting herd immunity via vaccination at the moment. Mind you, if it does arrive through infection the vaccine goldmine is going to run out- not that this would POSSIBLY affect anyone's thinking of course!
    1
  15687.  @sososoprano1  And the profiteering goes on. Injecting children could represent a severe threat to their future development and yet the left seems to be supporting it. The Tories may be a bunch of crooks but they get on with the crooks in Big Pharma. Sweet-natured, innocent Labour would probably have been conned rotten.
    1
  15688. Even if it's true?
    1
  15689. Putin is doing the right thing in allowing Ukraine to waste resources on a pointless gesture.
    1
  15690.  @bjaminm428  Many studies have indicated that lockdowns have no effect on death rates in the long run, and only slow down infection rates. Once they are lifted the situation can become worse than would have been the case if the measures had not been implemented.
    1
  15691.  @mcr2356  Obviously. I was referring to lockdown measures.
    1
  15692.  @mcr2356  The r rate isn't the be all and end all of everything. In any case there is nothing to suggest that infection rates and more importantly death rates are not following a normal curve. On top of this the more healthy people under 65 who get the disease the quicker group herd immunity is achieved. Apart from everything else, lockdowns create the very conditions which enable new variants to emerge.
    1
  15693. Strictly speaking Abbot should. After all, she is apparently so awful that she nearly turned this poor man into becoming one.
    1
  15694. They are now 12 points ahead in the polls - a further 2% increase. I guess many people don't view the world in the same way as you do.
    1
  15695.  Stanley Goddard  Oh Stanley, Stanley. Stanley! What a sweet, trusting idiot you are. The icecaps aren't melting. Sea levels aren't rising and there is no way you can tell it's hotter now than it was before because you don't know how hot it was before. No matter how hard you hammer the square peg of your theory will not fit the polygon of reality.
    1
  15696. I still don't understand exactly what threat Putin's Russia presents to the UK - other than that which we bring upon ourselves by continually provoking him.
    1
  15697. They should weep with gratitude.
    1
  15698. All these career military types and their buddies in the arms industry are going to be out of a job before long. No wonder they're pissed off.
    1
  15699.  @jakerowsell8752  Exactly. It's minimal and fluctuating day by day, You can scarcely see the Covid element in the graphs. This is nothing like the almost vertical climb in numbers we saw in March and April.
    1
  15700.  Drugsareforwinners  They can't argue with the numbers.
    1
  15701. This channel gets wierder and weirder. Where do you find these nutcases? What planet are you living on?
    1
  15702. Is there a single reason why Putin would want to invade Europe or a single indication that he plans to do so? No there is not.
    1
  15703.  @keithmorgan3295  Sentiment. As much relation to reality as the British singing Britannia Rules the Waves.
    1
  15704.  @keithmorgan3295  Just think about it. Former empires mourn their loss of glory - but it doesn't mean they plan to take them back. A song is just a song.
    1
  15705.  @keithmorgan3295  You must then consider soldiers singing a sentimental song to be more indicative of Russian foreign policy than that expressed many times by its President. This seems hardly likely. Putin's attitude to both Russia's imperial past and its Soviet past can be found in his writings and speeches. They are well- argued, historically informed and convincing. He goes on a bit, but they are well worth the read. His essay published in the summer of 2021 is especially illuminating. The past is dead, he says, and though it is a matter of great regret it cannot be resurrected, not would it be possible or of benefit to do so. Russia's task now is to defend itself against encroachment and the continuing Western threats aimed at its dissolution and subservience. He is defending Russia, not attacking Europe.
    1
  15706.  @BoostyGeoff  It's all in the Pandora Papers.
    1
  15707.  @gristlybillow7050  Pandora Papers. It's all there.
    1
  15708. @ Part of their strategy. Russia was attempting to reduce the Ukrainian army by getting it to fight on its own territory, instead of in the rebel-occupied areas of Donbass, which they believed the Ukrainians were planning to invade.. Putin has no desire to occupy Ukraine as a whole.
    1
  15709. @ That was battlefield strategy. There was no plan to permanently occupy, merely to try to reduce the Ukrainian army in Ukrainian territory, not in rebel-held Donbass.
    1
  15710.  @chkldstgee2433  It is difficult for more simplistic minds to accept, I realise. But facts are facts. If you want to conquer a country you don't send a 40km convoy of tanks and troop carriers nose-to-tail down the main highway.
    1
  15711. @ The army is pretty crap- but not that crap. It's a given of military strategy that the two reasons for entering territory are to conquer it, or because you have chosen it as the site for a battle. And Putin doesn't want to conquer Ukraine.
    1
  15712. @ All he wants is to take back the Russian bits. These were stuck on to the SSR of Ukraine for administrative reasons and mistakenly included when the country of Ukraine was created in 1991.
    1
  15713. Ukraine has been attacking civilians in Donbass for eight years. Thousands have died.
    1
  15714.  @sergeyb8  There has been a continual exchange of fire along a moving frontline in Donbass, certainly. But both sides are equally to blame for civilian casualties.
    1
  15715.  @sergeyb8  Oh far fewer. The bulk of the deaths happened in the first two years, but the separatist armies fought back and until recently I think deaths were running at as few as 50/60 a year. Now though it's all changed and civilian death rate is mounting again.
    1
  15716.  @sergeyb8  I continue with that final assertion. Diplomatic solutions were possible but they would invariably involve concessions to Russian interests. Lets face it, this is a war between two sets of gangsters the Ukrainian, American facing oligarchs and the Ukrainian Russian-facing oligarchs. Things has quietened down in Donbass before 2022 but it was clear that things were about to hot up again. America wasn't going to spend billions on training and equipping a large Ukrainian army without seeing a return. In December 2021 Putin offered an entirely reasonable peace deal, but it was scornfully rejected. What Russia either had to invade or skulk away defeated. That it could not do. Ukraine's responsibility lies in the lack of judgement of its leadership, both with Zelensky and with Poroshenko, whose efforts to crush the rebellion only succeeded in strengthening it, and under whose regime the majority of civilian deaths occurred.
    1
  15717.  @sergeyb8  I repeat that Ukraine must take its share of blame, for reasons already stated. Russia was provoked - and over a long period too. Ukraine may not end up with any choice. That's what wars are for. Nothing changes, let alone from the Middle Ages, but for thousands of years before. Interests clash. Weapons are rattled. Bribery is attempted. Talks take place. Talks fail . War results . It was ever thus. As I say, Ukraine may end up not having any choice in the matter of the annexation of Crimea and Donbass. Denying choice to your opponents is an essential feature of war. If Ukraine chooses to fight on it has be very sure that it has the resources to continue to do so. Otherwise things will only get worse. Tell me more about the Russians trying to extend their territory in Crimea. I am not familiar with this.
    1
  15718. I've got a 900 acre farm in Wisconsin. What you got?
    1
  15719.  @Marvellous132  Truth is I ain't seen much of a change since my subsidy shot up under Trump. Guy down the road who grows a few cabbages and keeps a coupla goats is getting a whole packet, so he tells me.
    1
  15720.  @Marvellous132  There's two things about farming. Is it there mainly to give the farmer a job, or is there to provide food for a whole lot of people? It can be for both, and that's good. But when times are hard productivity counts for more. Tough, but farming has always been tough. I dunno what you're getting at about fire brigades though. Our fire service is payed for with taxes, same as anyplace else.
    1
  15721.  @Marvellous132  Socialism is a road paved with good intentions and trod by many good people. But hell is at the end of it, because it don't take enough account of the bad people on that road, and the indifference and cruelty of life in general. Sermon for the day!
    1
  15722. This situation is the direct result of decades and decades of blind mismanagement by successive governments. Trying to shift the blame on to Tommy Robinson and Vladimir Putin would be utterly laughable if it wasn't so sickeningly hypocritical.
    1
  15723. The Wagner Group is currently spearheading the takeover of Bakhmut. Even if the losses in the Luhansk attack amounted to as many as 200 (doubtful) this is of no great significance. Is it just me, or does this alleged news channel appear to be run by woke schoolchildren?
    1
  15724.  @canuckprogressive.3435  And Ukrainians too. The city is now encircled on three sides and street-by-street fighting has begun. This is probably one of the most significant battles of the war so far.
    1
  15725. The war will end when the West stops supporting Zelensky's corrupt puppet regime. The sooner the better.
    1
  15726. A law passed over 200 years ago which nobody takes any notice of and never has.
    1
  15727. And the land route via Kherson.
    1
  15728. This is all working out very well. Voluntary testing of coronavirus spread and lots more votes for Donald!
    1
  15729. OK. These fires have nothing to do with climate change. Forests burn, regenerate and then burn again and have done so for thousands of years. It is nature. It is how it works. If forests didn't burn the tops of the trees would spread so much sunlight couldn't penetrate through them and new seedlings and shoots couldn't grow. If there were no forest fires there would be no forests. How was that for you? PS Man-made climate change is a total scam. Temperatures are not increasing any more than they should, the ice caps are not melting and the oceans are not rising. It is all being done mainly in order to restrict industrial growth and make money from trading in permissions to exceed carbon limits.
    1
  15730.  @rachel.mcgowan  "Renewables" aren't renewable because wind turbines and solar panels use up more energy to manufacture, install and maintain than they can possibly hope to produce in a working lifetime. Nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels as things stand at the moment; which isn't to say that the wit of man cannot devise a new energy source some time over the next few decades. We live in hope.
    1
  15731. The "climate crisis" is a total con trick designed to manipulate world energy markets. Even so-called "scientists" have been fooled. Those who question the received wisdom end up flipping burgers in Macdonalds.
    1
  15732. It's worth remembering that the population of the area served by Thames Water has increased by at least a third and possibly even more over the past couple of decades, largely due to immigration. I doubt very much that the government will be willing to take on the task of dealing with all the shit this situation has produced.
    1
  15733. I like rich people. They must be very clever to get as rich as they are. I want my country to be run by clever rich people, is there anything wrong with that?
    1
  15734. Louvre360 Yes. Thank you for asking.
    1
  15735. Louvre360 I hope there is nothing wrong with you. Your 2nd message said "goof" and finished strangely. I hope you haven't had a stroke.
    1
  15736.  @atikameg73  Some will - others will curse his name as in Russia some will curse the name of Putin, while others will be proud that their sons and husbands have died liberating Ukraine from fascism - according to their view of things, anyway. All these responses are equally valid.
    1
  15737.  @richiecooke69  Remind me how long Zelensky has been in power without an election? You are deluded if you believe that there is a great deal of difference between how Ukraine is run and how Russia is run. Both are oligarchies and riddled with corruption. Ukraine may have become a little more sophisticated in its methods, after being trained by American oligarchs, but that's about as far as it goes.
    1
  15738.  @richiecooke69  Much of what you say is true. But where is Ukraine, where are its borders? Putin says, with some reason, that the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, the borders of which the new country of Ukraine now occupies, was never a country as such but was a construct of the Bolsheviks to which great chunks of Russia were added for administrative and other reasons. Now he wants them back, and then the new smaller, Ukraine can do whatever it likes. This strikes me as being a perfectly reasonable attitude in the circumstances - and compliance with his wishes certainly preferable to going to war over the issue. Also I believe it is true to say without the interference of the free, democratic and incorrupt West Ukraine is so keen to join his wishes would have been complied with, or at least regional autonomy granted to Donbass. But - freely, democratically and incorruptly - the West very much wants to lay its hands on the trillions of dollars in mineral wealth in the Russian bits and is prepared to sacrifice as many Ukrainians and Russians as necessary to achieve this objective.
    1
  15739.  @richiecooke69  I have to disagree of a couple of points. First of all, I do think there obviously has to be sort sort of statute of limitations on historical claims to lands and, in fact, it was only part of Kursk which was part of a territory ruled from Kiev, which was not of course, Ukraine and this was around a thousand years ago. The 1991 borders agreed foolishly by Yeltsin are the real issue. Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine are really different entities to a great extent. They not only speak Russian in the East they ARE Russian - or at least very many are. These people have escaped the war into Russia and are now gradually coming back as an intense process of rebuilding is taking place which, in fact, is transforming places like Mariupol from a grim Soviet slum into a bright , modern city. Russia, in my view, has far more right to the mineral wealth of Donbass since it is the result of Russian investment and Russian labour. It is more entitled to sell lithium to China than Ukraine is to sell it to America.
    1
  15740.  @alanhindle3149  You are quite right, of course. Mind you, I do tend to wonder if Zelensky is currently experiencing the same level of support as Churchill did in the 1940s.
    1
  15741.  @alanhindle3149  Your opinion is of much worth as anyone else's in a situation where truth has been thrown out of the window. Personally I do not believe for a second that Russia's losses are anything like as high as has been claimed, and nor that its economy is in such dire straits as depicted. My hope is that the current Russian push will result in the whole of Donbass being taken, and the Ukrainians being thrown out of Kursk. If this happens before Trump takes office, then he is merely faced with the task of giving American approval to a fait accompli and the war could end with no more killing. Which would be a very good thing.
    1
  15742.  @alanhindle3149 You are as entitled to your opinions as anyone in a world where truth has been thrown out of the window. Think yourself lucky that you can express them on YouTube. My views are constantly silenced by its fascist algorithm.
    1
  15743.  @alanhindle3149  I think I like you
    1
  15744.  @richiecooke69  I have just this minute made a discovery which might be of help to you. Having had four attempts to reply to a post demanding evidence of Keir Starmer's duplicity rejected, I passed one over to another bot which re-rewrote it instantly. It got through and said more or less exactly what I had said, but rather more politely !
    1
  15745.  @richiecooke69  I have made a discovery. I got a bot to rewrite a rejected post and it got through! Oddly enough the first post I made announcing this to you was, for some reason, rejected by the YouTube bot!
    1
  15746. The change came from the IPCC.
    1
  15747.  @sososoprano1  "Thousands develop long covid each week?" Are you sure?
    1
  15748.  @sososoprano1  One good thing which might come out of all this is that much-needed research into the long-term affects of pathogens in a minority of cases will be undertaken. It happens with the flu as well.
    1
  15749.  @curtisep5885  As with everything that happens there are multiple "sides" as you put it.
    1
  15750.  @edc1569  When they destroy vast areas of power supply networks? The ones the Western media tell you about are the ones that missed their assigned targets, largely because they were intercepted.
    1
  15751. And very, very loudly.
    1
  15752. It didn't and no-one died. Just six children under 14 have died in the UK with Covid and all had other serious illnesses. More than 20,000 who have died have been over 85 years of age.
    1
  15753. tomb63 You really must stop playing all those violent video games.
    1
  15754. tomb613 Then there's hope for you. Not much. but some.
    1
  15755. But the science says children are at very low risk and there is even a very low risk of them passing the illness on to adults. Listen to the science.
    1
  15756.  @kfc_the_bucket8432  No more likely to contract it, but more likely to suffer badly or die from it. They should be kept at home or in hospital, obviously. Children very rarely spread the disease to adults.
    1
  15757. Well she's in touch with her inner Nazi, ain't she?
    1
  15758.  @briankristiansen821 Not so. Russia doesn't want the whole of Ukraine, just Crimea and Donbass. Crimea because it is Russian and Donbass because its immense mineral wealth was exploited and developed by Russia and by Russians, and they are reluctant to see America steal the fruits of their labours.
    1
  15759. Why would Putin hide in a bunker? Russia is not under attack.
    1
  15760. Is banning them enough though? During the First World War Dachshund dogs were thrown out of windows and stomped to death as a protest against German atrocities. What has happened to patriotism?
    1
  15761. The way things are going on the southern front I don't see how Putin needs a vast mobilisation. As anticipated, he has used up the blotting paper and is now going in hard with more experienced troops, including Wagner and Syrian veterans. This really can't last much longer.
    1
  15762.  @barrybrodin7085  No. Russian veterans who have fought in Syria. ie Syrian veterans.
    1
  15763. As are morons like you.
    1
  15764. The Proud Boys are not white supremacists. They have all races in their ranks. They are simply opposed to the far-left ideologies which are destroying America.
    1
  15765.  @Godric_71  Small bribes and pie in the sky promises do not compensate for the insidious erosion of traditional western values. They do not compensate for years of race-baiting which have served to undermine the nation's progress towards racial equality. They do not compensate for university courses which teach that men are toxic parasites or that capitalism is a force of evil. They are as nothing when compared with fostering the illusion of equality of capability or moral rectitude. They pale into insignificance when placed beside images of babies being torn from wombs and their dismembered bodies thrown into trash cans or men winning sports events because they have declared themselves to be women. These are things that are happening now; not things that will happen once the glorious dawn of socialism has broken. You make some worthwhile points in your final paragraph but: 1) Which murderous dictators did you have in mind? 2) The Jan 6 events were simply a "mostly peaceful" demo which got somewhat out of hand. There was no serious attempt at insurrection or assassination. That is pure propaganda. 3) Blaming the pandemic on political responses is both foolish and distasteful. Practically every government in the world was wrong-footed, and many continue to be so. America's comparatively high death rate owes more to obesity than anything Trump did or didn't do. Blame MacDonald's if you want to blame anyone. As to your other post, tax cuts should be enough in the first instance. A sensible right-wing government should merely set the scene for growth and prosperity. It is the function of the left to minimise the worst aspects of greed-fuelled capitalism. You should concentrate on that instead of obsessing with nonsense. You are the brakes, not the engine.
    1
  15766. @Rick Doran Of course not! There was no plan - just a bunch of angry people shouting their mouths off.
    1
  15767.  @reallymakesyouthink  What about sentencing? Why are TR's sentences always so severe in relation to his offences? Make no mistake. He has a target on his back because he refused to act as an agent for the security services in their attempts to control right-wing opinion. This is not justice. This is political chicanery manipulating justice.
    1
  15768.  @rtjames  You don't need an HGV licence to drive most farm machinery. In any case, ex-drivers are spread across a wide variety of occupations, although most are plant operators or employed in the building trade. I have this from an interesting article in Transport Operator magazine as long ago as 2016 which investigated the "ticking time-bomb" of driver shortages.
    1
  15769.  @arturobianco848  Actually drivers' wages are only a very small proportion of food industry costs. Effectively doubling their wages will have little impact on food prices.
    1
  15770.  @rtjames  I'm afraid I don't know how many people are employed in driving heavy machinery on farms, but I cannot imagine it is anything like a high proportion of the estimated million or so HGV licence holders who currently are employed elsewhere. Even now, agricultural work tends to be highly localised and almost in a father-to-son type tradition. Agriculture is suffering greatly from a lack of seasonal workers -that is very true but I doubt very much that many HGV licence holders give up their jobs to help out at harvest time.
    1
  15771.  @arturobianco848  In addition to my previous reply I have to point out that since many small haulage firms operate at very small profit margins, some of them will undoubtedly go under in what is likely to be a war for contracts - which will be rather a sad thing.
    1
  15772.  @arturobianco848  The government threw literally billions at the hysterical and foolhardy furlough scheme as a response to the pandemic. I agree though it will probably be beyond them to throw a couple of hundred million to bribe drivers to get back behind the wheel. We must wait and see.
    1
  15773.  @rtjames  Sorry, but you are misinterpreting what I said. Machinery is required all year obviously, but there is no reason to suppose that many -if any - of the operators hold HGV licences. There are a million or so HGV licence holders working in other occupations it is thought. The government has sent letters to all of them asking them to consider getting back behind the wheel. How many do so will doubtless depend on what incentives are offered - but they will obviously have to be considerable. There are also around 40,000 people waiting for HGV licence tests and the government is seeking to streamline and speed up the process. The 2016 survey appears to have been very thorough, and more recent studies have confirmed its findings.
    1
  15774.  @rtjames  All you have to do is check the trade magazines. They all tell the same story. The 2016 article was based on official statistics from the ONS and other sources. In June this year UK Haulier predicted the current crisis very accurately. The government's mail drop is based on comparing DLVA info with employment records. There are around a million people registered as holding HGV licences who show up on tax and employment data as now working outside of the industry. There are a further 40,000 people waiting to take an HGV test.
    1
  15775.  @rtjames  We 're not talking a short timeframe here by any means. Obviously recruitment will be gradual and supply-chain problems will continue for many months. The current fuel crisis is just an example of what happens when people panic. We can thank the media (including social) for turning what would otherwise have been a relatively isolated series of inconveniences into yet another example of unseemly hysteria.
    1
  15776.  @rtjames  I suppose getting the 40,000 applicants through the test ASAP would be a good step. Presumably they actually WANT to be drivers. Personally I would offer job permits to foreign drivers on a year long contract at high wages. That ought to set the ball rolling.
    1
  15777.  @dennisfraser6896  But supplies get through. In any case, drivers' wages only makeup a relatively small proportion of costs.
    1
  15778.  @gurkslunga  They will have to pay more. And the costs will indeed be passed on to the endbuyer. Goods will be slightly more expensive, but they will at least become available.
    1
  15779.  @toms5996  International laws largely decided upon by the US after the end of World War II many of which have failed the test of time. Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent the US taking it over and using it as a nuclear missile base and having access to its mineral resources. America started this war in 2014 when it staged a coup to overthrow the government. The Russian invasion is merely a development in that war which has already cost thousands of lives.
    1
  15780.  @SomethingLegit1 Russia is fighting to defend itself from Western incursion. Ukraine is fighting because America told it to. There is no moral high ground here.
    1
  15781.  @CantHandleThisCanYa  Never watch it.
    1
  15782.  @newsreader8249  What idea?
    1
  15783.  @newsreader8249  Yes. The entire strategy of NATO since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been to push Russia into a corner. Ukraine is a step too far.
    1
  15784.  @digitaldreamer5481  How naive.
    1
  15785. Ukraine is not a democracy in any real sense, and Crimea and the Donbass are not parts of Ukraine, except on paper.
    1
  15786. He didn't. The gun belonged to a friend who lives in Kenosha, Kyle works there.
    1
  15787.  @walkejb  He didn't cross a state line with it. It was already in Wisconsin.The only question hangs on right to carry at age 17. The law is rather vague in Wisconsin but it seems likely that he was acting legally.
    1
  15788.  @walkejb  The deaths are the result of riots. No riots: no deaths.
    1
  15789.  @walkejb  No riots: no vigilantes. No of course I wasn't but there is plenty of video evidence chronicling his behaviour. He may have acted foolishly and ended up in a dangerous situation which he felt he had to shoot his way out of. Only a court will decide if he acted legally. I think he did, but it remains to be seen.
    1
  15790. Surely it is now time for peace talks to begin We must put from our minds any idea that Russia wants to take Ukraine. It never did. A compromise on borders and commitments is possible - and always had been. Tragically this has been prevented by Western greed. Under the usual false banner of "freedom and democracy" our leaders have merely been scrabbling over access to natural resources. It is utterly shameful.
    1
  15791.  @timothyharris4708  Can't get an appointment.
    1
  15792.  @timothyharris4708  It's not my fault I'm not a Muslim.
    1
  15793. Now all that's need is for the verdicts to be overturned.
    1
  15794.  @jla6558  It doesn't have to be "played out" anywhere, This is a border dispute over mineral rights which has been blown up out of all proportion.
    1
  15795.  @andrewadams6905  God, I get so bored with these idiotic analogies between now and 1939. Putin is not Hitler. The situations are entirely different. All Putin wants are the Russian bits of Ukraine which were mistakenly included when it was set up thirty odd years ago. He has neither the desire nor the ability to invade Europe. Hitler was 50. Putin is 70. Hitler had the best army in the world. Putin has got - well far from the best army in the world... Just try to think it through, eh?
    1
  15796.  @UlricStormborn  Here we go again! Can you people not get it into your heads that Putin isn't Hitler and that he has neither the desire nor the ability to invade Europe. He just want the Russian bits of Ukraine. This is a totally false analogy.
    1
  15797.  @alexsilent5603  Provocation and some, then.
    1
  15798.  @andrewadams6905  There are no similarities between the two situations or the two men.
    1
  15799.  @andrewadams6905  Just look at a geological map of Ukraine.. Just look at history and ask yourself why the original Tatar population of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was deported and replaced by Russians. These should provide you with basic facts. You might also ask why the gigantic steelworks in Mariupol was fought over so fiercely. Do you really imagine the American government gives a damn how Ukraine is governed - or anywhere else for that matter.? Money is at the root of its foreign policy and there is an estimated $13 trillion of gas, oil, coal, iron ore and rare earth minerals is these disputed territories which have been exploited by Russia and by Russians ever since salt was found there in the late 18th century - and that includes the period following Ukraine's independence. Only in 2014 did it become clear that the Ukrainian government was intending to ensure these resources were passed over to Western control. The Minsk treaties were designed to give Donbass a measure of Independence, or at least autonomy, so they could continue to ensure their mines and factories remained in the Russian sphere. Crimea was "invaded" in a virtually bloodless coup which ensured the same result. NATO, led by America, then proceeded to provide Ukraine with a multi-billion dollar army under cover of the provisions of Minsk. It became clear that Ukraine's US-leaning government was not prepared to agree to the compromise proposals set out in Minsk, and despite the fact that a new compromise had been hammered out in Istanbul, Zelensky was persuaded to refuse to sign. As a result Russia invaded to obtain by force what it believes it owns by right of history.
    1
  15800.  @andrewadams6905  Russia invaded Ukraine. It had reasons. These are facts enough. To suggest that these reasons were anything other than a attempt to retain a hold of the highly profitable mineral extraction industries of Donbass is absurd. The reason Donbass and Crimea have such large Russian populations is that they original Tatar (not Ukrainian) populations of these areas were removed and replaced by Russians. Ukraine wants to ensure these industries export their products through Western conduits rather than through Russia. Russia strongly disagrees and since all attempts at peaceful solution have failed, war is the result. There is no evidence whatsoever that Russia has any large-scale territorial ambitions in Europe.
    1
  15801.  @andrewadams6905  You are living in a world of fantasy. Look at a geological map of the area. It contains 10% of the iron in the world and 20% of graphite for starters. Of particular interest are the as yet unquantified quantities of lithium discovered recently around Mariupol. The coalfields have been mined since the eighteenth century and the shale in the same beds is a major source of methane gas, rapidly taking its place beside oil as a prime energy source. Overall, Ukraine contains a staggering 5% of the world's mineral resources, mostly concentrated beneath the soil of the steppes to the east of the Dnieper. It is a prize worth having. Your Putin quote is accurate - but he went on immediately to say that the recreation of the Soviet Empire is an impossible dream. The second half of the statement is, of course, often left out. Recovering these mineral riches from the threat of them being sold off to the West is what this war is about. It has nothing at all to do with anything so vague as recreating a lost empire. As for dictators starting wars - that is not the sole prerogative of dictators. Wars begin for a variety of reasons, but predominately because ambitious people have their eye on obtaining natural resources, or new markets for the products made from them.
    1
  15802.  @andrewadams6905  You are living in a world of fantasy. Look at a geological map of the area. It contains 10% of the iron in the world and 20% of graphite for starters. Of particular interest are the as yet unquantified quantities of lithium discovered recently around Mariupol. The coalfields have been mined since the eighteenth century and the shale in the same beds is a major source of methane gas, rapidly taking its place beside oil as a prime energy source. Overall, Ukraine contains a staggering 5% of the world's mineral resources, mostly concentrated beneath the soil of the steppes to the east of the Dnieper. It is a prize worth having.
    1
  15803.  @andrewadams6905  Your Putin quote is accurate - but he went on immediately to say that the recreation of the Soviet Empire is an impossible dream. The second half of the statement is, of course, often left out. Recovering these mineral riches from the threat of them being sold off to the West is what this war is about. It has nothing at all to do with anything so vague as recreating a lost empire.
    1
  15804.  @andrewadams6905  As for dictators starting wars, over the course of the latter half of the last century and the start of this one, most can be traced to the political and economic ambitions of the United States of America which, usually under the guise of bringing democracy and freedom to poor, benighted foreigners, actually robs them blind. either by proxy wars or by cunning treaties, an art they learned when they first came to the continent they now occupy and which they used to ethnically cleanse it of its native inhabitants. The two failed treaties which preceded the present war in Ukraine - Budapest and Minsk - have the stamp of good old Yankee know-how written all over them.
    1
  15805.  @andrewadams6905  You still don't seem to get it, do you? $13 trillion of mineral wealth is worth having - and it's certainly worth fighting to keep hold of it, because the mines of Eastern Ukraine have been run by Russia even after Ukrainian independence, and it is the prospect of having them transferred to Western companies which has sparked this war. No other reason is required. The Americans exterminated native tribes by inserting clauses into treaties which they knew would have to be broken. They did the same with Minsk and with Budapest. It's a simple trick. Some fool kept on fighting a couple of days later than he should. That means we can ignore all the rest of the treaty and fail utterly to make provisions for autonomy for Donbass and use the time allotted for that to build up an army instead. That's Minsk in a nutshell.
    1
  15806.  @andrewadams6905  I don't think I've run out of arguments. You, on the other hand, seem to have run out of ways to rationally respond to them. (I don't watch Russian TV, by the way.)
    1
  15807.  @andrewadams6905  Aren't you getting a little tired of repeating yourself? A few more coal mines???!!! No, a huge, huge chunk of the world's diminishing mineral resources aren't a few more coal mines!
    1
  15808.  @JOHNDOE2K13  Look at a map. Ukraine is being pushed back on all fronts. Very few Russians are being captured and practically no North Koreans - if any. That's just propaganda.
    1
  15809. The fantasy continues.
    1
  15810. There will be chaos.
    1
  15811.  @ANH-1977  It's not the same. There is no evidence to suggest that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is other than a desperate attempt to keep hold of the mineral-rich Donbass.
    1
  15812. How about the non-covid death count? Got any explanation for that? It's at least as much above the five-year average as that caused by covid.
    1
  15813.  @MuddyDuck...  And this is the result of the hysterical over-reaction to covid, and not to the disease itself. The near-useless "mitigation" measures we have been obsessed with will end up killing at least as many as covid in the long run; young and middle-aged people too, not just mainly the elderly as with covid.
    1
  15814.  @MuddyDuck...  The hysterical over-reaction which led to near-useless mitigation measures, naturally enough. It seems that once covid gets in, it's in and that's that. It will spread by sheer force of numbers. When the disease arrived it was supposed that it would affect everyone severely, not just predominantly the very elderly and some younger people with severe medical conditions. Strategies seem to have ignored this latter fact completely. To my mind the ill-fated Great Barrington Declaration got it absolutely right. If some version of that strategy had been employed the pandemic would have long been over.
    1
  15815. Yes.
    1
  15816. Putin is only kept alive by daily injections of the glandular secretions of murdered babies. An estimated 70% of all males in Russia have been killed in the war. Three Ukrainians are known to have died so far. These are FACTS. Only brainwashed Kremlin bots deny them!
    1
  15817. @ History teaches no such thing! The unique circumstances of Nazism and the peculiar conditions prevalent in Europe in the aftermath in the worst war in history merely show that in that one unique and peculiar instance appeasement was not the best course to follow. It is not an engraved template. It is not written in stone! Grow up for Chrissake! If Russia hadn't appeased the Mongols then Russia would not exist. If Britain had not appeased the Vikings Britain would not exist. If Italy had not appeased Napoleon then Italy would not exist - the list is endless. Don't they teach you ANYTHING in school these days apart from the history of Nazi Germany?
    1
  15818. @ That was Communist Russia - the USSR. Do you not think that perhaps the Russian Federation has learned the lesson from the collapse of its predecessor?
    1
  15819. He wasn't impeached. The cases failed both times for lack of evidence.
    1
  15820.  @HalfCrazy520  Articles of impeachment were served but were not accepted. Do you happen to know what the term is for someone who is impeached who then gets impeached? Are they double impeached? The point is that this nasty attempt by the Dems to scupper Trump failed miserably. It was a failed impeachment. Full impeachment did not occur. The train did not leave the station. The journey never rook place. Trump is an unimpeached, impeached President. The impeachment process did not result in any form of censure - and quite rightly so.
    1
  15821. The Democrats and the media are stripped bare in all their ugliness. Particularily disturbing is the image of young college kids being brainwashed en masse by slogan-teaching professors. I am horribly reminded of the cultural revolution in Mao's China. We need to do something quick.
    1
  15822. Why is the word "corruption" used in this context I often wonder? It seems a perfectly healthy and time-honoured way of conducting business to me. Under a full-on Socialist/Marxist system money would still be disiursed in various ways, but only after lengthy committee discussions and the end results in terms of services and facilities available to the general public would be far inferior.
    1
  15823.  toriesrdemons tories kill  I agree we need Socialism to exist - if merely as a threat to prevent Tories from grinding the faces of the poor too ferociously. It may even be allowed to rule for a year or two to hammer the point home. To expect it to actually run a country fairly and efficiently for any length of time is, however, just plain ridiculous.
    1
  15824.  @jaggmor  If he did it was probably just because it was less of a hassle than to do so. This kind of thing is a problem all public figures have to face. The Dems and CNN just show how cheap and nasty they are by trying to turn it to advantage.
    1
  15825.  @connor5669  Yes it is. A court case with the evidence properly assessed is another matter.
    1
  15826. Starmer and his gang of globalists are irrelevant to the issue. Trump and Putin will decide what shape the future will be and they will just have to put up with it.
    1
  15827.  @dukakisomondi8552  Of course I have. But civilian infrastructure and military infrastructure are not separate entities. Missile launchers might well use the same electricity supply as hospitals.
    1
  15828.  @GHnov  Of the semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine since 1954 - but that entity was not the Ukraine of today. Crimea was only added for the convenience of Moscow. It has never truly been Ukrainian and never will be.
    1
  15829.  @GHnov  The Roman Empire no longer exists. The Ottoman Empire no longer exists. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine no longer exists. Russia exists. That is the essential difference.
    1
  15830.  @GHnov  Legally? Whose laws? America's of course. And those other countries will change their minds quickly enough once the balance of power has changed.
    1
  15831.  @andrewadams6905  Soldiers dying in a war is somewhat different to unarmed civilians being gunned down by fanatics, don't you think?
    1
  15832. Malaria?Hydroxychloroquine? No??
    1
  15833. This plant is occupied by Russia - and has been for many weeks. Why would they shell themselves? So sad to see Newsmax blindly following the anti-Russian MSM narrative.
    1
  15834.  @alexs691  Did you conduct this survey yourself? In fact support for Russia in these areas is considerable. They have kept the names of streets commemorating Russian figures, and even statues of Lenin and the like. More than 60% are of direct Russian descent and it is an incontrovertible fact that the economy has crumbled since Kiev took over from Moscow.
    1
  15835.  @alexs691  I'm sure you're right about Kharkiv with a relatively small Russian population. But what about further south in Donetsk and Luhansk?
    1
  15836.  @alexs691  You are quite right of course. I erred. I had it in my mind that Kharkiv was 20% Russian only. I apologise. All the same it does seen true, does it not, that pro-Russian sentiment is far more prevalent in the Donbass regions? Is this because the Russians there are mainly involved in industrial production? I also see that Kharkiv did not come out on the pro-Russian side in the Maidan revolt. I hesitate to ask, but if you have time I would be grateful for an explanation of this from someone on the ground, as it were.
    1
  15837.  @alexs691  Thank you. This is certainly food for thought. Oddly enough I don't find it at all unlikely that one section of the population can be incited to rebellion while another remains loyal. There are many historical precedents.
    1
  15838. Your sums are NUTS! For a start the death rate from coronavirus is currently less the half a per cent and that will decrease as more and more people become immune. The pool of potential deaths is strictly limited to the frail and the elderly and although obviously the numbers in that pool will be replaced in time, the rate cannot possibly match the rate at which people die. In addition the virus is bound to mutate into weaker forms over time since the more virulent forms will lose potential hosts, and die with them. Add to this the undoubted therapeutic effects of readily available ant viral replicants, which limit severe effects, and it is quite easy to postulate a scenario whereby herd immunity can be achieved with a death rate only very little above normal. After all, don't forget that 94% of so-called "Covid deaths" are the result of other morbiidities, notably pneumonia. The people who are dying now won't be able to die a second time, will they?
    1
  15839. Stephen Paul Spot on! With proportional representation UKIP would have had sufficient MPs to help ensure a smooth transition into Brexit without all this fuss!
    1
  15840. Stephen Paul Well we'll never really know, will we? I think nationalistic German imperialism was buried under the rubble by the 1950s. It still existed on paper though - in the form of a plan drawn up by the Nazis in 1939 , much of which formed the basis for the earliest efforts towards European unification.
    1
  15841. Stephen Paul Probably so! It is a thing though, but how real a thing I don't know. I'll try to check it out.
    1
  15842. skyblaze eterno Ah yes. It was called Europische Wirtshafts Gemeinschaft, roughly the same as European Economic Community. It was produced in 1942 when the Germans thought they were going to win and were planning how to run Europe. It was written by economists and bankers under the leadership of Prof Walter Funk, Hitler's economics minister and President of the Reichsbank. There were sections on agriculture, industry communications etc and made provisions for a harmonised currency system. There are those who say that this document bears remarkable similarities to the provisions of the 1957 Treaty of Rome which of course kicked off the EEC. Without the tedious task of placing the two side by side it is difficult to say how much truth there is in this. It's an interesting thought though.
    1
  15843. atomic critter But with plenty of meat in it.
    1
  15844.  @seanpatrick1243  I am not a Russian, and you are a fool.
    1
  15845.  @mikeb9820  Not everyone. Just most people on this comments thread.
    1
  15846.  @holon4662  Massacring Jews? Conquering Europe? Creating the most efficient army in the world? Having his very own salute? Building concentration camps? All that sort of thing?
    1
  15847.  @electricink3908  I know the meaning. You don't.
    1
  15848. Absolutely correct. These gangster tactics can no longer work with any other than the dimmest and least critical of Americans.
    1
  15849.  @MyUniqueVibe  I'm not advocating anything. I'm just saying this is a possible outcome, and it would have been preferable if it had been arrived out without blood being shed. Putin doesn't want all of Ukraine. He would just be landing himself with a pointless and expensive civil war. Crimea is around 70% Russian, as are the industrial areas of Donbass. There is considerable justification in removing them from the control of the recently created country of Ukraine.
    1
  15850.  @sebcw1204  Lets make that a half million dead then shall we? Or possibly several billion if things turn really nasty.
    1
  15851.  @ChrisTian-rm7zm  I know what he says he wants - and it makes a great deal of sense. Ukraine is a divided country and if Russia attempted to control the Western looking part of it it would mean a long and troublesome civil war. Donbass is where all the minerals and the big money is, and it has a large Russian population because it was Russia which developed it. Crimea has been Russian since 1783 and was only tacked on to Ukraine in 1954 as a tidying-up exercise by the Soviet Union.
    1
  15852.  @davidpartydoc1005  Which would be a shame because the people of Crimea and Donbass, very many of whom are Russian, would find it preferable to living in a war zone.
    1
  15853.  @sebcw1204  Putin doesn't. The solution he offers is the same solution arrived at in Georgia and Chechnya. He know the Russia empire is over. He was there when it happened. At the same time he doesn't want to see his country threatened by America and other Western agencies. In fact, he is a moderate and keeps some of the wilder elements in the military under control.
    1
  15854.  @timbehrens9678  He might want to buy it back (it was sold to the US, don't forget). The way things are going America might be grateful for the money.
    1
  15855.  @timbehrens9678  I don't know about multiple. The Budapest agreements back in the early nineties were signed by a drunk in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and efforts have been made ever since to iron out their anomalies. More recently the Minsk agreements were designed to halt the civil war in Donbass, but instead NATO just financed and trained a huge Ukrainian army with which to threaten Russia and crush the Donbass rebels. Trying to defeat this army and revitalise Minsk, or something like it, is what this war is about as much as anything.
    1
  15856.  @sebcw1204  NATO would invade Russia if they thought they could get away with it. In the meantime taking over Ukraine is threat enough, not to say an insult to Russia. Can you remind me of all the "legal" wars America has precipitated over the past fifty years or so, by the way?
    1
  15857.  @davidpartydoc1005  I smell decay and cowardice. But then I assume you are American.
    1
  15858.  @angela1984a  I don't suppose for a minute you have any idea at all of the background to this conflict, do you? You do realise that the Ukrainians have been at war with the Russian inhabitants of Donbass for eight years and many thousands had died before Putin invaded? And that Ukraine has genuine Nazi militias who want to remove the eight million Russians who represent almost 20% of Ukraine's population?
    1
  15859.  @angela1984a  Crimea is Russian. It was taken from the Turks in 1783 and only stuck on to Ukraine in 1954 as part of a tidying-up exercise in by the Soviet Union. And as I already explained, Donbass also has a very large Russian population, many of whom prefer to be ruled from Moscow than from Kiev. If their wishes has been granted this war would never have happened. Which would have been a very good thing, don't you think?
    1
  15860.  @sebcw1204  Why has Putin waited twenty years to start build an empire to replace one which crashed and left his country in chaos? That's just daft. And what is NATO anyway but America's bitch? Poor bloody Ukrainians are dying to advance America's commercial interests, so I don't suppose they'll mind if a few thousand Poles or Bulgarians do so as well.
    1
  15861.  @angela1984a  I don't think one can have any faith in any referendums carried out in Ukraine It is a very corrupt country and of course the referendums carried out by the Russians showed an exactly opposite result. I return to my original point. The compromise offered by Putin following the failure of Minsk was a fair and reasonable one, and supported by a goodly portion of the people involved. Anything would have been better than this dreadful war - and unless such a compromise can been agreed the war will just go on and on and more and more people will die. Furthermore, the chances of Russia winning it in the end are extremely high - which makes all this gung-ho sabre rattling by Zelensky groupies and keyboard warriors even more distasteful.
    1
  15862.  @sebcw1204  But these conflicts are all clearly designed to maintain Russia's existing borders and interests, not to extend them. NATO is the aggressor here - acting on behalf of largely American commercial interests. You can't expect Russia to lie back and just take it when former allies whose borders it shares are infiltrated by agents of a foreign power which is an avowed enemy. The idea that Germany pushed America into anything is absurd. Germany did as it was told, despite sensible reservations, allowing America to justify doing what it always intended to do. Russia is extremely relevant. Along with other BRICS countries it is in the process of forming an economic and military alliance which will hopefully end American hegemony forever. And not before time either.
    1
  15863.  @timbehrens9678  No treaty lasts forever. The Russians considered that particular one broken when Ukraine allowed American agitators to whip up violent insurrection against the then leadership. It was officially abandoned in 2019. In any case treaties that don't pass the test of time are just bits of paper. Hopefully they can be replaced by other treaties which acknowledge new circumstances - but if they can't then war may well result. There is nothing new in this.
    1
  15864.  @timbehrens9678  What's the point in obsessing with GDP when America has reached its debt ceiling and other countries are shedding dollar debts by the billion. America is borrowing money it can't repay and printing money by the billion just to keep itself afloat. Economic think tanks and even senior treasury officials are warning that the country is heading for a crash. Russia is riding the sanctions with considerable ease and if its getting clothes from North Korea I'm sure it isn't scrambling for them, it's paying for them in hard cash.
    1
  15865.  @angela1984a  And at least as many dead Ukrainians. It is an avoidable tragedy which should not have been allowed to get this far, and which could be stopped in hours if America and its lackeys were to mind their own business.
    1
  15866.  @telebubba5527  You are quite mad. Why would anyone want to annihilate Ukraine? Once Putin gets Crimea and Donbass it's game over.
    1
  15867.  @timbehrens9678  This obsession with jurisprudence falls by the wayside once the guns start firing. One can argue all sorts of things. One can argue for instance that the instrument by which Krushchev attached Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was not ratified and is therefore invalid. One can argue that Minsk II supersedes all preceding treaties and that the failure of Ukraine to abide by its precepts allows Russia to implement them by force. Now though things have moved on apace and lawyerly nit-picking will have to wait until the soldiers finish their work. The legal position will be decided by the side that wins. It always is.
    1
  15868.  @sebcw1204  NATO trained and paid for the army against which the Russians are currently fighting. Ukraine is America's surrogate in a proxy war over access to the mineral wealth of Donbass. Ukraine was created by Russia and around 20% of its population identify as Russian. Western Ukraine may keep its independence, but if Crimea and Donbass prefer Moscow to Kiev, then let it be so. It is better than a war. As for hegemony. it is time it was buried. We need a multipolar world, not a monopolar one.
    1
  15869.  @sebcw1204  On the contrary, Russia is very interested in a multi- polar world. This is why it has chosen to break America's back by defying its schemes in Ukraine. It knows the Soviet Union is over and a new union of emerging economies, resentful of American bullying, will be created - no single one of which will be dominant. The western alliance will similarly diversify and the brief American empire will crumble, as all empires must. Ukraine came into being in the chaos of of the collapse of the SU. It has never truly been a country before. As to referendums such exercises are pointless in a country as corrupt as Ukraine, although Russia has of course agreed in principle to an internationally monitored one. It would probably win too.
    1
  15870.  @timbehrens9678  This isn't imperialism, it is self-preservation. And Minsk II merely required a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, with which Russia and the DPR and the LPR complied. Ukraine did not and furthermore completely ignored the provisions designed to effect a peaceful solution, instead using the time to vastly increase the size of its army. Minsk, like most treaties in which America has had a hand, was designed as an instrument by which its own interests can be advanced. They've been doing that since the Indian Wars and have become quite expert.
    1
  15871.  @sebcw1204  In Russian eyes and indeed in the eyes of anyone sensible, NATO and America are interchangeable terms. Russia has stood by while NATO has spread steadily eastwards. Ukraine was a step too far. It is, after all, still "Little Russia" and it is clearly true that its prospective inclusion in America's gang was designed as a step to both diminish Russian status and to capture the mineral riches of Donbass. Russia did not "seize" these resources. It already had them. It was to prevent them falling into enemy hands that was one of the prime reasons for the invasion. The BRICS countries are meeting in South Africa in August to consider creating a joint currency to rival the dollar. Russia, as a significant partner in that alliance, will indeed be playing at the big table, as you put it. You analogies to historical events are absurd. In the cases you mention changes of ownership of territories are long established. In the case of Russia and Ukraine they are not.
    1
  15872.  @telebubba5527  He has never said anything of the kind. In speeches, essays and TV interviews he has repeatedly asserted that Russians and Ukrainians are one and the same people. This is entirely different to wishing to erase Ukrainians, or even to bring the whole of Ukraine back into the Russian fold! You are a victim of crude propaganda designed to demonise Putin and to attribute motives to him which he does not have.
    1
  15873.  @timbehrens9678  Ukraine is being financed by America/NATO to recapture Donbass and Crimea. That would be the first step in Western plans to disintegrate the Russian Federation which, in alliance with the other BRICS countries, presents a threat to American hegemony. Threat was met by threat, and that threat was provided by the Ukrainian army. Minsk required that heavy weapons be withdrawn from the front line, not from the area as a whole.
    1
  15874.  @timbehrens9678  Don't be so daft.
    1
  15875.  @timbehrens9678  But what is "the territory of Ukraine" and do these armed groups include Azov militia and the armed forces of the two republics? Ukraine had no intention of implementing the changes. It has recently been admitted by Angela Merkel that Minsk was a sham, designed to buy time got Ukraine to have its army vastly extended. And it was.
    1
  15876.  @timbehrens9678  The phrase "certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions” which occurs in the treaty clearly refers to the self-declared republics, and while Azov may have been, as you say, loosely under the direction of the Ukrainian military, it was clearly carrying out its atrocities as an autonomous body - or at least one hopes so. As to the origins of weapons, this is open to dispute and is not particularly relevant. Russia was clearly arming and supporting the rebels, much in the same way as America uses "special advisors" in conflicts in which it has a commercial interest. What political changes were actually implemented? And what part of the deal did Putin renege on? There was a cease-fire of sorts, broken intermittently by both sides, but the purpose of Minsk, to prepare the ground for local independence, was completely ignored.
    1
  15877.  @timbehrens9678  Now you're just nit-picking. Zakharchenko and Plotnitskiy, the leaders of the two republics, were co-signatories of Minsk II ! And the idea of Azov as protectors of gay rights as me curling in my seat. Makes a change from torturing, shooting civilians and cementing old ladies in cellars, I suppose. What were the changes to the constitution? Were they ever implemented? Did they in any way satisfy the separatists demands or were they just more weaselly wriggling by the weaselly Ukrainians?
    1
  15878.  @timbehrens9678  I have seen videos of terrified people fleeing Mariupol saying they had been shot at by Azov I have seen videos of corpses of people shot by Azov as they queued up for water. I have read testimonies in reports from the UN and Amnesty International. detailing their atrocities. I have seen a video of Russian soldiers breaking open a cellar which had been concreted over and pulling out elderly people who had been imprisoned there by Azov. The other parts of your post I find unintelligible, so I am unable to respond.
    1
  15879.  @timbehrens9678  Azov's strategy in Mariupol as elsewhere was to use civilians as human shields in order to slow up the Russian advance. To this end civilians were held in shelters and cellars and Azov snipers shot any of them venturing out. They also fired upon civilians attempting to flee along humanitarian corridors set up by the Russians. The evidence for this is extensive and irrefutable. The two "random dudes" were the then leaders of the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. Their signatures were obviously needed on the document since their forces were prime combatants.
    1
  15880.  @timbehrens9678  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEIFwLKlq1Q Excellent background analysis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lsoV_6ZCZc&t=70s Old ladies cemented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfTEgC4kIw&t=32s Lancaster shelter rescue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY Azov shoots refugees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAEhD7YlYe0 Zelensky stoned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeEnCcn1S3I Mass graves mariupol
    1
  15881.  @timbehrens9678  Are there any now? Obviously there were many deaths - too many - but there would have been far fewer if the Ukrainians had allowed civilians to leave via the humanitarian routes set up by the Russians.
    1
  15882.  @timbehrens9678  I have sent you some clips from my library on Mariupol. I daresay they haven't got through. Human shields very much do work with the Russians. They try as far as possible to keep civilian deaths to a minimum. The distribution of forces in the two republican armies is of course impossible to fully establish, as is the origins of their weaponry. It is, however, ludicrous to suggest that these forces are exclusively Russian military. The core of the rebel forces was the Ukrainian military and police who, like their fellow Russians in Crimea, deserted immediately post Maidan, taking their weapons and armour with them. These forces were supplemented by Russians and also by volunteers from among the civilian population. Your two "dudes" were the leaders of each republic.
    1
  15883.  @timbehrens9678  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlokJAUKhFE
    1
  15884. Cromwell 1 You have written a lot of question marks. There are 31 question mark. That's a lot of question marks. Why did you do that?
    1
  15885. Cromwell 1 You also write in Upper Case. Why do you do that?
    1
  15886. Cromwell 1 I UNDERSTAND. THANK YOU.
    1
  15887.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  And it works. Britain's brief excursions in socialism have brought some very real benefits, but all in all the downside wins.
    1
  15888.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Ramsey MacDonald, Clement Atlee and Harold Wilson all did a pretty good job, considering what they were up against. Blair and Brown were total aberrations. As for Starmer and his crew of globalist shills - they send shivers down my spine.
    1
  15889.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  There have been socialist governments, but it all went badly wrong after Wilson. Sad to say, socialism was simply a reaction to economic and societal conditions which no longer obtain.
    1
  15890. @ Tediously, the YouTube algorithm is sidelining all my responses to you. It's a shame. we might have had a reasonable discussion.
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  15891. The economic and societal disaster created by the grotesque over-reaction to covid 19 will soon emerge as the most significant factor in politics. Only those who can reasonably disassociate themselves from the strategies pursued stand any chance of future success with the voting public.
    1
  15892.  @jiversteve  But who is to replace them? I think it will be the Conservative Right, chosen from the ranks of those who have objected to covid restrictions.
    1
  15893.  @stephenthomas3085  I was referring to lockdowns, test and trace, "circuit breakers" and all the other restrictions and mad schemes introduced in vain attempts to control the spread of covid. None of them worked to any appreciable extent and now the chickens are coming home to roost. They have resulted in vast debts which will take decades to repay, small businesses destroyed, neurotic children and last but not least a wave of deaths from untreated cancers, heart disease and other ailments which will continue long, long after covid 19 has vanished as a threat to health. The NHS came nowhere near collapse, even at the height of the first and most serious wave. Since then it appears to be intent on committing suicide and is no longer fit for purpose.
    1
  15894.  @stephenthomas3085  Blaming the country's ills exclusively on Brexit is a somewhat parochial response. We have been victims of a worldwide scam designed to syphon public money into the pockets of billionaires and private investors. As far as the NHS is concerned there was never any real alternative to "letting the disease run rampant." Only by isolating the vulnerable, as suggested by the Great Barrington Declaration, could there have been any effect on reducing the number of deaths and hospitalisations. As it happened the only real shortage was of nurses trained to ICU standard. Ward nurses could have been swiftly trained up to deal with covid ICU patients at the very least. This of course didn't happen. It is quite easy to believe that the pandemic has been deliberately structured and extended in order that the pharmaceutical industry should reap colossal profits. Yes, an enquiry is needed but I doubt we shall ever get one. As to your suggestions that economies are "bouncing back" and that children are more traumatised by social media than being treated as front line guinea pigs for two years, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on both counts. The only winners are the globalist elite who have cunningly utilised the pandemic to further their aims and to vastly increase their personal wealth.
    1
  15895.  @stephenthomas3085  In fact the UK had considerable reserve of frail elderly in 2019, following three or four very mild flu seasons. The largest single category of those carried off has been those older than 90, you realise. I agree with much of what you say but I think you make the mistake of trying to tie our ills down to Brexit and the nasty Tories, The world situation really does make such considerations pretty small-time. When much of the world's media and all the big pharmaceutical companies are ultimately under the control of two investment companies, Vanguard and BlackRock, whether old Etonian Boris or man of the people Keir is in charge of our beleaguered little country is hardly here or there. The Great Reset is well under way and puny politicians of all parties are but chaff in a mighty wind. The very rich will get very much richer and the rest of us will be expected to be happy with whatever crumbs our contributions to the New World Order entitle us to. The pandemic and the way it has been handled clearly illustrate the pattern of the future.
    1
  15896. The only way to stop South Americans clearing forest for agriculture is to pay them not to. Some of the billions wasted on pursuing the myth of man-made climate change could be better used in this way. I guess the amount spent on a single silly wind-turbine would feed a village for several years.
    1
  15897. It's you who is the moron. Right wing INTELLIGENCE might be considered an oxymoron to the prejudiced eye, but the word I think you must have been groping for is "tautology."
    1
  15898.  @julianpetkov8320  Mistakes happen - which isn't to say it wasn't deliberate. Do you know what the "aid convoy" was carrying?
    1
  15899.  @julianpetkov8320  Israel provides a bulwark against Islamic terrorism which is one of the major threats to civilisation today.
    1
  15900.  @julianpetkov8320  Western civilisation needs a bulwark against the medieval mindset of Islamic fundamentalism. Israel provides it.
    1
  15901.  @julianpetkov8320  Israel is an ally in the civilised world's fight against medieval extremism. It's on the front line.
    1
  15902.  @julianpetkov8320  Of course not. Islam is.
    1
  15903.  @julianpetkov8320  A little thing called The Enlightenment seems to have passed Artemis/Diana/Allah by though, doesn't it
    1
  15904.  @julianpetkov8320  Paying occasional lip-service to a deity in order to soften acts of extreme political violence in the eyes of the populace is a far cry from instilling them from birth with a fear of hell in order to do so.
    1
  15905. If you play dirty .......
    1
  15906. What do you find so hard to believe?His eyes were bad when he was ill. They were OK now but he wanted to make sure they were up to the strain of driving. If you want parallels with the USSR or 1984 consider Emily Maitlis on Newsnight or the BooBoris nonsense.
    1
  15907. ​ @Pfromm007 Only the Western 🎉media said that.
    1
  15908. There are pros and cons to both main theories.
    1
  15909. Russian sources say some Leopards have already arrived, smuggled in on returning grain ships. They are currently being refurbished in an armaments factory and once its exact location has been identified they will be blasted to smithereens by cruise missiles.
    1
  15910. If they have the capacity to do anything much that will be surprise enough.
    1
  15911. The hospitalisation and death rates remain reassuringly low compared with previous waves, however. Suffering may be mitigated by the fact that herd immunity is approaching quite rapidly.
    1
  15912. Covid seems to be entirely apolitical. Odd that.
    1
  15913. In other news, St Thomas's Hospital, run by the same Trust I believe, has a statue of the alleged Crimean War "nurse" Mary Seacole prominently displayed in its forecourt. She was, in fact, a restaurant proprietor who may have occasionally given away some tablecloths to be used as bandages. To her credit, her own memoir of her experiences in the Crimean War makes no claims to anything other than providing lemonade and cakes to the soldiers of all nations involved. In the same way that Guy has been demonised by the race relations industry, this black woman has been elevated to a sainthood which she herself never laid any claim to.
    1
  15914.  @maciek_k.cichon  The war in Ukraine is about Russia retaining existing resources, not extending them. Putin is on record in both essays, articles and interviews saying that while re-creating the Russian empire might be a wonderful romantic notion, it is neither practical nor even desirable in reality. Unfortunately Western agencies tend to leave out the qualification, and just highlight the first bit. America and its European lackeys need Russia to be a permanent enemy. The livelihoods of many of their most important people depend upon it.
    1
  15915. But NATO is everywhere. It's been ganging up on Russia for thirty years and has just spent well over $100billion on creating an army to defeat it.
    1
  15916.  @superhumantrueman  What genocide?
    1
  15917.  @jacqdanieles  Getting people to join your gang.
    1
  15918.  @superhumantrueman  You can't defend things that don't exist.
    1
  15919.  @jacqdanieles  The CSTO has reduced numbers since inception. NATO, on the other hand, has expanded considerably with clearly aggressive intent.
    1
  15920.  @jacqdanieles  Exactly what imperialistic and belligerent tendencies has the Russian Federation ever displayed? Unlike America all its military actions have purely been to retain its existing interests - not to extend them. NATO is a protection racket designed to improve commercial relations between the US and European countries and to sustain the US military/industrial complex. Part of the deal is that these countries get a subsidised army on the condition that they lend it to America when needed. While one can appreciate that Warsaw Pact countries resent Russia for its dominant role in the USSR there is no evidence whatsoever that the RF wishes to recreate such a role.
    1
  15921.  @superhumantrueman  Ukraine comes into a different category. Putin's initial peace proposals were entirely reasonable, and this dreadful, dreadful war could have been entirely avoided had not America and its lackeys set their sights of the mineral wealth of Donbass and Crimea, and been ready to sacrifice the lives of over a quarter of a million Slavs to get their hands on them.
    1
  15922.  @superhumantrueman  There is no genocide. Children are not being abducted. These are just cheap propaganda tricks designed to inflame the passions of fools like you.
    1
  15923.  @superhumantrueman  Why shouldn't they be? All he wants is access to the mineral riches of Donbass and Crimea, to which he feels Russia is entitled, and an assurance that Ukraine does not become a platform for NATO expansion. Anything else is well beyond his reach - and he knows it.
    1
  15924.  @terryhand  Russia has no interest in controlling Ukraine. Why should it ? But it very much wants to retain control of Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  15925. You may have spoken too soon. Give it a week and the whole picture will be very different indeed.
    1
  15926. The potential collapse of the Russian economy is just another myth designed to keep the Ukrainians fighting. Ain't gonna happen.
    1
  15927. No. That's immigrants.
    1
  15928.  @allip4226  They didn't cause the mess. They just were hopeless at doing anything about it.
    1
  15929.  @CupOfSweetTea  Britain is collapsing for a number of reasons; the failure of infrastructure due to unprecedented numbers of often undocumented and uncounted immigrants is one of them.
    1
  15930.  @CupOfSweetTea  No no impact at all then? Unplanned for population increases do not causes services to crumble under the weight?
    1
  15931.  @Temislaw  I just made that up actually. Very likely true though.
    1
  15932.  @FreshGreenMoss  Sugar addiction then?
    1
  15933. I don't believe that atmospheric carbon causes climate change but I do like trees. One thing that worries me about this scheme though is its logistical aspect. I'm no mathematician, but planting a trillion trees must take a hell of a long time, even with say, a team of ten thousand people planting a tree each every ten minutes or so. Can anyone help with the math?
    1
  15934. Brian Diehl Thanks! It sounds a practical proposition in that case.
    1
  15935. Brian Diehl You had my hopes up there for a minute. Your revised figure sounds more like what I thought.Not much of a goer then really, is it?
    1
  15936. John Powell I endorse you 100per cent. It's a hard case to get across to the brainwashed millions though. The climate crisis hysteria has been created by hedge fund managers for profit and backed by governments as a source of tax revenue, as well as by the globalist Left as an ideal means of control through diktat. The science itself is thoroughly faulty, based as it is on "models" of the atmosphere created well over 100 years ago and altered little since. The truth will out eventually, but it will be a long, uphill struggle. Keep at it!
    1
  15937. All the same Putin won't just stop at Ukraine - he'll stop once he's conquered and secured Donbass and maybe a couple of other bits of Eastern Ukraine that have come his way.
    1
  15938. Putin will certainly not stop at Ukraine. He won't even go that far. He'll almost certainly stop once he's conquered the whole of Donbass, as has always been his stated intention.
    1
  15939.  @geraldinebricis2129  No, we need to be ready for peace - which means stop annoying Russia.
    1
  15940. Koreans are pathologically compliant. Ideal models for the rest of us when the New World Order comes.
    1
  15941.  @nadakbar  It matters because there is a strong feeling that excessive immigration is allowing types of crime to enter the country which did not previously exist. We actually need to know if this is true or not if the question of immigration is to be fully discussed.
    1
  15942.  @nadakbar  I don't think we even know that for certain. In any case if he should happen to be a Muslim, and his actions attributable to that fact in any way, then this is a matter of genuine public concern. It would be an extreme example - but an example nonetheless - of a very troubling division which is emerging in our society. And it has nothing to do with skin colour.
    1
  15943.  @BohemianRaichu  A fixed election result, so doesn't count.
    1
  15944.  @degaussingatmosphericcharg575  Prove that Trump has committed a crime then - and do it on your own without a gang of highly-paid crooked lawyers to help you.
    1
  15945.  3TNT3  I bet you're really, really dim, ain'tcha?
    1
  15946.  @rhondahartung5253  It doesn't matter. Trump is in court because he is who he is - not because of what he may or may not have done. (And what he has alleged to have done seems to be no more than a little creative accounting, which hurt no-one.)
    1
  15947.  @glencro2331  It's still a stitch-up. That must be obvious to anyone. The law is being manipulated for political ends - and that is not right and very, very dangerous.
    1
  15948.  @Me97202  Of course it's politically motivated!! The matter wouldn't even have been investigated if Trump's enemies hadn't spent years turning over every stone they could find in their bid to discredit him. It's utterly shameful.
    1
  15949.  @nosuchthing8  Not the same thing at all - just matters related to the same thing. He tried to cover it up , plus he lied to congress about other things. He was the fall guy, and he fell. End of.
    1
  15950.  @TheTerrainWizard  If only more people realised this!
    1
  15951.  @alansbinnie1446  But what he might be guilty of doesn't seem such a big deal.
    1
  15952. Trump realises - quite rightly - that America and Russia are natural allies. Demonising Russia is foolish.
    1
  15953. But many of his fears are very well-founded. The profit-making health and food-processing industry needs attacking on every level. He may sometimes make mistakes but if there are direct links between the increase in autism, drops in IQ levels and increases in heart conditions and cancers as a result of medical procedures and food additives, then we really ought to know about it. And no-one else in authority seems likely to defy the big bucks that big pharma throws at any form of criticism.
    1
  15954.  @ADifferentBias  As opposed to people taking money for pushing the claims of pharmaceutical companies? And what is a conspiracy theory anyway? Kennedy said that the covid vaccines didn't prevent transmission when we were all told they did. And they don't. He said certain red dyes cause cancer - now they are banned. He said fluoride lowers IQ. Now a meta study of 74 studies from all over the world has clearly indicated lower IQ levels in children with high fluoride levels. He's getting more right than he's getting wrong.
    1
  15955.  @samfetter2968  Red dyes causing cancer, covid vaccines not preventing transmission and now meta study of 74 studies has found correlations between lower IQs and fluoride levels in children.
    1
  15956.  @paulanaylor3548  This may well be true. But it is foolish to dismiss other possibilities. Cost/benefit analyses of medical procedures simply aren't being carried out objectively.
    1
  15957.  @samfetter2968  Certain red dyes causing cancer. They are now banned. Several others which YouTube won't let me detail.
    1
  15958.  @samfetter2968  You might try accessing "Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis". It was published in JAMA Pediatrics on January 6, 2025
    1
  15959.  @samfetter2968 "Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis". It was published in JAMA Pediatrics on January 6, 2025
    1
  15960.  @samfetter2968  https://youtu.be/wQj32ftmG_M?si=CZdnBnxm8xuTZfF6
    1
  15961.  @samfetter2968  https://youtu.be/20BUza4QSfs?si=OTD-bZfosuTU3Edk
    1
  15962.  @Nonexistent_Hero  It was a food additive. Concerns about medical procedures have not been so readily addressed. There are issues in the public domain which YouTube will not allow to be discussed, but if you think the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies don't put profit very high on their list of priorities then you are living in cloud-cuckoo land.
    1
  15963.  @Nonexistent_Hero  You are being far too trusting. Have you looked at death rates in younger age groups lately? Are you aware of a meta-study published by Jama Pediatrics earlier this month? Have you read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre? Tinfoil hat or not I think we have the right to be concerned by the hold the profit-motivated pharmaceutical industry has over healthcare.
    1
  15964. @ You are far too trusting. Read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre for a start. And there is plenty of other evidence out there suggesting that some medications are not as safe as claimed, as well as historically-proven cases.
    1
  15965. @ You are far too trusting. I prefer my tinfoil hat to living in cloud-cuckoo land.
    1
  15966. @ Ever read Bad Pharma by Ben Goodacre?
    1
  15967.  @Nonexistent_Hero  AdderalXR, Alatrofoxacin, Opren, Rofecoxib, Tamflu, Paroxertine, Avandia......
    1
  15968.  @samfetter2968  He is right as much as he wrong, but Big Pharma has such a hold over the media that it is very hard to access studies which indicate this.
    1
  15969.  @samfetter2968  I have to break my reply into sections in order to attempt to bypass YouTube's censorship algorithm, which is loaded heavily against any criticism of the health industry. I also have to choose my words carefully. A study released earlier this month, for instance, by a reputable organisation and assessing the results of 74 international studies indicates that Kennedy's concerns about a particular form of preventative treatment have a strong basis in fact.
    1
  15970.  @samfetter2968  JAMA Pediatrics.
    1
  15971.  @samfetter2968  Autism.
    1
  15972.  @samfetter2968  Fluoride.
    1
  15973.  @samfetter2968  I have list of medications withdrawn in recent years because of serious side-effects. YouTube will not even allow me to give you that list.
    1
  15974.  @samfetter2968  I didn't claim that. The dyes thing is a distraction because it is one of the few things he has been right about which Big Pharma allows to be publicised, Let me make my position clear. I am not holding up Kennedy as some kind of saviour, but the fact remains that the health industry's thirst for profit has got out of hand to such an extent that safety concerns are often being bypassed, and Kennedy is one of the few people with the political clout and courage to stand up to this.
    1
  15975. @ I didn't. The dyes thing is a distraction anyway. The more important issues are blocked by media outlets. Around six or seven of my attempts to reply to you with actual facts have been deleted by YouTube's censorship algorithm for instance.
    1
  15976.  @samfetter2968  https://youtu.be/20BUza4QSfs?si=OTD-bZfosuTU3Edk
    1
  15977. @ YouTube has banned all further conversation with you. You know you're on target when the flak starts.
    1
  15978.  @samfetter2968  JAMA Pediatrics.
    1
  15979. @ I have a key word: JAMA
    1
  15980.  @howareyou857  From where I'm sitting it sounds more like a bunch of scousers having a pop at the bizzies.
    1
  15981.  @howareyou857  So do the Old Bill, it seems!
    1
  15982.  @howareyou857  Sounded more like scousers having a pop at the bizzies to me
    1
  15983.  @howareyou857  I hear only local accents. Apparently I can't say "sk&%$ers " because YouTube thinks its derogatory!
    1
  15984.  @nickryder9669  I know. But in this instance it would surely be better to release more details. I doubt any lawyer would cite this is in any defence.
    1
  15985.  @nickryder9669  I'm not saying that at all. His name may not even be read out or any details given, since he is a juvenile. My point is that these rules can be set aside, and in this case they certainly should be.
    1
  15986.  @nickryder9669  It's a question of priorities. Juvenile's names are not mentioned in the press because it is thought they might be able to rehabilitate in adult life. This person has gone far beyond that stage, I would have thought. The Bulger case comes to mind.
    1
  15987.  @nickryder9669  That's true. I misremembered. All the same a court can order that details of a suspect can be released, and it would have been a very good idea in this instance.
    1
  15988. On the contrary, both are patriots and gave genuine affection for their people.
    1
  15989.  @luannhetrick-wood9764  Absolutely not. Trump has widespread support among working class and middle class people, as you know. Putin has frequently said that the Russian people are its greatest strength -"more valuable than gold." They both have genuine affection for their countries and their inhabitants and that affection is returned by large sections of the population .
    1
  15990. All you have to do is lock people up and torture them until they agree with you. Simple really.
    1
  15991. True science accommodates all phenomena.
    1
  15992. Zelensky is a warmongering globalist shill.
    1
  15993. America is run by unelected acronyms.
    1
  15994.  @ericlaus4417  Who knows?
    1
  15995.  @krit5  https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    1
  15996. Russia did. Now it wants it back.
    1
  15997.  @michaeldunham3385  Apparently it is.
    1
  15998. If the case does go ahead then the FBI will have to defend some of their rather dodgy photographic evidence. Trump is another winner here in the long run, and I for one am pleased about that.
    1
  15999. Russia is home -nearly.
    1
  16000. Even if it is true that there was outside interference (which it probably isn't) the message didn't exactly fall on deaf ears, did it?
    1
  16001. What nonsense all this is. Russian influence on Brexit and the UK's response to Ukraine are as absurd a notion as the idea that Russia somehow got Trump elected. It's just propaganda, and piss-poor propaganda at that. Anyone who falls for it deserves to be deeply embarrassed.
    1
  16002.  @MrSlanderer  What happened the first time is that Ukraine's armed forces were considerably reduced defending Kiev. They are now being considerably reduced defending Kharkiv. Meanwhile the Russians are taking advantage of Ukraine's energies being dissipated elsewhere by advancing along the southern front, where the real war is.
    1
  16003.  @Handler9  The plan was to draw Ukraine into battle on its own territory, not in rebel-held Donbass. It worked.
    1
  16004.  @sealwheel  Why would Russia want all of Ukraine? It would be a liability. Putin has made his intentions very clear: Ukraine can go its own way, but it can't have Crimea and Donbass and it can't join NATO.
    1
  16005.  @OKeefeist  Ukraine isn't really a country.
    1
  16006.  @TermInator-eh1zv  No. That's what some of the more ignorant troops were told in order to encourage them.
    1
  16007.  @brendanoconnor9196  Then it will suffer the consequences - and so will NATO.
    1
  16008.  @Talinthis  I think Russia has a very clear idea of what it is trying to do. And Lavrov is a diplomat. That means he lies a lot.
    1
  16009. Not the whole world, by any means. It's mainly the US and Western Europe who are lined up against Russia. Practically all other countries are on its side or sitting on the fence.
    1
  16010. Doncha just wish?Doncha?
    1
  16011. This is a tricky one. It has been suggested than an amphibious attack across open water would be easier than across mudflats and mine-stewn Islands. Any thoughts anyone?
    1
  16012.  @VanderlyndenJengold  Thanks.
    1
  16013. The trouble is that all of the trials undertaken so far, as far as I am aware, use very much larger and more frequent doses than those used in the field and are given generally to hospitalised patients whose condition is too advanced for the treatment to work. Make no mistake, big pharma is terrified of allowing this treatment to be widely accepted. You can get a year's supply for under $40 dollars and that number doesn't sit well with companies who are working on miracle cures they want to knock out for thousands of dollars a dose. Any scientists taking part in the sort of controlled study Dr Fauci suggests would find their career prospects much reduced in scope I fear.
    1
  16014. When he uses it I suppose.
    1
  16015. Was there?
    1
  16016.  @boink800  You still playing that record???
    1
  16017.  @rmdomainer9042  Nope. They don't want it. Never have, never will. Few Ukraine wrecks there too - which was what it was all about.
    1
  16018.  @rmdomainer9042  Enough to make the exercise worthwhile, I think. Ukraine is no longer in any position to retake Donbass.
    1
  16019.  @rmdomainer9042  That simply doesn't apply.
    1
  16020.  @rmdomainer9042  There you go with the insults again! It's a perfectly valid answer. It is clear from the way Russian resources were deployed that there was no intention of permanently settling in Western Ukraine. The first stage of the SMO was simply to reduce Ukraine's army to a manageable level, so that it could not retake Donbass from the rebels. Putin has made his intentions perfectly clear before the invasion even started, especially in his essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published in the summer of that year. You should read it. You might also want to look at a geological map of Ukraine.
    1
  16021.  @rmdomainer9042  I understand when a fallacy is not a fallacy. I understand when a Latin tag is misapplied. I understand that when people have been brainwashed into taking up a false position they become angry and hit out when that position becomes undermined.
    1
  16022.  @rmdomainer9042  My previous answer has been deleted by YouTube's new fascist algorithm - which is on your side, by the way. You are supported by censorship and by globalist mind-bending. I hope that makes you feel good about yourself.
    1
  16023.  @rmdomainer9042  Following the Minsk treaties both sides built extremely strong defence lines on their sides of no-man's land. The West then spent several billion dollars on training and equipping the Ukrainian army with a view to retaking those areas of Donbas held by the separatists. Russia has thwarted this ambition by invading and largely destroying that army which has, however, been constantly replenished by the West, greedy to lay hands on the vast mineral wealth of Donbass. The current position is that Russia has broken through the first two lines of Ukraine's defences and is rapidly doing the same to the third and final one. Ukraine has not come within 20 miles of even Russia's first defence lines.
    1
  16024.  @rmdomainer9042  Two helpful hints for you: 1) Read Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published shortly before the invasion. 2) Study a geological map of Ukraine.
    1
  16025.  @rmdomainer9042  I do have some little hope for you. Your position is outwardly tenable but you really do need to take a little more time to think things through.
    1
  16026.  @rmdomainer9042  None of us is quite as clever as we think we are. In your case though, the gap does seem especially wide, if I may say so,
    1
  16027.  @Dude0000  I'd keep quiet about that if I were you.
    1
  16028. Of course today's Free Palestine supporters would have it that this whole area has been inhabited by peace-loving Arabs since time immemorial, and is now being attacked by genocidal Jews.
    1
  16029. Surely this land has been occupied since time immemorial by peace-loving Arabs who are now being persecuted by genocidal Jews from Europe?
    1
  16030.  @rafflesmaos  How do you define Ukraine's border pre 1921?
    1
  16031.  @rafflesmaos  I'm trying, believe me! There seems to be some dispute whether or not the self-declared Ukrainian People's Republic had a right to claim the territories it did which must, I suppose, provide a background to Putin's claim that the boundaries of the SSR which followed it have no legal definition either. (I'm not being confrontational, by the way. Just trying to puzzle this out. It seems there are no clear-cut or universally accepted answers to these problems.)
    1
  16032.  @rafflesmaos  The whole situation is an utter mish-mash. One thing which is clearly not true is that there is (or even was) an historic country called Ukraine, with defined borders and a clearly defined ethnic population. I'm not sure that the Ukraine People's Republic was ever recognised by anything called Russia, though, unless it was perhaps in the last dying days of the Romanovs, or by the White Russians?
    1
  16033.  @rafflesmaos  In principle I have agree -but the fact remains that all these various maps define the area of Ukraine in different forms according to the circumstances of the time. Ukrainian nationalism, as such, seems to have emerged in a somewhat romantic form towards the end of the 19th century and while the Ukrainian People's Republic claimed large chunks of Russia during the brief period of its existence, these claims seem to be aspirational rather than anything else. I really do think that putting the borders of the new country of Ukraine on the same footprint as those of the SSR was a serious mistake, and did not acknowledge the quite considerable pro-Russian sentiments which exist in the East of the country and in Crimea.
    1
  16034.  @rafflesmaos  I tend to doubt the accuracy of any referendum or election carried out in Ukraine, as of course in Russia. Be that as it may, I believe it is commercial considerations which are at the root of the issues, rather than any high faultin' notions of freedom, democracy and national identity. There are literally trillions of dollars in mineral wealth under the soil in Eastern Ukraine and I think I'm right in saying that these have largely continued to be owned and operated by Russians after independence -as indeed they have been for hundreds of years. Western noses have been sniffing around these resources ever since independence and it is the risk of losing them to BlackRock or US energy companies which has caused Putin to take the actions he has. Autonomy for Donbass, as outlined in the Minsk Accords would have been a viable compromise and it is a great pity that this did not come about. I think it probably could have, were in not for the pernicious influence of the players mentioned above. Tragically it now seems likely that Russia will gain even more than was outlined in Minsk, and tens of thousands of people will have died to no purpose.
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  16035.  @rafflesmaos  I seem to be running into the mysterious censorship of the YouTube algorithm bot. So, briefly: Votes in Ukraine, as in Russia, cannot be taken on face value for obvious reasons. In any case the near economic collapse and huge drop in wages in Donbass post independence undoubtedly caused considerable "buyers' remorse." Again, the acceptance of the 1991 borders can be seen, in retrospect, as a serious mistake. The country is far from unified, but all that aside, the fact that much of Eastern Ukraine's hugely remunerative mineral extraction and steelmaking industries remained largely in Russian hands, operated by people who consider themselves to be Russians is a major factor. The threat of losing these multi-trillion dollar resources to Western agencies and asset management companies is surely the main reason for Russia's actions. Equally the promise of benefits from such courses of action are considerable reason for the Ukraine government's enthusiastic support for them. As for moving to Russia - it now seems as though Russia is making this unnecessary by restoring these territories to Russian control.
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  16036.  @rafflesmaos  Voting in both Ukraine and Russia has to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. You can get more than dirty looks if you suspected of going against whoever happens to be in charge at the time. And Ukraine is in no way unified. It is an artificial construct with no true identity. As for Chechnya, as with Georgia and Ukraine, what we see here are attempts to undermine Russian influence and historic interests. Very many Chechens would rather stick with Russia than be slaves to extremist Islam, especially when that extremism is financed by the CIA. This is why many Chechens are now fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
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  16037.  @rafflesmaos  There really is no such thing as legitimate voting in Ukraine -whichever side is in charge of the ballot boxes. As for Chechnya, like Ukraine it is a deeply divided country with very many Chechens preferring to stick with Russia rather than come under the control of another lordship. It is no coincidence that many Chechens are fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
    1
  16038.  @rafflesmaos  The simple reason is that, as stated, I do not believe that Ukraine in its present form qualifies as a true country. Neither do I believe that Russian agents did anything more than encourage and organise an existing dissatisfaction with rule from Kiev - in much the same way that US agents have been for years attempting to encourage and organise anti-Russian dissatisfactions in Ukraine, Chechnya and Georgia. It's just the game that is being played. In my view the Russian solution to these problems - the creation of small local buffer states - is a realistic response to these problems. Russia simply cannot be expected to have its security and its economy undermined by Western sabotage masquerading as nationalism. Ukraine, Chechnya and Georgia all owe their present existence to Russia, and if they are at any time destined to become truly independent it must be on terms which are neither detrimental to Russian security and economic interests, nor the result of their resources being desired by Western agencies.
    1
  16039.  @rafflesmaos  Examples please?
    1
  16040.  @rafflesmaos  I'm sorry you feel that way. Personally I do not think Putin wants all of Ukraine, let alone to recreate the Soviet Empire. All he wants are the mineral wealth of Donbass and when he gets it, I'm pretty sure he'll stop there. Good luck to you anyway, I mean that sincerely.
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  16041. Jockum T But what if the experts are wrong? They are in this case because they have been using a flawed model of the atmosphere created back in 1942. Not many people know that.
    1
  16042. daedalron There is no consensus - its just that some scientists make more noise and are friendlier with politicians and journalists than others. In any case there is strong likelihood that the whole man-made climate change monster is going to be blown sky-high over the next several months. See my reply to Jockum T above.
    1
  16043. Social Purgatory - A brain. See my reply to Jockum T if you want more details of where I'm coming from.
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  16044. MrDreiAugen Actually it is 97 per cent of the 30 per cent who supplied an opinion. Anyway, you're not going to get very far in the climate change industry by defying orthodoxy ,are you? Please look at my reply to Jockum T on this page. If this study is correct then climate change cannot be man-made.It can only be man-made if the 1942 model is correct and carbon retains heat in the atmosphere. The model says it does. The actual empirical data from weather balloons says it doesn't. It means that science has made one almighty fuckup, but there,s nothing new in that. Look at it this way:imagine the atmosphere to be a HD photograph. By comparison the Serbian professor's model is like something drawn of the side of a cardboard box with crayons. Nature rights itself whenever it can. Mankind screws up whenever possible.
    1
  16045. MrDrei Augen The Connolly report . See my reply to Jockum T, as stated.
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  16046. daedron This 90plus per cent bollocks is just something to beat you over the head with.Look carefully and you will always find out it's 90 per cent of some other per cent of something. It doesn't matter anyway because the climate change mafia have such a hold on things that if you question the orthodoxy you get drummed out of the corps pretty quickly. It matters even less now if it turns out the tools you have been given are broken from the start. 100 per cent of scientists who believe in AGW are wrong if AGW is wrong.We don't need a "consensus" based on interpretations of false data. We need unarguable facts based upon an empirical assessment of reality. And if the Connolly experiment is repeated by other scientists and comes up with the same results that's what we've got.
    1
  16047. Like Biden and China you mean? And to Ukrainian gangsters?
    1
  16048.  @D1Snr  Strictly speaking, no. But they have been ignored for several decades.
    1
  16049.  @GreatSageSunWukong  Care workers are a special case and not enough is being done to support them A shift system and regular testing are needed to protect them from the effects of prolonged exposure and exhaustion.
    1
  16050.  @GreatSageSunWukong  That is sadly true. All we can do is try to lessen the chances. When this over (as we hope it will be) a detailed analysis is needed. Health care workers are obviously at great risk of catching it, but what needs looking into is why a disproportionate number of health care workers are dying. At present the figures are being fudged for political reasons but a likely theory is that multiple infections over a short period reduce resistance. Once again, giving health care workers extended rest periods and regular checks should help prevent this.
    1
  16051.  @GreatSageSunWukong  Exactly so. There have, understandably perhaps, been very muddled responses to this situation. We can only hope lessons will be learned. After all something very similar is bound to happen again. I think I'm right in saying that countries most affected by SARS have done rather better than most, which makes the point. Sweden's gamble seems to be paying off though, but I fear for New Zealand. Total lockdown and strict border controls can surely only mean they will never build up herd immunity.
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  16052.  @siy8230  Retribution. Attacks on Odessa and Kherson from the air.
    1
  16053.  @alexandrelobo8524  It was pure Hollywood. Smoke and mirrors.
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  16054.  @mark63424able  Another pawn sacrifice. Putin is sending his weakest soldiers to the front. Many of them are dissidents. His true front line is much further back. All he wants is the coast, and the coal, iron and gas fields of Donbass. He doesn't much care how many weaklings and old tanks he loses.
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  16055.  @AtomicExtremophile  He is actually a top-notch chess player. It shows.
    1
  16056. @Charles White That is what you may think. Chess and warfare, however, rely on strategy, deception and sacrifice. Tennis doesn't.
    1
  16057.  @perceptoshmegington3371  It's already back in operation, with minimal damage.
    1
  16058.  @midaztouch  As of now the bridge is back in operation. I do not support Russia, but it is quite clear to me that there is indeed a strategy underlying Russia's actions which puts its apparent failures into a somewhat different perspective.
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  16059.  @midaztouch  As far as I am aware Putin has never played to any high level. He is far too sensible, I expect, to waste time on a game which merely relies on the avoidance of error to achieve success. Nonetheless it is widely held that - like many criminals - he can knock the spots off most average players.
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  16060.  @midaztouch  I emphasise that I don't support Russia. I merely support a rapid end to this dreadful war. It just strikes me as more probable that this was a false flag operation by the Russians rather than some grand coup by Ukraine.
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  16061.  @midaztouch  Oh dear! I think I must concede. All the same I still believe that Putin, as a political strategist, is still several streets ahead of the opposition offered by the current "blockheads" in the West. My analysis, for what it's worth, is that the Biden administration is merely a front for Washington hawks who are determined to crush the old enemy Russia - and are using Ukraine to do so. They will fail because they are not very clever. Putin is unscrupulous and determined and fully prepared to take this game to its ultimate conclusion. He has little choice. He cannot be the leader who allowed Mother Russia to be humiliated. America and its "allies", on the other hand, are actually just playing a game in which the stakes are merely such things as personal aggrandisement and political and financial success for the participants. This means they will probably lose.
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  16062.  @AtomicExtremophile  He's nowhere near losing it.
    1
  16063. It does. It is near impossible for anyone over the age of 65 to get Pension Credit. Even if you are on means-tested housing benefit you will still not qualify.
    1
  16064. Primitive people, such as many of those who support this channel, have picked up the American habit of wanting to send everyone they dislike to jail.
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  16065. Trump will change all that. Just wait and see.
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  16066. Russia's prime war goal is to secure Donbass, They are well on their way to achieving it.
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  16067. It would be really much simpler and much safer to do deals with Russia, don't you think? The notion of Russian expansionism is a myth designed to keep the Western military/industrial complex in business. Russia just want to be left to recover from the horrors of Communism. We should be trading, not arming ourselves like paranoiacs.
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  16068.  @emm_arr  Still does.
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  16069.  @jonb4155  The land in question has been Russian from time immemorial ( or least since the 18th century, apart from brief returns to original Turkish control). Russian is NOT expanding other than to retain control of territory mistakenly handed over to the new country of Ukraine at the time of its "Independence.".
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  16070. What's happened to all the advanced weaponry the Americans are supposed to have sold them?
    1
  16071.  @burns281981  For adults in the 18th century perhaps. But it is a nonsense in this day and age.
    1
  16072.  @burns281981  The Logan Act was enacted in 1799 under President John Adams. It is named after John Logan who entered into unauthorised negotiations with France. It has only been utilised twice, and never in the last 150 years.
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  16073.  @violax3467  Yes. You have it exactly.
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  16074.  @violax3467  Your amazement amazes me. The President of the Russian Federation and a former -and hopefully future -President of the United States can surely be judged to be significant world leaders. They have much in common, although Putin is far more of an intellectual.
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  16075.  @harold9394  all three - although we can hope he will soon stop being a civilian and that the felony thing will be seen as the shameful sham that it is.
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  16076.  @violax3467  Neither can do whatever they want. They can only do what is best for their respective countries. In both cases this means, among other things, keeping various powerful elements under control. Putin has succeeded in this, but America's oligarchs have successfully controlled the legislature for many decades. Trump threatens this comfortable arrangement which is why he is vilified and persecuted.
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  16077.  @bonnie7898  It also insists that any communication must be specifically against the interests of existing government strategies. This is almost impossible to prove.
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  16078.  @bonnie7898  Pretty much. They are all still Presidents. The extent of their leadership varies considerably of course, with Trump being very much at the top of your list.
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  16079. What did he actually say? I'm still waiting for an accurate quote.
    1
  16080.  @RogueGneral  Quite!
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  16081.  @RogueGneral  How supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for you!
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  16082. He has also announced new peace proposals. And he is asking for more than he asked before the invasion. This Christmas break might well be an opportunity for Ukraine and Western warmongers to reconsider their actions.
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  16083.  @Kevin-xq2tv  Of course the West is at fault - especially America. By boxing Russia into a corner the West has brought the world to the edge of nuclear annihilation.
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  16084.  @orchid6699  Just madness.
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  16085.  @aarondavis9290  Yes they are. The walrus fell off the cliff because they were being approached by a pack of hungry polar bears. The drone cameras buzzing round their heads didn't help. Nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. Walrus always crowd onto dry land to birth so theoretically the more of it there is, the happier they are.
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  16086. Biden slain in S American jungle after starting World War III! https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
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  16087.  @susansmith9263  Last time I heard this it was used about Trump!
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  16088.  @captainswing4487  I am serious.
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  16089.  @malcolmmcfarlane7565  Only after the drugs kick in.
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  16090. We can blame the sinister warmongers who fixed Joe's election for all this. They have pushed Putin too far.
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  16091.  @boink800  Perhaps you're thinking of nuclear power stations.
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  16092. @LuLYaWott Unfortunately my reply to this somewhat naive interpretation of yours has fallen foul of the YouTube Gestapo. It can sometimes be fun to get heresies past the blind computer, so I may try again later.
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  16093.  @errorswillmultiply1697  How does it feel to be something that slithered out of a chicken's arsehole? Just because you don't have the guts or the brains to defend yourself against logical reasoning and precise information doesn't mean other people shouldn't be given the chance.
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  16094.  @geraldhewing2076  I'm so very sorry. I do apologise! I thought you were using the pandemic in a pathetic attempt to denigrate Donald Trump.
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  16095. @LuLYaWott How can you tell what would have happened if no vaccines had been introduced? Where do you get the data for that scenario?
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  16096. @LuLYaWott How much to drug companies spend on marketing as opposed to research?
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  16097. @LuLYaWott Why did companies insist that immunity via infection was neither near-inevitable nor long-lasting?
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  16098. @LuLYaWott Why do you imagine it was that cheap and already available treatments for covid were denigrated in the media? Are you aware of recent studies clearly indicating the effectiveness of these treatments?
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  16099.  @errorswillmultiply1697  So your "warning" was as pointless and as ineffectual as everything else about you, was it?
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  16100.  @geraldhewing2076  Orange Man Bad is just SOOOO last year sweetheart!
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  16101.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Well, it's better to be a whinger than a bully I suppose. Probably not as sexy though.
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  16102.  @GG-ml3vr  It is rumoured to be so.
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  16103.  @timothyharris4708  If I try to make the argument in full, YouTube will delete it. And I emphasise that it is "a case that can be made" rather than one which is unanswerable. So, proceeding carefully, I will ask questions rather than make assertions. Does infection provide efficient and long-lasting immunity? Were we not told for many months that it did not do so? Was the main reason the Great Barrington Declaration was dismissed not because of this? Is it not true that the recent Johns Hopkins meta study strongly indicates that lockdowns provided next to no reduction in mortality, while at the same time resulting in immense societal and economic damage leading inevitably to increased mortality from other causes? Is it not true that certain very cheap medications were available which could have reduced mortality, but which were denigrated as dangerous quack remedies? Is it not now true that at least one of these remedies is being proven by scientific study and indicated by real world observation to reduce mortality? Can it not be reasoned that the above artificially extended the pandemic, giving time for the vaccines to be developed? Is it not true that pharmaceutical companies have considerable influence on governments, the WHO and the UN and also are part-owned by the same investment companies which part own a considerable part of the media, especially medical journals? Can you see a pattern here?
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  16104.  @timothyharris4708  I assure YouTube deletes many arguments. I know this from experience. Getting past its Gestapo often a challenge. These may explain a certain evasiveness in my answer to you, but where is the dishonesty? Answer my questions in the affirmative and they clearly show a pattern whereby the pursuit of profit has far eclipsed the pursuit of an end to the pandemic. Even now it is being artificially extended on order for more vaccines to be sold. For the pharmaceutical companies this has not been a health issue, it has been a business opportunity.
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  16105.  @timothyharris4708  What political opinions am I advancing? Name one.
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  16106.  @timothyharris4708  Who's being spineless now?
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  16107.  @timothyharris4708  I did say "it can be claimed", and I so claim. There is nothing vague or dubious about any of the questions I asked, although obviously the answers may be contested. On the whole though the answer to all of them is "Yes." This constitutes as strong an argument as you can get. Unless you wish to be considered spineless or intellectually incompetent you must provide evidence that "No" is the answer. As for credulity, anyone who believes the patter of snake-oil salesmen must be judged more credulous than those who doubt it. As for being "conspiracy-minded", again healthy cynicism about the messages promulgated by our leaders has been proved to be justified more often than not. The handling of the covid pandemic is a particularly glaring example of multiple deceits being employed to subdue and exploit a weak-minded populace.
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  16108.  @vforwombat9915  Yes natural immunity is infinitely more efficient. It provides near total, long-lasting immunity and in rare cases of re-infection the second infection is always mild. Vaccines only prevent infection intermittently and are only effective over short periods. "Horse de-wormer" has proved to be enormously effective in reducing mortality is countries where it has been deployed. Furthermore recent studies have clearly shown similar benefits in clinically conducted trials,. One of these used an entire town in Brazil as a test site. The difference in mortality between those who took the "horse de-wormer", even in very small doses, and those who did not is truly staggering. Another study compared the effectiveness of the horse de-wormer, which costs literally almost nothing, with that of a recently developed medication which costs £340 a dose. The horse de-wormer won hands down. A recent meta-study by Johns Hopkins University, citing hundreds of individual studies, has clearly shown that lockdowns have little or no effect on covid mortality, while at the same time creating immense economic and societal damage resulting in a great many deaths from other causes. Herd immunity is a fact of nature. It is the only way any epidemic is conquered. All the above assertions can be backed by attested scientific studies. The only conspiracy is the one which claims these very disturbing findings are the results of conspiracies.
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  16109.  @timothyharris4708  I think you might be slowly coming round to the cause of of reason, truth and justice. Just a little more effort and you will probably get there.
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  16110.  @vforwombat9915  Deductive reasoning is not data-based. It is based on assumptions any of which may be false. All the assertions I have made or questioned are backed up by evidence. Deductive reasoning leads to the strong possibility that a sequence of events has been created which has led to an extension of the pandemic with the purpose of increasing drug company profits. Drug companies falsely asserted that natural immunity was ineffective because otherwise fit, healthy people could have willingly caught covid and therefore had no need to be vaccinated. Even now such people are being coerced into having unnecessary vaccinations, as indeed are young children. All trials pretending to show the inefficacy of hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin were undertaken directly or indirectly by drug companies. The results are therefore unsurprising. Recent trials and on-the-ground experience clearly present evidence for Ivermectin to be highly effective in reducing covid mortality.
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  16111.  @timothyharris4708  The truth is we have been conned something rotten. This conclusion is arrived at by reason, but obtaining justice is a very long way off.
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  16112.  @timothyharris4708  Once again my original reply has been deleted by YouTube. I will now attempt to conceal my heresies. Who is wearing a mask? Who has been triple-jabbed? Whose fearful and compliant responses have helped create new billionaires while further impoverishing the already poor? What motives lie behind the encouragement of the processes you have willingly undergone? What motives lie behind the questioning of this encouragement? Who's the mug here?
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  16113. @LuLYaWott I cannot see why you assume C19 is going inevitably to cause serious problems again. Omicron certainly seems to provide a very high level of immunity to other variants, and this very much fits the general pattern of viral epidemics. It is entirely possible that the drop in cases following roll-out was purely co-incidental. Unlikely, but possible. And there is at least one UK statistical study which indicates that all-cause deaths actually increased post roll;-out. The vaccines have certainly performed very badly, and as far as Omicron is concerned there is little evidence that they actually prevent infection, but merely reduce severity. Since Omicron is rarely, if ever, fatal this is scarcely a recommendation.
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  16114.  @timothyharris4708  You really are Mr Muggins personified. If you don't believe me about YouTube censorship you are a fool. Anything which rationally questions the efficacy of vaccines or the efficacy of pre-existing medications is deleted unless it is phrased very carefully indeed -on the grounds of spreading "medical misinformation." This obviously makes arguing a forceful case very difficult. YouTube controls thoughts. Only certain opinions are allowed. Insult me as much as you like. My sole motivation is to unpick the official line and try to work out true motivation. Gullible idiots like you, who believe everything they are told, are dangerous and must be hunted down and chastised, even if only metaphorically in the comments sections of YouTube channels.
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  16115. @LuLYaWott Vaccines are not the answer. Natural selection is. C19 has evolved into a more transmissible but less virulent form which bears out Smith's Law and could well have arrived at this stage a great deal earlier if we had not misjudged it and attempted so clumsily and ineffectively to divert it from its natural course.
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  16116. @LuLYaWott There is no evidence that BA2 is more severe. Indeed there is no evidence that Omicron has directly and solely caused a single death. The Chinese outbreak is tiny and we have no evidence as to the severity of outcomes. Life certainly comes up with nasty surprises, but I really do believe your pessimism is entirely unjustified.
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  16117. @LuLYaWott What does it matter how many people catch it? The more the merrier. The more who achieve actual real immunity! Omicron affects the bronchial passages and rarely descends to the lungs. Asthmatics and others with bronchial difficulties will have problems- but so they would if they caught a chesty cold. Which is basically all Omicron is at worse.
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  16118. @LuLYaWott We have achieved herd immunity. Herd immunity means that a pathogen is containable. It does not mean, as many think, that it has been entirely eliminated . C19 will always be with us. It has simply joined that small contingent of pathogens we refer to as the "common cold." Which is exactly what sensible people predicted when it first appeared.
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  16119.  @errorswillmultiply1697  What you don't understand (among the many things you don't understand) is that my views are in no way controversial when aired on other channels. The inward-looking little tribe you belong to is generally characterised by fear, pessimism, self-righteousness and an overwhelming desire to conform and to obey. You are sheep. You need a good shaking and it is my pleasure to give it to you. Win an argument and I will concede. Point out an inaccuracy and I will gratefully acknowledge my error. Just because you are incapable of achieving these things doesn't mean others can't. You really are a whinging wimp. And so is anyone who heeds your dirge-like warnings.
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  16120.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Your not proving anything you buffoon! And I am not angry with you, merely slightly irritated.
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  16121. @LuLYaWott Currently in the UK deaths and hospitalisations from all causes are around 5% lower than the five-year average. BA2 is going to have to behave very strangely indeed if it's going to knock a hole in that reserve. We can go on forever predicting doom and disaster, but as things stand there is no need for it. Very often in life the things we do to prevent disasters turn out to be more damaging than the disasters would have been. We have virtually destroyed ourselves out of fear if what is basically a nasty bug which kills people already on their way to the crematorium. And it isn't even doing that any more. It's time to stop the paranoia.
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  16122.  @vforwombat9915  My evidence is based on original studies too - hopefully ones not paid for by drug companies which have a vested interest in skewed results. What on earth do you mean: "Natural immunity is zero percent effective at preventing infection. It is highly effective at preventing reinfection."???!!!. You don't get natural immunity unless you you catch covid in the first place - or in some cases have it because of inbuilt immunity due to response to earlier historical infections by a similar pathogen. This is why some Asian countries have been less hard hit. If you are fit and healthy getting covid is practically a bounden duty, as you help build up cordons of immunity around the vulnerable. The way things are looking you stand about as much chance of developing serious issues from covid as you do from the measures taken to prevent it. Have you read the recently released Pfizer data? Trials not undertaken by drug companies, plus statistical evidence from countries where it is widely used, have shown clear correlations between "horse-medicine" and quite dramatic decreases in mortality. Big Pharma has taken the world for a ride -and not for the first time.
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  16123.  @vforwombat9915  The following is a precis of the data released by Pfizer following a Freedom of Information Court Order. The FADA in America considered that despite the adverse events, including over 1,200 fatalities, the advantages outweighed the risks. Adverse event reports 01 December 2020 through 28 February 2021 Cumulatively, through 28 February 2021, a total of 42,086 case reports (25,379 medically confirmed and 16,707 non-medically confirmed) containing 158,893 events. Most cases (34,762) were received from United States (13,739), United Kingdom (13,404) Italy (2,578), Germany (1,913), France (1,506), Portugal (866) and Spain (756) the remaining 7,324 were distributed among 56 other countries. Fatal, 1,223
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  16124.  @vforwombat9915  My last three replies to you have been deleted, so briefly: How does your trained scientific mind explain the fact that actual number of injections in this pre-licence roll-out has been redacted? Would it not be useful, in your trained scientific opinion, if the percentage thus obtained could be compared with the equivalent percentage of deaths/serious outcomes resulting from actual infection? As to horse -dewormer you just have to compare death rates in Uttar Pradesh and Goa with Kerala or other Indian states where it has been banned. The argument comparing immunity through infection with immunity via jab is over. You lost.
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  16125.  @1inchPunchBowl  I said the response to the pandemic has been engineered. Which it has: by the drug companies who have artificially extended it and suppressed information about alternative treatments in order to maximise profits from the sale of vaccines and other medication.
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  16126.  @1inchPunchBowl  The drug companies have the system tied up. They run rings around NICE and GPs. They cost the NHS millions by persuading GPs to carry on prescribing brand-name drugs even when much, much cheaper versions are available. Tests showing unpleasant side-effects are tucked out of sight and tests exaggerating benefits are widely proclaimed. They are in business for profit and the way in which the pandemic has manipulated to maximise their profits while having little regard for public health is a scandal.
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  16127. And trousered a million quid for doing it, what's more!
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  16128.  @susannehartl3067  And those "atrocities" were almost certainly staged and - according to rumour and to Lukashenko of Belarus - by the British SAS.
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  16129.  @justinmillette9110  And money didn't come into at all, I'm sure. Russia's peace terms were entirely reasonable, as far as one can gather, centring mainly on regional autonomy for Donbass, thus freeing it from EU constraints as agreed eight year before in the Minsk Accords.
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  16130. @ Funny coincidence, that. Of course there can be no possible truth in the claims that Bucha was a staged event.
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  16131. @ Bucha? Convenient timing, wasn't it?
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  16132.  @justinmillette9110  But Russia will have no need nor wish to invade Ukraine once it gets Donbass back - although I suppose some of the more hawkish among them will have their eyes on Odessa and possibly Kherson. But I don't blame Russia one bit for nor wanting what was once its own territory becoming an armed camp for its self-declared enemy. As long as Ukraine is an armed force there is a far greater likelihood that it will bow to Western pressure and attempt to retake Donbass and Crimea than there is any chance whatever of Russia attempting further incursions.
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  16133.  @fitzstv8506  But not the influence of what was in his briefcase.
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  16134. Over 90% of the adult population is now thought to possess antibodies to covid. This ought to mean that herd immunity is very near.
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  16135.  @Scanini  Thank you for your profound political insight madam
    1
  16136. Ukraine is one third Russian, at the very least.
    1
  16137. Is the government so stupid it cannot workout a way of ensuring the fuel payments go only to those who need it? And no, Pension Credit is not the answer.
    1
  16138. Science Matters CO2 is not a pollutant and the 'evidence' that it contributes towards global warming is very shaky indeed. The theory is based entirely upon laboratory experiments using models of the atmosphere decided upon well over 100 years ago and little altered since. The actual atmosphere appears to behave very differently - which is scarcely surprising since it is very much larger than the artificial atmospheres used for these experiments, to say nothing of being subject to cosmic rays and being on the edge of outer space. Experiments carried out in contained areas on the earth's surface do indicate that carbon instigates a procedure whereby infra-red radiation is retained or reflected back downwards. In the real atmosphere, however, recent studies have shown that carbon molecules retain infra-red photons for approximately one third of a second before disseminating them in various directions. It also appears that this procedure assists in maintaining the atmosphere in a state of thermodynamic stability, as Einstein posited it must be in his theoretical paper of 1917. The climate crisis is a gigantic scam conceived by hedge fund managers who make vast profits from trading in carbon emission permissions created by artificial restrictions imposed following such events as The Paris Agreement. The scam is supported by governments who increase revenue via carbon taxes and also by left-leaning politicians generally who see it as a way of exercising widespread control over you suckers while at the same time allowing you to feel clever and virtuous.
    1
  16139. Science Matters You really have been totally brainwashed I'm afraid. C02 is not a pollutant. How can it be when it is essential to plant life and you are breathing out quantities of all the time? Greenland's ice sheets are not melting more now than they have done.in the past. The process is cyclic. Coral reefs are doing just fine except when affected by actual chemical pollutants. Sea levels are not rising and NASA tells lies as well as altering historical data. I won't bother to read any of the articles you cite. They will be nothing but alarmist propaganda I'm sure. You are free to check out www.ceres-science.com if you like though.You could even try "A New Look at the Physics of Earth's Atmosphere" on ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com. You have a nice day too. And keep checking the science.Double check.And don't assume that those of us who deny AGW are doing so because of magazine articles and TV shows. We smell a rat and checking things out is clearly showing the rat is there.
    1
  16140. Science Matters I'm getting a little worried about you. Very often you climate alarmist types get hysterical in this way when your bubble is prodded. I've already explained why CO2 isn't a pollutant and I don't think many people say it is. As to the luxuries we have today, they are of course provided directly via the CO2 emitting fossil fuel industry one way or another, aren't they? I don't deny global warming by the way, I just don't think human activity causes it. If the current trend conforms to previous patterns it will get warmer and warmer for a couple of hundred years before a new cooling period begins. The level of carbon in the atmosphere is irrelevant. Don't forget that our lush green earth, with its oxygen breathing fauna came into being when atmospheric carbon levels were hundreds of times greater than they are today.
    1
  16141. Science Matters I believe in science. I just don't believe that the science behind AGW is accurate. I've already explained why. And what is this paper I've changed my mind about? If you mean Einstein's it certainly insists that the atmosphere is thermodynamically stable. Where does it say that an increase in CO2 will cause surface warming? Which of my points have you refuted by the way? And which of yours have I failed to address?
    1
  16142. Navalny's death has harmed Putin more than if he had lived. It wouldn't be like Putin to make such a foolish move as to have him killed. He could be speaking the truth.
    1
  16143. Well done. You finally found some fascists. Not very many of them, are there?
    1
  16144. A civil war.
    1
  16145.  @natamadic  Not in the slightest. As fascinating as this story is I don't see how it impacts on the Ukraine war.
    1
  16146.  @TimD-ny6ks  A bit irritating for Putin, I would imagine but I doubt it's his biggest problem! Thanks for your input, just the same.
    1
  16147. Bring in useless lockdowns and the virus will adapt to circumvent them. This is so bleeding obvious that I cannot understand why the government's coterie of so-called scientific advisors do not see it.
    1
  16148.  @31Blaize  The two often combine.
    1
  16149.  @weswheel4834  But you do. Real life isn't a football game in which the referee's decision is always final.
    1
  16150.  @JA-qi1fb  He was guilty of defying the court. As to the film itself, it seems probable that some of the people he interviewed exaggerated their claims about the Syrian boy and he was foolish and inexperienced enough not to check their claims thoroughly. It is quite clear though that the original incident in which the boy had water poured on his face was not racially motivated, but because he had a reputation for unacceptable behaviour. How bad that behaviour was (if at all) remains unclear.
    1
  16151.  @31Blaize  He defied the law, and was punished by the law. Whether the law was right or not is another matter. I think he overstepped the mark in his film - and I think he has finally admitted it to himself - hence his guilty plea.
    1
  16152.  @rogerphelps9939  Greater Israel.
    1
  16153. It makes sound economic sense to rid ourselves of the elderly, who contribute nothing to the economy, and replace them with fit, health young men from Muslim nations.
    1
  16154.  @philipmain5701  Blame America
    1
  16155.  @nicolasolton  The West attempting to take over extremely valuable mineral resources in Eastern Ukraine, developed and invested in by Russia over very many centuries.
    1
  16156.  @nicolasolton  NATO expansion, plus attempts to redivert the vast mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine away from Russia into the hands of Western agencies.
    1
  16157.  @nicolasolton  US aggression, military and economic.
    1
  16158.  @natalieturko4808  Nicolas Olton is a brainwashed child.
    1
  16159.  @natalieturko4808  I am, in fact, a patriotic Briton who does not want to see his children used as US cannon fodder in the same way as the poor bloody Ukrainians are being.
    1
  16160. You begin with the assumption that alarmist climate predictions are accurate. What if they are not? They have been miserably inaccurate over the past thirty years and there is a growing body of evidence that man-made carbon emissions play only a very small part in global warming, which is solar forced and cyclic. Under these circumstances is it not reasonable for industries to resist this interference with their affairs? The only people to benefit from the situation appear to be hedge fund managers playing a volatile cap and trade market to advantage. One even suspects that the whole shooting match has been created for this very purpose.
    1
  16161.  @makeracistsafraidagain  That might be a mistake in the long run.
    1
  16162.  @paulgibbon5991  Not really. The situation remains very much in the balance, but you Americans and the Europeans and we British are getting fed a load of one-sided guff. It's always like that in wars. It's as well to see the other side of the coin.
    1
  16163.  @1202burton  I don't think so. As I explained, the SMO first stage of the war was designed to reduce Ukraine's army by sacrificing elderly equipment and less efficient troops. This appears to have succeeded to some degree, and the real war starts this winter with Ukraine being bombed to bits and its army in tatters. The outcome depends largely on how much Russia has left versus how much the West will give Ukraine.
    1
  16164.  @1202burton  The troops who were sacrificed were not the elite. The elite went in first, gained ground and then the blotting paper was shipped in while the prime assault troops retired to Donbass, Crimea and Belarus. Russia completely rebuilt its army from 2001. onwards and has a substantial inventory of modern equipment, much of which appears to be intact. You can find details by Googling Russia Military: Quick Reference Guide.
    1
  16165. Surely fossil fuel companies are major investors in green energy?
    1
  16166.  @Ian_Carolan  But they are covering their bets by investing in wind and solar power, electric vehicles etc. It is foolish to suppose they do not realise that diversification is necessary. Objection to the AGW hypothesis comes generally from individuals who fail to see much evidence for it in the real world, and clearly see images and data manipulated to give it credibility. They are reacting to propaganda, not succumbing to it.
    1
  16167.  @toyotaprius79  As I understand it the six major oil companies are investing in all green energy areas, including wind and solar power and electric vehicles. This may currently only account for slightly more than 1% of their total budgets, but it us clear they are hedging their bets and do not see alternative energies so much as rivals as strategies to be incorporated into their future business plans.
    1
  16168.  @BrianMcGuirkBMG  They are currently only spending about 1% or so of their budgets on it I admit. That's only a few billion dollars, but I don't quite know where the rest of the money comes from.
    1
  16169.  @burner9147  About 1% of their budgets at the moment. Only a few billion dollars though.
    1
  16170.  @BrianMcGuirkBMG  Not really. I know what I know and don't know what I don't know.
    1
  16171.  @dalstein3708  Have you got any idea how MUCH 1% of the combined budgets of the six major oil companies must amount to? Manufacturing wind turbines is a costly business, but at least it's subsidised. What's a FUD tactic? Does it really cost more than manufacturing wind turbines and electric cars?
    1
  16172.  @BrianMcGuirkBMG  I don't see the connection. Trump got elected to drain the swamp, not to revise cosmology. Shame his efforts have been interrupted, considering present events on the other side of the globe.
    1
  16173.  @dalstein3708  I don't hear much denial from fossil fuel companies. I get my denial from individuals and sites who, like me, regard the whole AGW hypothesis with deep suspicion. I'm an old journo and back in the day the watchword was: "Where's the pile of bodies?" The cancerous effects of tobacco became clear, but even then people continued to smoke - not because of tobacco company pressure but because smoking was so bloody nice. I still haven't seen the piles of bodies promised by man-made climate change yet. Lots of luvverly coloured graphs yes, but nothing on the ground. The ice caps are not melting. Seas are not rising. There is no evidence that natural disasters are any worse or more frequent than they have ever been. It's looking to me very much as though it is the climate crisis industry which is performing the tobacco company's role - throwing out propaganda to support a money-making enterprise - one in this instance which is part of a general move to reshape capitalism.
    1
  16174.  @5400bowen  Much of it stays in the US for now. $13.4 billion to replace armaments already sent over,$7.3billion to allow the US to continue monitoring operations, and $13.9 billion to be spent on procuring new advanced weaponry. In the immediate future Ukraine gets $13.7 billion, some in the form of unspecified equipment from America's depleted armouries, and the rest in the form of credit to enable Ukraine to buy weapons elsewhere.
    1
  16175.  @AdamWhistle1  Surely the Russians are world leaders in nuclear technology? Perhaps we can assume they know what they're doing.
    1
  16176. @Purple Syndicalist I think you're right - but I gather the chances are much reduced.
    1
  16177.  @денисбаженов-щ1б News outlets seem convinced that all six were shut down by September 11 - but perhaps you have more recent information?
    1
  16178. @Purple Syndicalist Thanks for putting me straight. I gather though that a Chernobyl-style disaster is only a remote possibility. I can't help wondering though that if it DID blow it might knock some sense into people.
    1
  16179.  @денисбаженов-щ1б  Thank you for the information.
    1
  16180.  @doubletap-z8c  One can imagine several quite feasible scenarios where this might well become possible. The Tories have collapsed. It is quite likely that Labour will prove to be unfit for power and follow a similar trajectory. The Great British Public will turn sharp right and if Farage leads a viable alternative at this point, he will occupy No 10.
    1
  16181. Now of course we have millions of immigrants from distant lands tilling our fields and creating wealth for all to enjoy. Happy days!
    1
  16182.  @williampatrickfagan7590  This is a somewhat enigmatic invitation. Am I to take it that your latest immigrants are employed in other fields? Ukrainian cockle farmers? Albanian barkeeps? What lifestyles do Lithuanians lead on the banks of the Liffey? Do Syrians wield shillelaghs while Polacks swig potcheen and Nigerians and Nubians escort the fair Coleen?
    1
  16183.  @williampatrickfagan7590  One wonders why they bothered to make the journey in that case.
    1
  16184.  @williampatrickfagan7590  Only for slave labour.
    1
  16185. It doesn't much matter. Lefty lawyers (especially Supreme Court judges) have dragged this once-great country to the brink of ruin. Now we are due for a Labour government which will further encourage this madness.
    1
  16186.  @anthony1636  Democracy at work, or such of it as remains Seventy hours of sworn testimony available on the Internet. Here's a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  16187.  @Bluewhalebig  No such specific request was made nor could it have been. The witnesses had all signed affidavits which is as close to an oath as you can get at a state senate hearing. What's your point anyway? Are you suggesting that people don't lie under oath? Are you suggesting this continual procession of seemingly honest ordinary folk and professional experts with their careers on the line were not telling the truth as they saw it? There have been over 1,000 statements sworn and signed. You can't ignore such a mountain of allegation.
    1
  16188.  @CricketEngland  And what it likes is leftist brainwashing.
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  16189.  @duuet5614  Capitol Hill. Yes of course, what's your point?
    1
  16190.  Murray David  Not by 61% of Brits it isn't.
    1
  16191.  @Phones007  I don't agree. And nor do over half of the population of the USA.
    1
  16192.  Murray David  Which figure? My sources are generally impeccable but I need to know what figure you are querying.
    1
  16193.  Murray David  Must be a BBC poll then. Should it be true it's no wonder so many people are brainwashed.
    1
  16194.  @Dbdbe1  Rude and unpleasant maybe - but I still don't see that it was racist, It just seems to me that we are so ultra-sensitive these days that no reference can be made to a black person except in terms of fawning respect. This is very dangerous and, as in this instance, creates resentment among non-black people. But resentment is not racism because it is not black people who are disliked but the system which creates this situation.
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  16195. Peter Lynch's funeral today. RIP.
    1
  16196. You do realise that our King is equally immune?
    1
  16197.  @deanlowdon8381  It actually makes a great deal of sense. The very fact that the Democrats have sunk to abusing the judicial system for political purposes proves that the Head of State should be immune from prosecution. In Britain only a revolution can remove the King or Queen. In America it ought to be a free and fair election, not the kind of dirty trick the Dems have been playing.
    1
  16198.  @bob-g3e3x  Of course the King is immune - which is as it should be.
    1
  16199.  @deanlowdon8381  Yes it is. And for sound constitutional reasons.
    1
  16200.  @deanlowdon8381  It's more than that. The Crown represents the history of the country, and all the unwritten constitutional law accumulated for over a thousand years. The Crown prosecutes wrongdoers, so it can't very well prosecute itself. As the recent attempts by the Democrats in America clearly show, the temptation to abuse the judicial system for political purposes is always there. This is much more difficult when the Head of State is the ultimate prosecutor, and therefore immune.
    1
  16201.  @bob-g3e3x  Just because you're now 13 there's no need to get sassy.
    1
  16202. @Dmon ! I sometimes wonder if it is a glitch, or even indeed my incompetence that causes this to happen, I must admit, but the YouTube algorithm recognising certain key words and combination of words seems to be the most likely answer. In the post which did get through I left out certain accusations about vaccines effects which I had included in the earlier posts and it passed censorship, as you see. Similar accusations are included in the video I posted, but they are couched very discreetly. The statistics proff doesn't come right out and say what his figures indicate. (My parents are long dead, so your analogy does not apply.)
    1
  16203. @Dmon ! I rely on experts, obviously. They just happen to be different experts to those employed by drug companies and cited by lackey news channels. We are being conned something rotten. The whole approach to dealing with the pandemic has been geared towards maximising profits for vaccine manufacturers - and continues to be so.
    1
  16204.  @JustinLT212  Thankyou - and my very best wishes and hopes for your future success.
    1
  16205. @Dmon ! I thought I had made it clear that I am not against covid vaccines. They play a useful role in slowing down the progress of the pandemic and, more importantly, reduce the severity of symptoms. (Oral palliatives do that too, but no matter.) Big Pharma has a long and discreditable history of putting profits before health care considerations. Counter-indications and even evidence of harm caused by products are buried, rival medications which are out of patent and cheap are routinely discredited and so on. The response to the pandemic has been structured in such a way as to artificially extend it until vaccines were produced and even though the vaccines are shown to be of limited efficacy and to be subject to significant drawbacks, that process continues. It is clear that a more well-rounded approach is needed. I do urge you to watch Proff Fenton's video. It is rather technical in places, but but quite easy to understand if you put your mind to it.
    1
  16206. @Dmon ! You are only listening to the "experts" who have political and financial axes to grind. Extend your range of sources of information and you will realise things are not as cut and dried as you seem to think.
    1
  16207. @Dmon ! You are not the most coherent and rational person in the world, are you?
    1
  16208. @Dmon ! I love it the way you go on about "education". Gaining some tinpot degree in a trash Midwestern University is not an education. It is brainwashing. I imagine your earlier career as an unsuccessful schoolyard bully being over you are venting your personal inadequacies in this hysterical fashion. I suspect you are as thick as a stevedore's sandwich as well as being more than slightly insane but you are quite fun to play with. Even if any hope of broadening your horizons is rapidly declining I shall enjoy taunting you mercilessly should you wish to continue this conversation.
    1
  16209. @Dmon ! When you actually make a point I will respond to it. You haven't yet.
    1
  16210. @Dmon ! The evidence for exactly what is it you are looking for? I have sent you Proff Fenton's video which more or less summarises my position from a statistical viewpoint, but you have not yet responded to it. If you wish me to point you towards any evidence for any assertion I have made and with which you disagree then please specify the assertion.
    1
  16211.  P.M.  Certainly. But I am not one of them
    1
  16212. @Dmon ! I think -on the evidence submitted so far - that you fall into the imbecile category rather more than I do.
    1
  16213. @Dmon ! I think you are probably taking too more sugar in your diet. That aside, if, as I say, you would care to specify which of my claims you require evidence for then I will try to provide it.
    1
  16214.  P.M.  I gave you my life story! What more do you want?!
    1
  16215. @Dmon ! Again I must ask: what points? I don't see any. If you think you have a point or two then carefully extract them from their surrounding verbiage and present them to me and I'll see what I can do.
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  16216. @Dmon ! Of course vaccines work. I never said they didn't. But they are not the silver bullet and they have largely failed to keep the pandemic at bay. Other strategies, such as those put forward in the Great Barrington Declaration have been systematically belittled because if implemented they would have stood in the way of Big Pharma's greed for profit. Other existing potential remedies, prophylactics and palliatives, out of patent and therefore cheap and readily available, have been treated in the same way and for the same reason. (You are still going on about spewing by the way. Are you overweight and bulimic? Or a bi-polar emetophobic perhaps?)
    1
  16217.  P.M.  I have sound reasons for anonymity I'm afraid, so you doubts must go unanswered.
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  16218.  P.M.  I'm not American, I'm British. We care too. Suffice it to say that if you cross a religious cult they have ways of making your life hell. It was a long time ago now but these guys have long memories. I wouldn't risk it happening again.
    1
  16219. @Dmon ! They partially work, but not enough to halt the pandemic. I realise this is a concept a simple mind such as yours cannot grasp, even at the best of times, but if you started taking your medication properly it might stop you making such a fool of yourself.
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  16220. Belegrod is a nothing nonsense. Russia can now soak up anything Ukraine throws at it. Idiots will shout and cheer should they retire back to their new trenches , but Putin wouldn't give a damn as long as more and more Ukrainians are killed and more and more of their Western-donated weaponry is destroyed. The utter destruction of Ukraine's military capability is the objective. Once that is achieved Russia can set about getting what it really wants - which will probably be a good deal less than we have been led to believe.
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  16221. How is the BBC going to manage if Russia starts winning?
    1
  16222.  @billybobkingston5604  Try to do better.
    1
  16223. Great times, actually.
    1
  16224. Does General Jones have another career impersonating characters from P J Wodehouse? He really is quite entertaining.
    1
  16225. Well it worked for me.
    1
  16226. It seems as though every sordid attempt to attack Trump just backfires, doesn't it? Perhaps the Democrats would have more luck is they tried actually having policies instead of just trying to drag their opponent into the gutter.
    1
  16227.  @davefave4351  This is admittedly a somewhat tortuous analogy, but entirely cogent. And really funny once you get it.
    1
  16228.  @WilliamMacKenzie-dq6bf  Well, no. That's a different thing. When Trump lies he tends to do so with grace and humour often lacking in the lies of other politicians.
    1
  16229.  @rogerphelps9939  I do hope that was a typo.
    1
  16230.  @Deathadder90  You seem to know about these things, but I gather this jobby goes up very, very high, then comes down so very very fast that it is impossible to intercept it. Is this wrong then?
    1
  16231.  @mayamelagia  Media reform and medium regulation are just euphemisms for censorship.
    1
  16232.  @MonsieurJimjams  There actually isn't so great a difference. The truth is notoriously difficult to define. You may well be living in a paradise of falsehoods.
    1
  16233.  @Lindafoy11  One man's facts are another man's propaganda. You could be wrong in everything you think., same as anyone else.
    1
  16234. Zelensky's regime is theatre funded by American gangsters. The cracks are showing and the run will soon be over.
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  16235. Does this mean that Russia is planning an attack on Odessa?
    1
  16236. Rubbish. It's only the mRNA vaccines which are under scrutiny - and with good reason. The return of these other diseases is almost certainly due to unfettered immigration from poor countries.
    1
  16237.  @RussCR5187  They weren't overwhelmed in the first wave which was far, far worse than this very minor hiccup is likely to be. Therapeutic measures already exist, particularly in the form of hydroxychloroquine which reduces death rates by at least a third if administered early enough, and also acts as an effective prophylactic.
    1
  16238.  @mattgreek1066  Oh Matt! Isn't it past your bedtime? I've just given Russ some proper science to read and I'm sure he's to bright to listen to your nonsense. What Dale is, as you know, is someone who worries about all you poor children being told nasty stories by bad grown-ups and is doing his very best to open your eyes to reality.
    1
  16239.  @RussCR5187  It actually helps with your issues https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03592823 Once again the Big Pharma shills shoved ten or twenty times the proper dose down their trial patients to get the bad results. Hydroxychloroquine cost $37.50 for 1000 in the US - and even less in the third world. There's no money in it -which is why Big Pharma hates it. (Don't take any notice of little Matt. He follows me around like a dog. He thinks I am a Russian bot, I believe. He is probably slightly insane, poor boy.)
    1
  16240.  @iaydah86  Oh that's all right then.
    1
  16241.  @VMVarga-zg4cl  So it's simply a question of scale? How many people are allowed to be killed before it starts to upset us?
    1
  16242.  @StinkCabbage  Damn! You've got to explain that one!
    1
  16243.  @StinkCabbage  Please tell me these aren't anagrams
    1
  16244.  @StinkCabbage  And you're right. I've never heard of any of them. They should really have one called Mandy though.
    1
  16245. He's right though. These pathetic attacks were directed at civilians.
    1
  16246.  @RaRa-eu9mw  By using it to try to destroy Trump.
    1
  16247.  @guidedmeditation2396  Thank goodness the mystery is explained. Glad we're on the same side. I just Googled hydroxychloroquine prices and immediately hit a company selling them for $37.50 per 100. I still don't get why you put the $200 next to Trump's name though.
    1
  16248.  @petervanwyngaard4788  It shows nothing other than that the common soldiery was given to understand it would be an easy job. Their officers and Kremlin knew exactly what they were doing. They were fully prepared to sacrifice low-grade troops and ancient equipment in the early stages of the operation.
    1
  16249.  @petervanwyngaard4788  The Russian army does tend to operate in ways that haven't altered much over the centuries. It is careless of the lives of its men in ways now unthinkable in Europe and America.
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  16250. MAGA TRON Do 97 per cent of scientists say this? Or did you read it in a comic book?
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  16251. MEGA TRON I'm happy for you. I wish you a long and prosperous life. CO2 does not cause warming. That was a mistake that has now become a lie. The real atmosphere turns out to be different from the artificial atmosphere used for experiments. Climate is cyclic and based on a combination of the position of the earth in relation to the sun and atmospheric pressure. The earth was warmer in the 1200s than today. We are slowly approaching such temperatures (global warming) at which point there will be a period of rapid cooling. It depends on your age but it is likely this will happen in your lifetime. This winter is likely to be very cold, incidentally. If so, will you think about what I have just said?
    1
  16252.  @stephensuddick1896  Not at all. Why speak out now when it is unclear which side will win? We in the West are fed the illusion that this war is some kind of moral crusade when it is just another battle over the control of resources. Both India and China - and many other countries beside - would like to see Russia win so that in a future world they can profit by an end of US hegemony. But Russia may not win, in which case it is as well to keep on the right side of America.
    1
  16253.  @stephensuddick1896  ?
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  16254.  @stephensuddick1896  Is not the protection of your country's interests a sound principle? What is cowardly about caution?
    1
  16255. David Roberts It's TOO LATE! The carbon is ALREADY THERE waiting in great clouds to come down to destroy us.
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  16256. Billions of £££s have been stolen from the public purse under the guise of protecting health. Bojo and his gang were party to the theft and did not for a moment believe in the usefulness of the lockdowns. They should be punished for introducing them - not for ignoring them.
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  16257. I hate to be a bore, but you still don't seem to get the idea that the whole Kharkiv thing is just designed to keep Ukraine occupied while the Russians continue to push through on the southern front, where the real war is.
    1
  16258. If China backs Russia, Russia will almost certainly win and between them and other countries in the BRICS group they will be adequately provided to give America a good run for its money in any economic war that follows.
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  16259. Utter crap. The average salary in Russia is a thousand dollars more than the figure you quote. Why is it so important for your well-being to believe such nonsense?
    1
  16260.  @joerogain5025  Out in the wilds, maybe. But there are towns and cities all over Siberia which compare very favourably with their US equivalents. Once again I have to ask why it is so important to you to believe that the Russian people are less well provided for than Americans? It simply is not true.
    1
  16261. Nothing to do with the Afghanistan withdrawal then?
    1
  16262.  @johnoliver3518  That's funny. I thought Biden was President at the time and undid all Trump's groundwork. Bagram Airport ring a bell? Military hardware worth eighty billion dollars left behind in the rush?
    1
  16263. What has he been convicted of? I must have missed that.
    1
  16264. The Russian offensive is imminent. Why would they wait until Spring? If they win this, they will not forget the part Britain has played in attempting to defeat them.
    1
  16265. But Biden is your president!
    1
  16266. This is looking more like an ideological war than a trade war. Trump has immediately got what he wanted from all the countries he threatened with tariffs - mainly big help with the war on drugs and illegal immigration. What he wants from Britain and the EU is anyone's guess.
    1
  16267. This is a real test. If the economy booms, the NHS becomes more efficient and people do not ACTUALLY starve in the gutters then Labour will be finished. The only people supporting socialism in a modern context will be brainwashed students. Even if the gloomy predictions come true Labour will have great difficulty in rebuilding and rebranding itself in the time available. There is even a possibility that the Loyal Opposition will not come from the left but from the right. There are plenty of UKIP and Brexit Party supporters and others who think Boris is too soft on many issues, particularly Islamification. His endorsement of climate change legislation also does not sit well with the many people who sense some sort of scam is going on. Imagine Boris Johnson on one side of the dispatch box and Nigel Farage on the other! Stranger things have happened.
    1
  16268. It works around the other way of course. Deaths among those who have not received proper treatment for existing serious conditions due to lockdown restrictions etc, and who die "with" covid are counted as covid deaths.
    1
  16269.  @thinker646  A Russian retreat isn't exactly likely though, is it?
    1
  16270. Joseph Fuller Climate change is real. The sun does it. AGW IS BS! It is science manipulated by financiers and politicians and fuelled by millions of suckers like you.
    1
  16271. He can switch to Parler and his supporters will switch with him.
    1
  16272.  @rockbutcher  Well I've given those up. I guess I'm not destined for stardom.
    1
  16273.  Lala Ghana-Love  Difficult unless you are a contortionist.
    1
  16274. Farage is no friend of Tommy Robinson.
    1
  16275. Whether it was incompetent US "Intelligence" or just a crap assessment by Black Rock this sick enterprise have gone off the rails big time.
    1
  16276.  @andrewyoung1904  The MPs didn't put her through. The root and branch CP members did. There is a big gap between the membership and the hierarchy.
    1
  16277. and now they're firing off rockets like it was New Year. Trump was on his way to persuading them to disarm.
    1
  16278. But when this convention is being used to facilitate illegal immigration, do you not think some amendment is needed?
    1
  16279.  @gwendolinegoetz9224  But the rubber boat arrivals are economic tourists, not starving Irish peasants. They pay between up to 20,000 euros for the trip, including 5,000 for their seat on the dinghy. Many are wearing trainers costing a couple of hundred Euros and they sometimes use their expensive cellphones to film themselves throwing their credit cards and identification documents into the sea. Not quite the same thing, is it?
    1
  16280.  @gwendolinegoetz9224  I imagine the people smugglers will respond to this by handing out sharp knives to puncture the dinghies, just to be on the safe side. The deep reasons for economic migration are many and complex - as indeed are the reasons for a nation's decline into poverty and chaos.
    1
  16281. Dr Fauci is a liar, a fraud and a charlatan.
    1
  16282.  @L3L3L3  Fauci is a schill for the pharmaceutical industry.
    1
  16283.  @rt-420  You were conspired against. You continue to be conspired against. Your every move, decision and action is deliberately manipulated in order to make even more money for people who are far, far, richer than you are and who don't give a damn if you live or die.
    1
  16284.  @rt-420  If you were being conspired against , would you be happy to realise it?
    1
  16285.  @dritemolawzbks8574  These people strike me as being eminently sane and sensible. The country is being sold down the river. What else can you expect them to do?
    1
  16286.  @dritemolawzbks8574  You mean 69million people, two million corpses, Dominion voting systems and your grandma's dead cat don't you?
    1
  16287.  @dritemolawzbks8574  He lost power because the election was rigged. And it pretty much is a banana republic.
    1
  16288.  @brigidann23  Don't they? I thought most of them did. It's not an exact parallel of course since they exist mainly to prevent much larger particles than covid virions falling from surgeon's mouths and nostrils. Oddly enough a survey published in 2015 revealed that 4% of surgeons in the UK actually didn't wear masks in theatre and of those who did 20% said they only did so because they thought it was expected of them.
    1
  16289. What tosh! Racism and racists are dying out day by day and are not being replaced. You're right, you can't get people to change their view, you just have to wait for them to die. Which inevitably they do.
    1
  16290.  Corvus Glaive  It seems to me that just about every publicised example of apparent racial harassment by the US police has occurred after a suspect has refused to co-operate. It's not just a question of exercise your right to ask for an explanation, it's a question of making it clear from the outset that you are not a threat either to the officers or anyone nearby. I daresay you do get white people behaving in the same way and with similar results, but since this does not fit the left's race-baiting narrative such incidents are not given any airtime.
    1
  16291.  Corvus Glaive  You are living in a world of fantasy. If a white guy behaved like that he would get the same treatment. But probably he would be less inclined to do so. Statistics show that more white people are killed by police than black people. The criteria isn't the colour of your skin but just how badly behaved you're being. These officers, just like Chauvin and his team, behaved entirely properly in the first instance but when they met with lack of co-operating they behaved accordingly. They got riled and nervous. What would you expect them to do? Say:" Ok man, you win. Don't get out of the car. Just be on your way. Have a pleasant evening?"
    1
  16292. This is just the continuation of Putin's long-stated policy of recapturing the entire Donbass region from Ukrainian control. It is likely to succeed - and at the end of the day the situation will be broadly similar to that put forward by Putin in his 2021 peace proposals and half a million people will have died to no purpose. God bless America.
    1
  16293. The dreadful thing is all he needs to do is to come up with a spiffing wheeze between now and May and all will be forgiven.
    1
  16294.  @liannegeorge2881  Of course they are. This is just another of America's proxy wars, The Ukrainian army is equipped and trained by America and its allies. It is a mineral rich country, extremely corrupt, and the US wants all the action. The US organised a coup in 2014 to put their own guy in and Zelensky was put into power by a man called Ifor Kolomoisky, an oligarch who owns a great chunk of the US steel industry.
    1
  16295. Blood and bribery are all the Taliban understand. Trump knew this. Biden clearly doesn't.
    1
  16296. It already has. The city of Dnipro was devastated last night in an attack which included the first ever use of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in warfare.
    1
  16297. Name one lie Trump told.
    1
  16298. ...or a recipe for suicide.
    1
  16299. TDS is a mind-boggling example of mass psychosis. Its effects are comparable with Germany in the 1920s and 30s and with Cambodia in the 1960s.
    1
  16300. Who wouldn't?
    1
  16301.  @UniversalAwareness101  Wrong. I'm an elderly Englishman.
    1
  16302.  @Goldeen-x6k  No. That's why the thousands of Russians living in Eastern Ukraine have been fighting for ten years to keep theirs.
    1
  16303.  @petern9743  Moscow bought off the Mongols after being attacked in 1238 but Kiev was destroyed by them in December 1240. I don't believe that Kiev at any time "released Moscow from its occupation", although Khan Tokhamash did retake Moscow in 1338,I think. I would imagine Kiev had more than enough troubles of its own at this time. The city and the surrounding area were totally devastated and took centuries to come even close to recovery. But the history is indeed complex and perhaps you are aware of some incident which has escaped my notice.
    1
  16304.  @andrewadams6905  Analogies between the present situation and that of Germany in the late 1930's are a sign of mental weakness.
    1
  16305. Will it though?
    1
  16306.  @tigrrtom  I share many of them, especially a fear and resentment of the Deep State - which is to say an unholy alliance between government officials, the secret services, corrupt politicians and amoral financiers which has destroyed democracy and threatens to make junkies or slaves of us all.
    1
  16307.  @TheBigStink9268  No. Why should I?
    1
  16308.  @TheBigStink9268  More with the way it's run.
    1
  16309. Another gamechanger? What's next, giant catapults?
    1
  16310. I think they've given up. These aid packages are mostly for show.
    1
  16311. The Independent can of course be forgiven for indulging in masturbatory fantasies of Trump's demise, but he has something like a 96% chance of full recovery. And the virus has not killed more than 205,000 Americans. It has merely been (possibly) present at the time of their deaths.
    1
  16312. @ You got me! I've been retired for many years and the days just merge into each other somehow....
    1
  16313.  @Steven-vo4ee  Good work if you can get it!
    1
  16314. @ As I say, good work if you can get it. But I imagine this is peanuts to someone with his Lordship's career experience.. He's about the same age as me, but I bet he knows when it's Sunday and when it isn't.
    1
  16315. ​ @Steven-vo4ee  Actually, I believe Lord Rose does not qualify, since he is receipt of a salary (several, in fact). The money would in any case be the sort of amount he could lose in his trouser turn-ups without much noticing. As for other Lords and Ladies, some are in pretty dire straits and compared with the billions wasted on various government enterprises their little perquisite seems hardly worth taking into account.
    1
  16316. @ It's not strictly inconsistent. If we are going to have a House of Lords then we can't expect them to turn up for nothing, as in the old days. And when you come down to it even if they turn up and register every day the House is sitting their annual income would not be that stupendous. As I said, compared with other areas of dubious expenditure, this is pretty small beer. I do hope it is not the politics of envy which is influencing your disapproval.
    1
  16317.  @Steven-vo4ee  I have, funnily enough, no objection to people being well-off, as long as their money is gained in a relatively harmless way But I do object to vast amounts of public money being wasted on absurd and dangerous causes. What Musk says about America applies equally Britain. Bureaucracy becomes self-serving and takes over. It is in the nature of things, and periodic revolutions are necessary so we can start all over again. Taxing the very, very rich so that they only become very rich doesn't help matters at all, since there is every chance that the money the state takes will be wasted by the state, whereas of the billionaire had kept it he may well have invested it in ways which leads to its increase.
    1
  16318.  @Steven-vo4ee  Not yet awhile, but I live in hope.
    1
  16319.  @Steven-vo4ee  I daresay you're right - in the short term, at least. On the other hand Elon Musk might buy Britain one day.
    1
  16320.  @Steven-vo4ee  I was half joking. But only half.
    1
  16321. @ Billions to Ukraine for a start. HS2. Providing shelter and sustenance for illegal immigrants. Giving away the Chagos Islands....
    1
  16322. @ I have to disagree. USAID, for example, has helped create tensions and start wars all over the world under the cover of feeding the starving masses. The FBI is dangerously out of control DEI has led to a lowering of standards in many areas.. and so on.
    1
  16323. @ But Musk and DOGE are working with very limited resources - and achieving great results.
    1
  16324. @ It just sort of SEEMS you place the blame for many of the world's ills on rich people. The offshore billionaires who own media companies, for example.
    1
  16325. The point is a trial by blackmail isn't a trial at all. The evidence of murder is entirely superficial and limited to those snatched video shots which prove nothing other than the fact that this very large, very stoned and very troublesome man was being perhaps excessively restrained. And yet guilty verdicts were inevitable -whatever happened in court. Not because of evidence presented, but because the jurors knew that to return any other verdicts would have resulted in cities being burned down and their and their families' lives being put in danger. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case as such, this trial has pushed America one step further down the road to anarchy.
    1
  16326. A bit
    1
  16327. The more deluded lefties despise him - the more of a saviour Elon seems to be!
    1
  16328. @ I don't think Trump supporters are any more devoted to him than the supporters of any other political leader. The fantasies occur in the minds of his opponents, it seems to me.
    1
  16329. There's no way Ukraine can win either - so where does that leave us?
    1
  16330. Anyone who thinks Russia deliberately targeted that hospital is either a fool or someone determined to keep this war going by demonising Russia even more than might be considered reasonable. And if Russia is running out of missiles and men, then why are we demanding more money should be spent on our defence? You can't have it both ways.
    1
  16331. Civilians were warned to leave. The many Russian inhabitants of the city were evacuated into Russian held territory on the other side of the river. One can only conclude that the Ukrainians are carrying on with their thoroughly disgusting policy of keeping civilians in military positions to act as "human shields" and to raise sympathy for their cause in the gullible West, as they did in Mariupol and are also doing in Bakhmut.
    1
  16332. It would be a fitting feature of this farce - and would bring Trump lots and lots of votes!
    1
  16333.  @StratsRUs  Child abuse.
    1
  16334. @ Some people will have done so. And as I pointed out, importers will have capital available - because they are not buying from abroad - which they can use to make domestic items, or items from non tariffed countries, cheaper by buying them in greater bulk or by other methods, such as investing in improved transportation and storage. At the end of the day the supplier who provides the cheapest or most economic product is the one who wins through, whatever routes he uses.
    1
  16335.  @grahamlees4394  To the guillotine, eh?
    1
  16336. Attacked to prevent them attacking, I think.
    1
  16337.  @ZsoltPal23092011  What do you think the Ukrainians were planning to do with their new multi-billion dollar army then? Sit back and let the rebels keep their territory in Donbass?
    1
  16338. @ How so? I think it very likely that Ukraine was preparing to attack the rebel-held areas of Donbass. Russia certainly thought so.
    1
  16339. Trump realises - like anyone with any sense - that the myth of Russian expansionism is just a cheap trick to justify arms expenditure.
    1
  16340. You must be deluded to think that.
    1
  16341. Because it doesn't financially protect consumers.
    1
  16342. @ Overregulation, restrictive practices and the threat of crippling fines have led financial institutions to restrict potentially beneficial packages and to be forced to vastly increase insurance premiums, thus making their services out of the reach of many. The number of consumers is thus reduced, as are the services available.
    1
  16343. Don't forget that it is the winners who write history. If the ideas so insidiously promoted by the BBC ever become reality then history will be over. We will be living in a world of lies.
    1
  16344. It looks as though Putin is killing two birds with one stone. Getting rid of civilians likely to oppose his regime while reducing Ukrainian strength at the same time. What nobody in the West quite seems to know is how many Chechens, Syrian war veterans and battle-hardened separatists are left to guard Donbass.
    1
  16345. MAGA's first victory in the new Congress. McCarthy is in, but he has little power to rule as an autocrat and can be ejected if he steps out of line. Next step a committee to investigate the treasonous activities of the FBI and other government agencies which have been making a mockery of democracy in the US for decades.
    1
  16346. They're both as bad as each other.
    1
  16347. Was this a "failure if intelligence" or a deliberate ploy? Israel can now destroy Hamas and conquer Gaza and still keep on the right side of public opinion. Some would say that 700 civilian deaths is a small enough price to pay.
    1
  16348. This is part of a cycle. It'll get cold there again soon.
    1
  16349.  @vfta7906  They are many and varied, as I am sure you must be aware. China's infiltration of foreign governments in order to achieve world domination is an indisputable fact. By assisting Joe Biden to cheat his way into the White House they have pulled off a massive coup. The article below is just one small example illustrating concerns about Biden. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-censors-professors-boast-on-beijings-influence-over-biden-after-it-goes-vira
    1
  16350. These over-confident predictions do not bode well. In war, as someone once said, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. Lord Doughnut is merely rallying the troops.
    1
  16351.  @ian-nz-2000  No. It's war which is agony.
    1
  16352.  @foilhat1138  Where does the Soviet Union come into this?
    1
  16353.  @foilhat1138  Obviously not. The Soviet Union ceased to exist more than thirty years ago. What effects it surrendering anytime might have had on the present situation I can't imagine.
    1
  16354.  @foilhat1138  Oh I see. An analogy. I mistrust analogies since the differences invariably outweigh the spurious similarities, as is the case here. I attempted in a previous to list some of the more obvious differences but the new fascist and very irritating YouTube algorithm has deleted them.
    1
  16355. No
    1
  16356. What communist regime?
    1
  16357. Propaganda or semi-adolescent ignorance, I'm never quite sure.
    1
  16358. Contact dermatitis is Putin's new secret weapon of terror.
    1
  16359.  @Ceceasasa  Comrade is a term used in the former Soviet Union. I am not Russian, but I can tell you that Russians no longer use it. You are an idiot.
    1
  16360.  @Ceceasasa  Childlike, uneducated, ignorant Americans are supporting the collapse of civilisation. Your turn to suffer will come.
    1
  16361. When will the BBC realise it's only preaching to the choir? They can hire actors and actresses to pretend to be journalists and patronise us with sorrowful voices but the game is up. The British people are sick of sanctimonious middle-class snobs telling us how to think. We have the Internet now and can see through their lies. Flloyd and Blake were drug-crazed criminals who refused repeatedly to comply with the police while being arrested. BLM, like the BBC, is a Marxist organisation seeking to overthrow Western democracy. BLM burns and murders. The BBC lies and misinforms, but they are both creatures from the same evil swamp.
    1
  16362. They are quite rational. They have just bought into a wider variety of propaganda than you.
    1
  16363. I can't find the actual words he used but it seems nothing much to get so het up about. He doesn't seem to hate black women, merely Abbot, whom he dislikes so much that she puts him in danger of doing so - which is obviously something he'd feel bad about. Shoot me if you like, but this isn't racism.
    1
  16364.  @lloroshastar6347  Well what were they? That's the trouble with censorship. If something's censored you can't tell if it was bad or not. Neither can I paraphrase it here or YT would censor me! If he said that he disliked Abbot so much that she put him off black women then that implies he is NOT racist and resents Abbot for putting him in a position where he might be. This was an expression of personal dislike and not in any way racist as far as I can judge. As a footnote it is my opinion that racism is quite natural in communities where there aren't many races. It's an evolutionary imperative. That doesn't mean to say it's right though. It's a primitive instinct which we ought to suppress.
    1
  16365. A realist at last. America has thrown away $60 billion on Ukraine in the hope of getting hold of all that lovely oil, gas, coal, steel and rare earth minerals in Donbass. The investment is not paying off. Ukraine, with its $27 billion US-financed new army, was supposed to walk into Donbass and get the mines and factories back from the separatists. But Russia has put a spoke in the works - big time. American, $32 trillion in debt, cannot afford to keep on like this, especially with a major conflict looming with China. It will leave Ukraine in the lurch, as it did the Vietnamese, the Libyans, the Afghanis et al. All the BS about "freedom and democracy" goes out with the trash once the mighty dollar is threatened. Goodbye Mr Zelensky, it was real nice knowing you.
    1
  16366. One reason. If Putin gets back Eastern Ukraine and Crimea is officially recognised, there's a chance that allowing the rest of the country to join NATO would be a price he'd be willing to pay.
    1
  16367. Amery did appropriate the quote though, in 1940, and applied it to PM Neville Chamberlain - who resigned the next day
    1
  16368. The whole pandemic has been a licence to print money from start to finish. The Tories' little scam is just crumbs from under the table.
    1
  16369. How can someone so out of touch with reality ever have been America's warmonger-in-chief? No wonder Trump got rid of him.
    1
  16370. Er..... the democratic right to vote as the person you actually ARE, instead of some person you might pretend to be.
    1
  16371. I'm currently working to develop a game called "Fantasy Insurrection". Does anyone know how I can find out how many lamp-posts their are on Pall Mall without actually going there?
    1
  16372. Took me a while.
    1
  16373.  @DrEgonCholakian  They're not.
    1
  16374. Jack Richardson Liar yourself - or more probably credulous fool.
    1
  16375. America is dead. The persecution of Donald Trump has utterly undermined its credibility as a free and democratic nation. It is worse than a banana republic.
    1
  16376. These appointments signify the opening of new fronts in the immediate future. Russia will now invade from both the north and the east.
    1
  16377.  @simonwatson2399  Nonsense. Just another propaganda myth.
    1
  16378.  @simonwatson2399  Check out street interviews of Russian citizens then. Anti war opinions are expressed quite freely.
    1
  16379.  @simonwatson2399  Try Rebel News and France 24 for starters. I saw two students interviewed yesterday who said that Putin should be tried at the Hague. Most Russians, however, fully back him.
    1
  16380.  @simonwatson2399  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR83u0rxh14&t=403s
    1
  16381.  @simonwatson2399  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTN5hadYiNk
    1
  16382.  @simonwatson2399  What does it matter? These people clearly express their opinions without fear, You can't do that in Ukraine. All anti-Zelensky stations have been shut down.
    1
  16383.  @simonwatson2399  The fact that you imagine I'm a paid Russian agent is just another symptom of your paranoia.
    1
  16384.  @simonwatson2399  Not an insult, simply a diagnosis. As to your question, as you can plainly see people in Russia can express their opinions, but demonstrations are frowned upon - much as were anti Vietnam war protests in the 1960s.
    1
  16385.  @simonwatson2399  Such laws are entirely commonplace in times of war. Ukraine's are broadly similar.
    1
  16386.  @simonwatson2399  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2clfJHOjSzk
    1
  16387.  @simonwatson2399  According to the Decree of the President of Ukraine No. 64/2022 as of 24 February 2022, the constitutional rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens provided for in Articles 30 – 34, 38, 39, 41 – 44, 53 of Constitution of Ukraine may be temporarily restricted during martial law (in particular, concerning inviolability of the home, secrecy of correspondence, non-interference in private and family life, freedom of movement, freedom of thought and speech, the right to own, use and dispose of one’s property, etc.).
    1
  16388.  @simonwatson2399  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMKPz2j2oWA
    1
  16389.  @simonwatson2399  The effects though are broadly similar.
    1
  16390.  @simonwatson2399  I don't see the point. The earth is not flat, but Ukraine has an appalling human rights record.
    1
  16391.  @simonwatson2399  They invaded Donbass in 2014
    1
  16392.  @simonwatson2399  It depends what you mean by "country." Donetsk and Luhansk were self-declared independent republics. They are now part of Russia.
    1
  16393.  @simonwatson2399  What do you think the war is about then?
    1
  16394.  @simonwatson2399  Not bad. NATO in fact paid for and trained the Ukrainian army, and continues to supply it. To flesh things out a bit further: Crimea is Russian, the vast mineral wealth of Donbass was extracted by Russia and by Russians. America, using NATO and the EU as covers, is seeking to grab it. Zelensky is their puppet - an actor given the role by Ukrainian oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky who then owned a good chunk of the US steel industry, half of downtown Cleveland and several prominent US politicians. A series of peace offers put forward by Putin have been curtly refused and the Minsk Agreements of 2014 have been deliberately manipulated by NATO in order to buy time to train and equip the Ukrainian army with the objectives of retaking Crimea and Donbass. Even that doesn't quite cover it, but it'll do for now.
    1
  16395.  @simonwatson2399  You still insist I get paid, then? Since I don't - and know I don't - this silly assertion can only detract from your credibility. I think my view is an entirely balanced one. Russia has a strong case for its actions, and one which is foolishly ignored by most Western media.
    1
  16396.  @simonwatson2399  Run out of glib responses then? So be it.
    1
  16397.  @Kodakcompactdisc  What old Russian are you talking about?
    1
  16398. The root causes of the war are European and American greed to take control of valuable resources in East Ukraine, which are owned by and operated by Russians. It is not greedy to protect what you already have.
    1
  16399. Of course the Moslems want to take over. It says so in the Koran and no amount of moral obfuscation will alter that fact.
    1
  16400. The Ukraine war is a war between two gangs of oligarchs. One gang is in America's pocket and is presented to the simple-minded as heroes as a consequence. The Amnesty International report on the civil war in Eastern Ukraine which began in 2014 makes very disturbing reading. Rape, torture and the execution of civilians are employed by both sides, and the same applies now.
    1
  16401. Ruth Johanne But surely will either be dead or living in a world where voting is a thing of the past?
    1
  16402.  @muzwot9603  How the hell you work that out?
    1
  16403.  @AB-jz6hd  What for?
    1
  16404. It's certainly fucks your game up though, don't it?
    1
  16405.  @Viperveteran  How so? It's just an expression of the same idea.
    1
  16406.  @alfiedobres  Forty plus hours of testimony at several separate state senate hearings?
    1
  16407.  @DarkCriimes  I didn't.
    1
  16408.  @boink800  Truth hurts, huh?
    1
  16409.  @DarkCriimes  Not so much as jumping to wrong conclusions.
    1
  16410.  @7ookee  You are wrong. Omicron will lead to herd immunity simply because it is so "viral." Practically everybody will have caught it before long, no matter what we do. Fortunately the effects are generally so mild that immunity will result at very little cost.
    1
  16411.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Chicken
    1
  16412.  @rocketscience4516  I have never denied that the 2020 US Presidential election was fraudulent. I have said that it no longer matters much, except in terms of history. Perhaps it is this which has led to your confusion.
    1
  16413.  @Yeknodathon  Put another record on Yekki!
    1
  16414.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I wish I could remember this.
    1
  16415.  @errorswillmultiply1697  It would be much simpler if you could guide me to my destination.
    1
  16416.  @rocketscience4516  Your good wishes are much appreciated.
    1
  16417.  @errorswillmultiply1697  OK. Confused chicken then.
    1
  16418.  @Yeknodathon  Misinformation? You're drowning in it..
    1
  16419.  @Yeknodathon  You are becoming increasingly incoherent. This in incomprehensible mush of mixed metaphors with no apparent meaning or purpose.
    1
  16420.  @atomiccritter6492  Simple scientific truth, in fact.
    1
  16421.  @altheogre  You are as misinformed about this as I daresay you are about almost everything else.
    1
  16422.  @Dash8Q400Channel  Number three has certainly got a great deal going for it in a roundabout sort of way. Soros - one of the most intelligent men ever to have lived probably - certainly laid the foundation for the World Economic Forum's activities in his earlier works, particularly "The Alchemy of Finance." Like Klaus Schwab he pays lip service to the idea of replacing capitalism in its present form with a new, structured version in which individual behaviour is circumscribed by imposed regulation controlled by a system of social rewards and punishments This is essentially the New World Order or The Great Reset which is currently being worked towards. I'm sure Soros knows where to place his millions in order to speed up the process.
    1
  16423.  @Dash8Q400Channel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQbVyHVmmKs
    1
  16424.  @Dash8Q400Channel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W70zjwnBiAg
    1
  16425.  @Dash8Q400Channel  How's that working out for you?
    1
  16426. Perhaps the US should not have encouraged the expansion of NATO to Russia's doorstep, nor attempted to bribe Ukrainian officials into transferring the mineral wealth of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine from Russia to the West. It takes two to have an argument.
    1
  16427. On a more optimistic note, is it not true that the vast majority of current cases are among unvaccinated people, therefore probably mostly in younger age-groups and therefore probably less liable to severe symptoms and death? Is it also not true that those vaccinated people who have succumbed are generally experiencing less severe symptoms and that they too are less likely to suffer severe outcomes?
    1
  16428. Why would it be brief? Ukraine has a great chunk of Russia which Russia wants back. If it gets it, that will be that.
    1
  16429.  @mitchhills4747  Nonsense. Crimea is, was and always will be part of Russia. There are very few Ukrainians living there and it was only stuck on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 as a matter of administrative and logistical convenience.
    1
  16430.  @Lasse65  Crimea and much of Ukraine east of the Dnieper is Russian and only stuck onto the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Russians as a matter of administrative convenience.
    1
  16431.  @mitchhills4747  Most Crimeans would disagree, as indeed would most residents of the Republic of Ireland had they not managed to escape from UK control.
    1
  16432. These riots, like the rebellion upsurge in Syria, are merely CIA- sponsored attempts to divert attention away from Russia's inevitable victory in Ukraine.
    1
  16433.  @Audentia89  Russia has every right to Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine. They were attached to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine BY Russia for purely administrative reasons. They have large Russian populations and their industries have been developed using Russian money and Russian labour.
    1
  16434.  @Aesthention  These are not true analogies. Mexico and Sweden lost these territories long ago and under vastly different circumstances. Russia lost Ukraine a mere thirty years ago, purely through a flawed treaty.
    1
  16435.  @davecooper3238  This just didn't happen.
    1
  16436.  @Dimzswlrd_  Why would Europe bother? There's no money in it. And Donbass and Crimea are Russian anyway. There were foolishly handed over to the new country of Ukraine by Yeltsin in 1991 and all Putin wants is to have them back. Ukraine can keep the rest.
    1
  16437.  @takman026  But they don't even do that very much. They are mainly a psychological prop and only high standard models, N95 and above and tightly fitting are of any real use.
    1
  16438.  @takman026  Sadly untrue. As I said, masks have only a very minimal effect on viral spread and are positively dangerous when people rely on them too heavily.
    1
  16439.  @oldbloke204  We can only hope that Covid 19 evolves into milder forms, as we have every reason to hope it might. Strains that spread more quickly but do not kill hosts ought theoretically to thrive and prosper. Covid 19 has no interest in killing. It just needs our bodies' resources to enable it to reproduce. Don't forget that is not the virus itself which kills, but the body's reaction to it. Personally I feel that many societies are in danger of imitating that process on a larger scale: over-reaction leading to severe damage.
    1
  16440.  @Wowwhataswing  Russia does not want to ever has wanted to take Ukraine. It only wants those parts of the country called Ukraine which it considers to be Russian - especially the two oblasts of Donbass. This has now almost been achieved and without a vast amount of Western help it would be impossible for Ukraine to take them back.
    1
  16441.  @sigis72  They simply don't. Russia has enough internal problems without wishing to expand.
    1
  16442.  @speedyhillski  He simply didn't.
    1
  16443.  @dangermouse355  Only very few are. Most who profess to believe in AGW have been taught to believe in it, and pretty convincing arguments have been presented to them since childhood which they can reproduce in kit form. They pass exams with good grades, and get jobs with advancement and grants and who can blame them for doing as they are told and believing what they are told to believe? You may as well expect a Catholic priest to deny that the host and the wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ.
    1
  16444. Israel uses rockets to protect its children. Hamas uses children to protect its rockets. The sin lies with the cruel and primitive idiocy of Islam which is dragging the world back into the Dark Ages.
    1
  16445. Actually they can call for the resignation of the leader if more than 50% ask for a vote of no confidence. It's in the Reform constitution.
    1
  16446. Trump has, in fact, stepped out of the disinformation space created by his predecessors and is now more or less up to speed with reality.
    1
  16447. Check these deaths. In the UK of the 150,000+ covid deaths less than 18,000 have been due to the virus alone.
    1
  16448. This would be because he has not been charged with a crime.
    1
  16449. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUyAZbwxKIc
    1
  16450. Why selfish? Isn't it just as selfish for the West to try to stop Russia cashing in on its oil resources?
    1
  16451. How selfish the West is trying to prevent Russia pursuing a legitimate business.
    1
  16452. @ Glad you agree. I'm starting to feel like an oppressed minority!
    1
  16453. Partition is the only solution.
    1
  16454. Shh. Ukraine and the Western media lie a lot.
    1
  16455.  @brianm2881  That's one way of looking at it, but since no senior Russian from Putin downwards has ever suggested that anything other than acknowledgment of Crimea as Russian, Donbass as separate from Ukraine and non-membership of NATO by Ukraine is what is required for peace, there are other explanations. It seems to be a characteristic of Western observers to say what they think the Russians are doing - and when they don't do it to accuse them of failure. The object of the SMO was not to conquer territory, but to use it as a killing ground on which to severely deplete Ukraine's large, NATO funded army. This achieved, the real war has now begun.
    1
  16456.  @RandomDudeOne  Yes it would. But sooner.
    1
  16457. The West had given a good few billion dollars worth after 2014. It wasn't enough and the extra few billion dollars worth they've had since isn't going to be enough either .
    1
  16458.  @ll0l0l0lolo0l  The rouble buys a lot in Russia. It's just not much traded as a speculative currency.
    1
  16459.  @andzejsulzicki9401  I can still get a Big Mac in Moscow for less than half of what it would cost me in New York.
    1
  16460.  @andzejsulzicki9401  True enough. But if you aren't all that rich you'll be better off in Moscow - especially if you've got some fiddle going on the side!
    1
  16461. Lenny Harry The average individual contribution to CO2 emissions is 58.6 tonnes a year. A transatlantic flight will add 1.6 tonnes A vegan diet will reduce your carbon footprint by .8 of a tonne. Every little helps I suppose.
    1
  16462. lenny harry The Financial Times says so. Not a tablet of stone I agree, but I would imagine the figure is based on some sort of evidence. If you want to be a vegan then be a vegan. I don't see why you should want to add to your feelngs of virtue by imagining you are helping cool the Earth down in any way.
    1
  16463. lenny harry. You were perfectly clear and I understood you perfectly. You just happen to be wrong.
    1
  16464. lenny harry The .8 of a tonne is .8 of a tonen a year, by the way. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.
    1
  16465. Dr Diablory Are you a DENIER??!! Me and Millie probably won't even be ALIVE long enough to become horrible stereotypes. We will go down fighting. We will laugh when we see you deniers choke to death on your own vomit. Great clouds of evil C02 are due to engulf the planet before me and Millie even get to be grown-ups. You must be grown up already I suppose which makes you double-dead selfish in this regard, you bloody DENIER!!
    1
  16466. Dr Diablory You are a dillytanti! Nothing more! No-one cares about your bicycle. Fly all over the world, it won't matter. The carbon is ALREADY THERE!! Me and Millie don't eat meat neither but that's because we love animals more than people. Bicycles and vegan is just the Oligarch's way of making you harmless. Me and Millie don't want to be harmless. We want ACTION. Gluing yourself to stuff and starting bushfires in Australia just don't hack it bro! When get a bit older me and Millie are going to get flying lessons and fly a plane into some big buildings. just like those Musclemen guys did back in the day. That's if we DO get older. You bastards have had YEAR and YEARS to sort this out but all you've done is ride your fucking bicycles and make a big deal about your crappy fucking diet. Wankers!!
    1
  16467. @ Which has made him reject Communism. He despises it. He is a free- enterprise capitalist, and a Christian.
    1
  16468. Putin's clearly stated objectives are the inclusion of Crimea in the Russian Federation and continued access to the mineral riches of Donbass. As long as the myth persists that he actually wants to conquer all of Ukraine the war will drag on. The compromise has always been there, and it is only Western intransigence and Western deceit which is creating this dreadful, dreadful situation.
    1
  16469.  @monkla32  Not at all friendly! Russia has historical claims to all these territories, but I would imagine that ownership Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are open to negotiation. It is even possible that Putin will accept regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics. It all depends on how the conflict develops.
    1
  16470.  @facty_kit1742  To engage the enemy on its own territory.
    1
  16471.  @monkla32  The Budapest treaties have failed to pass the test of time, as this war clearly demonstrates. No treaties last forever, and most fail within decades or less as circumstances change. Just look at a map of Europe. Ideally they are replaced with more realistic treaties, such as the Minsk treaties of 2014/16, but these were also ignored - by Ukraine this time around. When treaties fail, wars result.
    1
  16472.  @facty_kit1742  Cope with what?
    1
  16473. Ice core samples from Greenland show it to have been 1.5 degrees warmer 1,000 years ago than today. Man-made global warming is a myth. More money is made by pushing this myth than the fossil fuel industry could hope to gain in a month of Sundays.
    1
  16474.  @HTHAMMACK1  Nope. The first bit is directly from the mouth of Denmark's top glacier expert Jorgen Steffensen. Look him up. The second bit is a lot more complicated, involving gambling on the carbon futures market. You could look that up too, if you like.
    1
  16475.  @Piterdeveirs333  People who play the carbon futures market. Look it up. Restrictions on the amount of carbon emissions means that permissions to exceed limits acquire an instant value. These permissions, in the form of bonds and certificates, are traded every day - for huge sums. They are an international currency which can be traded against other currencies. If some poor country gets a heap of carbon bonds to enable it to build some fictitious road or dam those bonds can be bought cheaply one day, and when a developer in another country needs permissions they are sold to him for many, many times what was paid. To work the Cap and Trade market, as it is called, must ensure that the bonds have scarcity value. And the myth that carbon emissions create global warming does exactly that.
    1
  16476.  @notme2day  They are not irresponsible companies! They are behaving in a completely respectable way. Climate change is real - and always has been for millions of years. But in order to control the value of carbon certificates everyone has to believe that carbon emissions cause global warming. That is a different question entirely. The very fact that the carbon futures market depends on everyone believing it makes it suspect in the first place. The "proofs" are becoming increasingly hysterical and removed from reality, however. Not one of the gloomy predictions has come true in the real world, but as long as people continue to believe they one day will carbon bonds remain a stable currency.
    1
  16477.  @Jay...777  The whole thing is down to Big Pharma's greed. These people would boil their grandmothers down for cough medicine if they saw a profit in it. Their bloody vaccines do little more than existing prophylactics and palliatives they have vilified through faked data, and whatever data there is on the dangers and drawbacks of the vaccines is dismissed as "conspiracy theories." When the final butchers' bill is added up they will have much to answer for.
    1
  16478.  @olmostgudinaf8100  Well I'm only going by what the senior officials say and they have no reason to lie that I can think of. In fact the pandemic has very much been exaggerated out of all proportion. The hysterical over-reaction has led to measures being taken which will do far more long-term damage and cause more deaths than the disease itself. As for the new variant, so far none of the patients are even hospitalised , as far as one can gather. We can but hope that Smith's Law of Declining Virulence is coming into play and omnicron might actually turn out to be a good thing. But then I'm a right wing optimist, not a snivelling leftie coward.
    1
  16479.  @olmostgudinaf8100  No wonder you're such a lot of miseries with all that responsibility and all those good intentions to carry around with you. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and more often than not the consequences of actions are vastly different to those originally assumed. The handling of the pandemic is a case in point.
    1
  16480.  @junegoddarddevon8306  He is also an unprincipled scoundrel whose Churchill complex caused him to persuade Zelensky to defy Putin and so to enter into this bloody and needless war. With friends like Boris who needs enemies?
    1
  16481.  SoapMonkey76  Make your own mind up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0&t=53s
    1
  16482. @ Russia is only technically annexing a territory. What is actually doing is preventing that territory being annexed by a foreign power. And we do have constant war, more or less; and outdated treaties are more often or not at the root of them. There would be no war in Ukraine were it not for the Budapest Accords in much the same way as there would have been no World War II without the Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I, and no World War I without the treaties put into place to end the Franco-Prussian War, which itself would not have occurred without the series of treaties which ended the Napoleonic Wars... and so on.
    1
  16483. Democracy means changes in government. Changes in government mean changes in policy. This has been an entirely needless war, fostered by America for the most part. It is only fitting that a new American government should bring it to an end.
    1
  16484. American elections aren't about polls or even about who gets the most votes. They're about who cheats the best.
    1
  16485.  @DG-iw3yw  And what about those vicious Welsh choirboys?
    1
  16486.  @DG-iw3yw  Those Welsh choirboys can be quite vicious too.
    1
  16487.  @DubanaburiDubanaburi  But he isn't talking about ALL Jews - just the little group of Jews he's arguing with!
    1
  16488.  @2spliffs41lifetime  Who is invading who exactly? I think we are at cross purposes.
    1
  16489. Russia, South Africa, China, India Brazil, Hungary, Croatia.... The world conspiracy against Russia begins to crumble.
    1
  16490.  @genevanarsdale9067  If course he does. There is as much free speech allowed in Russia as there is in Europe - and probably more than is allowed in America.
    1
  16491.  @sdk4422  There is a considerable amount of objection to the war in Russia, especially among the young, educated urban middle class. Thousands are trying to escape conscription. Opposing views are aired on TV and indeed in the streets. It's certainly true to say that the police come down hard on those who seem likely so cause riot and damage, but otherwise you can speak freely against the war - probably more so than an American can speak in favour of it.
    1
  16492. What an utter disgrace that political and cultural disasters created by complex forces can be blamed upon the myth of "man-made climate change." The BBC has sunk to yet another new low.
    1
  16493. Why exactly should Trump supporters support news outlets which defame him?
    1
  16494.  @Mathew-8896  I assume "dead" is a misprint? In any event, I repeat the question.
    1
  16495. Where's the contradiction? His supporters continue to believe they were cheated, but they will not be drawn into bloody battle quite yet.
    1
  16496. This would be a direct route to World War III and nuclear annihilation.
    1
  16497.  @What_do_I_Think  By presiding over a political show trial.
    1
  16498.  @niwotmom8419  No. Because he's taking part in the abuse of the law for political purposes.
    1
  16499. Two points: America has sold millions of dollars of sophisticated military hardware to Ukraine which doesn't apparently work.(If it ever existed except on paper). Civilians are now defending the streets with Molotov cocktails and army-surplus automatic rifles. If it wished Russia could flatten every city in Ukraine as it did in Chechnya and Syria. Putin is holding back. He may not do so for very long. Surrender is the only realistic option.
    1
  16500. Improbable alliances are being formed in the lead-up to the collapse of the USA as the leading world power. One can only hope that N Korea will follow Russia's example in freeing itself from the shackles of Communism. As for Iran...
    1
  16501. Putin doesn't want all of Ukraine, just the parts which he regards (with some justification) as being essentially Russian. Once a new border is agreed then there will be no need for any future conflict.
    1
  16502. Every Ukrainian fleabite will result in Russian revenge. It really is time the West realised that this mad adventure must be abandoned before more harm is done.
    1
  16503.  @MiqelDotCom  Up until May medical science was opposed to mask use. Then suddenly this changed. I'm still not quite sure why.
    1
  16504.  @MiqelDotCom  I have to disagree. The CDC published a lengthy study in May recommending against the use of masks by the general public in dealing with the novel coronavirus, as has indeed been the case with influenza viruses. The WHO offered the same advice as did the British Medical Association and similar bodies in other countries. Suddenly everything changed. Although transmission by droplets is one source of infection, masks only reduce the problem slightly. I can't help feeling this obsession with them is more of a psychological prop than anything.
    1
  16505.  @markb6295  Well May of last year, obviously. Do you need time explained to you?
    1
  16506. Ron Harrison What is peer review? Is it when people have to look at something very hard and sort of narrow their eyes a bit? No, it can't be that I'm sure. What is it? I'm sorry to be so incoherent but my pet parrot has just died and I'm very upset.
    1
  16507. Colin C Actor and opera singer. Greta herself was chosen from a shortlist by the hedge-fund company which employs her.
    1
  16508. weses2 What about the considerable body of science that says climate change is cyclic and largely solar forced?
    1
  16509.  @Apollonos  I think you should extend your education beyond those little snippets you read on the back of cereal packets. While it is true that Kyiv existed before Moscow was founded, that is scarcely relevant to the present day situation. Russia has no interest in dominating Ukrainians. If Ukraine wants to look to the West, then so be it. The question is defining what Ukraine actually is - and it does not included Crimea and much of the land east of the Dnieper. That is Russian, inhabited by large numbers of Russians and was merely stuck on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for the sake of administrative convenience - by the Russians.
    1
  16510.  @SCOTTEDM  Replies deleted.
    1
  16511. NATO is defunct. It is a self-perpetuating fallacy. It is a glorified protection racket. Kiss it goodbye!
    1
  16512. Russia has always been ready to talk - but interference from the West has prevented it.
    1
  16513.  @JimTimber  A myth designed to encourage war fever among the ignorant. Russia has no wish to expand beyond its traditional borders. The Soviet Union collapsed because it was over extended. Why should the Russian Federation make the same mistake?
    1
  16514.  @JimTimber  A myth designed to promote war fever in the West. Russia shows no signs of doing anything but protecting its existing interests.
    1
  16515.  @petefrys545  They will become accepted pretty soon, I predict.
    1
  16516.  @petefrys545  They will become acceptable pretty soon, I predict.
    1
  16517. What do you mean CAN'T? You can carry on chaining yourself to railings or gluing your face to a road as much as you like. You'll just get punished for it, that's all. Your protests will thus become more effective. as well as separating the REAL revolutionaries from the middle-class twits who think it's all just a game.
    1
  16518.  @keyboarddancers7751  The white dudes were rioting because a black dude had been shot by a white cop. Get's kinda complicated, don't it?
    1
  16519. @Hopper33 Sadly not. I simply meant that it seems to have been an impulsive reaction from someone who is clearly not on the train with the rest of the passengers.
    1
  16520.  @dfr6663  Not lies, but a version of events which has now been expunged from the record, and for which there is some evidence. It certainly strikes me as a likely explanation.
    1
  16521.  @dfr6663  There is an armed branch of Antifa which has a presence at Charlottesville. YouTube automatically deletes any mention of its name though, or any version of events which contradicts the official line. The same would undoubtedly have happened with Rittenhouse if the truth had not emerged at his trial.
    1
  16522.  @dfr6663  All I am saying is that I remember this explanation being offered. I didn't follow the trial that closely but I do recall videos of the college professor standing on a car and ordering his troops while waving his gun in the air. He was later tracked down to his college and accused of being responsible for the the woman's death. Was this evidence ever presented at the trial then? I do not defend for the silly white supremacist now in jail, but the US justice system is incredibly corrupt. Rittenhouse would be in jail too if the leftoid/MSM narrative had been accepted instead of being exposed as lies by video evidence.
    1
  16523.  @dfr6663  Well not really. He's a silly white supremacist who was attacked by a gun-toting Antifa member. I've just checked accounts of the trial and it DID happen - but apparently half an hour before the actual incident. It's like Chauvin. You can't tell what was in his mind. Did either of them INTEND to kill? Or were they reckless in their behaviour and didn't consider the consequences of their actions? Don't get me wrong; both deserve punishment, but their actions seem to me to be less deliberate than those of the guy in the present case. And it's important to make these distinctions.
    1
  16524.  @dfr6663  Sorry, I wasn't notified of your previous post for some reason. I thought I had covered most of your reservations in my post before that - but to re-iterate: The Charlottesville driver did not approach at high speed from a great distance weaving from side to side. It appears that he came upon the crowd by accident, hesitated, and then drove into it relatively slowly and appears to have actually sounded his horn. Evidence was placed before the court that the driver had encountered a group of armed Antifa between half an hour and an hour before the tragedy. The leader of the group admitted this, agreeing that they had shouted at the grey muscle car. Earlier allegations that they had banged on the roof with their weapons were not brought before the court, as far as I am aware. This does not seem to have been a deliberate planned attack, but more of an impulse by a mentally challenged individual who had recently undergone a frightening experience.
    1
  16525. Of course not. That's the point.
    1
  16526.  @Aaqe  No. The virus isn't a hoax, but the elaborate measures taken in the pretext of containing it are part of a gigantic hoax to convince people that it is: a) far worse than it is and: b) they can actually do very much about it.
    1
  16527.  @giftedtheos  Surveys in Ukraine make US election polls look reliable. Very many civilians have fled the war zone, perhaps the majority to Russia. The new population will depend upon who wins.
    1
  16528.  @giftedtheos  Such surveys are far from reliable. A large number of Donbass residents have fled to escape the war - some to Ukraine and some to Russia. I imagine the nature of the future population will depend very much on who wins, and therefore on who comes back.
    1
  16529.  @ghostlightx9005  Afraid not. The Russians stopped relying on the bridge some time ago. There are now well established road and rail supply routes through Russian-held territory south of the Dnieper. The bridge is hardly used at all for military supplies.
    1
  16530.  @ghostlightx9005  Afraid not. There are now well-established alternative road and rail routes through Russian-occupied territory East of the Dnieper - the so-called "land bridge". The bridge across the strait is no longer essential.
    1
  16531.  @ghostlightx9005  How do you think they managed before the bridge was built then?
    1
  16532. You're a clown for thinking so.
    1
  16533. If not we ought to be.
    1
  16534. On the contrary, Big Corporate is restructuring capitalism and utilising mind control as expertly uses in communist states is part of the process.
    1
  16535. As I understand it a considerable proportion of our "quota" will be women and children.
    1
  16536. Stewart Jennings This becoming terrifying. Obviously following the election of the racist/fascist Johnson the Koch brothers and their one-percenter allies are following up with a concerted attempt to shut down legitimate opposition. We must mobilise immediately. The Hope Not Hate website appears unaffected SO FAR. Go to www,hopenothate.org.uk IMMEDIATELY and report the difficulties you have experienced.
    1
  16537. Stewart Jennings Welcome Comrade!
    1
  16538. Stewart Jennings Wonderful stuff. These family connections are so important, aren't they? I myself am a descendant of Robert Noonan who, under the name Robert Tressell, wrote that great socialist masterpiece The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Have you read it? As you say, let's keep going forward with hope in our hearts and a smile on our lips! Victory is just around the corner.
    1
  16539.  Trump is now Tramp  So you're afraid to check out hour upon hour of sworn testimony before state senate hearings? There are around 1,000 testimonies alleging fraud and serious electoral malpractice; only around 100 of which have been presented. All lies? C'mon man! Fox and OAN don't admit there's no fraud. They just admit that Dominion has enough money and backing to wipe them out. Like the electoral system in the USA the legal system is rotten to the core. Money beats truth. The people who own Dominion have enough money to have just bought America. Don't you wonder what they're planning to do with it? Don't you wonder what they've got planned for YOU?
    1
  16540.  Trump is now Tramp  I have read your comments and replied to them. You , on the other hand, have refused to accept my explanations or to view the evidence I have offered. There is considerable evidence of Dominion voting machines being used to commit electoral fraud. The fact that news channels do not want to spend huge sums on pursuing the matter does not alter the issue.
    1
  16541. I think he's just confused.
    1
  16542.  @drcommonsense1  How so? The suggestions were credible. Some may actually be true. Where's the contradiction?
    1
  16543. This is a great time to be alive. The myths of Russian expansionism are being shattered. The Russian Federation is NOT the USSR!
    1
  16544. I hope you are feeling better now. There have only been a handful of secondary infections you know, and all appear to be in instances when the first infection was very mild. Covid 19, like its predecessor SARS 1 seems to like warmer weather, but this was in Asia of course where there is little need for central heating. I would suggest that people should open a window in the winter and damn the expense. If you feel cold put a pullover on!
    1
  16545.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  These countries are all less under Russian control than they were forty years ago, which rather proves my point.
    1
  16546.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  I don't see why. They were all once under strict Russian control as part of the former Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has merely sought to retain some of that influence. This is not expansionism.
    1
  16547.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  I think the Russian empire, both Tsarist and Soviet, is long gone and they realise it. I tend to believe Putin when he says that while it might be a romantic notion to bring them back, it is neither practical nor even desirable to do so. I think the present effort to claw back a little corner of Ukraine to which Russia feels entitled is sufficient proof that it wouldn't be achievable anyway. Keeping the Russian "threat" alive really exists only for the benefit of Western warmongers, locked into the idea of perpetual conflict for economic reasons.
    1
  16548.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  It's a myth. Even Putin admits it. The Russian empire is a thing of the past.
    1
  16549.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  No more so than the nostalgia of any other fallen empire. Even Putin says so.
    1
  16550.  @user-vc5zt9ci12 Russia is merely trying to maintain its commercial and strategic interests against continual interference from the West which, not content with the collapse of the Soviet Union, wants the Russia Federation to be subject to US hegemony. This kind offer is one which Russia continues to refuse. I sympathise with this view.
    1
  16551. A RUSSIAN agent? He works for the Ukrainian oligarchs.
    1
  16552. British First I'm not. So there.
    1
  16553. Both these young men were fleeing police while carrying guns. What do you expect to happen?
    1
  16554. To keep resources owned by Russian companies, in fact.
    1
  16555.  @sideshowkazstuff3867  My you are persistent! He wasn't PLAYING, he was seeing if he was okay. I don't suppose he was expecting to be struck blind in a split second. If he had detected blurred vision he would have stopped.
    1
  16556.  @sideshowkazstuff3867  As I understand it he had no symptoms at all before making the experimental drive, so it was really the equivalent of one of your family going for a drive when they didn't have a headache. Which I suppose is what they do.
    1
  16557. That's the general idea.
    1
  16558.  @jeelianbb6405  No. Due to the fact they are shit scared to pick up a stick of dynamite. Hours of evidence -or allegation if you prefer - have been presented to state senate hearings. There is clearly a case to answer. The case may fail, but in the interests of justice it must proceed to a full tribunal of some sort. This has not happened - yet - but unless it does the Biden administration will operate under a cloud. It is perfectly possible for it to be judged legal to ignore its edicts in these circumstances.
    1
  16559. And Russia only invaded Ukraine to stop the (US backed) Ukraine invading Russia.
    1
  16560. I would imagine that at least 15 million people share Farage's views, and possibly even more. Studies have shown that immigration is the prime subject of concern for Conservative voters.
    1
  16561.  @HappyValleyDreamin  It would be great if Americans gave up their guns. But they won't. Try to take them away and you get civil war with hundreds dead.
    1
  16562. @ianR It's statistics. Each one of these cases is horrible but the number of people killed is a negligible fraction of the number of guns owned. It's a deeply-embedded culture you have to deal with. In terms of numbers it would just take one English farmer to go berserk and shoot two or three people with his 12 bore and, proportionately, this would be as bad as a regular monthly school-shooting in the US.
    1
  16563.  @Abornazine  It could well be so, but it is difficult to see what else he could have done. The Ukrainians, heavily supported by the US and NATO, were clearly lining up to push the separatists out of Donbass and probably take Crimea back as well. There was no way Putin could put up with that. He might have just reinforced Crimea and Donbass but given the size and efficiency of the new Ukrainian army there was every chance he would be defeated. I think what he has done is throw everything at the Ukrainians simply in order to kill as many of them as possible, regardless of the cost to himself. He's lost thousands of old tanks and new conscripts, but I guess he still believes he has enough force left to defeat the much-depleted Ukrainian army when and if they do try to invade Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  16564.  @parabeiium7075  I'm still trying to find the source of these alleged boasts. Do you have it or are you just repeating MSM propaganda ?
    1
  16565.  @MartinJames389  Neither am I either of these things, but I would put money on these figures being entirely due to the increased transmissibility of BA 2. No other explanation is required.
    1
  16566.  @MartinJames389  As I said, no other explanation is required. The more it spreads the more people get it, including hospital patients. Why need it be in any way more virulent?
    1
  16567.  @MartinJames389  What indications? If it was we would know by now. Look at Delta, we knew then soon enough.
    1
  16568.  @vforwombat9915  But where is the evidence that this means effects will be worse in individual cases?
    1
  16569.  @timothyharris4708  And there you go again. How about you respond to the points I make instead of trying to deny me the right to make them? You accuse me of "lies and evasion" Name one lie. One evasion. What "conspiracy-mongers" do you mean? What do you mean "able to think"? You show little evidence for it when all you seem to do is swallow official propaganda without question. Look at the mess the mismanagement of the pandemic has got us into. It has only been possible because of the gullibility of unthinking fools who are unable to question objectively what is going on around them
    1
  16570.  @timothyharris4708  We are currently having an argument over on Robespierre. An annoying shit called Matt Greek 1066 claims he is blocking my replies to you over there. Is this true? And if it is do you think it fair? Would you be happy to see our argument halted by a third person?
    1
  16571. This sinister collusion between greed-obsessed globalists and woolly-minded liberals seems to be setting the pattern for Western politics. It's kinda scary.
    1
  16572. This is such piffle. The Russians have rescued thousands of largely Russian ethnic Russian children from Eastern Ukraine to save them from the ravages of war. What "indoctrination" they may receive in their temporary camps is far less harmful to their young minds than listening to flagrant homosexuals reading them pornographic fairy tales.
    1
  16573. Climb out of the argument. All lives matter. .BLM means Bias Lies and Manipulation. Invidious and insidious Marxism undermining Western democracy. Fight it with all you've got, or succumb.
    1
  16574. The pandemic turned from health issue into a business opportunity very early on. The money made from dodgy PPE contracts is peanuts compared with the billions trousered by the big pharmaceutical companies. These Tory opportunists are little fish in a sea of sharks.
    1
  16575. Collusion between Ukraine and Isis is entirely possible.
    1
  16576.  @janaejoaodosacramento9731  Not at all. There have been rumours for some while that Islamist opponents to Russian presence in their countries have signed up to fight with Ukraine. Ever since its inception the Russian Federation has been fighting two enemies - the West and Islam.
    1
  16577.  @Coyannn  No. (But I would say that, wouldn't I !!)
    1
  16578.  @janaejoaodosacramento9731  No. There is reasonable evidence for this, but YouTube censors my attempts to outline the background. Both Islam and the West, via Ukraine, have an interest in conflict with the Russian Federation.
    1
  16579.  @G_Demolished  The build up of an army on the border was a bit of a giveaway. Even then it wouldn't have happened if Ukraine had seen sense.
    1
  16580.  @b62boom1 No. He's in middle of countless law suits because the corrupt American judicial system has been weaponised by the corrupt American political system and the corrupt American security services.
    1
  16581.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  All successful people in America are corrupt -especially politicians. Trump has no choice since the Mafia runs a great part of the US construction industry. But he's done what he's done on his own time and with his own money - unlike Biden and his kind who have been cheating the American taxpayer for decades. Starmer is indeed successful. But he's still a lawyer.
    1
  16582.  @usul573  Ok. I was a little hyperbolic - but the fact remains that Covid 19 has an extremely low death/case ratio and is highly selective as to whom it kills. Trump's attitude is the right one: be brave and face up to it. If you're young and healthy the chances are you're going to be OK. If you're in a vulnerable category you can choose to isolate or be isolated or, like Trump, still take your chance. This cowardly face-masking and skulking is demeaning and generally useless anyway.
    1
  16583.  @rainbowthesaurus6253  Depend what you mean by "sucker" if you want to spend your life living in constant fear and walking about with a diaper on your face, it's up to you. This "plague" isn't as advertised, but we're behaving as though its a universal killer. It isn't. Up until now it has been worse than the flu, but that's because it's new and people with weak immune systems can't deal with it. It isn't worth crashing the economy for - let alone helping to crash the economies of Third World countries where children are already starving to death because of the increased poverty our selfish measures are causing.
    1
  16584.  @rubenjr9440  You spelt "incentive" wrong. Just sayin'
    1
  16585.  @rubenjr9440  But it helps, especially when you are calling for improved education. ( Isnt should have been isn't and your should have been you're, by the way.) Just sayin' Don't worry, I make plenty of mistakes myself.
    1
  16586.  @ubikentang2017  Babies don't die from Covid 19.Nor do healthy young people. And you don't have it anyway, do you? And even if you did, a mask has little or no benefit. And yet you believe that wearing a mask is going to keep you all safe.
    1
  16587.  @ubikentang2017  Masks are of little protection against Covid19, I'm afraid. The government tells you to wear them mainly to help prevent panic from spreading. It's harmless enough and seems to work for that.
    1
  16588.  @ubikentang2017  I see your point, but masks would not have prevented this. Nothing much would in the circumstances you describe. Prophylactics such as hydroxychloroquine and vitamin D help to reduce the severity of symptoms but Covid 19 is now just one of the many afflictions which beset us. The good news for the future is that it is probable that the weaker strains will survive, because this makes more evolutionary sense.
    1
  16589.  @bonnie7898  Everyone is humiliated in Afghanistan!
    1
  16590. Hosni Mubarak Do you claim that the historic graphs and data he supplies are forgeries? Or the newspaper cuttings he uses to support them? Are you aware that he was a pioneer in computer technology who worked on the earliest climate change models and walked out when he realised the work was being used for fraud? He used computer technology to redesign golf-balls at a time when I suspect you weren't even a twinkle in your mother's eye. Climate scientists aren't scientists. They are shills for globalism and hedge-fund managers.The very name of science is sullied by their existence. Peer review that.
    1
  16591. Hosni Mubarak Hi Hosni! Who are these people with half a brain who don't take Ronan Connolly seriously?
    1
  16592. Peter M Eggers Another name for you list of good guys: Professor Valentina Zharkova. She is a great channel for the latest work on the sun - which is far from being the burning ball of fire in the sky which the simple minded Warmists think it is. Her stuff is highly technical but the essentials can be grasped. Climate on earth is solar forced with very little doubt.
    1
  16593. Hosni Muburak I really don't know if Zharkova's predictions will come true. The good thing is they will be tested by events and, unlike the repeated warnings of the AGW brigade, it will not be possible to shift things along for a few more years if they just don't happen. One thing I am pretty sure of is that global temperature records are not being smashed, as you so confidently assert. How can you know this? Proxy data is notoriously difficult to interpret and there have only been reliable or semi-reliable recording stations in the US and Europe and a few other locations for a little over 100 years. Add to this the fact that AGW fanatics are constantly "adjusting' data that doesn't fit into the narrative and continue to ignore or underestimate the impact of the Urban Heat Island Effect then I'm afraid I must continue to be very suspicious of claims that global temperatures are increasing to any great degree, if at all. I still think it was warmer in 218BC when Hannibal crossed the Alps with an army of 30,000 including a troop of war elephants. It certainly must have been warmer in Greenland in 10th century when there were forests and fields of wheat and Viking settlers built towns and churches. I even think it was warmer in the 1930's when tens of thousands died of heatstroke both in the American Midwest and in continental Europe; hotter, and for longer periods. The very fact that AGW alarmists find it needful to suppress or minimise these long-established facts is proof enough to me that something sinister is afoot. You're either complicit in this con trick or a victim of it. I suspect the latter in your case.
    1
  16594. Hosni Mubarak I have to agree. But although he was able to produce a detailed enough model of the constituents of the atmosphere he obviously could not place it in the context of the characteristics of the solar system - even more unknown then than today. I think this is part of the problem. Scientists admire his brilliance and this has coloured their acceptance of his findings and methods. The solar system, as I say, is emerging not as a collection of objects but as a single organism-like entity with apparent built-in safety structures. Considering what the Earth has been through over the aeons and survived a piffling increase in atmospheric carbon is probably neither here nor there.
    1
  16595. ​ Adam A-K  He didn't break the rules. This government if far, far from perfect and you are an illiterate moron.
    1
  16596. Why? Politics is just showbiz for ugly people.
    1
  16597.  @nk7274  he SAID....as do many Muslims wishing to claim asylum.
    1
  16598.  @D0csavage1  Simply that Catholics could possibly support the Pope rather than the Crown in the event of war. Today the non-Muslim world is under attack from Muslim extremists who wish to create the Caliphate via jihad. Every British Muslim's loyalty to the Crown is therefore in doubt and ought to be proven if they are to enjoy the benefits of citizenship.
    1
  16599. To be controlled by US backed fanatics who follow another religion?
    1
  16600. Bill Gates got there first.
    1
  16601. Net zero is suicidal madness. Few good things come from wars, but Britain's abandonment if this absurd concept might be one of them.
    1
  16602.  @valenrn8657  I sense a resentment against the military establishment in his attitude. Does this affect his judgement adversely in your view?
    1
  16603. The reason double infections are not in a separate category is that the number is so small as to be statistically insignificant.
    1
  16604. Democracy in America is a sham. Biden will win because the Deep State will fix it that way.
    1
  16605.  @louminarty  See what I mean? Just can't win!
    1
  16606. Trump was keeping documents to use them against the security services, which have been spearheading the witch-hunt against him. Biden was merely being criminally careless.
    1
  16607.  @rogerphelps9939  I ask it again. Ukraine is nothing to us. Donbass and Crimea are essentially Russian, not Ukrainian, and the only reason for this war is that greedy Western companies want to get their hands on the vast mineral resources they contain.
    1
  16608. NEWSFLASH Trump is not yet even impeached. Legal opinion says the articles have to be delivered to the Senate before they are declared official. Trump will not be impeached until Pelosi tells the Senate that he is.
    1
  16609. Quid pro quo
    1
  16610. They are not allies, they are whipping boys.
    1
  16611. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yVTrNem3d8
    1
  16612. It's going to be at least five years before Russia recovers sufficiently to even think about this - by which time Putin probably no longer be in power.
    1
  16613. No. A lie.
    1
  16614.  @Rocket_scientist_88  Well you do seem to have swallowed the official line -hook and sinker as well! The fact is no-one apart from the very high-ups on both sides know what the actual position on losses or available armaments is. I'm sure you're aware the Russian version is very different, and it is pointless to argue which is the more likely. Until an agreement is reached the war will continue, with loss of life and considerable effects on the world economy. You are living in a fools' paradise to believe either that Russia can be beaten quickly or that it will necessarily be the loser in the economic war between the two blocs. Russia can starve Europe and America of both gas and oil, as well as affecting food supplies. Hopefully it will be at this point that people will start to ask what all this suffering is about - and why their governments have chosen to take sides in what is basically a turf war between two sets of gangsters.
    1
  16615. Before the missiles arrive and the Ukrainians are trained to use them, the country will be pounded to dust.
    1
  16616. Was it such a good idea to bomb that bridge? If indeed Ukraine was responsible. If it was, the Zelensky government must have known it would bring severe reprisals. In this case they are either plain stupid or want to encourage more Russian attacks in order to persuade the West to give them more weapons.
    1
  16617. Most Russians don't see it as an unjust war of aggression though - largely because it isn't. It's a totally justifiable attempt to recover extremely valuable resources stolen from Russia by a clever treaty, signed in haste by a new administration which innocently believed that a new and fruitful relationship with the West was on the cards. Neither will the Russian economy grow weaker - except on paper. Russia is largely a criminal enterprise and an increasing amount of its wealth will be accrued "off the books" as it is happening now. This tragic and needless affair has degenerated into a war of attrition which Russia will win because support for Ukraine from outside sources will inevitably decline over time.
    1
  16618.  @JamesSmith-qs4hx  I just did.
    1
  16619.  @jankwartel1860  The mosquitoes are more troublesome.
    1
  16620. I am very worried about sea level rises. But there seems to be so much conflicting information. Could we not just put a stick in the sea at the Marshall Islands and mark it so that we can see how much the water is rising? It would have to be a very strong stick, and very firmly set in concrete and it would have to be guarded day and night to stop Climate Change deniers from damaging it, but it would be useful, I think. You could even have several of them.
    1
  16621. Awkward.
    1
  16622.  @jimjiminy5836  What's so wrong with the 19th century? A rural 19th century lifestyle without the diseases then prevalent sounds like paradise to me. Seen the Ulanovs?
    1
  16623.  @murphysrevenge9650  Yep, when there were no beggars and muggers and junkies lying around in the streets.
    1
  16624.  @jimjiminy5836  What's wrong with the 19th century? A rural 19th century lifestyle without the diseases then prevalent sounds like paradise to me. They even have YouTube channels so you can see how good it is.
    1
  16625.  @PianoGamer64  Present day Russia is very pleasant place to live - at least according to the numerous Westerners who have done so, and send regular reports via their YouTube channels.
    1
  16626.  @richiecooke69  If I was a bit younger and it wasn't so cold I might well consider it.
    1
  16627.  @richiecooke69  I don't know they'd have me!
    1
  16628.  @michaelmadsen3696  Was the "god" intentional or just a typo?
    1
  16629.  @dawggonevidz9140  Apart from building and maintaining nuclear power stations all over the world, and supplying gas and oil through giant pipelines and manning a space station, the quite incredible increase in the standard of living might be considered a cause for congratulation.
    1
  16630.  @PortilloMoment  And where do we find the "independent assessors". Labour politicians out of a job? University chancellors with axes to grind - journalists, heaven forbid! The current system is self regulatory in that slander and defamation are heavily punished in law, and even then hard to prove. It would be even more difficult and really not at all sensible to extend the process to political opinion, or even in any other field for that matter.
    1
  16631.  @Ooze-cl5tx  Actually Johnson is quite a good journalist. Just a crappy politician and a bit of a psychopath. I'm still very much against your idea, I'm afraid. Journalism in this country, for all its many, many faults would become even worse if subjected to the diktats of a body of worthies, whatever their origin. People just have to learn to take everything they hear and read with a huge pinch of salt - and I believe they already do.
    1
  16632.  @Ooze-cl5tx  Somewhat excessive! And boring.
    1
  16633.  @PortilloMoment  This is a nightmare scenario. Only journalists truly understand journalism, and the prospect of a panel of the great and the good passing judgement on their outpourings sends shivers down my spine. All that is needed is for everyone to treat journalism with healthy cynicism - which actually I think a great many people already do.
    1
  16634.  @MijinLaw  Not impossible, but very very difficult. It is also a lengthy process, and one fraught with danger. I agree with your second statement. But then - so what? As long as you are sensible enough to accept that all these explanations are possible, it doesn't much matter which one happens to be correct.
    1
  16635. Zelensky is winning in the Western media and in the minds of fools. This is clearly far more psychologically important than winning on the battlefield.
    1
  16636. Got a list????
    1
  16637. I don't suppose it has crossed your mind that masks are the biggest money-spinner since cigarettes, has it?
    1
  16638.  @markbriten6999  What? A product which every single person in the world MUST have and has to be replaced on a regular basis? Malboro Man is eating his heart out!
    1
  16639. This is the worst possible time for the UK to have a globalist, leftie, idiot government under a globalist, idiot leftie. Without Starmer and his crew at the helm Britain would be entirely free of the threat of US sanctions.
    1
  16640. Are the Democrats just hoping that many voters are so pig ignorant that they don't even know what impeachment means? Orange man go jail,duh?
    1
  16641.  @simonchristopherrule7313  It is entirely America's war. They are using Ukraine as a last ditch attempt to crush and humiliate the old enemy, Russia.
    1
  16642. Russia just wants Donbass. Everything has been leading up to this.
    1
  16643.  @mustang6599  There is considerable evidence of malpractice in US elections. Go to Here Is The Evidence for some relating to 2020.
    1
  16644.  @chrisparnham  They are not allowed to present the evidence, either to a court or on TV. I am not allowed to direct you towards it, as I did in a previous post which was immediately deleted.
    1
  16645.  @eattherich9215  Here Is The Evidence
    1
  16646.  @eattherich9215  You can wade through the evidence given to the various state senate committees after the election. They certainly claim intimidation of Republican watchers and breaches of chains of security, as well as videos showing computer sticks apparently being passed surreptitiously from hand to hand, boxes of votes being produced from beneath tables after the observers had left, plus demonstrations by operators of how voting machines can be programmed to miscount votes without leaving any evidence.
    1
  16647.  @TheScaramongus  How would I know? BBC or YouTube I expect.
    1
  16648.  @DavidGetling  I don't even know if such creatures exist. But I do know I am not one.
    1
  16649.  @superhumantrueman  What genocide? This is a border dispute caused by US imperialism.
    1
  16650.  @stephan5673  These people are pretty pathetic.. They can't deal with the idea that others may disagree with their brainwashed opinions.
    1
  16651. Not their land.
    1
  16652. Any sanctions placed on China will backfire - as have the sanctions imposed on Russia. Poking the dragon after poking the bear is a far from sensible strategy.
    1
  16653. Just as well.
    1
  16654. Oh how very convenient! We have to be reminded how evil the Russians are at times like this, don't we?
    1
  16655. He should do it standing up A small moustache might help.
    1
  16656.  Jay Goren  You are clearly not a politician then. Unless you are lying, in which case you might well be.
    1
  16657.  Jay Goren  So you ARE a politician! And a Democrat too!
    1
  16658.  Jay Goren  Are you a Zen Master as well as a Democrat politician?
    1
  16659.  @andrewthornber7783  There really isn't a great deal of difference between the two countries. Both are oligarchies and riddled with corruption. Ukraine has allegedly gone further down the road to democracy, but the fact that an oligarch managed to make a comic actor President isn't all that heartening.
    1
  16660.  @davidwright5094  The last treaty was the Minsk Treaty which Ukraine broke and instead of paving the way to make Donbass autonomous used the time to build up its army( with billions of dollars of help from the US and NATO). Nobody is quite as good at making treaties which suit their purposes than the Americans. They used them to commit genocide in their own country and they are still using them today to fool innocent politicians from other countries.
    1
  16661.  @andrewthornber7783  What is look aid?
    1
  16662.  @davidwright5094  One has to very careful how one puts things on YouTube. The new fascist algorithm deletes anything which smells of heresy. I think America learned the art of drawing up treaties back in the 19th century when they were used to help commit genocide against the native population. The same techniques have served well in the 20th and 21st centuries when one tribe is cleverly set against another; treaties with little bombshells in the small print are drawn up, and when the treaties fail the cavalry arrives to clear the land for the US to start mining or planting crops.
    1
  16663.  @davidwright5094  One cannot express oneself more directly with the new YouTube algorithm ready to delete any comment which smells of heresy. All I can say is that the US is very good at drawing up treaties. Look what happened to the Sioux.
    1
  16664.  @davidwright5094  One can't attempt to express oneself more clearly with YouTube hovering to delete any comment which smells of heresy. All |I can say is that the US learned well the art of drawing up treaties. Look what happened to the native population of their country.
    1
  16665.  @davidwright5094  Are you suggesting that American lawyers don't know how to draw up a decent treaty. One that doesn't have inbuilt failure mechanisms so you can bring in the cavalry? Sitting Bull and various other leaders of the destroyed original population of America could have told you differently. It's an art form, for goodness sake!
    1
  16666.  @davidwright5094  Sadly, YouTube does not wish to allow me to express myself more clearly. The history of the Indian Wars is illuminating in this regard, but even then I am not apparently allowed to summarise them.
    1
  16667.  @FortoFight  Generally wrongly.
    1
  16668.  @FortoFight  2 and 2 make 5 now. Haven't you heard?
    1
  16669.  @gavinangus5518  Completely untrue. It was hotter a thousand years ago than it is today.
    1
  16670.  @GlasgowCelticBhoy  What entire scientific community? Between 300 and 700 papers are published each year refuting various aspects of AGW and the lists of scientists who object to the methods and results of the so-called climate "scientists" is as long as your arm. Nobel Prize? If Al Gore can get one for marking a cartoon packed with lies they don't have much value, do they?
    1
  16671.  D Murray  Dr Barnado founded orphanages. What are you talking about about, clown?
    1
  16672.  @GlasgowCelticBhoy  Chicken!
    1
  16673.  @GlasgowCelticBhoy  Well your last excuse is better than your first! And where is the proof? Assertions and computer models are not proof. The science is flawed and empirical evidence calls it into question. Sea levels are not rising. Ice caps are not melting. Previous temperatures can only be surmised via proxy data, and this is often contradictory. What CAN be proved is that the Climate Crisis is an immense money-spinner and a very useful tool indeed for the exercise of political and social control.
    1
  16674.  @GlasgowCelticBhoy  In am a very pro-science person. I am also a very cynical person and I dislike to see science being abused - although it often is. When you have time give me one incontrovertible proof that an increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon, man-made or otherwise, causes an inevitable increase in the surface temperature of the Earth.
    1
  16675.  @nonameissafer.8457  Old, fat people die from covid. Young otherwise healthy people die from the consequences of lockdowns and certain other measures taken.
    1
  16676.  @nonameissafer.8457  No. Covid is.
    1
  16677. Of course he is. He only wants to get back those bits of Russia which have mistakenly been included in the new country of Ukraine.
    1
  16678. No it was him telling a bunch of lies which did that.
    1
  16679.  @Videosop23  Nostalgia is one thing. Committed foreign and military policy another. I can't imagine any of them believing for a moment that the clock can be turned back - any more than, say, there are many Brits who think they can take back India or Zimbabwe.
    1
  16680.  @kd8199  Yes, there is something of the medieval Pope about him! But he is not a communist and he is far, far too practical have any notion of re-creating the Soviet Empire.
    1
  16681.  @kd8199  I think he will be quite content to maintain the Russian Federation in its present form. He has shown no signs of regarding extending it as a practical proposition. He is resisting Western aggrandisement, that's all.
    1
  16682.  @kd8199  Crimea is Russian, and has been ever since it was taken from the Turks in 1783. It was only stuck on the Ukraine in 1954 by the USSR as a matter of administrative convenience. Putin merely took advantage of the chaos of 2014 to walk in and take it back. The largely Russian population welcomed him with open arms. He has since sealed his popularity by pumping billions into its development.
    1
  16683. This is a great time in history. With the uranium deal with Russia and by settling the Ukraine conflict Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have announced the opening of a new chapter in international relations. The childish militaristic posturing which has characterised the years since the end of World War II is now a thing of the past. Get used to it.
    1
  16684.  @georgeeldridge7954  Apart from 40+ hours of state senate hearings ignored by the courts and the FBI.
    1
  16685. At last! Someone with sense and facts to back it!
    1
  16686. But Putin won't be in charge then and the whole world picture will have altered - hopefully in such a way as to make such a scenario pointless.
    1
  16687. No. They're preparing for defence. There's more chance of Europe and Ukraine trying to take back Donbass and Crimea than there is of Russia trying to take anywhere else.
    1
  16688. But he denies ever saying these things. I tend to believe him.
    1
  16689. I wonder how many parties have taken place in police stations over the past two years.
    1
  16690. Jordan 2024?
    1
  16691. He'll want independence for the Donbass provinces too. And a firm assurance that Ukraine will not join NATO.
    1
  16692.  @michaelmullins3396  They let him FLY PLANES???
    1
  16693. That's because you're obviously a bit simple.
    1
  16694.  @patrikfloding7985  That's exactly what it is - with the additional feature that one set of oligarchs facilities Western money-laundering and is willing to sell off vast mineral resources to Western companies. Which is why the West backs that particular gang.
    1
  16695.  @sparkling_h2o895  Yeah, and God made little green apples.
    1
  16696.  @dawodakah7745  This is a fight over resources, as are all wars. The idealism is a sham.
    1
  16697. America simply has to stop abusing the judicial system for political purposes.
    1
  16698.  @hochmeisterr  I think that's just the start. Soledor makes a good rear base for the eventual front line along the Donbass border. We can anticipate invasions from both the north and the east in perhaps just a few days. Ukraine will probably have to move troops out of Donbass to defend Kiev, leaving the Russians to fulfil their military objectives in the south.
    1
  16699.  @ThatGuy-bz2in  It has had to be heavily adapted, I believe and does not enjoy much of a reputation. I am no expert in these matters but I gather it is pretty useless on narrow roads and built-up areas. But all that's fairly irrelevant. The whole picture will change before they arrive on the scene.
    1
  16700.  @ThatGuy-bz2in  I just wonder though what stage things will be at by the time they all arrive and crews are trained to operate them. If over the next few weeks Russia succeeds in taking Donbass while the Ukrainians are protecting Kiev, then tanks will be fairly irrelevant since the whole industrial region is relatively built up. The infantry movements we have seen in Soledar and Bakhmut will be the way things go, not the tank battles out in the open fields. I suppose a good benchmark would be if Russia can take Kramatorsk before the tanks arrive.
    1
  16701.  @ThatGuy-bz2in  Russia doesn't want Ukraine. It just wants Donbass mainly, and it already has three quarters of it. Ukraine is putting up a magnificent fight, but it is exhausting all its resources in the process - which has been Russia's plan throughout. Russia has an extra half million men ready for Phase Two, and some of them are as battle-hardened as the Wagners, and have hardly been used at all so far. It could go either way, but if the recent recruits come in from the north and east, and the Chechen, the Syrians and the DPA and the LPA push up to the Donbass border the Ukrainians will be hard put to fight on all three fronts. This is what the Russians do. They don't worry about losses. They don't worry about keeping ground they don't need. They just keep pounding away till the enemy breaks and then they move in for the kill.
    1
  16702.  @ThatGuy-bz2in  Your information doesn't coincide with mine. I'm afraid. While Putin, in a famous essay, describes the Ukrainians and Russians as "one people " he knows full well that many have been seduced into Western attitudes and anything like a militarily imposed regime would result in an endless and costly civil war. A Russian-leaning regime would have to be the result of some sort of electoral process (inasmuch as such things exist) and Russian troops on the streets would never do. And he's not that bothered. Donbass is where the real money is. I can't see there's much of a percentage any longer in "drip feeding" armaments to Ukraine. The investment isn't paying off. Russia, on the other hand appears to have a very healthy munitions industry, and can buy in extras on the arms market anyway. It's got gas and oil to swap. Ukraine has virtually nothing. Even Western observers admit that Russia has this number of men waiting in the wings.. Don't forget that the majority of Russian men undergo compulsory military training of between two and four years, and before the war Russia had a reserve army of two million. The number of men of military age is about 33 million. Russian tactics are always to secure the field with trained troops who then retire to the rear while disposable units with old equipment bear the brunt of the response. The troops at the rear also shoot any of the newcomers who try to retreat. Wagner has been doing this with its released prisoners, but the elite are highly trained and experienced. Many have fought in Syria, as have battalions of regular Russian troops who appear not to have been much used yet. Neither have the Chechen mercenaries who were so instrumental in capturing Mariupol. I think there may be a whole Chechen army standing by. I don't think the Russians were "smashed" in Kharkiv or Kherson or anywhere else. They used the tactics outlined above to drain Ukrainian forces before withdrawing to the south, preparatory to the new three-pronged assault which it is about to commence.
    1
  16703. @ It's odd. This visceral dislike for the man from some people really colours their thinking.
    1
  16704.  @denniskrust2137  That's crap. Brainwashed crap.
    1
  16705.  @bEverCurious  The danger is all in your mind.
    1
  16706.  @mogzybuster  Neither.
    1
  16707. Surely if all the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated the cost of the removal of restrictions will largely been in terms of varying degrees of discomfort for the rest?
    1
  16708. The concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming is an utter illusion. Conceit and greed are two of the greatest motives of human behaviour. The "Climate Crisis" encapsulates both. Long-term weather changes are entirely the result of cosmological forces beyond both our control and our understanding.
    1
  16709.  @MikeKeller  Well you left out California , didn't you, way up at the top of the death toll yesterday? No matter. It's rather silly and distasteful to get drawn into this sort of argument, don't you think? Covid 19 is apolitical and indiscriminate in its nature. There seems little rhyme or reason to its prevalence or otherwise. It is what it is.
    1
  16710.  @MikeKeller  I was speaking without the facts at my fingertips, and as I say making this political is somewhat distasteful. I'm not so keen on masks as a significant feature in the prevention stakes. Initially most medical opinion gave the thumbs-down . The view then was that they provide little or no protections against incoming infection, and only minimal protection for others if the wearer is unknowingly infected. I think the emphasis on masks is, sad to say, political again. They are badges of responsibility as much as anything. They provide an illusion of a united front against the invader. I don't wear one. Hydroxychloroquine is the bee in my bonnet. I've investigated this pretty thoroughly and I'm sure that if given in small, correct doses in the early stages of infection it reduces deaths by about 30+%. You might not want to wade through the video below. It's very Australian and in-your-face but towards the end it gives some interesting US state by state information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If5H5eA5ftI
    1
  16711.  @bobashmore2875  Make what up?
    1
  16712.  @MikeKeller  I just came across this which makes sense. My original data has been overtaken by events it seems. https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-unhelpful-red-state-vs-blue-state-covid-narrative/
    1
  16713. @deutschermichel5807 The situation is different in at least 150 different aspects. Go to the back of the class and try thinking with more than one brain cell.
    1
  16714.  @Yattayatta  Go to the back of the class. You may read a history book and when you have found five examples of historical events which resemble the present situation more closely than the absurd example above, you may return to your place.
    1
  16715.  @univeropa3363  Different age. Different intellect. Entirely different background to the situation .. the list just goes on and on.
    1
  16716. @ After US provocation, courtesy of USAID and its ilk.
    1
  16717. @ Putin is nothing like Hitler. Post Soviet Russia is nothing like post Great War Germany. Ukraine in 2025 is nothing like Poland in 1939. Donald Trump is nothing like Neville Chamberlain. Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s had not been re-armed by the US to the tune of several billion dollars. ... I could go on, but this is getting boring. Go to the back of the class.
    1
  16718. @ You don't have to be a genius to realise that Putin is nothing like Hitler in age, intellect or just about anything else. Or that the situation on Germany in 1930's, still recovering from the aftermath of war, is nothing like the Russia of today, rebuilding after the horrors of Communism. Or that Poland, Czechoslovakia, France or any of the other targets on Hitler's wish list had not, to my knowledge, been in receipt of billions of dollars in military aid from America. The list just goes on and on. Honestly, seizing upon or or two minor and spurious similarities and extrapolating from these that two situations are "exactly the same" is intellectual weakness of the most obvious kind.
    1
  16719. @ You don't have to be a genius to realise that Putin is nothing like Hitler in age, intellect or just about anything else. Or that the situation on Germany in 1930's, still recovering from the aftermath of war, is nothing like the Russia of today, rebuilding after the horrors of Communism. Or that Poland, Czechoslovakia, France or any of the other targets on Hitler's wish list had not, to my knowledge, been in receipt of billions of dollars in military aid from America. The list just goes on and on. Honestly, seizing upon or or two minor and spurious similarities and extrapolating from these that two situations are "exactly the same" is intellectual weakness of the most obvious kind.
    1
  16720. @ It's important to recognize that drawing parallels between Putin and Hitler, or the current situation in Russia and Germany in the 1930s, is misguided. While both leaders have had significant impacts on their countries and the world, their circumstances and the global context are vastly different. Germany in the 1930s was a nation still reeling from the aftermath of World War I, while today's Russia is navigating its path after the fall of Communism. Additionally, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and other nations targeted by Hitler did not receive extensive military aid from America, as some countries do today. In short, highlighting a few superficial similarities and using them to claim that the two situations are identical is an oversimplification that ignores the unique complexities of each scenario.
    1
  16721. @ As you might guess my "genius" reply was written by a polite bot who translated my original diatribe into language acceptable to the YouTube bot.
    1
  16722. It should be replaced by a statue of the saint and martyr George Floyd.
    1
  16723. Is there anyone at all you don't want to see banged up?
    1
  16724.  @31Blaize  Remind me.
    1
  16725.  @31Blaize  I think we are at cross-purposes. I meant meaningful discussions prior to the event, not hysterical phone calls when it became clear that the invasion was practically inevitable. At that time what needed to be done was to assure Putin that the terms of the Minsk Accords would immediately be attended to and he would have left his troops at the border. Instead, gripped by war fever, the West sent the poor Ukrainians to their doom. The tragedy is that it now seems more than likely that Putin will actually achieve objectives in excess of his original demands, and tens of thousands will have died to no purpose,
    1
  16726. This myth about the 60 court cases is just propaganda. There were no court cases. America being the way it is the judges refused to hear the cases so no evidence was presented. The lawyers were entirely happy with this since no verdict could possibly have been reached before the Electoral College met. They therefore presented the evidence to a series of state senate hearings. There's a mountain of it, but naturally enough the media just feed you the crap about the irrelevant court cases. Here's a small selection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin Many Americans have followed these hearings. A recent poll showed that 39% of them think the election was fixed - and not just because Trump says so, but because it was.
    1
  16727.  @Leszek.Rzepecki  It is you who have been reeled in - or kept in the dark, rather. There are approximately 70 hours of evidence of fraud and electoral malpractice which have been presented to various state senate hearings in recent weeks. Here are a couple of examples. Let me know what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  16728.  @Leszek.Rzepecki  Haven't we been through this already? Sadly it is you who have been conned. The court cases were never heard, which suited everybody. The judges didn't feel they had the authority and were certainly fearful of the impacts on their careers. The Trump side didn't want them because there was no way any verdict could have been reached by Jan 6. They are are an irrelevance being waved under your nose to distract your attention from the real evidence, which was put before a series of state senate committees in subsequent weeks. There are over 70 hours of it hidden in the deepest recesses of the Internet. Here are a couple of examples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  16729.  @Leszek.Rzepecki  Are you blind to these testimonies? Propaganda videos??!! Hour upon hour of evidence and assertion presented to state legislators. Tedious in places, possibly even hyperbolic in places, but containing a core of hard truth which needs to come before a properly constituted judicial enquiry or tribunal of some sort. Until it does this highly suspect administration will be built on very shaky foundations indeed.
    1
  16730. You mean the washing machine he stole from your mother before he joined a motor-cycle gang?
    1
  16731. The ECHR is like Frankenstein's monster. Winston would very much regret what his idea has turned into, I'm sure.
    1
  16732. ​ @Pikaling3408  Why have it at all?
    1
  16733.  @tony_w839  We already have them. All the ECHR does is give foreigners the freedom to take advantage of us.
    1
  16734.  @geraldhewing2076  Stop taking about me behind my back. You're like some old lady muttering in a bus queue.
    1
  16735.  @srp01983  God, you intellectuals. Whatever will you come up with next?
    1
  16736.  @geraldhewing2076  Stop talking about me behind my back! You're like some old lady muttering in a bus queue.
    1
  16737.  @badfairy9554  Only very fat ones.
    1
  16738.  @badfairy9554  According to the BMJ there are less than 2,000 children under 18 in hospital in the US with covid. In hospital. Not in ICU. And that's out of an estimated population of that age group of 71 million.
    1
  16739.  @badfairy9554  Obviously there even fewer of them then. Very few pre-pubescent children suffer ill effects from covid.
    1
  16740.  @badfairy9554  I doubt that figure. So far 350 children under 17 have died from covid in the US. If only 175 have died from flu they are doing well. Delta, if anything, seems less virulent than preceding variants. Clinical obesity is of course a factor in a great many US deaths, including those of children.
    1
  16741.  @guidedmeditation2396  You seem to have changed your tune since I last read you! Did I misunderstand you? What's going on? The above is about the finest assessment of the true situation I have come across so far!
    1
  16742. Even he hasn't got the money himself his supporters will stump up for him. Yet another sordid lawfare ploy by the Dems which will backfire on them, I predict.
    1
  16743. Let's pretend it's small. It makes the surrender terms look so much less significant.
    1
  16744. What a relief to see common-sense comments in response to blatant BBC race-baiting.
    1
  16745. Islamist lunatics are ultimately responsible for this.
    1
  16746.  @iii1025  Perhaps you can help me then. The Russians left the area on March 30. These discoveries were apparently not made until April 3. There must be an explanation for this and I would like to know it.
    1
  16747.  @_tarnished_  How so? Was there a fear the Russians might return?
    1
  16748.  @mikewhocheeseharry5292  But the heat was apparently long over. The Mayor gave interviews on March 31 saying his town had been liberated.
    1
  16749.  @iii1025  Without being too cynical they were apparently all in hiding - so how could they know? I want to emphasise strongly that I am not pro-Russian but there are very good reasons why Ukraine would push a story like this. It was widely expected that something of the sort would happen, with "evidence" of chemical weapons use being the top contender. Not so. Or not yet anyway.
    1
  16750.  @vesnatadic9740  These have been explained actually -and convincingly. The "hand" was a raindrop and the resurrected corpse was an optical illusion caused by the curve of the wing mirror. None of which proves or disproves anything other than that.
    1
  16751.  @MarynaKoval  Is Ukraine without guilt? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LQSYmda0S
    1
  16752.  @iian_  A contributing factor, certainly.
    1
  16753.  oliver von arx  Back then an Indian told me; "In the West you have cheras and LSD. Here we have cheras and hypnotism." Hypnotism certainly plays apart in the sahdu culture, along with smoking copious quantities of weed. Many are also accomplished conjurers. The Twisted Arm Baba was one such magician, but alas largely used his talents to rob people blind. I was fortunate, however, to later fall into the company of a genuinely ascetic sadhu who despite having no English, provided me with many fascinating insights into the realms of macrocosm and microcosm and other esoteric matters, including the ability both to self-hypnotise and even how to hypnotise others to a certain limited extent.
    1
  16754.  @SubjectiveFunny  My granny is long dead. I'm in my seventies and this is madness.
    1
  16755. Actually Trump got out in time. By the time they went bust he only owned ten per cent.
    1
  16756. Because he didn't. He was robbed.
    1
  16757.  @salome5055  The cases were not lost. Courts refused to take them on. Different thing.
    1
  16758. The gun was already in the state. Kyle worked in Kinosha and the owner of the car lot asked for help protecting it.
    1
  16759.  @julianmarsh1378  Those are the facts, you stupid child. The protesters are being used by Marxist revolutionaries s as a cover for riots, Rittenhauser is a stupid child too - but his cause, the protection of property and civil order, is the right one.
    1
  16760. This really is quite scary. Australia's close-on immunity to the virus might quite well be due to early lockdown. On the other hand it might be due to other factors, such as climate conditions.. immunity in response to earlier similar covids - and even geographical location. Whatever the case, the Australian people are currently in a very vulnerable position.
    1
  16761. Experiments by gun enthusiasts have shown that a shot from a rifle like the shooters would have passed through the ear leaving a relatively small hole. Either theory is possible but it is interesting that TDS sufferers are reluctant to allow Trump the glamour of being actually shot.
    1
  16762. Why?
    1
  16763. Those who are dying continue to be mainly elderly. A new factor is that many of them have not received proper treatment for existing conditions because of lockdowns.
    1
  16764.  @Geffo555  Putin has no intention of expanding anywhere. Over-expansion was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union and he doesn't want the same thing to happen to the Russian Federation. Putin is entirely moderate by Russian standards. The thing is he wants his country to be strong and independent and not just another lapdog of Washington or Brussels.
    1
  16765. @ Putin doesn't even want all of Ukraine, let alone Finland and Poland.
    1
  16766. @ Compared to many political figures in Russia Putin IS a moderate!
    1
  16767. Trump could buy Greenland simply by bunging a few million bucks to each and every one of its 55,000 or so inhabitants.
    1
  16768. And it's not as though they haven't asked. Four times at least. But Washington warmongers need enemies.
    1
  16769.  @walterschluterjun5594  And America isn't?
    1
  16770.  ger du  Is Russia especially illiberal though?
    1
  16771.  ger du  I think his view might be a little prejudiced, don't you?
    1
  16772.  ger du  Perhaps illiberal was not quite the right word? All states set limits on the behaviour of dissidents and potential troublemakers. Russia has always been a more unashamed kleptocracy than most and the unfortunate Navalny has been given a nasty lesson. If he had been a Canadian truck driver he might have found his bank account frozen and his livelihood destroyed.
    1
  16773. These figures are probably inaccurate. There are strong suspicions that the population is already considerably higher than the official figures state. At least 3% of people don't fill in the necessary forms and the number of illegal immigrants is not quantifiable, but is probably a great deal more than the estimated 1.5 million. The existing population could already be close to 100 million for all anyone knows.
    1
  16774.  @Neutralino  It's perfectly possible. There have been rumours circulating for years about supermarket chains and other commercial organisations planning for the future, based on present consumption, who have realised that there are far many more people around than the government says.
    1
  16775. Careful what you wish for. Those who howled for the cops to be called in have dropped a right clanger. This could now go on for weeks and months. In the meantime, those on the right of the Conservative party -as well as Dominic Cummings -can go on blackmailing Boris with threats of further revelations unless he pushes the legislation they want enacted. This will be a jolly good thing. Watch out for the abandoning of the zero carbon nonsense - with the added pleasure of knowing that it was Labour do-gooders who made it possible.
    1
  16776.  @rockchildofthe60s69  Ha ha. Got you! 4CHan and Qanon score again, You guys are just so EASY to fool!
    1
  16777.  @rockchildofthe60s69  Your not one of these girls who shaved her head to mourn the passing of George Floyd, are you by any chance?
    1
  16778. @Dan B The politicians aren't telling the truth, but the Office of National Statistics is. There is no second wave. The pandemic is over - but the government and the media are intent on keeping the fear alive for some reason.
    1
  16779. I hope ALL the intellectually challenged dumbasses in America watch this channel and join in the comments. The idea that there might be even more of you is quite frankly terrifying.
    1
  16780.  @southerngent4929  It's a lot to cope with.
    1
  16781.  @octavianpopescu4776  Like many of the left Phil tends to be credulous, risk-averse and inclined to group conformity. The true manipulators of public opinion recognise these tendencies and so tailor their techniques to fit. This is why the oligarchs and billionaires backing the New World Order make a pretence of left-wing ideology. They have learned from history that it is an effective way of controlling people. Phil's honesty and intelligence is often subverted in this way.
    1
  16782. @Alfred Wedmore So much so that YouTube has deleted two or my replies to you. For a conspiracy to succeed it is essential that its victims believe it to be false.
    1
  16783. @Alfred Wedmore Indeed not. Unless you regard the New World Order as a conspiracy site. Or that a book called "The Alchemy of Finance" is forbidden reading.
    1
  16784. @Alfred Wedmore No. I'll try again, but YouTube's censorship algorithm is a right old granny these days!
    1
  16785. @Alfred Wedmore The NWO isn't a conspiracy theory. It is the declared aim of the World Economic Forum, which holds a conference each year in Davos, Switzerland which is attended by world political leaders, billionaires and the CEOs of giant multi-national companies to discuss strategies referred to as the Great Reset. And Soros also explains how taking these "irrational factors" into account can be used to manipulate populations and to gain financial and political advantage. Irrational factors such as the hysterical over-reaction to covid and the belief that carbon emissions are going to cause the world to end.
    1
  16786. @Alfred Wedmore I am. And the phrases "great reset" and "new world order" come directly from Herr Schwab's mouth. A total restructuring of the capitalist system on regulated, globalist lines is clearly the ultimate objective of his organisation. And it is clear that techniques of control developed in former Communist countries are envisaged as tools towards achieving that objective. You may well think this is a good thing. I don't; and I especially don't since it is clear that techniques of deception, which is really what reflexivity represents, are being used to further these objectives. When most of the world's media and most of the world's pharma companies are owed by the same two or three investment corporations and a pandemic arrives ....well, I don't need a tinfoil hat to get suspicious of the outcomes we are currently witnessing.
    1
  16787. @Alfred Wedmore I have no such intention. You making such a suggestion rather indicates your seeming lack of ability to appreciate motivation generally. You are clearly a man who is easily fooled. I have no interest in worsening the pandemic. The pharma companies, however, have an obvious financial interest in keeping it ticking over for as long as possible. They have very cleverly done so, and will continue to do so for as long as they possibly can. I only hope that Omicron will put paid to their filthy tricks.
    1
  16788. @Alfred Wedmore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W70zjwnBiAg
    1
  16789. @Alfred Wedmore Say what you like, it certainly undermines your contention that the Great Reset is a conspiracy theory.
    1
  16790. I think all that's being said is that we can kill people who are directly trying to kill us. Which is what happened here.
    1
  16791.  @cyberash3000  He'd be dead himself if he hadn't fought back.
    1
  16792. Trump has just poisoned America! Millions will die!
    1
  16793. mUdz Climate scientists do not exist. There are scientists and fraudsters who lie about the climate. Two different things. Bush fires happen every year. It just takes a spark. In the past farmers pre-empted their spread by the controlled burning of firebreaks - strips of land already cleared of vegetation so bushfires had no-where to go. This sensible procedure has now been banned by interfering nutjobs who, like you, have been conned into believing that atmospheric C02 is a major factor in global warming.
    1
  16794. mUdz So long sweetheart Try not to be a mug all your life.
    1
  16795. Can I polish your jackboots for you?
    1
  16796.  @evieshore3270  My allegiance is to anything which results in an early end to this dreadful war. Blind support for the Zelensky regime is not it.
    1
  16797.  @StarsManny  How else should it work? The poor bloody Ukrainians have to choose which set of gangsters they prefer to rule their affairs, that's all.
    1
  16798.  @Zikar  Apart from in Crimea, this is true enough. Unfortunately the wishes of the majority cannot be ascertained in a corrupt country, and are only of partial significance anyway.
    1
  16799.  @Zikar  And as I say, we are now far beyond the stage where the wishes of the majority count for much, I'm afraid.
    1
  16800.  @StarsManny  The world does not work according to absurd analogies, I know that.
    1
  16801. Like his predecessors, Putin initially was under the illusion that America was interested in forming working partnerships with the new Russia. This proved not to be the case, since the American military/industrial complex needs a permanent enemy in order to justify its war- based economic expansion. Putin has created a Russia which, for all its faults, preserves its strength, independence and dignity in the face of constant Western aggression.
    1
  16802.  Ann-Marie Paliukenas  I don't know that it is. Cause of death is a complex matter very often and up to three contributory factors are generally included. on a death certificate. Doctors have been told to include Covid 19 if it is present and are doing so. All such deaths are classed as "corinavirus related".The figures we are given are all "coronavirus-related" - simply because if, say, someone with cancer dies and they have Covid it is pretty difficult to say whether it was the cancer or the Covid that killed them. This is my understanding anyway. The trouble is that different countries record deaths in different ways and with different criteria , so we will probably never really be able to compare the coronavirus death tolls in any meaningful way. The numbers are just too political for one thing. Gosh! What a long answer to a one word comment!
    1
  16803. See a doctor.
    1
  16804. @Alle Warten Auf Das Licht When did this trial begin? What are the charges?
    1
  16805. @Alle Warten Auf Das Licht Do you always answer a question with another question?
    1
  16806. @Alle Warten Auf Das Licht You must lead a very boring life then.
    1
  16807. @Alle Warten Auf Das Licht Well I am pretty bored at the minute. Fancy a fight?
    1
  16808.  @oskardahle2478  Go on then.
    1
  16809. The idea that Putin wants to invade the Baltics - or anywhere else for that matter - is a myth designed to prop up the declining US industrial/military complex and the woke warmongers of the Democrat party.
    1
  16810. What planet are you from?
    1
  16811. Insurance companies are now believed to be considering setting up indemnity policies for covid, much like car insurance. You will be covered for any damage done to yourself through catching it, or indeed any damage you may cause by passing it on to others. It's an ill wind...
    1
  16812.  @awf6554  And a Ukrainian-run survey established the Russian-population at 20-30%? As I said earlier no referendum, vote or even census can be thought to be reliable in Ukraine. Ukraine wins when Ukraine is in the chair and Russia wins when Russia is there. I think there can be little doubt that America had a hand in fomenting the Maidan riots which led to the Russian-supported independence movement in Donbass. The CIA has been operating in Ukraine, as indeed in Georgia and elsewhere, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Minsk Accords provided a viable solution to the difficulties, but NATO and the US took the opportunity then to pour billions of dollars into rebuilding the Ukrainian army, escalating the situation from one in which US interests were advanced though political machination to one in which they can get their hands on all that lovely lithium with a proxy war. Except it seems to have failed and tens of thousands of lives have been lost to no purpose.
    1
  16813.  @awf6554 I don't think there was military interference as such, but the Russian actions were a direct result of US attempts to influence Ukraine into cutting ties with Russia. The military interference came after Minsk, when billions of dollars were poured into rebuilding Ukraine's army while little or no attempt was made to find ways of granting regional autonomy to the Donbass republics. A semi-independent Donbass, out of the EU and still maintaining ties with Russia would, in my view, be infinitely preferable to a terrible war costing tens of thousands of lives. The tragedy is, of course, that it now seems very likely that these efforts will have been in vain anyway. It is quite probable that Russia will gain by force of arms even more than it attempted to secure through diplomatic means.
    1
  16814.  @awf6554  The reason it should have lost it is with us now. Taking it away from Russian oligarchs to hand it over to their Western equivalent was a process fraught with obvious danger. Russian investment and Russian labour created the mineral extraction and steel-production industries of Eastern Ukraine. This has continued to be the case and a viable compromise, facing facts and avoiding bloodshed, would have been to adhere to the principles of Minsk. Life under Russian control is not so very different to life under Ukrainian control and is certainly very preferable to living- and dying - in a war zone.
    1
  16815.  @awf6554  I don't think it is that much different. Modern Russia is a reasonably prosperous country where life is some respects is better than in the West. The UN Charter is far from being holy writ. All it does generally is a give a spurious legality to America's continuing economic colonisation.
    1
  16816.  @awf6554  Look up the indices on quality of life. Russia beats Ukraine on most of them -except the weather! My view is that following the end of World War II the USA has followed a deliberate policy of economic aggrandisement under cover of promoting "democracy and freedom" and has not hesitated to sacrifice many thousands of human lives in doing so. There is no such thing as "human rights" . There are only privileges and obtaining and retaining these privileges is a procedure better suited to diplomacy and trade than war.
    1
  16817. All Putin ever seems to have wanted is Ukraine neutrality, independence for Donbass and acknowledgement of Crimean secession. He might well get all that. He should have got it in the first place.
    1
  16818. Trump's strategic withdrawal plan has nothing in common with this shambles. The US was conned into accepting a gang of crooks and cheats into office and this is what they get. No surprise!
    1
  16819.  @conormul1  Exact same? The differences between the two situations are colossal. This is a visible defeat for Biden's inept policies and will hopefully help lead to the Dems losing the House and Senate next year - however much they cheat.
    1
  16820.  @davidbrayshaw6162  Yes, I remember the mass evacuation in Syria very well. All those people falling off US planes as they took to the skies. Dreadful. We are still experiencing the international repercussions, are we not? The Great Unravelling in Maricopa County is a tough job. but the Ninjas are doing as well as can be expected. It would be a great deal easier if the election officials gave up documents and equipment for inspection as required by law. One wonders what they are trying to hide by being so shy. Still, the truth will have to come out eventually. You can only hang so many people off hotel doorknobs before people start getting suspicious.
    1
  16821. Many of the letters were missed out because they sound like dirty words in other languages. Epsilon, for instance, is Turkish slang for a sexual act to unspeakable that I blush to think of it.
    1
  16822. There are plenty of question marks about this explosion. Ukrainian sabotage? accident? Casus belli by the Russians? All are possible.
    1
  16823. If I was half black, would my life matter just a little bit?
    1
  16824. They will be window-dressing - as will probable re-arming of Ukraine for purely defence purposes. Trump's task is to allow Putin his military gains, while making it look as though he has been forced into defeat by Trump's statesmanship.
    1
  16825. Whoever gets in is going to face the biggest shitstorm since 1939. The war in Ukraine is going to lead to economic and societal collapse.
    1
  16826.  @desertsunman5880  You must be right. My definition of "conservative" is someone who likes to stick with established rules.
    1
  16827.  @JohnFrumFromAmerica  I agree to some extent - yet security agencies taking the law into their own hands seems to be an increasing trend in many countries. They, unlike politicians, seem to be less and less accountable .
    1
  16828.  @osric1730  It might seem hard to swallow, but a similar argument was put forward for the Yom Kippur war: deliberate inaction by the Israelis leading to the enemy over-extending itself and being quashed. The fact is Israel can now release full shock and awe on Gaza and still be on the right side of much world opinion. This is surely just as easy to believe as the idea that Hamas could have organised such a large-scale operation without Israeli intelligence getting wind of it.
    1
  16829. Am I the only one who thinks this might not have been an accident? Any hedge fund manipulator with foreknowledge of this could make billions by predicting the effects on world trade.
    1
  16830. If you are American these people are dying because of the greed of your deep state government.
    1
  16831.  @Claire-tn4xp  Because of the vast quantity of postal votes and the general difficulties in running an election under lockdown conditions. Postal voting is wide open to fraud by "vote harvesting" whereby party officials offer to collect ballots and post them and then replace them with forms naming their own candidate. It happens all the time but with literally millions and millions of postal votes the chance of a fair result are nil. On top of this the actual physical business of collecting and counting the votes will take weeks and involve the employment of many thousands of people who will also have the opportunity to tamper with the votes. In local elections in New York for example they are still waiting for a result four months after polling day. The only thing that is certain is that over 20%b of the votes are still unaccounted for. Whoever "loses" will also inevitably question the result and the resulting legal procedures might take years.
    1
  16832.  @Drinkwateritsgood4u  Yes I want him to win. Far from being a joke he has made a better job of the Presidency than almost anyone in recent memory. All opponents can do is mock his mannerisms and spread usually false stories. He is no saint. He is very human. But he is a cunning and competent human. Postal votes on this scale is utterly unprecedented in the world. Fraud is inevitable as are lengthy delays as millions of votes are counted by thousands of people. We'll be lucky to get anything like a result until next year and then it will be disputed - whoever "wins."
    1
  16833.  @donbriggs9128  I have no answer. I suppose the system dates back to a time when there were far fewer people and there was a greater respect for democracy. It is true there have been a mere 1,000 convictions for voter fraud in the US but just the least consideration of modern morality makes you realise that this must be the tip of the iceberg It is so very easy to do and so very difficult to detect, Left wing media and politicians say there is no problem, but they would say that, wouldn't they? There are people so committed to a cause that they consider it entirely justified in making it succeed BAMN - by any means necessary.
    1
  16834.  @donbriggs9128  BAMN is more of a Marxist slogan. Voter fraud is entirely acceptable to Marxists. In the UK voter fraud is also a problem. There it generally involves a group of people also beginning with "M" but who I am not allowed to mention by name. In both cases the world-wide establishment of their doctrine is considered to be far more important than democratic considerations.
    1
  16835.  @donbriggs9128  I agree . Sometimes its not worth the hassle. But the US situation is mind-boggling. The Democrats are now pushing for voting forms to be sent out to people without them even asking for them. This includes people who have left the state, but would still be eligible to vote. They want party officials to be able to collect votes without oversight, and also to allow the period for counting them to be extended. Many thousands of people will be needed to do this job and vetting procedures are practically non-existent.
    1
  16836. Ed Cranium Indications that global warming is not caused by human activity are many and varied. Long before atmospheric C02 levels reached their present levels Greenland was occupied by Vikings for some 300 years from 900AD They grew many crops and built churches and towns. They planted ash trees on graves which grew to such a size that the skeletons beneath were broken and twisted by their roots. Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218 BC with an army of 30,000 and a troop of war elephants. In the 14th century many of Europe's great rivers ran dry. In more recent times, records show heatwaves of far greater intensity and duration than those of the present day occurred during the 1930's and the late 1800's. Evidence for these facts, commonly accepted and backed by anecdotal and proxy data until very recently, is now being suppressed. Linking man-made carbon emissions to global warming is based on bad science, historical ignorance and a desire for financial gain and political ascendancy. The present level of global warming is entirely solar forced and in complete accord with long-established historical cycles.
    1
  16837. Ed Cranium You've been suckered, like so many. Surface temperature on Earth depends exclusively on a combination of atmospheric pressure, proximity to the sun and its behaviour at the time. This is the case with all planets in the solar system and there is no reason why Earth should be any different. The climate crisis scam is based on the errors of outdated science, seized upon by hedge-fund managers who make vast profits trading in carbon emission permissions, and welcomed by politicians as a means of taxation and control. C02 is a beneficial gas. Atmospheric carbon neither retains nor reflects heat as it does in earthbound enclosed experiments. Instead it absorbs infra red photons for about one third of a second before disseminating them in various directions. The directions are determined by the need to maintain the atmosphere in a state of thermodynamic stability, as Einstein posited in 1917 it has to be. There is no radiative force involved in temperature. The greenhouse has a built in thermostat.Carbon is a major component.
    1
  16838. WHY are we doing this?? Is it a deathwish? What POSSIBLE advantage is there is provoking Russia to this extent??
    1
  16839.  @SirDigby3601  If you look carefully you will see that rather than wasting troops on dealing with this incursion, the Russians have simply surrounded the Ukrainians and are waiting for them to run out of fuel and ammunition. There really is nothing where they are which is worth having. It's just another Zelensky PR stunt.
    1
  16840.  @SirDigby3601  Why should Russia bother? The Ukrainians aren't going anywhere. This whole ridiculous business is just another Zelensky PR stunt.
    1
  16841.  @SirDigby3601  The incursion is being contained at very little cost. The occupied land is of no great value and the whole exercise appears to be little more than a PR stunt by Ukraine.
    1
  16842. @Arfur Fuxxakes Hi Arfur! By which you mean of course people who disagree with your somewhat limited an anal-retentive view of the world, I think.
    1
  16843.  @querelledebrest4978  Trump is the most dreadful liar, but amusing with it. Most news outlets these days have lost all idea of objectivity. - especially when it come to dealing with our God Emperor.
    1
  16844. @Arfur Fuxxakes Not once. Give me an example. (And who fact checks the factcheckers by the way?) You really are quite incredibly naive you know.
    1
  16845. @Arfur Fuxxakes So you have no evidence for your accusations as usual then? Thought not.
    1
  16846. @Arfur Fuxxakes Fuxx off Arfur. You are too tiresome to bother with.
    1
  16847. In the UK around a quarter of new cases occur among the double vaccinated. Hospitalisations and deaths are not dissimilar.
    1
  16848. This is largely underdefended farmland of no strategic value that I can see. Could this be a sign that the war is ending soon? The only purpose I can immediately think of is that holding this territory will give Ukraine a bargaining chip in any peace negotiations. I can't see Russia detaching troops from the Donetsk front or even Kharkiv in order to try to retake it.
    1
  16849. Who gives a duck! What is this, professional jealousy?
    1
  16850. It is becoming increasingly clear that the hysterical over-reaction to the covid "pandemic" caused more harm than was prevented. If the principles of the Great Barrington Declaration had been adhered to there would have been, far less societal damage and, it can be argued, possibly fewer deaths.
    1
  16851. She would have to rephrase her accusation in more Parliamentary language ie: "He may occasionally be mistaken in his assessments of the veracity of the information he has been given."
    1
  16852.  @mrdaveythebaby  A PM cannot make deliberately false statements. He may occasionally have been misinformed by his advisors and inadvertently misled the House - but that's it. This may seem pretty two-faced, but it it is necessary in order to maintain at least semblance of dignity in what is essentially a very undignified process - namely quarrelling violently with people you probably dislike, mistrust and fear.
    1
  16853. A very worthy effort. Farage usually gets 100/145k views on his live slot. His interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday was almost certainly in the upper regions of that, and the YouTube version has had 30,000 hits so far.
    1
  16854. And went to the trenches. What would Boris do I wonder?
    1
  16855. It's time for a reckoning. We might also consider putting on our tinfoil hats and examining some of the remarkable similarities between the way the pandemic has been handled and that other and even more sinister money-spinning enterprise - the threat of man-made global warming.
    1
  16856. Gross Herman We could safely close down 70 per cent of universities and used the money saved to bolster the NHS.
    1
  16857. He doesn't have to negotiate. He just has to issue an ultimatum.
    1
  16858. So far the case rests upon the testimony of a liar and of a whore.
    1
  16859. Trump is no more a racist than he is fascist or a would-be dictator.
    1
  16860.  @pansepot1490  No. That's what the Putin inside many people's heads thought. The real Putin had a very different assessment, of that you can be sure.
    1
  16861.  @timothyharris4708  It's not an accusation, but an observation and yes - I'm as guilty as anyone! (How did you get on with Patrick Lancaster, by the way? He has disappeared over the last four or five days. Gonzalo Lira had a run-in with the Ukrainian Secret Police, but has emerged after a week somewhat chastened but relatively unharmed.)
    1
  16862. He had little choice. It was either that of face total humiliation and the loss of billions of dollars a year in income.
    1
  16863. He had little choice in the end.
    1
  16864.  @ostevoostevo1592  But he had little choice, really.
    1
  16865.  @petertomsic8082  It is Ukraine's border which is in dispute. There is good case to be made for Crimea and Eastern Ukraine not really being part of Ukraine, other than on a map. The maps are now being redrawn. They are only 30 years old, anyway.
    1
  16866.  @philipmain5701  Huh?
    1
  16867.  @stephenhill545  It isn't. But trying to take over Eastern Ukraine's multi-trillion mineral extraction industry is.
    1
  16868.  @fainitesbarley2245  They haven't, but they have attempted to undermine pro-Russian governments in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, which Russia regards as being almost as threatening as military invasion.
    1
  16869.  @fainitesbarley2245  The Russian Federation is very different to the Russia of Soviet days. It just doesn't suit America's warmongers to accept this.
    1
  16870. Martin O'Brien CLIMATE CHANGE KILLED MY PARROT!!!!!
    1
  16871.  @mikewheeler3994  That was before nukes entered the equation.
    1
  16872.  @NO-CASH478  Can't beat it.
    1
  16873. Omelettes? Eggs?
    1
  16874.  @jxhensley2243  Russians don't need an excuse to drink.
    1
  16875. Russia
    1
  16876. And Britain is looking for one now.
    1
  16877. Way to go! Self-righteous narcissists need severe and visible punishment. Personally I'm all in favour of bringing back the stocks - set up at the site of vandalised statues.
    1
  16878.  Michael o'donnell  It was of its time. We have now proceeded beyond it. Resurrecting its obvious moral failings in a modern context is simply a Marxist trick to attempt to create an oppressed underclass.
    1
  16879. But she ain't that black. Trump has the black vote because he's against authority.
    1
  16880. AndresGarciaMovies All the Democrats' schemes seem like this. You wait for their strategy to become clear - and nothing happens, except they seem even more stupid and deluded than before. Weird.
    1
  16881. Sky Aus gives the fuller picture. It's opinions (quite rightly) come down on the side of truth and justice but it does not pretend that other views do not exist. The channels you mention are also great but run into the danger of becoming mere propaganda outlets.
    1
  16882.  @spineshrine2966  Do something about that cough. { You might have Covid 19.
    1
  16883. The new YouTube algorithm appears to have been programmed by a team of mad, woke schoolchildren. In addition, if it becomes suspicious of a comment it seems to send it up to some other agency of arbitration, which is apparently a real, live mad woke schoolchild.
    1
  16884. There is no Republican party. There is no Democrat party. There is just the Uniparty of crooks and grovellers, sharing out the goodies. America's only hope lies with the MAGA movement and the freedom caucus, which brilliantly used the past few days to gain at least some advances on the road back to true democracy.
    1
  16885. At the moment the infection rate is roughly 20,000 a day for the unvaccinated, 6,000 a day for those with one shot and 2,000 a day for those with two. Make of this what you will.
    1
  16886.  @darrenrooke  These figures come from the evidence-based medicine site ZOE. I am sure they are accurate. The present case-to-death ratio is a fraction of what it was at the start of the second wave. For the week ending September 21, 44,089 confirmed cases were recorded. Three weeks later on October 12, 819 deaths had been recorded in the previous week. On June7, 46,825 confirmed cases were recorded. Three weeks later on June 28, 118 deaths had been recorded in the previous week.
    1
  16887. Isn't it odd how it's the Left which is obsessed with racial groupings? To sensible people - people are people and that's that.
    1
  16888.  Carl Stone  Wrong on every count. In terms of deaths to population the Hong Kong Flu of 1968/69 killed as many as covid - but is was much, much worse since many of them were children and young people whose lives were cut short. Your second sentence makes no sense at all.
    1
  16889.  Carl Stone  No more than anyone else. No more than you, I bet.
    1
  16890. Firstly it wasn't a coup attempt. It was just a demonstration which went a bit bottoms-up when a few hotheads got out of control. To think otherwise really IS a conspiracy theory! Another interesting fact is that 39% of all Americans believe the election was fixed- including 17% of Democrats.
    1
  16891.  @patchso  But you are condemned by your own definition! What evidence is there that madcap venture had any such intention? God, there are so many deluded brainwashed buffoons in this comments stream it makes me despair for the future of the human race. I think you must all be playing too many computer games.
    1
  16892.  @pastyman001  I gave up believing much of what the MSM says long, long ago.
    1
  16893.  @patchso  Don't be so bloody daft.
    1
  16894. The slaves of Mammon have but one God.
    1
  16895.  @perkinscrane  You are misinformed. The idea that Putin wants to reunite Russia and Ukraine is incorrect. All he wants is to establish control of the mineral rich eastern parts of the country which were is danger of being transferred from existing Russian ownership into that of Western agencies.
    1
  16896. @ I don't believe for a moment that Putin wants re-unification. He has made it quite clear that all he wants is for those eastern parts of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine to be returned to Russia. They have substantial Russian populations and much of the industry there is in Russian ownership, and always has been.
    1
  16897. @ Does Putin want re-unification? The evidence seems to point to him merely wanting to regain control of the eastern parts of the former SSR of Ukraine which have substantial Russian populations and close economic ties with Russia.
    1
  16898. @ I see no evidence that Putin has any wish for re-unification, much less to recreate the Russian Empire. He is merely protecting his country's existing interests.
    1
  16899.  @perkinscrane  On the contrary, Putin has been able to accept it - however regretfully. I suggest you read the essay he wrote shortly before the invasion which makes his position entirely clear. The truth behind the catastrophic war in Ukraine is that the Western powers - notably America - have refused to accept the independence of the Russian Federation and have consistently attempted to both diminish it and to take over many of its resources. In Eastern Ukraine, for example, there are trillions and trillions of dollarsworth of minerals. Russia has mined these resources for centuries and Russian companies still own many of the mines and the steelmaking industries which have sprung up around them. The prospect of the new Ukrainian state nationalising these resources - and then selling them off to Western agencies -is what has largely persuaded Putin into the grim necessity of war. It has nothing whatsoever to do with some romantic notion of re-creating a Russian empire.
    1
  16900. @ Of course Putin accepts it. You should read the essay he wrote about the subject shortly before the invasion. The idea that he wants to re-create the Russian empire is just silly propaganda designed to keep silly people behind what is basically a Western attempt to take over Russian resources in Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  16901.  @perkinscrane  He isn't. He is merely trying to ensure that the mineral-rich eastern part of Ukraine remains under Russian control.
    1
  16902. @ I like your reference to Shango. Vladimir Vladimirovich would be flattered, I'm sure. I don't really see your analogy about the North Sea oil fields though. The mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine were developed by Russia, using Russia labour and Russian capital, and continued to be largely owned by Russian companies even after Ukrainian independence. Ukraine's contribution has merely been somewhat half-hearted attempts to nationalise them, in order to flog them off to foreigners.
    1
  16903. No point. All the bribes are well-concealed.
    1
  16904. She should also be black or brown, homosexual and disabled in some way. That would work.
    1
  16905. Another example of the enormous benefits of gently warming atmospheric carbon trickling into the ocean.
    1
  16906.  @Jc-ms5vv  Just rejected the " research" of economic-based pseudo science. The world is getting warmer, due to a complexity of factors. In the long run, unless something occurs to stop it, the human race will become extinct. In the meantime, increased carbon levels will promote growth of vegetable matter, as well as micro-organisms in the ocean.
    1
  16907. Just more lefty cancel culture, no matter how you try to dress it up..
    1
  16908. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD9YmiGVEkA&t=427s
    1
  16909. It exists to make the world safe for it.
    1
  16910.  @tokenetta8070  Is it not possible though that teachers who have done this course might not attempt to inculcate its precepts into young and vulnerable minds?
    1
  16911.  @toddmorningstar4206  His body was working pretty quick then, since had only just swallowed his stash. The causes of his cardiopulmonary arrest were several, as is usually the case. The fact of his existing heart condition is probably the most significant but the rapid ingestion of fentanyl and methamphetamine plus being knelt on didn't help. The removal of any one of these contributing causes would almost certainly have resulted in his survival.
    1
  16912.  @shamanahaboolist  Prior and recently - unless of course the chewed up remnants of speedballs in the back of the police car were planted there. Seems unlikely.
    1
  16913.  @shamanahaboolist  Sorry, I'm not up on the jargon. Anyhow it's impossible to think how the remains of these drugs -with Floyd's DNA on them - could have been put in the back seat of the patrol car by Chauvin.
    1
  16914.  @shamanahaboolist  Sure .It's possible that a cop may have got hold of the appropriate drugs and somehow managed to mix them up with Floyd's saliva he got from somewhere and smear them on the back seat of the patrol car. It would have shown considerable foresight though. Also part of the video seems to show Floyd chewing on something. It's got to be the most likely explanation that he was trying to swallow his stash. He was apparently so into his medicine he would be unlikely to go anywhere without some being to hand.
    1
  16915.  @musicfanIV  I daresay laws differ in different countries and even in different US states. A police officer has rights to exercise force though, which a civilian does not other than in totally exceptional circumstances. This eggshell skull rule surely ought only apply when the initial force is being applied illegally. I agree with your last paragraph entirely, but it was a difficult situation. Chauvin may well have snapped in some way. Floyd really was a thoroughly troublesome person I think. A huge man, but seemingly childlike in many ways.
    1
  16916.  @musicfanIV  And that's the key issue on the murder charges. As for manslaughter.....even that is looking dubious, which of course should be enough for dismissal really.
    1
  16917.  @Hate4heweak  One can only guess. There are a number of possible explanations, only some of which imply murderous intent. Others include panic, dismissal of the opinion or even not registering it fully. There is no proof of any intent to kill in this case and even manslaughter due to negligence is shaky, due to the victim's pre-existing conditions. Chauvin could well have murdered him, or been entirely indifferent to whether he died or not, but neither of these have been proved beyond reasonable doubt I think. Having said that, no verdict would shock me particularly, given the circumstances.
    1
  16918.  @Hate4heweak  If ever there was a time for a measured response this is it! I hear what you're saying - but who knows what was going through Chauvin's mind? He had a weird look in his eyes -but that's no evidence in a court of law. I think he cracked. He'd had enough. He seemed to be in a kind of coma, really. Perhaps at that point he DID realise what he had done and was trying to find in his mind ways of dealing with it. That's the trouble. Unless we can get inside Chauvin's mind for those nine minutes we will never know the truth. And we can't.
    1
  16919.  @WHS_reviews  Got you rattled, haven't I?
    1
  16920.  @christophersutcliffe9869  I suggest you look at a map.
    1
  16921.  @jamescorneliustaylor6997  I have to disagree. My view is that the virus wins all round. It does what it has to do through sheer force of numbers and our interventions do little more than delay the inevitable. It does not stop until it has reached all those who are non-immune - or at least until we are at a stage where the chances of an infected person coming in contact with a non-immune person are negligible. High death rates are the result of success in previous years in keeping flu deaths down. This has led to the "dry tinder" effect where there is a residue of frail and elderly people who have escaped respiratory failure in previous flu seasons but who had no resistance to Covid 19. As to herd immunity, it seems that between 40% and 80% of the population have T cell immunity due to resistance to other covids, of which there are many. Some studies suggest that in the UK the figure is toward the higher end. This could mean that we may need as little as 26% new immunity for Covid 19 to become just another of the covid infections which afflict us in the autumn and winter. That is what appears to be happening right now.
    1
  16922. @Cliv Ings The countries are very different. The dry tinder in Sweden was very high, with a large number of people having survived previous flu seasons and most of the deaths have been concentrated in its largest and most overcrowded cities. And there is that matter of which we must not speak -deaths among immigrants from southerly climes. At the start of the pandemic Somali born Swedes were dying at five times the rate of natives. Rather than compare Sweden with its smaller neighbours we should compare it with the UK and the deaths per million are very similar.
    1
  16923. @Cliv IngsSo many factors enter into a country's performance. Geographic proximity is not all that relevant. As to age, Sweden has an intensively protective attitude towards the elderly following flu pandemic disasters in the past. A huge proportion of the Swedish Covid 19 deaths were of people over 90, let alone 65. Dark-skinned people living in temperate climes are known to die at significantly higher levels with Covid 19, even when social factors are taken into consideration. Lack of vitamin D is thought to be the probable reason. In the last analysis, and as harsh as may sound, the vast majority of those who have died have been elderly people with severe co-morbidities. Sacrificing freedoms and economic stability simply in order to give them a year or two more of life is not a sound policy.
    1
  16924. Odd how it's the nuttiest Jews who support the nuttiest Muslims.
    1
  16925. They either know lots of things we don't know or - much more likely - the Western world is run by fools each pursuing a dangerous individual agenda.
    1
  16926.  @Paul__108__  The situation is a great deal more complicated than that. Instead of wriggling and wriggling to try to fix Trump through manipulation of the law, why don't you people have the guts to fight him manfully, through an exchange of ideas and opinions?
    1
  16927.  @jamesallen4050  It's just that it seems so unlikely. I wish we could have more details, that's all.
    1
  16928. I have a plan for Britain to take back the Republic of Ireland along much the same lines.
    1
  16929. Let's face it, the Ukrainians are occupying a hole on the ground. The Special Military Operation is over. The real war has begun.
    1
  16930. Actually the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of covid is questioned in many European countries. A recent study by the European CDC found them to be of very little use. It's the enormous fuss you make over the issue which amuses us.
    1
  16931.  @runnergo1398  Masks are effective ( to a certain extent) in preventing relatively large organisms such as bacteria in entering wounds etc, but are of very little use in preventing very much smaller viruses from entering into the human body via aerosols.
    1
  16932.  @qjtvaddict  Wot?
    1
  16933. But it's now deeper and the mudflats and mines are no longer a threat.
    1
  16934.  @aleph8888  So what? the guarantee on your washing machine ran out. Live with it.
    1
  16935.  VINLAND_777  No treaty lasts forever. Signature on documents are no match for situations on the ground. The documents in which you set such faith are irrelevant to the present situation.
    1
  16936. I find it easier to believe in child molesting Satanists infiltrating the corridors of power than I do in cow farts setting the world on fire.
    1
  16937. Dr Pavlov says: "Have a biscuit!"
    1
  16938.  Stephen Martin  https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
    1
  16939.  Stephen Martin  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIaul0U83d0&list=WL&index=17
    1
  16940.  @gadaffi1000  I'm sorry, but I fail to see the connection. Are you suggesting that black and Hispanic people are inherently incestuous?
    1
  16941.  @LukVik  Whether he cares about the oppressed or not, those who are oppressed will sympathise with the way in which he has been victimised. (Is there actually a tradition for MAGA supporters to marry their close cousins? I thought that was more of a Muslim thing - or something prevalent in isolated communities where there ain't much choice.)
    1
  16942.  @rahimmajid647  Why not though? He's merely behaving as they themselves would behave if they happened to have been born into great wealth. The fact that he's getting shafted by the establishment - as the oppressed have been all their lives - just adds to the sense of fellow-feeling. Trump is actually a working-class hero.
    1
  16943.  @Westwoodchronic  By being the victim of a corrupt legal system.
    1
  16944.  @LukVik  He's been stitched up like a kipper. (I'm English. It's a phrase we have. Look it up.)
    1
  16945.  @Femfit123  At the very, very best the entirely corrupt system bagged a small-time crook on absurd charges while the bad guys are laughing all the way to the bank as a result.
    1
  16946. It's not going to make much difference either way. Even if people vote for Trump because they sympathise with his persecution (which many will), he will not be allowed to win under any circumstances. All this verdict will do is give the Demorats an excuse for winning against all the odds.
    1
  16947. @ It's a true statement, whoever posted it. I'm often accused of being a bot, and I know I'm not . Maybe they don't even exist. It's a sign of extreme intellectual weakness to believe that anyone who has a different view to yourself is somehow corrupt or inhuman.
    1
  16948. People have quite suddenly realised that in teaching the Tories a lesson they have let a wolf into the fold. This government is not a Labour government, it is a globalist government which has come to power through false pretences. It MUST be got rid of, and as soon as possible. One can only hope that genuine Labour party supporters, including even newly-elected MPs, will come to realise what they have done and have the courage to make redress.
    1
  16949. Of all the insane blunders committed by this absurd government in its brief period of office, this is the most stupid and dangerous.
    1
  16950. I gather Hansen is now touring Canada wearing a cowboy hat and touting a credit card scheme for buying carbon offsets. Make no mistake - the cap and trade scam is at the back of all this and corrupt, crazy Canada is leading the way.
    1
  16951. I think people are confused as to exactly what Trump wants. He's not interested in getting concessions for "poor little Ukraine." . That was the schtick of previous administrations. What Trump wants is a deal in which the US and Russia can divvy up the immense mineral wealth of Ukraine to their mutual advantage.
    1
  16952. So much better for our young people to have useful jobs, such as diversity co-ordinators and lecturers in dance studies.
    1
  16953. It is clear that Russia's air attacks are aimed exclusively at legitimate miitary targets. This glib conman has fooled us for long enough. He is a mere mouthpiece for US imperial smbitions and no peace is possible in Ukraine as long as he remains in power.
    1
  16954.  @davidhooper1767  Islamification is the declared objective of Islam to eventually rule all countries to which it is introduced. It is taking place in Britain which will be a Muslim country within three or four generations unless immediate steps are taken to prevent it. (What do you mean "obtuse"?)
    1
  16955.  @adifor  Not dissimilar, but at least Christianity has been tempered by reason and is now more or less non-political. Islam, on the other hand, has a clear and continued agenda of suppressing all opposition. It wants you body and soul.
    1
  16956.  @davidhooper1767  The Enlightenment has passed it by.
    1
  16957.  @davidhooper1767  Islam denies all other religions where it cannot absorb them. This is why multi-culturalism can never work.
    1
  16958.  @davidhooper1767  TR is not a bigot. He has an entirely reasonable and well-argued case to present, based upon personal experience and detailed research.
    1
  16959.  @hulldanfan  There is neither the time nor the space to break down the allegations. He is no angel. He is a working-class tough. But if you read the things he writes and watch his videos you will see there a highly intelligent and totally viable analysis of the crisis facing this country today.
    1
  16960. How on earth did anyone get the idea that Putin wanted to recreate the Russian Empire? All his writings I have read make it very clear that he believes such a thing is an impossible romantic dream.
    1
  16961.  @julianshepherd2038  They've got an excuse!
    1
  16962. Kenny Byrne I'm sorry Sir. That's NOT the right answer,
    1
  16963. Given that the long-term effects of the vaccine are not known, giving them to young people who don't need them seems an act of folly.
    1
  16964.  @syriuszb8611  It's a hard decision. There are some legitimate concerns the most recent being the unexpected build up of lipids in the ovaries and bone marrow. Currently around 1% of people below thirty are experiencing debilitating effects from covid three months after infection. And you're quite right, that 100 to one chance has to be balanced against the unknown odds of unknown consequences some time in the future. For children though, who never die from covid (in the statistical sense) and and do not experience long covid, and whose bodies are still developing vaccinations have got to be a non-starter in my opinion.
    1
  16965. The New World Order is very real. It is the declared strategy of the World Economic Forum which is run by billionaires and whose website quite unashamedly reveals its plans for the future of mankind.
    1
  16966. NATO is a dead duck. There is no Russian threat to justify its existence. The threat which NATO was created to defend against was international Communism, not Russia itself. The Russian Federation has no expansionist plans whatsoever. It merely wishes to defend its existing interests. International Communism has been replaced as the major threat to Western civilisation and values. While spending billions on needless weaponry to defend against a threat which isn't there, further billions are being spent on welcoming the soldiers of this creed to our shores.
    1
  16967. Putin is good at what he does. Which is being a strong and patriotic leader, unafraid to take difficult decisions.
    1
  16968.    And near full employment till the Kung Flu hit.
    1
  16969.  mi channnal  He IS the President! Having a good stand-up act is a bonus.
    1
  16970.  @drew6857  Well I laughed. And he didn't kill all those people - however many they were - the virus did. Dealing with the virus is the responsibility of individual states anyway, not the federal government.
    1
  16971. Crawleth the bootlicker, more.
    1
  16972. A lie. RT paid him for a couple of appearances - why would the Russian State give him half a million? Grow up.
    1
  16973. Well, America's not going to take part, so Germany won't take part, so probably no-one else will take part - possibly apart from the idiot Prime Minister of Britain.
    1
  16974. Causes? Untrammelled mass immigration. Covid hysteria. Top-heavy management. Lack of financial supervision.
    1
  16975.  @maureennewman905  He and other greedy American warmongers started it. They can make some sort of amends by finishing it - even though it's only because the investment isn't paying off.
    1
  16976.  @barrywood7322  They needn't. Putin only wants Crimea and Donbass, where the majority of those 80 million live.
    1
  16977.  @Blonde_Somnambulist  America started this war. America controls the Ukrainian militarily. Zelensky is America's puppet. Your homely analogy is therefore meaningless.
    1
  16978.  @barrywood7322  Are you trying to be sarcastic?
    1
  16979. The population is almost entirely Russian Does ethnic cleansing form part of your masterplan?
    1
  16980. There was a time when Roman Catholics were barred from public life because of the danger that their loyalties could be to the Pope rather than to their country. We are now in a similar situation with Muslims, with jihad replacing the Pope as a potential source of treason.
    1
  16981.  @BigHenFor  What's normal? Unless this disease becomes anything more than just another seasonal pain in the arse we can put it behind us - although hopefully learning from the many mistakes which have been made.
    1
  16982.  @joesod  Can it REALLY outspend Russia? And does it REALLY want to?
    1
  16983.  @anthonyhulse1248  Or even want to at this stage.
    1
  16984. I just really, really like the idea of a black, woman, Conservative Prime Minister. I don't know why - I just do, that's all.
    1
  16985.  @stephjsinclair  Exactly!
    1
  16986. keir farnum I am not a troglodyte. I do not live in a cave. I live at Wickham House Residential Home, except when I stay with my grandfather,which is where I am at present. I always endeavour to try hard in everything I do.
    1
  16987.  Ho Too  Sorry. But you gotta share!
    1
  16988.  @Mark-Haddow  Any more than you can prove yourself right.
    1
  16989.  @alana8863  The bleach thing is a total misunderstanding, and as time goes on it becomes clearer and clearer that many of the measures taken to restrict the disease have, in fact, added to the negative effects.
    1
  16990.  @FragwellFam  They can't. But then again no treaty lasts forever.
    1
  16991.  @bonnie7898  It seldom if ever happens that way in real life - especially if treaties have been constructed with objectives other than to ensure continued peace.. The Minsk Treaties are a good example. They were designed to lull Russia into believing that Ukraine would find ways of granting regional autonomy to the disputed Eastern territories. Instead they were used to buy time to allow NATO to rebuild Ukraine's army.
    1
  16992.  @bonnie7898  There can , I think, be little doubt that time to rebuild the army was the intention. Billions of dollars were spent by NATO to make it so. America has been adept at overseeing the writing of treaties which achieve political and commercial objectives while appearing to merely bring peace. It was a skill learned in the very early days when it was used to aid the genocide of native Americans. Setting one tribe against another, and then coming along with a peace treaty which is so flawed it cannot help but be broken is part of the technique. The disputed territories are historically Russian and inhabited by a large proportion of native Russians, imported to work the mines and factories since the native Tatars of the region were disinclined to do so. These areas were gradually included in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for purely administrative reasons, and it was a great mistake for the boundaries of the SSR to have automatically become the boundaries of the new country of Ukraine. (Russian troops were largely withdrawn incidentally - but replaced by mercenaries. This is how the Wagner Group came into being.) Ukraine, on the other hand, took no steps to pave the way for regional autonomy which was clearly the main objective of the accords. Minsk was another flawed treaty, and deliberately flawed in order to achieve a political objective. I think the term "sovereign country" is one which needs clearer definition. A country doesn't become sovereign because an Empire says it is, and draws lines on a map saying so. Ukraine is not a sovereign country in real historical terms. I agree that Ukraine should have been allowed to sort the problems out, and they were well on their way to being sorted out in proposals drawn up in Istanbul. Something went wrong though, following a visit to Zelensky by Britain's Boris Johnson. One can only imagine that he expressed NATO's concerns at the deal and that Zelensky listened.
    1
  16993.  @hgbnkbggj2915  Er, the South African health authorities. Don't you watch the news?
    1
  16994.  @hgbnkbggj2915  I'm just trying hard to be optimistic I suppose! Sorry if I was a bit snappy in my last post, by the way.
    1
  16995. Has it though?
    1
  16996. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
    1
  16997. Tell better lies?
    1
  16998. Like much of Russia's strategy the move on Kharkiv seems multi-layered. At the very least they are drawing Ukrainian forces away from the southern front, where the real war is taking place. If they do take the city (and this is not impossible) it will expose Ukraine's corruption and weakness, as well as the fact that many Ukrainians of Russian descent resent the Kiev regime.
    1
  16999. George Henry Moore Your obsession with faeces is somewhat disturbing.
    1
  17000. George Henry Moore There you go again. I'm really getting quite worried about you.
    1
  17001. Mister Physics I don't know what books you read - but a dictionary is clearly not one of them.
    1
  17002. AWResistance I too wonder about that. He is known to be a good delegator and he may just have asked the British science establishment to tick the box. There are other possible explanations of course...
    1
  17003. Marvin I was thinking more in terms of useful hedge fund managers.
    1
  17004.  @mayamelagia  I don't think it makes much difference in this instance!
    1
  17005. @ This doesn't seem likely. In any case, as the covid epidemic showed, these agencies seem often more of a hinderance than a help.
    1
  17006. @ I think he possibly has more practical methods in mind than the mere exercise of will.
    1
  17007. @ We shall have to see. Forcing down grocery prices is a key part of Trump's platform and there are various ways in which it can be achieved -predominant among which will be forgetting all this net zero nonsense and reducing energy costs through increased reliance on fossil fuels.
    1
  17008.  @doccarter5283  I'm sure I must have mentioned the 70 hours or so of evidence presented to recent state senate hearings, haven't I? Here are a couple of examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  17009. This deluded, conceited, egotistical fool must never be allowed anywhere near the seat of government ever, ever again.
    1
  17010. He's not banning them though, is he?He's just saying don't trust them. And quite right too
    1
  17011.  @christopherg2347  The same applies in the other direction, surely? And no-one in contemporary history has been subjected to so many lies and so much vilification as Donald Trump.
    1
  17012.  @crispincoque  Truth is eternal.
    1
  17013. Freedom IS chaos, as often as not.
    1
  17014. M R Russia, along with the US, should and could become Britain's greatest allies in the future. In my house PC nonsense means sanctimonious bullshit, since you ask.
    1
  17015. California Dreamin Because he knows he wouldn't get in. Pragmatic, see? Anyhow who wants to be a humble MP when you can run things from the back seat?
    1
  17016. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    1
  17017. The next one's in a fortnight. He'll be out and about and spitting fire and fury by then.
    1
  17018.  @joshuacampbell1625  What about wanting your country to be an imperial asset of America?
    1
  17019. Farage is entirely right. We have been conned into believing this war is the result of Putin being some kind of demented dictator when it is, in fact, the result of greedy Westerners trying to muscle in on Ukraine's vast mineral resources. We are the bad guys here.
    1
  17020.  @salome5055  He didn't SAY that. If your postal vote hasn't registered, you haven't voted, right? So you go and vote in person. Simple enough for you?
    1
  17021.  @mickmaphari6606  Once again he never said any such thing. It was a total lie backed by cleverly edited footage. It was the lying media who were responsible for subsequent illnesses, not Trump. As in this case, look beyond the headlines and see what was actually SAID!
    1
  17022.  @salome5055  You are obviously an even bigger idiot than I took you for. Please try to concentrate. If you have voted by post and your vote has not registered, then your vote has not been counted and therefore you have not voted. Are you with me so far? To find out if your postal vote has been counted you can check on line, or you can go to the polling station. In both cases there will be records of whether or not your postal vote has been registered. If it has not been registered, then you have not voted. For the sake of clarity I will state this in capital letters: IF YOUR POSTAL VOTE HAS NOT REGISTERED THEN YOU HAVE NOT CAST A VOTE Therefore, since you have the right to vote, you can vote in person at the polling station. If by any chance your postal vote turns up later then the records will show that you have voted in person and the postal vote will be discounted. The reason Trump wants voters to check is because the Democrats, who have lost all sense of morality, will be using the postal vote to cheat in the forthcoming election. I hope he has a scheme to stop false votes being cast, but what he is suggesting here will be one way of stopping Republican postal votes being spirited away.
    1
  17023.  @mickmaphari6606  If you look at the footage you will see that Trump is asking a question, not making a statement. He became confused, poor soul, because the speaker before him. a Homeland Security guy, was using military speak. This guy used the word "inject" in much the same way as I might say I'm trying to "inject" a note of sanity into the conversation. Nothing to do with sticking a needle in your arm. The HS guy also used "disinfect" in a broad sense in the way the military say they are going to "disinfect" an area occupied by the enemy. You don't see this bit in the footage of course. Trump was the victim of euphemism. He thought he'd heard from the HS guy what you think you've heard from him. He couldn't quite believe his ears. He was asking for this to be checked out. The idea of disinfectant and injection was entirely new to him at this point, Much as in the present instance the media has seized upon Trump's sometimes clumsy way of expressing himself to make it appear that he meant things which clearly he did not. Brain fodder for simpletons, in other words.
    1
  17024.  @mickmaphari6606  You still haven't quite caught up, though you might be getting close. Trump didn't want to admit he'd been wrong-footed, so he said he was being sarcastic. You could just about interpret it that way, but I think myself he was just confused. Whatever the case he never IN ANY WAY recommended such stupid behaviour as drinking or injecting bleach or disinfectant to cure Covid 19. Go back and check. You will see I am right.
    1
  17025. More cases without an equivalent increase in deaths means herd immunity. It's as though these merry folk know this instinctively.
    1
  17026.  M K  Sounds like utterly bonkers nonsense to me. Link please!
    1
  17027.  M K  A couple of dozen attested cases worldwide - and related to your original post. Immunity to a mild strain may not last which means you may get a stronger strain later on. This led to a number of scare stories, now largely discounted. Even without the actual antibodies present the body "remembers" how to recreate them if a further infection occurs. Here is a more up to date account of the current state of play. Even this may soon be outdated if current research suggesting T cell immunity may be far more prevalent than earlier thought proves to be correct. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-long-does-immunity-last-after-covid-19-what-we-know
    1
  17028.  M K  Only a few nutjobs think it doesn't exist. But a great many of us believe the government's reaction is very bizarre. Lockdowns are spreading world poverty and are responsible for far more deaths than they save. Healthy young people just don't die of this. A few may get serious complications but at this stage this seems no more prevalent than is the case with the flu.
    1
  17029.  @joblo497  The myth of lemmings following each other over a cliff to their deaths was invented by Walt Disney Studios in a fake nature documentary. There are certain similarities to the current situation I have to agree.
    1
  17030.  M K  You have my every sympathy, but lockdowns don't really work in the long run. You would almost certainly have had a bad reaction whenever you caught it - and you could have caught it at any time. The virus is always there until it runs out of victims, or at least until the chances of and infected person meeting someone who is not immune are so remote as to be negligible. Many experts are now saying that time is already at hand. We will know within a couple of months or so if they are right or not.
    1
  17031. They know Russia's going to win - and that's not going to look good for them.
    1
  17032.  @jonathanbowen3640  Until comparatively recently the idea that Ukraine and Russia were actually separate countries would have been quite incomprehensible to many people. Having said that, many of those in the Western parts of Ukraine are apparently keen to exchange Russian domination for American or EU domination - and why not? There are many tempting treats being wafted under their noses. Many of those to the East of the Dnieper, however, are not so keen on this transition and, once again, this is a totally acceptable viewpoint.
    1
  17033. I don't believe Russia even wants Ukraine - just the highly Russianised bits to the East which happen to be sitting on trillions of dollars of mineral wealth.
    1
  17034. The case will merely polarise the voters. It will, however, provide a convenient cover story for the inevitable victory of glove-puppet Biden.
    1
  17035. Careful what you wish for. There are many dissatisfied Conservative voters who might well transfer their allegiance to a right-wing party. Imagine, if you dare, an alliance between the Tories and Reform with Nigel Farage given a senior ministerial position in a coalition government.
    1
  17036.  @sirmeowthelibrarycat  You might try making the best job of winning at X before going on to Y. Socialism in its present form has a long way to go before it grabs the hearts and minds of the British people again. PR is the plaintive cry of the perpetually defeated. Look at the Social Democrats.
    1
  17037.  @northside0nation  It'll take at least until then to lay his hands on it I would imagine.
    1
  17038.  Wesley Ware  On the contrary, there is every chance that he and Nick Sandmann will end up owning CNN between them.
    1
  17039. @Rick Doran Well no. They won't have to pay out millions for slander. Sandmann has set the bar and Rittenhouse was, if anything, more defamed than he was.
    1
  17040.  @mikemlejnek4194  Only those "intelligence agencies" engaged in Western propaganda. Nobody knows for certain, of course but based on the Ukrainian units believed to have been deployed and their likely losses under constant bombardment a figure of 50,000 has been arrived at. The very fact that Ukraine has been defeated would seem to imply their losses have been greater. This is a war of attrition,after all.
    1
  17041.  @TheRuthlessEAZY  He lost 20 - by many accounts Ukraine lost 50, and of their best. The capture on Bahkmut was never the point. The entire point of this war has been to destroy Ukraine 's armed forces to such an extent that they cannot regain Crimea or prevent the total takeover of Donbass. The siege of Bakhmut has gone a long way toward achieving this and if Ukraine tries to recapture it that objective will be even closer to realisation.
    1
  17042.  @Cheese_Boi1986  Doubtful. The Ukrainians have been under constant shellfire for months and could easily have lost 50,000 over that period. And even if by some miracle the Russian losses were greater it wouldn't matter that much. The very fact that Ukraine has been evicted from a fortified position with substantial losses makes it a win for Russia.
    1
  17043.  @mikemlejnek4194  Not a staging ground- but a killing ground. Ĺatest mapping shows the Russians have recaptured the strategic heights around the city and appear to be attempting to advance at several points along the Donetsk front.
    1
  17044.  @barrywebber100  But PR would make a political opinion the sole criteria for representation. The present system is pretty fair. Power shifts from party to party according to performance and although it is true that minority parties do not get a look in, under PR having one or two right-wing or left-wing extremists in Parliament is a recipe for chaos when you think about it.
    1
  17045.  @maxwild1212  Am I? I hadn't realised.
    1
  17046.  @magnificentbastard5085  It's a close run thing, I admit; but PR is essentially a clumsier form of government than the one we have at present. As a member of the " if it ain't broke why mend it brigade" I am suspicious of the motives for change. In the present climate it might well be to Labour's advantage to alter the system but if Labour did get in and then fuck up big time (perish the thought) then such a strategy could well rebound on them. City dwellers increasingly outnumber us country mice and some of them do seem more than slightly insane. I fear the consequences of even more pink-haired climate crisis loonies having a hand in rural affairs than they do at present. Obviously the democratic process requires the electorate to be divided into sections of some sort, but to make that division down to the bone, as it were, at make those units individual persons is probably asking for trouble.
    1
  17047.  @magnificentbastard5085  Minority power? I don't think so. Survival, more like. Electing a government isn't some kind of glorified TV talent show where the winners are chosen by the amount of applause they get. It's far more serious than that. I'm afraid I have come to the conclusion that man-made global warming is a magnificent scam, no more. There is no empirical evidence, only theories and shamelessly manipulated data. It is a con trick whereby an immensely powerful elite is manipulating woolly-minded socialists and other do-gooders into supporting a strategy which will enable them to re-structure capitalism and make even more money on the way by playing the carbon futures market.
    1
  17048.  @magnificentbastard5085  Have you come across Patrick Moore's new book yet? It seems to state the case pretty clearly. You must be aware that there is a considerable body of scientific opinion which casts doubts on various aspects of AGW - and does so for purely scientific reasons. The proponents of the notion, on the other hand, have powerful geo-political reasons for doing so. The kindest interpretation is that yes, fossil fuels will run out one day and carbon scare is one very good way of achieving the transition to whatever we can come up with to replace them. Considering that not a single one of the doomladen predictions has come to pass in forty years the strategy is working very well. The psuedo-science which props AGW up is quite cunningly constructed and several generations of "climate scientists" have been well trained in how to repeat the experiments. The fact remains, however, that the world is warming entirely in accord with cyclic patterns and that the icecaps are not melting and sea levels are not rising and temperatures 1,000 years ago appear to be a degree and more higher than they are today. The only way this situation can be made to appear not to be the case is by altering data, which is done on a regular basis. In the meantime governments can increase their incomes via carbon taxes and speculators can make millions overnight by fixing the price of permissions to exceed carbon emission limits. Have you ever wondered why we always talk about NET zero emissions, by the way? What do you imagine the gross is? I like your last sentence. Your inner Stalinist is showing.
    1
  17049.  @magnificentbastard5085  Well you got me on the last one! JFK??! Really, what was the context I wonder? I see you are doing the usual trick of defaming the messenger without listening to the message. You will probably do the same about Tony Heller while ignoring the hours of proof he presents of data alteration or the historical records and newspaper reports he collates clearly showing that weather conditions were hotter and generally more severe in the 1890's and 1930's than they are today. I expect you would like to see all opposition to the climate crisis scam airbrushed out of history. I see too that you are still stuck on the myth that the fossil fuel industry is in some way opposed to the green economy. Of course it isn't. These industries are heavily involved in wind farms, solar panels and so on. It's called diversification. At climate change conferences the car parks are packed with the Jags and Mercs of oil company executives while the eco-warriors electric cars huddle in a corner. There really isn't such a thing as climate science - it was invented back in the eighties as a vehicle to push the new creed, itself resulting from decisions taken a decade or two earlier by the forerunners of today's World Economic Forum. It works very well. To be a climate scientist you just have to believe in AGW and take it from there. To believe in it without making a living out of it is just plain foolishness.
    1
  17050.  @magnificentbastard5085  As I predicted, all you can do is attempt to disparage the character of those who oppose you, rather than respond to their opinions. Skeptical Science (what an Orwellian name that is) is just another one of those establishment "fact checkers" which is designed to keep you sheepies munching grass in the meadow. It doesn't matter what you say about Tony Heller, the facts he presents are overwhelming. The graphs he shows clearly demonstrate decades of data manipulation. The newspaper cuttings demonstrate the utter failure of all climate crisis predictions, as well as the clear existence of lengthy heatwaves in the recent past. It is quite astonishingly easy to persuade large amounts of people to believe the most arrant nonsense. The techniques are well-established. It is how religions work and the climate "crisis" has become a religion. As long as the leaders of a cult are motivated enough the process is self generating. Hitler and Lenin did it and while Michael Mann isn't as bright as either of them he and his buddies are doing a fair job. (Have you read his latest by the way? It is jaw-droppingly bad.) You couldn't get today's climate scientists and their supporters to stop believing in AGW any more than you could stop medieval monks from believing in God and hell, or Germans in the 1930's from believing the Jews were the source of the nation's ills. The more insane the ideology and the more its predictions turn out to be false, the more fanatical its adherents become. These tens of thousands of climate scientists aren't making things up for money. They believe as medieval monks believed and Nazis believed, because it is what they have been taught and extensive "proofs" have been put before them. The fact that their livelihoods depend upon their loyalty does help considerably of course. The politicians also know what side their bread is buttered on and the speculators don't care either way. As long as the miracle of placing a scarcity value on permissions to exceed carbon outputs is there, they have a new currency to trade with. More than gold or the mighty dollar carbon certificates are the basis of the new order's economy and as long as gullible souls in their millions hold true to the creed they will continue to rake it the cash, while at the same time effecting total control over public behaviour.
    1
  17051.  @magnificentbastard5085  The great majority of "established" scientific theories get proved wrong at one time or another. The situation is especially grave at the moment due to the politicisation of science and problems of reproducibility and so on. Any departures from doctrine are actively discouraged. Have you ever watched a Tony Heller video at all? He cherry picks - not to deceive but to enlighten. He has the original data and shows how new "data" is introduced to make the past cooler and the present warmer. Okay, you can say that temperature data before 1980 or so is suspect because of equipment etc, but then to say the temperature now is such and such and that according to our theory the temperature back then should be so and so is just not the right way to set about things, is it? Even modern satellite data been altered because the original figures showed no warming over a ten year period. There is just so much evidence pointing to the fraud. Tens of thousands of people died of heatstroke in the 1890's and 1930's. Air-conditioning can be the sole answer to that conundrum! The Danes are stubbornly resisting the ridiculous claims about Greenland and insist that ice-core samples show it was 1.5 degrees colder a thousand years ago than it is today. I was much amused recently when a climate hysteria channel revealed that this year the cherry blossom in Tokyo came out a day earlier this year than any other year since 1408 or somesuch. Of course it did. That was the height on the Medieval Warm Period in the Pacific. A team from Switzerland has been mapping the MWP for decades and discovered that the northern hemisphere heated first and the heat was transported slowly south by deep ocean currents. Cosmic events of which we still have little understanding and the behaviour of the earth's various inner layers in relation to them are what cause changes in temperature, not farting cows and belching chimneys. Your creed is mumbo jumbo, got up to benefit the rich and misdirect the rabble. It is not science at all.
    1
  17052.  @magnificentbastard5085  But everyone "cherry picks" when presenting an argument. My point is that blatant alteration of data is another matter. And even if there is no alteration (which clearly there is) then a responsible scientific body should explain why and how the alterations have been made. They should explain why they only select one section of a graph to demonstrate global warming but when the camera pans out the picture looks very different indeed. For a commentator such as Heller there might be some excuse for such behaviour. There is no excuse for a public body to behave in this fashion. The evidence is clear. Interpretation is constantly and shamefully biased towards the climate crisis narrative. Your first paragraph applies exactly to organisations such as NASA and NOAA. I am aware of the explanations offered for the alterations and shifts of emphasis but they are generally as shallow and facile as your ridiculous explanations why tens of thousands died in lengthy heatwaves in the 1930's as opposed to the 2-700 a year who die in the much shorter and less severe heatwaves we experience at present.
    1
  17053.  @magnificentbastard5085  My balls are truly aching to realise that you are trained to recognise the symptoms of heatstroke while supervising activities at a summer camp and are thus competent to judge the effect of severe heatwaves occurring in the first part of the last century. But lets put that aside. Lets put Tony Heller aside. Lets forget the ritual whereby data is offered to the world, along with the algorithms used to interpret it, and how amazing it is that such similar results are obtained and how all the clever, well-behaved boys and girls get together afterwards and congratulate one another for making such nice cakes in cookery class. This guy puts it better than I can (Go to next post. Big Brother YouTube has the nasty habit of deleting heresies these days.)
    1
  17054.  @magnificentbastard5085  Sure enough the thought police have deleted my link to Dr Motaka Nakamura's book "The Global Warming Hypothesis is an Unproven Hypothesis" How does it feel to know that you are on the same side as a bunch of fascists? Dr Nakamura is one of the many heretics who have been disgusted by the work they were expected to do. He has been a climate specialist for 25 years, working in various prestigious institutes and universities. In this extract he explains the position very clearly: Nakamura writes: “The global surface mean temperature-change data no longer have any scientific value and are nothing except a propaganda tool to the public.” The climate models are useful tools for academic studies, he admits. However: “The models just become useless pieces of junk or worse (as they can produce gravely misleading output) when they are used for climate forecasting.” Climate forecasting is simply not possible, Nakamura concludes, and the impacts of human-caused CO2 can’t be judged with the knowledge and technology we currently possess. The models grossly simplify the way the climate works. As well as ignoring the sun, they also drastically simplify large and small-scale ocean dynamics, aerosol changes that generate clouds (cloud cover is one of the key factors determining whether we have global warming or global cooling), the drivers of ice-albedo: “Without a reasonably accurate representation, it is impossible to make any meaningful predictions of climate variations and changes in the middle and high latitudes and thus the entire planet,” and water vapor. The climate forecasts also suffer from arbitrary “tunings” of key parameters that are simply not understood. NAKAMURA ON CO2 He writes: “The real or realistically-simulated climate system is far more complex than an absurdly simple system simulated by the toys that have been used for climate predictions to date, and will be insurmountably difficult for those naive climate researchers who have zero or very limited understanding of geophysical fluid dynamics. The dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans are absolutely critical facets of the climate system if one hopes to ever make any meaningful prediction of climate variation.” Solar input is modeled as a “never changing quantity,” which is absurd. “It has only been several decades since we acquired an ability to accurately monitor the incoming solar energy. In these several decades only, it has varied by one to two watts per square meter. Is it reasonable to assume that it will not vary any more than that in the next hundred years or longer for forecasting purposes? I would say, No.” SOLAR FORCING Solar output isn’t constant, IPCC. And the modulation of cloud nucleation is a key consequence. During solar minima, like the one we’re entering now, the sun’s magnetic field weakens and the outward pressure of the solar wind decreases. This allows more Cosmic Rays from deep space to penetrate our planet’s atmosphere. These CRs have been found to nucleate clouds (Svensmark et al). And clouds are a crucial player earth’s climate.
    1
  17055.  @magnificentbastard5085  Once again you are defaming the messenger while ignoring the message. Are the only people who impress you the ones who re-iterate the approved doctrines in paper after paper? YouTube now regularly deletes links to information which goes against those same approved doctrines - and indeed approved doctrines in other areas. We are slipping slowly but surely into totalitarianism. I think your summer camp is very forward thinking in extending its activities into the spring and autumn, by the way.
    1
  17056.  @magnificentbastard5085  Since you are so interested in scientific qualifications I thought you might like to check some of these guys out when you have a day or two to spare from the camp. Or isn't it open yet? SCIENTISTS ARGUING THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS PRIMARILY CAUSED BY NATURAL PROCESSES — scientists that have called the observed warming attributable to natural causes, i.e. the high solar activity witnessed over the last few decades. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, astrophysicist at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[81][82] Sallie Baliunas, retired astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.[83][84][85] Timothy Ball, historical climatologist, and retired professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg.[86][87][88] Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.[89][90] Vincent Courtillot, geophysicist, member of the French Academy of Sciences.[91] Doug Edmeades, PhD., soil scientist, officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.[92] David Dilley, B.S. and M.S. in meteorology, CEO Global Weather Oscillations Inc. [198][199] David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester.[93][94] Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University.[95][96] William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy; emeritus professor, Princeton University.[39][97] Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, Theoretical Physicist and Researcher, Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.[98] Ole Humlum, professor of geology at the University of Oslo.[99][100] Wibjörn Karlén, professor emeritus of geography and geology at the University of Stockholm.[101][102] William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology.[103][104] David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware.[105][106] Anthony Lupo, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri.[107][108] Jennifer Marohasy, an Australian biologist, former director of the Australian Environment Foundation.[109][110] Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.[111][112] Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.[113][114] Ian Plimer, professor emeritus of mining geology, the University of Adelaide.[115][116] Arthur B. Robinson, American politician, biochemist and former faculty member at the University of California, San Diego.[117][118] Murry Salby, atmospheric scientist, former professor at Macquarie University and University of Colorado.[119][120] Nicola Scafetta, research scientist in the physics department at Duke University.[121][122][123] Tom Segalstad, geologist; associate professor at University of Oslo.[124][125] Nedialko (Ned) T. Nikolov, PhD in Ecological Modelling, physical scientist for the U.S. Forest Service [200] Nir Shaviv, professor of physics focusing on astrophysics and climate science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[126][127] Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.[128][129][130][131] Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.[132][133] Roy Spencer, meteorologist; principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville.[134][135] Henrik Svensmark, physicist, Danish National Space Center.[136][137] George H. Taylor, retired director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University.[138][139] Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, professor emeritus from University of Ottawa.[140][141] SCIENTISTS PUBLICLY QUESTIONING THE ACCURACY OF IPCC CLIMATE MODELS Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, former Greenpeace member. [203][204] David Bellamy, botanist.[19][20][21][22] Lennart Bengtsson, meteorologist, Reading University.[23][24] Piers Corbyn, owner of the business WeatherAction which makes weather forecasts.[25][26] Susan Crockford, Zoologist, adjunct professor in Anthropology at the University of Victoria. [27][28][29] Judith Curry, professor and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.[30][31][32][33] Joseph D’Aleo, past Chairman American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, former Professor of Meteorology, Lyndon State College.[34][35][36][37] Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of the School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study; Fellow of the Royal Society.[38][39] Ivar Giaever, Norwegian–American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics (1973).[40] Dr. Kiminori Itoh, Ph.D., Industrial Chemistry, University of Tokyo [202] Steven E. Koonin, theoretical physicist and director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.[41][42] Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan emeritus professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences.[39][43][44][45] Craig Loehle, ecologist and chief scientist at the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement.[46][47][48][49][50][51][52] Sebastian Lüning, geologist, famed for his book The Cold Sun. [201] Ross McKitrick, professor of economics and CBE chair in sustainable commerce, University of Guelph.[53][54] Patrick Moore, former president of Greenpeace Canada.[55][56][57] Nils-Axel Mörner, retired head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, former chairman of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999–2003).[58][59] Garth Paltridge, retired chief research scientist, CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and retired director of the Institute of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre, visiting fellow Australian National University.[60][61] Roger A. Pielke, Jr., professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[62][63] Denis Rancourt, former professor of physics at University of Ottawa, research scientist in condensed matter physics, and in environmental and soil science.[64][65][66][67] Harrison Schmitt, geologist, Apollo 17 astronaut, former US senator.[68][69] Peter Stilbs, professor of physical chemistry at Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.[70][71] Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London.[72][73] Hendrik Tennekes, retired director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.[74][75] Anastasios Tsonis, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.[76][77] Fritz Vahrenholt, German politician and energy executive with a doctorate in chemistry.[78][79] Valentina Zharkova, professor in mathematics at Northumbria University. BSc/MSc in applied mathematics and astronomy, a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
    1
  17057.  @magnificentbastard5085  You really ought to get of this habit of shooting the messenger before reading the message. Do you not realise that you are so blinkered by the repressive scientific conventions that exist today that you have become incapable of even listening to non-consensual ideas, let alone being capable of rebutting them? This is how autocracy begins. It is how cults work. Your parameters are defined for you and any suggestion of stepping beyond them makes you fearful and aggressive. Groupthink, cognitive bias and loss aversion suppress the desire for truth which is the essence of science. Just because scientists churn out papers re-iterating the same positions over and over again and keep their jobs and their grants as a result doesn't make them right. Scientists have a duty to consider alternative ideas if they are cogently presented. Peer review has become meaningless; the constant failure to repeat experimental results unless pre-processed data and procedures are followed to the letter has turned so called "climate science" into little more than a cookery school. This is why scientists from proper disciplines should be heard - particularly cosmologists who are appalled at climate science's utter disregard for the enormity and complexity of the solar system and the powerful and still largely uncomprehended forces which hold this organism together as it hurtles through space. Jupiter's gravitational field probably has more effect on the Earth's climate than any amount of atmospheric carbon and temperature changes can clearly be related to regular 11-year cycles of solar energy. To climate "scientists" the sun seems little more than some sort of distant lightbulb. I will add to your potential list of reading material while relaxing from your duties at the club by introducing you to Ronan Connolly, who has published many papers. You can visit him at ronanconollyscience.com. You will see that much of his more controversial work is only in preprint but there are obvious reasons for this, as there are for the fact that Dr Connolly and his father, also a published scientist, have left the sheltered halls of academia to earn their living by designing and building eco-friendly homes and other structures. More noble work that churning out papers full of the same lies and inexactitudes in my view.
    1
  17058.  @magnificentbastard5085  Sorry for sending this twice but I have deleted the link to ronan connolly science and a dot com on the end all one word I included in the other one. Perhaps I am getting paranoid but the YouTube Gestapo algorithm has a nasty habit of deleting all posts with suspect blue writing in them. You really ought to get of this habit of shooting the messenger before reading the message. Do you not realise that you are so blinkered by the repressive scientific conventions that exist today that you have become incapable of even listening to non-consensual ideas, let alone being capable of rebutting them? This is how autocracy begins. It is how cults work. Your parameters are defined for you and any suggestion of stepping beyond them makes you fearful and aggressive. Groupthink, cognitive bias and loss aversion suppress the desire for truth which is the essence of science. Just because scientists churn out papers re-iterating the same positions over and over again and keep their jobs and their grants as a result doesn't make them right. Scientists have a duty to consider alternative ideas if they are cogently presented. Peer review has become meaningless; the constant failure to repeat experimental results unless pre-processed data and procedures are followed to the letter has turned so called "climate science" into little more than a cookery school. This is why scientists from proper disciplines should be heard - particularly cosmologists who are appalled at climate science's utter disregard for the enormity and complexity of the solar system and the powerful and still largely uncomprehended forces which hold this organism together as it hurtles through space. Jupiter's gravitational field probably has more effect on the Earth's climate than any amount of atmospheric carbon and temperature changes can clearly be related to regular 11-year cycles of solar energy. To climate "scientists" the sun seems little more than some sort of distant lightbulb. I will add to your potential list of reading material while relaxing from your duties at the club by introducing you to Ronan Connolly, who has published many papers. You will see that much of his more controversial work is only in preprint but there are obvious reasons for this, as there are for the fact that Dr Connolly and his father, also a published scientist, have left the sheltered halls of academia to earn their living by designing and building eco-friendly homes and other structures. More noble work that churning out papers full of the same lies and inexactitudes in my view.
    1
  17059. We can stop this by stopping supplying arms to Ukraine. This is, after all, just another land grab by America under its usual flag of "making the world safe for democracy."
    1
  17060.  @hoover573  But the population of Crimea was at least 70% Russian before the war. Didn't you know that? And most of the rest were Tatars or Greeks.
    1
  17061.  @tomjones7184  Suez?
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  17062. G Love 64 It isn't real. You've just been brainwashed. Stop believing the lies and realise you are being manipulated. Try doing just a bit of independent research.
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  17063. G Love 64 You sound like a hysterical Nazi. Corporate greed is nothing compared to the greed of the hedge fund managers and lust for power of their unwitting allies on the left which are behind this giant scam. Science isn't truth when data is manipulated, which it clearly is in this instance. Why don't you check a few facts for yourself instead of foaming at the mouth?
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  17064. chez moi - No. I listen rather to Friends of Science, Tony Heller and other independent sources who call into question the current ideology. They put out detailed refutations of the man-made climate change scenario which are well worth taking note of. There is something very wrong happening here. We need to find out what it is. The so-called science is not being backed up by on-the-ground experience. We are being lied to. We should find out why.
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  17065.  @chkldstgee2433  Leave NATO.
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  17066.  @chkldstgee2433  Lol. And I don't do that very often. Joking aside, my sense of history tells me that the USA and the EU are going down the tubes before very long, so we might as well start thinking about whom to best align with in a new multi-polar world.
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  17067. Putin doesn't seem to be doing much with it though.
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  17068. All this will do is needlessly prolong the war, and make it cost even more in wasted human life.
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  17069.  @StreetsOfRage2  I think you fancy me.
    1
  17070.  @Stan_the_Belgian  Why would Russia want Kherson other than to protect Crimea-for which the southern side of the Dneiper is all that is needed? You and many others are playing the wrong game. Russia doesn't want Ukraine - only Donbass and Crimea. If you were any good at chess you would realise that it isn't about retaining pieces, it's about tactics.
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  17071.  @Mark-Haddow  No. It's Keeeeev.
    1
  17072. Lies and propaganda. The greatest con trick inhuman history, based on false science, brainwashing and slewed, over-dramatised presentation as typified in this report. You're either being conned or you're doing the conning. Which is it?
    1
  17073. I would rather work with Trump than grovel at the feet of the EU.
    1
  17074.  @hermanhawtrey8578  It's certainly a way of getting things done, it appears!
    1
  17075.  @davidharris5736  But if what he does benefits me, then he is working with me, right? If the other guy gets shafted, what do I care?
    1
  17076.  @rupok90  Against what? Ukraine?
    1
  17077.  @Tas17.4  It's not the ordinary working class people who support Farage and TR who are gullible. It's the half-educated university students who've swallowed the crap about multiculturalism and globalism, People who wear facemasks in their cars and support Palestine and Ukraine instead of supporting the country they live in.
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  17078. Russians will have the sense to know that this is just a cheap ploy by the CIA - which is now but a shadow of its former self. Must be all that inclusivity and levelling up.
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  17079. She's a bit colourful, but there several other doctors in the same video who have also been removed. I was lucky enough to see it all before the thought police cracked down and believe me these are very , very sane people.
    1
  17080.  @aye3678  Have you got evidence of this? It doesn't matter anyway because the other doctors who spoke out that day agreed with her completely. She is of course a pastor as well as a doctor and I gather her sermons can be rather colourful. Perhaps they have been misinterpreted by people who do not understand metaphor. In any case the way the Democrats and their allies in BLM and Antifa are behaving at the moment I'm halfway towards believing in demonic possession myself.
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  17081.  @thedudeabides5201  I didn't entirely understand the relevance of your Sagan quote. She is a trained doctor and very good at her job, it seems. The fact that she is deeply religious and follows a form of Christianity perhaps alien to many of us does not and should not affect our judgement of her medical skills. To do otherwise would seem to smack somewhat of racism, don't you think? Or religious intolerance at the very least. After all, Muslim doctors believe that Mohammed rode up into the sky on a horse with a human head and took a slice off the moon with a magic c sword. And there are very many excellent Muslim doctors about.
    1
  17082.  @molybdomancer195  Well that was some time ago before Bozo revealed his true identity!
    1
  17083. But children do not suffer greatly from covid nor do they pass it on to adults to any great degree. This is because the antibodies in their noses and throats seem to deal with it before it affects their lungs, which is where the real trouble starts. It also means that they are not expelling droplets and aerosols to infect others. Covid in children really isn't much of a problem at all. If there is a good example of the hysterical and damaging over-reaction to the disease it is the way children have been treated.
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  17084.  @trentriver  Not satellites, but customers. Europe can't survive on buying American gas and oil at three times the price of the Russian product - and why should it be expected to?
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  17085.  @trentriver  Putin has no imperialistic ambitions whatsoever. He saw what happened to the USSR. Nor no I see any evidence that any serious politician in Russia wants anything other than for the country to follow its own path, free from foreign (ie American) interference. Far from ruining Russia, Putin has brought it successfully from the horrors of communism and the chaos of its collapse to becoming a well-fed, well-organised and generally contented society.
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  17086.  @trentriver  Try some Russian YouTubers or expat Brits and Americans for a more nuanced view. Anna from Russia takes you shopping in Siberia, Sam's Russian Adventures is an English guy living in a little town over there, and there are several more. I found them very useful research, since they are totally unpropagandised. Everyone has a phone, you know, and access to the Internet. They know exactly how we live. Another good source is Real Reporter who will take you to the heart of things both in cities and in the depths of the countryside and The Ulengovs, although Russian, provides fascinating insights into peasant life in really remote areas. I would move there myself if it wasn't for all that snow! Seriously, we are sold a completely false view of life in Russia.
    1
  17087.  @trentriver  But Anna lives in Siberia! And Sam lives in a little town 200 miles from Moscow! The Ulengovs live in tents and wooden huts in the forest - with TV's and microwave ovens!! Real Reporter visits a friend in Siberia - whose chief complaint is that his YouTube channel has been demonetised! There are two farming brothers in the same village who have the same complaint! Get real!
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  17088. You can't stop something that never began. An increasing body of research shows that man-made climate change is a myth and that ALL apparent signs that it is not have been fabricated. The earth's atmosphere is thermodynamically stable and surface temperatures are the result of a combination of atmospheric pressure(if any) and distance from the sun -as is the case with all planets in the solar system. CO2 has nothing to do with it.
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  17089. The Bahkmut fortress is now rubble The Ukrainians can now lose more men taking it back.
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  17090.  Pho-King Soup  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAEhD7YlYe0
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  17091.  @ultonian63  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAEhD7YlYe0
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  17092. It's time for Islam to stop taking itself seriously. As Christianity has.
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  17093. If not being prejudiced against Trump counts as being prejudiced, then she is guilty.
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  17094. Net Zero is recipe for global disaster.
    1
  17095. Yes! He'd win thousands of votes!
    1
  17096.  @hammondpickle  Andrew Bridgen, a British MP, has presented the statistical evidence relating to one particular procedure to Parliament. Other statistical evidence is the fact that in many countries excess deaths above the five-year average are currently running at between 3% and 15%.
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  17097. Rebuild Britain and save the planet. I like the sound of that, Will it take long do you think?
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  17098. @ What free world would that be then? Seriously, it really is time the West realised that the Russian Federation is NOT the USSR and started trading with it instead of demonising it.
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  17099. @ What free world would that be, then? Seriously it's about time the West realised that the Russian Federation is NOT the USSR and started trying to form mutually beneficial relationships with it.
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  17100. @ For both.
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  17101. I hate that with a vehement hatred.
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  17102. @ Vehemently!
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  17103.  @emm_arr  How so? And how about you?
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  17104. I had no idea the situation is so bad. It was terrible when my parrot died due to Climate Change' But being a Climate Refugee must be worse than having your parrot die on you. . Bernie 2020 Yaaay!
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  17105.  @theoracle7175  Not the same crime, is it?
    1
  17106.  @Nirawen  I'd rather have a serial adulterer than a bribe-taking dementia patient who has helped start a war in which tens of thousands have died.
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  17107.  @Nirawen  He is accused of paying to conceal adultery - slightly preferable, perhaps, to say taking bribes to start a war in which tens of thousands get killed.
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  17108.  @goodday512  I don't, but it would probably be more accurate than stuff on this channel.
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  17109.  @osric1730  It is usually a mistake to use obvious similarities to come to specific conclusions.
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  17110.  @osric1730  Exactly.
    1
  17111.  @osric1730  But they did. Sorry, but I'm still trying to get my head around Bayes' Theorem. Have a little sympathy.
    1
  17112.  @TonymanCS  Was there a point?
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  17113.  @TonymanCS  And? (Is this current bombing indiscriminate though? It appears to be directed at specific targets and becomes "indiscriminate" only if the drones malfunction or if some fools shoot one down.)
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  17114.  @TonymanCS  I wouldn't disagree that demoralising the civilians is at least as important to the Russians as destroying infrastructure. Civilians are infrastructure, after all. So making them reluctant to go to work in the morning helps. These attacks are psychological warfare as much as anything. Throughout the war the Russians seem to be playing cat and mouse in the north while presumably making secure the territory they hold in the south, and where their more competent elite forces are situated. They will hunker down for the winter and I daresay the line they will choose to try to hold is currently being decided. The only real hope for a quick end to this dreadful business is for Zelensky to be overthrown, but we are a long way off from that.
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  17115.  @_MaxHeadroom_  Much as a rhinoceros resembles a hippopotamus? Chilling.
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  17116.  @_MaxHeadroom_  OK, I give in!
    1
  17117. Obvious to simpletons.
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  17118. I have known old Etonians who were the toughest, hardest and most calculatingly vicious men imaginable.
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  17119.  @TheUnatuber  Rugby? Rowing? Boxing? Cross country runs? The Eton wall game? Imagining Etonians as wimps is a mistake. Obviously they are not all bruisers, but plenty are. (In fact, as a kid I was soundly beaten in a boxing match against Eton. I had a bloody nose within two minutes and the fight was stopped.)
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  17120.  @lukeamato423 I think the figure is lower recently but it was 40,000 at the height of the war. And of course Russian troops have been in Syria long before there were any in Ukraine.
    1
  17121.  @lukeamato423  What exactly do you do for a living then?
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  17122.  @lukeamato423  Obviously you're not a political scientist then. From your use of grammar I imagine you are a US High School student, 10th grade maybe?
    1
  17123.  @rogerphelps9939  Why?
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  17124.  @jeremymanson1781  Putin is winning and Trump recognises that. Trump's task will be to grant Russia a victory, and yet make it look like a defeat. This shouldn't be too hard as long as people continue to believe that Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine, and that the country's economy is in freefall.
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  17125.  @jeremymanson1781  They respect each other, I think -as they should. Both are very clever men in their very different ways.
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  17126. This is such a load of crazy nonsense. Only a globalist fool like Starmer would believe it.
    1
  17127.  @dritemolawzbks8574  That's the one!
    1
  17128. Putin has never wanted Ukraine - only those parts of Russia which were wrongly handed over to it when the country was created. Seems likely he'll get them. He very nearly has.
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  17129. It is now impossible to doubt that the main motivation of the "experts" and the politicians is to terrify people into accepting the need to consume more and more Big Pharma products. Follow the money.
    1
  17130. You just don't get it, do you?
    1
  17131.  @markedwards9247  You are clearly very confused. Collecting the elderly in care homes was a serious error of judgement NOT a deliberate attempt to kill them off. To think otherwise is a paranoid delusion.
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  17132. Have you compared the death to case ratio though? Bit of a shock, nein?
    1
  17133.  @peterebel7899  Crudely, but reasonably, by measuring the number of people who have died in a particular week as a percentage of the number of cases recorded two weeks before; 14 days being the average period of time between the onset of symptoms and death.
    1
  17134.  @JohnSmall314  Why? Are we working out a batting average or comparing the impact of the pandemic as it stands at the moment?
    1
  17135.  @JohnSmall314  Why this absurd urge to politicize everything? I hold no brief for Boris Johnson but I cannot see how the benefit of the vaccine is being thrown away. On the contrary, we are now in a position to take a run at herd immunity with relatively few casualties. This may have happened entirely by accident but making a country's "performance" entirely the result of political decision is nonsense. Pre-existing natural conditions play a far greater part.
    1
  17136.  @JohnSmall314  No. They demonstrate that we have a population with a large proportion of frail, elderly people. (This is not to imply this government is wise, however - except in the pursuit of self-interest perhaps!)
    1
  17137.  @peterebel7899  There are many factors involved in a country's "performance" . In Japan the low death rate has different explanations from the high death rate in the UK. The relationship between Covid and malaria, for instance, is most interesting - with the countries with the most malaria all being way down on the list of covid deaths. Japan was malarial until the 18th century until when the disease was wiped out by efficient marsh drainage. The paper below gives a number of hypotheses to account for the huge differences in survival and infection rates between Europe and Asia and would certainly explain why the elderly in Japan have escaped, while the elderly of Europe have not. Genetic differences as a result of responses to earlier epidemics seem highly significant. "Several genes may be involved in the genetic predisposition to COVID-19, and the combination of multiple genes may be important for the severity of the infection. Among them, human leukocyte antigen (HLA) polymorphisms are associated with susceptibility to various diseases such as autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases. The composition ratio of HLA types varies greatly depending on the country and ethnic group. Since HLA is a protein of the immune system that is responsible for antigen presentation, HLA has been attracting attention in relation to disease susceptibility. Ellinghaus and colleagues performed GWAS on patients in Italy and Spain [17]. But, it was found that certain HLA types are unlikely to be associated with exacerbation of the novel coronavirus at least in Italy and Spain. Nevertheless, since HLA types, which are present only in Japan and other Asian countries, may show resistance to the novel coronavirus, further analysis is necessary." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403102/ Japanese and east asian immune systems
    1
  17138.  @peterebel7899  As you will see from this paper the average period between the onset of symptoms and death is 14 days. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/928729/S0803_CO-CIN_-_Time_from_symptom_onset_until_death.pd Time between onset and death approx 14 days
    1
  17139.  @peterebel7899  Sorry about that. Let's try again! There are no hard and fast rules, obviously. Cases differ but this is the official UK analysis, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/928729/S0803_CO-CIN_-_Time_from_symptom_onset_until_death.pdf
    1
  17140.  @bh5037  There's no use crying about it. Getting something done about it is more important. The vast majority of these people had led very long lives and we must be grateful that the disease does not kill babies and children.
    1
  17141. All three of them.
    1
  17142.  @emptyhand777  But it is a choice with so severe a consequence that it must be regulated - and not merely advertised as a means of contraception.
    1
  17143. Food for thought? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peaRgEOF7zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZqTs_YNJk
    1
  17144. Well, Russia has won, so it's only realistic.
    1
  17145.  @Elizadoolittle1948  You need to get off your high horse and look at the history of the region. Israel is defending itself against constant attack from all sides and the land it has occupied belongs to Israel, not only as a historical fact but as a fact of commercial ownership. It was bought from the Ottomans with real cash money, and then only occupied by Arabs from neighbouring countries. These interlopers now call themselves "Palestinians" but Palestine has never existed and does not exist now.
    1
  17146. Who remembers Mandy Rice-Davies?
    1
  17147. Far from being thick, Moggy is as clever as a barrel load of monkeys. Like many Tories he realises that loyalty and polite behaviour are useful in masking your real intentions. He knows Johnson has to be propped up until a solid replacement plan is in place, and that's exactly what he's doing.
    1
  17148.  Yaakou Abimelech  Visit a site called Here Is The Evidence. You might get a surprise.
    1
  17149. Since Islam is not a race, Anderson cannot be accused of racism. Perhaps, like me, he believes that anyone who puts the interests of Islam before the interests of the country can justly be accused of treason, and be treated as such.
    1
  17150.  @Pikaling3408  Unfortunately, unlike the other religions you mention, Islam is committed to world domination and the destruction of all other beliefs. It SHOULD therefore be discriminated against for this very reason.
    1
  17151. @sinclair Is it bigotry to be concerned about a religion which has the destruction or enslavement of anyone who rejects that religion as a tenet of faith? Instead of reading flawed legislation you'd do better to read the Koran.
    1
  17152.  @stephjsinclair  Only about half a billion of them, I would imagine. Whatever the percentage the remainder seem sufficiently cowed and fearful to turn a blind eye to the excesses of the others.
    1
  17153. Grow a brain.
    1
  17154. It is actually quite a sensible and forward-thinking solution to the problems in the Middle East.
    1
  17155.  @mimic6494  I hope I wasn't being too condescending. I didn't mean to be. This is, after all, the way language evolves and I rather hoped it might have caused Mr Parekh some wry amusement. I might be a narcissist; I simply don't know. (That was a sort of joke, by the way.)
    1
  17156.  @appletree6741  Who gave them the guns?
    1
  17157.  @NYJGreatness  And in America neither.
    1
  17158. Tom Wylie Try living without fossil fuel energy. You're dead within a week.
    1
  17159.  @AaronOkeanos  So if only three members of a biker gang smash up a corner store for not paying protection, then it's got nothing to do with them being members of the biker gang, right?
    1
  17160.  @DarkNecronLord  This is becoming like a religious war in Europe in the 15th -17th centuries, Protestant v Catholic with no concessions from either side.
    1
  17161.  @mikethespike7579  You should have asked more nicely.
    1
  17162. I suppose my level of anger when I see people wearing masks for stupid reasons doesn't much enter into the scheme of things.
    1
  17163.  @nathanlewis42  Masks are more or less totally useless. No-one is suggesting any longer that they protect the wearer and anyone unknowingly infected may prevent themselves from spreading it by 20% at the very most. Most infections are caused via aerosol dispersal, which masks do nothing to contain.
    1
  17164.  @Yeknodathon Masks are more or less totally useless. No-one is suggesting any longer that they protect the wearer and anyone unknowingly infected may prevent themselves from spreading it by 20% at the very, very most. Most infections are caused via aerosol dispersal, which masks do nothing to contain. The very idea that people could be so foolish and condescending as to wear the stupid things merely to allay the fears of paranoiacs eats into my very soul. Science and emotion, see?
    1
  17165.  @Yeknodathon  But not much, as I said. In any case there has been a welter of studies produced by eager scientists who know the route to success is by skewing results and interpretation to fit the official line. It was ever thus.
    1
  17166.  @Yeknodathon  I never have. Hydroxychloroquine is, however, an effective prophylactic against the worst ravages of the disease if administered prior to the onset of serious symptoms.
    1
  17167.  @nathanlewis42  Over 60% of covid infections are via aerosols - minute droplets which masks do nothing to contain. While the most effective ones may prevent larger droplets escaping if the wearer is in a catatonic trance, any substantial action of the lungs - such as coughing or shouting - causes droplets to disperse through the mask weave like shotgun pellets. And it may interest you to know that a survey of surgeons carried out by the Royal College of Medicine in 2015 showed that 4% of surgeons do not wear masks during operations and of those who did 20% said they did so only because they thought it was expected of them.
    1
  17168.  @rossmurray8159  What contradiction? Masks do not contain(ie hold back) aerosols and aerosols are responsible for 60% of infections. What's your problem?
    1
  17169.  @neodym5809  Pretty much when 60% of infections are via aeosols and 5% via surface contact leaving 35% via droplets which masks MIGHT hold back 20% of. So it's 20% of 35% and infections thus prevented would have to occur in crowded unventilated conditions anyway. So the advice on crowded buses and trains is about right - unless, like me, you believe the more healthy young people who catch covid and recover the better for us all.
    1
  17170.  @Yeknodathon  Anger is very healthy. It clears the mind and unblocks the sinuses. When I see folly disguised as reason it gives me a reason for loathing sanctimonious do-gooders as much as I naturally do.
    1
  17171.  @rossmurray8159  Oh I DO beg your pardon! Formal etiquette for young ladies was never my strong suit.
    1
  17172. @Nehemiah Scudder But masks are only one factor in an extremely complex equation, and most likely a very insignificant one. Apart from factors such as climate there is mounting evidence that genetic factors enter into resistance to the disease. Responses to past covid-style epidemics seem to have created a degree of inbuilt immunity in some Asiatic groups. Considerable research is currently taking place into this topic, especially since it is now clear that SAR-Covid 2 was engineered and that it is entirely possible to engineer a viral pathogen in such a way that it affects some racial groups far more than others. As far as Singapore and other East Asian locations are concerned masks simply cannot have affected the death rate to this degree - simply because they don't actually work that much.
    1
  17173.  @Yeknodathon  Ah, but when you know you are not in error anger gives you the strength to fight your cause.
    1
  17174.  @Yeknodathon  Only if they are sanctimonious. Which they seldom are.
    1
  17175.  @neodym5809  So called long covid is a factor, but it is one which appears to have been exaggerated. Latest studies suggest that 1.2% of covid victims in their twenties still have debilitating symptoms three months after first being infected. Sadly, long-term effects with varying degrees of seriousness in a minority of patients characteristic of all pathogens, especially respiratory ones, and one good thing which ought to come out of the mess will be much-needed research into this long-standing problem.
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  17176.  @neodym5809  I see no point in injecting young people with a medication the long-term effects of which are not known when they don't die of this illness and only very small percentage appear to suffer from long-term effects to any great degree. They are doing everyone a great service by getting covid and becoming immune to it and thus setting up cordons of protection to stop it reaching the rest of us. And masks are more or less totally useless. This strategy has a great deal going for it. As long as the vaccines are potent enough to reduce symptoms in the elderly and vulnerable an R number of around 1.4 is maintained we should see a herd immunity threshold reached in a matter of a few months and at very little cost. Now put that gun away before you hurt someone.
    1
  17177.  @Yeknodathon  But I want to be a threat. And only when anger is combined with panic does it lead to a loss of control.
    1
  17178. @Nehemiah Scudder Australia and New Zealand are a puzzle, certainly, but I find it hard to believe that their strict lockdown and masking policies are the sole reason for their incredible escape from the ravages of covid. Don't get me wrong: it may be so, but logic and reason cry for other explanations. As to your other examples, as I think I said initially the formulae for covid consequences is very complex. Many factors come to bear and it is probably a mistake to attribute much success or failure to political decisions. Existing natural conditions have more effect, I believe. The wide open spaces and rural nature of much of Canada and Ireland probably account for their comparatively low death rates as much as anything and as for the UK it is worth taking into account that it has had an inbuilt population of extremely elderly people following a series of mild 'flu seasons. A racial element enters into it too. A considerable proportion of deaths have occurred among the UK's Bangladeshi and Pakistani population, where the death rate is five times higher than among white British. Genetic factors may be involved, but this is just as likely due to multi-generation occupation. As for seatbelts and airbags the essential difference here of curse is that they work and facemasks don't - much.
    1
  17179.  @Yeknodathon  I, or at least others with more power and authority, would do well to employ such emotions: not so much as to deal with the pandemic as such, but to deal with the cynical opportunists who seek to take advantage of it and, to lesser extent, the many fools who are persuaded by them.
    1
  17180.  @nathanlewis42  I've had this one waved under my nose before. Nature (the magazine) has been taken over by NWO lefties like so many once respected publications. It is the easiest thing in the world to persuade a bunch of ambitious scientists to cobble together a study which purports to support the official line. Real world data has much more value than skewed and doctored lab experiments, especially in the current state into which science has fallen. Countries and US states with similar demographics show little or no difference in death and infection rates whether masks are mandated or not. Whatever tiny degree of protection they may give is entirely submerged by other factors.
    1
  17181.  @neodym5809  But surely these vaccines are the result of a new technique? The principle is different to that employed for influenzas as covids have proved themselves incapable of responding to previous techniques - or is this not the case? All I know is that warning bells have been sounded, especially with regard to the possible effects on adolescent development and while these may be unfounded it strikes me as being a better option to allow natural immunity to evolve, especially since there are so very few cases of covid re-infection while vaccinated people in the UK are now succumbing to the virus at a rate of around 8,000 a day I believe.
    1
  17182.  @nathanlewis42  Both out of the same stable. Prior to covid all studies cautioned against the widespread use of facemasks by the general public in pandemic situations. If those studies which suggest otherwise had come out before the widespread political decision to mandate masks had been issued I would be more convinced. But they did not. They came after. As I say, they are designed to prop up policy, not to provide objective assessment.
    1
  17183.  @neodym5809  And yet nobody who has been infected gets re-infected, whereas nearly 10,000 people a day who have been vaccinated are testing positive in the UK alone. The natural defence system is superior because it releases fewer antibodies but at the same time "trains" T cells and other features of the immune system to remember the virus and to release massive and immediate defences should it be detected again.
    1
  17184.  @neodym5809  I am in no position to argue, and have only an uninformed instinct to go on. It strikes me that the balance between the alternatives is a fine one, however, and a fear of hubris probably weighs too heavily with me. (You have, by the way, greatly strengthened your position in my humble view by not exaggerating the long term effects too much. This is still a very unknown quantity but at least this experience should encourage much-needed research into the problem of long term debility in a small portion of sufferers from pathogen infection.)
    1
  17185.  @Yeknodathon  They could come in handy sometimes - especially when dealing with anger, loathing and threats from enemies both without and within.
    1
  17186. @Nehemiah Scudder It might surprise you to learn that a survey conducted by the Royal College Of Medicine in 2015 revealed that 4% of surgeons do not wear masks while performing operations and of those who do, 20% said they only did so because they thought it was expected of them. And there's no point bringing in things like crash helmets unless you want to weaken your case. Their effectiveness is measurable. The effect(or not) of facemasks is not because so many other factors enter the equation.
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  17187. @Nehemiah Scudder Oddly enough it is Bangladeshis and Pakistanis not so much Indians who suffer this greater death rate. In any case, Indian data is bound to be somewhat unreliable and on top of this although the Bangladeshi and Pakistani death rate is proportionately higher the actual numbers are submerged in the death rate as a whole.
    1
  17188.  @neodym5809  Couldn't get your link but I was being somewhat hyperbolic I admit. Next to nobody would have been better. You must agree the numbers are very small and last time I checked all appeared to be the result of the first infection being very mild - or even possibly a false positive which, as I am sure you are aware, account for 1 in 14 "cases" in the UK.
    1
  17189. @Nehemiah Scudder What is the point of all this? Mary Seacole was a restauranteur who went to the Crimea to sell posh food to the officers and may have given away a few tablecloths to use as bandages, but that's about the sum total of her nursing experience. Florence Nightingale was a very superior woman indeed who was visited for advice on statistical matters by all the great men of her day. I think she would be readily capable of analysing the effects of mask wearing on the transmission of airborne pathogens and come up with a firm "nothing proven." And what have seatbelts got to do with anything?
    1
  17190. @Nehemiah Scudder I think we may be at cross purposes. The Indian covid death rate figures may be unreliable not because the people are brown but because there are so many of them and it is difficult to keep track. In any case their home death rate is irrelevant because as soon as they get to the UK their deaths are included in the UK death rate. So are the deaths of people of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin - but which are nonetheless five times higher than those of the white British.
    1
  17191. @Nehemiah Scudder Do you not realise that making these ridiculous analogies only weakens your case? I think you will find (even if you read some of the comments in this thread) that sensible people approach a middle ground and then agree to disagree on the interpretation of the facts. In this instance that fitted facemasks of a high specification may provide some protection in crowded badly ventilated indoor environments can be agreed. But they possess no magical properties. People may choose to wear them in other circumstances if they so wish but forcing others to do so is an infringement of civil liberties.
    1
  17192. @Nehemiah Scudder Like so many things in life one must assess a balance of probabilities. My research has led me to the belief that facemasks have only a minimal impact on reducing the spread of the disease and may indeed do more harm than good in many instances. A properly fitted, high spec facemask worn in a crowded, badly ventilated space may slightly reduce the chance of someone unknowingly infected passing the disease on to others. And that's all that can be said for them.
    1
  17193.  @Blinful  A myth.
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  17194. @ Which did not say that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for territorial integrity and military support. For one thing, Ukraine never had any nuclear weapons to start with.
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  17195.  @user-sf3ks1yl5b  But the weapons still belonged to the USSR, no matter where they were made. And they could only be fired from Moscow. Ukraine simply didn't want them. Converting them to be fired from Kiev and maintaining them thereafter would have been hideously expensive. They preferred to keep ships and tanks. To suggest that Ukraine nobly surrendered a nuclear capability in return for assurances of peace and integrity is just nonsense.
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  17196.  @user-sf3ks1yl5b  It is certainly a great pity then that the relationship between Russia and Ukraine has soured so greatly. But you surely cannot believe that there is any necessity to add to world's woes by allowing Ukraine to possess nuclear weapons! What for? Once Ukraine's borders are defined in a more rational way it can pursue whatever course it likes , without any interference from Russia.
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  17197. @ But the removal of the nukes from Ukraine was part of a process of negotiation over the distribution of ex- Soviet materiel. Items left in individual republics did not automatically become the property of that republic. Russia got most of the Black Sea Fleet and the nukes. Ukraine got tanks. It is utterly disingenuous to suggest that Ukraine nobly surrendered "its" nukes in exchange of guarantees of any sort. These negotiations included distribution of Soviet debts as well as assets and took several years to complete.
    1
  17198.  @daydays12  Nor do I, come to that.
    1
  17199. What about the two coloured guys from London just sentenced for running a child prostitution racket? They got TWO AND A HALF YEARS!!!
    1
  17200. Is there not a difference between representing a set of ideas and representing a group of people?
    1
  17201.  @TAP7a  Now there's a question!
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  17202. Quite right too.
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  17203. He would be more likely to ask "Alice". She is the Russian version, and her views on the whereabouts of Ukraine's borders are rather different to Siri's.
    1
  17204.  @owenthomas5103  Not ALL politicians, just the Head of State. Almost anything has to be better that seeing Justice - which should be blind and impartial - being abused for political motives. That really is the slippery slope and America has been in great danger of sliding down it.
    1
  17205.  @owenthomas5103  Not ALL politicians, just the Head of State, as is the case with the King of England. It makes sound constitutional sense and helps prevent the abuse of the judicial system for political purposes.
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  17206. The polls lie - it's a lot more than 40 per cent! And Trump does not falsely claim anything. He genuinely claims the election was stolen. The BBC falsely claims that Trump falsely claims the election was stolen whereas Trump genuinely claims the election was stolen and the BBC falsely believes this to be false. Get it right!
    1
  17207.  @jukeboxtimebomber  Because the fraud was expertly constructed by the CIA or one or several of its subsidiaries. Concealing any evidence that could be used in a civil court was part of the package. These guys have been fixing elections all over the world for decades, don't forget. Now though there are the forensic audits in Arizona and Georgia etc which instead of merely repeating the conjuring trick are trying to unpick how it was done. If there is nothing to hide why are election boards and official refusing to hand over documents and equipment? Why is a campaign of obfuscation being launched to cloud the issue? Why is the media running scared? Because the 2020 election was a fraud, and they know it and they are afraid they will be found out.
    1
  17208.  @jukeboxtimebomber  You seem to be unaware of the state senate hearings which took place immediately after the election and at which many concerns were voiced. They have resulted in the current forensic audits, details of which I append below. There is also a site called Here Is The Evidence which has collated many hundreds of items relating to the fraud. Some are circumstantial and some are partisan, but there are also official documents and so forth. I particularly like the fact that there are a number of voters in South Carolina who are120 years old. As for the CIA or whatever this has clearly been a thoroughly professional job, as indeed are the current attempts to hinder and sidetrack the investigations. Trump did not come up through the dirty mess of politics and is therefore the only president in many years who was not controlled by the secret services. This why he is hated and feared and why he had to go - by fair means or foul. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_XyeW3Kky4 Mitchigan audit https://www.westernjournal.com/74000-ballots-returned-no-record-ever-sent-shocking-az-audit-update/ Maricopa 17 July https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HkZa6XKbdk&list=WL&index=1&t=3925s Maricopa audit vid https://mammothnation.com/blog/2020-election-audit-exposes-fraud-in-georgia-as-votes-mysteriously-vanished Georgia audit https://beckernews.com/az-update-40299/ Maricopa and Fulton July 17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_XyeW3Kky4 Why did you send me a video of a man feeding a pig by the way?
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  17209.  @BambiTrout  Your analogy is absurd. Israel has as much right to the land it occupies as do the so-called Palestinians, most of whom are the descendants of Arabs from neighbouring countries who flocked into the area to take advantage of the prosperity engendered by Zionism. The Jews consistently attempted to be fair to these people in the early days, but were met with general hostility created by the religious intolerance of Islam. Their attitude has understandably hardened over the years and they have met fire with fire in order to survive. It is a tragedy that matters should have reached this point, but it is undoubtedly the intransigence of Islamic fundamentalism which is the prime cause - not a cruel and savage colonialism on the part of Israel.
    1
  17210.  @DJ25-g4l  I suggest you follow your own advice. The modern Jewish presence in Palestine goes back to the 19th century, when large tracts of land were actually purchased from their Ottoman owners by Zionists. At this time the area was vastly underpopulated and there were soon as many Jews as there were Arabs. The Zionists created farms out of deserts and Arabs from Syria and Jordan flooded in to take advantage of this prosperity. Arab warlords also conquered large tracts. These are the ancestors of the poor, oppressed Palestinians your heart bleeds for.
    1
  17211. You have it the wrong way around. Education is about enforcing opinions and the academically successful are those who most readily accept such opinions, and are rewarded for doing so. Those who use their intelligence to question these enforced opinions are rejected. Thus the correlation is between education and compliance, not education and intelligence. The extremely stupid man in this video rather proves the point.
    1
  17212.  @williamcarter9066  Let's go Brandon!
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  17213.  @larrylindsey1497  Did you vote for a senile, incontinent front man shoe-horned into the Presidency by a cabal of cheating globalists? Thought so.
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  17214.  @larrylindsey1497  Do you see what I mean about compliance? You think you are thinking for yourself, whereas you are simply doing as you're told. You are a victim of your own conceit.
    1
  17215.  @larrylindsey1497  I don't watch Fox but I'm pretty convinced that someone has convinced you that you are much smarter than you are. Have you ever had an original thought in your entire life?
    1
  17216.  @larrylindsey1497  Why do you think that people whose opinions differ from yours are stupid? That's really stupid of you.
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  17217. It should concentrate people's minds wonderfully, don't you think?
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  17218.  @TheYahmez  State control of means of production? Building projects to create employment? Local councils to ensure the fair distribution of resources? Co-opting wealth from big business and the aristocracy? National SOCIALIST party?
    1
  17219.  James Parker  What do you think Stalin was up to all those years? Idiot.
    1
  17220. Zelensky and CÑN are in denial. Bahkmut is taken and the chances of Russia losing this war in the short or medium term are negligible. It is time for the Western powers to call a halt to this madness and negotiate. Far too many lives have been lost in a false cause already. America's encouragement of this war has been utterly shameful, and will be a further blot on the nation's history.
    1
  17221. He doesn't like the government. That's enough for a lot of people.
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  17222. Too Big to Rig!
    1
  17223.  @Steven-vo4ee  Try this: there are about 20million fake votes lurking around in various corners of the US electoral system. They were put into play on behalf of Biden in 2020 but 20million wouldn't have been enough to swing it for Kamala.
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  17224. Ain't it though?
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  17225. Later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire.
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  17226. Did Biden actually go anywhere? I must have missed it.
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  17227.  @equalityforall8418  Wot? Trump has got several pages in Wikipedia just on the court cases against him which have been piling up for twenty years. Water off a duck's back.
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  17228.  @equalityforall8418  Do you never EVER get tired of hearing all these things that are going to happen to Trump, or all the things that Trump has DONE and yet none of it ever actually happens or turns out to be true? Don't you ever get the tiniest bit suspicious - after the first two or three years, say - that you are being conned and that this is because you are quite exceptionally stupid?
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  17229.  @melissahoneybee8493  None of this matters. In his career as a properiy developers Trump must have infringed the law many times; but this is as a private individual. Politicians also invariably break the law, but this is within a political framework and it simply results in a system of alliances and betrayals. Trump is not part of this scheme, and cannot be controlled by it - which is why he is so hated and feared by the political establishment.
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  17230.  @catherinemacaskill1421  That must have been it. Biden certainly does lack presence. Among other things.
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  17231.  @equalityforall8418  You, on the other hand, don't even know you're being humiliated.
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  17232.  @paulvalentine8172  You can - in a Russian version. It's called a Big Hit and is very tasty, so I'm told.
    1
  17233.  @dennisduebelbeis2974  Bit of a gamble, that.
    1
  17234.  @dz7786  Alleged success rates aren't that relevant surely? In this scenario who goes first wins.
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  17235.  @dinaf1409  Ukraine would have to surrender.
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  17236. If Putin's aim is to secure Donbass and Crimea while damaging the Ukrainian army as much as possible, then he seems right on track. And does he CARE what western commentators think?
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  17237. The trouble with that idea is that they get replaced by other people growing older.
    1
  17238.  @arndbaggen3011  He's utterly out of his depth in a situation where bluster and wriggling won't help. But the idea that old people are being killed off to save money is utterly ridiculous. (By the way although money has been saved while investigating how much the DWP has discovered massive underpayments to married couples which will cost ten times as much - several billion, in fact.)
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  17239. Very true, Most of the fires had gone out and the owners of the burned business were sitting home weeping. Bunch of snowflakes!
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  17240. What education system? Perhaps you mean the indoctrination and brainwashing system?
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  17241. Support for Ukraine has been based on myth and paranoia. Trump will hopefully show a pragmatic approach and allow Russia to regain territories mistakenly included in the borders of the country of Ukraine.
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  17242. I foresee a major split in the Tory party between traditional right-wing conservatives and globalist shills. Braverman is just setting her stall out. Good luck to her, I say.
    1
  17243. First prove they did it.
    1
  17244.  @ADifferentBias  They may have agreed - but were they going to actually do it?
    1
  17245. Analogies are slippery customers.
    1
  17246.  @colonelklink9911  Google Here Is The Evidence for around 2,000 of them
    1
  17247.  @David-du5vk  Under what legislation were these cases brought though? The trouble is no legislation exists, and furthermore to hear such a case would be career suicide for any judge. The point is that the US electoral system is nor fit for purpose. The current situation in Arizona proves that.
    1
  17248.  @martinepstein3332  And when the system is so crap that's pretty inevitable. I'm starting to think voting in the US is just a cosmetic exercise
    1
  17249.  @welcomeaboard69  Water under the bridge really - but watching that election and its aftermath convinces me that if you can spread a few million bucks in the right areas you can get practically any result you want.
    1
  17250.  @welcomeaboard69  Understandably.
    1
  17251.  @garytate8284  Indeed.
    1
  17252.  @welcomeaboard69  There is. Doubts exist about the efficiency of the system, plus other factors which you are not allowed to know about.
    1
  17253.  @welcomeaboard69  I'm over it - but did he lose fair and square and is the US electoral system a total sham? Two important questions, I think.
    1
  17254. Ukrainians are beginning to sound more and more like Germans in World War II. They also had a charismatic leader who dragged them to bloody ruin and defeat.
    1
  17255. Total Yank bullshit.
    1
  17256. This man has the political nous of a hamster.
    1
  17257. Have all these "far right" protesters moved to Israel from Southport, Sky?
    1
  17258. The charges are overblown and unnecessary. T-hey are quite clearly the result of corrupt electioneering typical of the Democrat party in its current ugly incarnation.
    1
  17259. @user-hl1ex6py8l Obviously I cannot deny you your experience - and nor would I disagree entirely with your views. What I meant to imply was that Russia under Putin was incomparably better than Russia under communism, or in the wake of the collapse of the SU. Yeltsin certainly had many virtues, although his judgement was often flawed, especially in regard to relations with the West. As for corruption - is it any worse under Putin than under his predecessors? It seems to be endemic to Russian society, and always has been.
    1
  17260.  @JC-rr1wu  I live in England - but I get your point. What you have to realise is that much of the economy in Russia is "off the books" and people generally live better than these figures would imply. They certainly live better now than they did under communism.
    1
  17261.  @aysee6663  Planet Reality.
    1
  17262. @user-hl1ex6py8l Thank you very much for these insights. I have probably been guilty of praising Putin overmuch, simply as a reaction to his demonization in the Western media. His advancing age means that a new regime is soon on the way. I only hope it will be one which will be of benefit to the Russian people as a whole.
    1
  17263. @user-hl1ex6py8l Thank you for these insights. Perhaps I have been guilty of praising Putin overmuch - simply as a reaction to his demonization in the Western media.
    1
  17264. Can someone tell me where I can get figures showing the effectiveness of renewable energy sources? As far as I can see a wind turbine, made of oil-based plastic, its components shipped across vast areas of ocean and driven along roads on low-loaders before being set up in foundations the size of a six-bedroom house comprised of concrete interlaced with tons of steel rebar netting is going to enter the world with a considerable carbon debt . How long will this take to repay? Just asking. Honestly. Do set me straight if you can.
    1
  17265. So where's the "fumbling"? The situation could change any time, but as of now Russia is pressing ahead with its military objectives.
    1
  17266.  @randie5436  Be comforted. You have been sold a lie. Compared to many US politicians past and present Donald Trump is a choirboy.
    1
  17267.  @coachbrooksey3838  What was so terrible then? Do tell.
    1
  17268. It's probably more a question of temperament than susceptibility to media propaganda. To right-wingers the left often seems paranoid and easily influenced, addicted to authority and control and lacking in necessary cynicism. The climate change issue typifies this as indeed does typical responses to the covid pandemic.
    1
  17269. Pipo Pipo No, it is a spontaneous and heartfelt response from the many people who are sick and tired of your insane, bullying bullshit.
    1
  17270. msmightymelle Wow! I didn't know this. Where do I go to get my money?
    1
  17271. Pipo Pipo You wouldn't know the truth if it bit you. You've been utterly brainwashed and your capacity for reasoned thought has been deliberately stunted by the Communist controlled education system. You are a victim and I visit left-wing channels in the vain hope that I may be able to begin the process of de-programming you so desperately need.
    1
  17272.  @rickatatastan2695  Then God Bless and Keep You. You have exercised your democratic rights.
    1
  17273. @alfsmith4936 It's very dangerous for the State to inflict one set of opinions. It's the gateway to totalitarianism.
    1
  17274.  @MijinLaw  But how can you know that someone knowingly lied? Even with the situation as it is, when individuals who believe they have been lied about can take the media to court, it takes a lot of time and money to even get close to a resolution. When it comes to matters of general opinion or abstract notions it would be utterly impossible. I'm afraid reality come is shades of grey, not in black and white.
    1
  17275.  @MijinLaw  No journalist worth his/her salt will reveal their sources. Many have gone to jail for refusing to do so. Defamation is different to general untruth in that an individual can quantify, in financial terms, the damage done to him/her. How can you quantify the damage done to a perception of truth?
    1
  17276.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  I tend to suspect that the opinions most denigrated by those in authority are most likely to come closest to the truth.
    1
  17277.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  Have you ever read 1984? What you are suggesting is a recipe for state totalitarianism.
    1
  17278.  @jonovens7974  You seem remarkably certain of your facts.
    1
  17279.  @MijinLaw  Again: the cure you recommend is worse than the disease.
    1
  17280.  @jonovens7974  Opinions are many, facts are few and far between. Both should be treated with caution.
    1
  17281.  @MijinLaw  I think lying has to be accepted as a part of the human condition and that it is up to us asi ndividuals to decide what is true and what is not - and not be forced to believe what authority tells us - because there's every chance that will be a lie too.
    1
  17282.  @MijinLaw  In my view GB News lies no more or less than other outlet. I simply don't go along with this notion that a different approach or point of view is "a lie." Broadcasters very seldom "knowingly and deliberately " lie. They generally believe what they are saying, and just because you may not agree with it, that doesn't make it a lie. Just an error.
    1
  17283.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  I see you are confused by my natural modesty.
    1
  17284.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  I think you like me really.
    1
  17285.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  You left one of the "i" s out of misericordious. This is taking self effacement to extremes.
    1
  17286.  @ClaudeGhendrih-w4o  No. That's my suede Chelsea boots.
    1
  17287.  @mrs.taylor9666  Oh dear, the utter paranoia of you people! You simply can't accept that not only do many disagree with you but that you are objects of derision. I am, in fact, a 75-year-old Englishman and I utterly despise the way so many people have bought into this Russiaphobia which our elites have created in your minds in order to justify their greedy schemes to steal the bread from the mouths of foreigners.
    1
  17288.  @aldosterone2348  It's OK, I'm well in.
    1
  17289.  @stephenoneill245  No. We are all on pretty much equal terms. We generally talk about antiques and knitting patterns.
    1
  17290.  @mrs.taylor9666  Well you reckon wrong, lady. I'm as English as tea and crumpets!
    1
  17291.  @georgeomole14  I actually share your optimism. It's a shame that so many people choose to take drugs and even more of a shame that they get caught. I do accept your addition of incarcerated males to the demographic and fully endorse practically everything you say. I think BLM is a false god an bad route to take though. Sweeping the system aside and getting to Year Zero just isn't the answer. It never is, no matter how frustrated one may feel.
    1
  17292. They're paid for by the CIA.
    1
  17293. jacq danieles She's not selling fear, she's only using it to work the carbon emissions market. Vast fortunes are being made overnight as permissions are sold as a cheaper alternative to taxation. It really is the most marvellous scam in the history of humanity. And carbon is perfectly harmless too! Beautiful!
    1
  17294. Douglas Langley I'm not talking about green industry, I'm talking about the cap and trade carbon emissions market. Fossil fuel industries play too which is why they ain't that bothered about trade restrictions. As for carbon, the evidence to suggest it causes global warming is suspect to say the least. There are dozens of "models", guessing more or less what's happening up there.The alarmists obviously always choose the ones which paint a grimmer picture. The models used by many countries indicate far less warming and far less contribution by carbon to that warming. Some say none at all.
    1
  17295. TheUltimateReductionist Your dedication is commendable. I think I'm correct in saying that the average individual share of the carbon emissions bill is 58.6 tonnes a year. This is the amount you will save for each child you don't have. A vegan diet reduces your own footprint by about .8 of a tonne per year. So unless you enjoy being a vegan, or have ethical reasons for being one, then there is little point in depriving yourself of meat and other animal products. As you may have gathered I believe the climate crisis is basically a load of bollocks cooked up for purposes of financial profit and political control. PS I have several children by a number of women and I am off new to check on the shoulder of lamb roasting deliciously in the oven. Mmmmm.
    1
  17296.  @paulhadlington8179  Dream on
    1
  17297.  @damianeadie510  It's a date. Assuming absence of nuclear holocaust, that is. Or the presence of electricity to fire up our devices. Truth is we are at a turning point, and my money's evens on the Russians. We get fed so much nonsense by the Western MSM that it's impossible to judge the true situation, but the idea that they have "already lost" is utterly ridiculous.
    1
  17298.  @tonyfanfarone  Patriots begin as revolutionaries. The traitors are occupying offices in Washington.
    1
  17299.  @wsbs520  Kent State?
    1
  17300. Putin has more intelligence and breadth of thinking than most of Congress put together. And Joe Biden is just a nasty little crook.
    1
  17301.  @richiecooke69  Actually, roubles are a wonderful investment right now.
    1
  17302. It's a severe loss, but more psychological than actual. The new fleet of smaller more mobile missile carriers is more effective.
    1
  17303. In this case he is seen on video both carrying the gun and ditching it a split second before he was shot.
    1
  17304. His big mistake was listening to Fauci. If he had followed his own instincts the impact would almost certainly have been far less.
    1
  17305. Wrong. He has plenty. Everyone who hates America for a start - and that's lots and lots.
    1
  17306.  @925Emotional  I tend to dismiss entirely the opinions of those who cannot judge the present situation without recourse to absurd analogies.
    1
  17307.  @californiadreamin8423  The US has spent billions on undermining pro-Russian governments in Ukraine, as well as in Georgia, Chechnya,, Belarus and elsewhere. USAID is just one of several organisations in this field In 2014 the democratically-elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup organised and funded by the CIA. Hunter Biden wasn't on the payroll of a Ukrainian oil company for nothing. Russia can't be expected just to sit back and take this. It has to react.
    1
  17308.  @PLAYER2035  I don't think Russia is too worried about this. NATO is just a glorified protection racket, and if a couple of shopkeepers want to pay their dues, so what?
    1
  17309. @ I think it's an accurate and understandable one, though.
    1
  17310. @ There is plenty of evidence. US agencies have been attempting to undermine places like Ukraine, Chechnya and Georgia for decades. Modern Ukraine is largely a Russian creation and its very valuable mines and factories in the east are often owned by and run by Russians. Trying to get the Ukrainian government to nationalise them and then sell them off to Western interests is at the root of this needless war.
    1
  17311.  @californiadreamin8423  The US has spent billions on undermining pro-Russian governments in Ukraine, as well as in Georgia, Chechnya,, Belarus and elsewhere. USAID is just one of several organisations in this field In 2014 the democratically-elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup organised and funded by the CIA. Hunter Biden wasn't on the payroll of a Ukrainian oil company for nothing. Russia can't be expected just to sit back and take this. It has to react.
    1
  17312.  @PLAYER2035  That's only one thing. Ukraine is far more special to Russia than these other countries, because in its present form it was largely created by Russia. Really though, the cause of the war is money. There are trillions and trillions of dollars in coal, gas, oil and now rare earth minerals in Eastern Ukraine. The mines were developed by Russians using Russian labour and many of them and other industries are still owned by Russian companies. Attempts to nationalise them and sell them off and now to join the EU and prevent them benefitting Russia are what Russia is mainly trying to prevent.
    1
  17313.  @PLAYER2035 National security is largely about resources, isn't it? Russia is protecting its interests from US greed.
    1
  17314. @ National security is surely largely about protecting national resources isn't it? The two are far from mutually exclusive.
    1
  17315. What money is needed to call up a few like-minded people on social media and give them a place, a date and a time?
    1
  17316.  @jananders1351  Who call a few pals, who call a few pals..........
    1
  17317. Putin will hold on to Donbass and Crimea with or without Trump's approval. A ceasefire and very lengthy and pointless negotiations while things settle down and Russia rebuilds the territories it has gained seems to be the most intelligent answer.
    1
  17318. Is it racist to say that a black person is so awful that it puts one in danger of becoming a racist?
    1
  17319.  @franciscopineda2594  Naughty boy, isn't he?
    1
  17320. Why is this the left's answer to everything? Lock em up! Then what?
    1
  17321. It might even be true.
    1
  17322. The n-word is in regular use by black people as a form of friendly parlance, of course. I really do wonder how many of them are genuinely offended by its use. It seems like yet another guilt trip by whitey to have it banned.
    1
  17323. Defeated Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has just warned Parliament that if we in the UK accept a trade deal with the US we risk getting maggots in our orange juice and rat hairs in our paprika. Is this true?
    1
  17324. This is good news. It will be an insane and pointless cock-up from which, with luck, the UK might learn.
    1
  17325. The Democrats have been abusing and manipulating black people since the Civil War and beyond. Time they woke up!
    1
  17326.  @fredatlas4396  What is?
    1
  17327. Novara Media presenters are basically children with university degrees. They deserve our pity.
    1
  17328. Exactly. And the NATO trained and equipped Ukrainian army has been decimated while Russia's hard line troops and mercenaries seem to be holing up in Donbass ready to repel its remnants. Looks like a plan to me.
    1
  17329. Exactly. And the NATO trained and equipped Ukrainian army has been decimated while Russia's hard line troops and mercenaries seem to be holing up in Donbass ready to repel its remnants. Looks like a plan to me.
    1
  17330.  @Terminalsanity  I'm sure you're wrong. The US has made the destruction of electricity supplies a prime objective in war. I'm sure the Russians have too. It's hard to imagine railway supply lines operating without electricity and relying on generators and alternators to re-power the multitude of gadgets now used in warfare is asking a bit much. What about repairs? Can you imagine repair shops running on generators? At the very least it will vastly increase the use of fuel, always a problem. I think we are talking a bit more than a mild inconvenience here.
    1
  17331.  @theother9941  Huh? Why not for the reasons that he has stated?
    1
  17332. I'm really loving how silly US propaganda has seamlessly transformed into wishful thinking. You're DEAD, you conceited fools!
    1
  17333. Don't get too excited about the number of missiles shot down. Most are decoys without warheads designed to use up defence responses - and also to cause the Ukrainians to give away the sites of their launch pads and radar installations.
    1
  17334. There are a couple of others but he's in the thick of it every day.
    1
  17335.  @handarokadath1515  Ae you a bit dim? To suggest that Putin gives a damn about how any other country rules itself or how much freedom its people have is just plain ridiculous.
    1
  17336.  @coolbanana165  All Putin wants are the highly Russianised and mineral-rich parts of Ukraine mistakenly included in the newly-created country of Ukraine. He doesn't even want the whole of Ukraine, let alone other bits of Europe. He know full well that such expansionism led, in great part, to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why would he want the Russian Federation to make the same mistake?
    1
  17337.  @tomoliver4632  You live in a little world of your own, don't you?
    1
  17338.  @tomoliver4632  Lashing about a bit, aren't you? I have no faith whatever in the media -or the politicians. The media is largely owned by the same investment groups which largely own the pharma companies and the politicians dance to their tune.
    1
  17339.  @tomoliver4632  Ah. A schizophrenic. Sorry to have bothered you. Do try to keep on with the medication. It's never perfect but it is as well to persevere.
    1
  17340. @Chris Viking No, but I certainly attribute the gloomiest views to most scientists.
    1
  17341. Perhaps you would rather invest several billions on invading Hungary instead of having a chat with its leader. It is the American Way, after all.
    1
  17342. Nor do you. Reform UK is a registered political party.
    1
  17343.  @Hamish-f4b  But Reform is registered political party, registered by the UK Electoral Commission. Its registered number is PP7931. What mix up?
    1
  17344. Islamism is a threat to Britain. It is blind folly to pretend otherwise.
    1
  17345. Socialism is dead and Starmer will bury it.
    1
  17346.  @emm_arr  I'm not het up. I am a former Socialist myself - but it is a philosophy which has run its course.
    1
  17347.  @emm_arr  What hate? I am sometimes guilty of mild contempt for muddled thinking, but that's about as far as it goes.
    1
  17348. More nonsense from the school of wishful thinking.
    1
  17349. He has a permanent throat condition. And he can be as coherent as anyone.
    1
  17350. @ You have been given one extract only. Try looking at the whole thing, if you can bear it. He holds up well, considering the pressure he's under.
    1
  17351. @ Much of what he says makes complete sense and his case is a sound one that needs to be answered. The health industry is run for profit, and blind eyes are turned to its failings.
    1
  17352.  @harmless6813  Given he has a permanent condition which affects his vocal cords he does a very good job. A transcript of his evidence shows him to be at least as coherent as many Americans.
    1
  17353. That "white power sign" was put out by right-wing channel 4Chan to troll you credulous lefties. And it's still working!
    1
  17354. Truth serum.
    1
  17355.  @lsd8497  It beats spending a few million dollars shooting down a weather balloon.
    1
  17356.  @emilschn7438  Got a result didn't it?
    1
  17357.  @orchid6699  Er... kamikaze means you die. No-one was hurt in this shaming of the US military (again).
    1
  17358.  @pigloo147  Huh???
    1
  17359.  @emilschn7438  Exactly what I said.
    1
  17360.  @lsd8497  Not for much longer. It isn't just drones that are crashing.
    1
  17361.  @lsd8497  America's economy is based upon borrowing money it can't pay back, and printing dollars to make it look as though it can. This will not end well.
    1
  17362.  @emilschn7438  I'm sorry. I hadn't realised you couldn't read English very well. "Giving the finger" is an American gesture of contempt. Does that help at all?
    1
  17363.  @emilschn7438  America has been humiliated, that's what.
    1
  17364. Farage has consistently refused to have any dealing with TR - which is one reason why many on the right have doubts about Farage. TR left the EDL because he found it impossible to keep out extremists, by the way.
    1
  17365.  @davidpeacock40  What past? TR and his colleagues burned Nazi flags in the very early days. He is a much maligned man.
    1
  17366.  @primalconvoy  I've read this before. It covers a wide spread of research and is very good. But the amount of "help" in even the most positive of the studies is still pretty small.
    1
  17367.  @andord123  Well I'm a climate change denier too (or at least the AGW aspect of it). This "debunking" to-and-fro always amuses me. It's the same with Tony Heller. They cite scientific papers and opponents ignore these and just attack the interpretations. Anyhow here's the British Medical Journal's view from April, plus an interesting street interview with a guy who apparently designs PPE. https://www.youtube.com/=nYWlb-rITBIwatch?v BMJ April 2020 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1422.short They concluded, “The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against covid-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.”
    1
  17368. The BBC must be destroyed. Cut off the licence lifeline and watch it die.
    1
  17369. I think it's got something to do with money-laundering.
    1
  17370. Why bother even with these? The quicker everyone gets it and gets over it the better.
    1
  17371.  @FactsBro1184  The areas concerned are far from being unequivocally Ukraine - and a large number of the people living there are proudly Russian.
    1
  17372.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Oh come on! They were crap and a year old. I took them down myself and replaced them with the disclaimer which you have doubtless seen.
    1
  17373. This isn't a war - it's an investment. And one that isn't performing too well either
    1
  17374.  @NZobservatory  He certainly did. He has really messed it up for the crazy American war pigs who thought they were going to get another Iraq.
    1
  17375. Putin doesn't want Ukraine, let alone all of Europe. He just wants back the bits of Russia which were given to Ukraine 30 years ago.
    1
  17376. This is peanuts compared to the billions and billions made by the Big Pharma companies. At least dodgy plastic aprons don't kill you.
    1
  17377.  @bosoerjadi2838  Parliament hold supreme authority over the interpretation of the laws it passes. This is a fundamental principle of the British constitution. There is a difference between obeying the law and agreeing with a judicial interpretation of it.
    1
  17378.  @jiversteve  Oh you and your old fascism thing! You are such a duck!
    1
  17379.  @bosoerjadi2838  And its judgements may be over-ruled by Parliament.
    1
  17380.  @justmythought7658  Not at all. A government which does not represent my views has exactly the same rights.
    1
  17381.  @bosoerjadi2838  There is no need to wait for an Act. If a judicial assessment contravenes Parliament's assessment then it may be overturned by the government, acting as an instrument of Parliament. This sets precedents, which form as much the basis of English jurisprudence as do written laws.
    1
  17382.  @Ardelanin  The Constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document. Thus, it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched. This ensures that our constitution, unlike written constitutions, has the facility to adapt to changing circumstances. It means that the government, acting on behalf of Parliament, is empowered to ignore any judicial interpretations of its laws with which it disagrees. It is Parliament which makes laws and Parliament has sovereign rights over its own laws. In the example you mention Parliament could indeed, in principle, overturn a finding of guilt in a court should it choose to do so. But it would need very good reasons!
    1
  17383.  @Yeknodathon  Another good reason for disobeying bad laws. At least Parliament can do so legally!
    1
  17384.  @rocketscience4516  But it's not up to them to say what is proper. They have only the right to interpret laws in individual cases. It is their role to say what they think the intention behind a law was, and if Parliament, which made the law, says "No, you're wrong " then that assessment over-rules the judge's interpretation.
    1
  17385.  @verystripeyzebra  You are totally incorrect. Coke's1610 judgement makes it clear that judicial attempts to "control Acts of parliament and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void”. Parliament's interpretations of Acts which it itself passes, have clear precedence over any interpretations of the judiciary, which is only right and proper since laws are Acts of Parliament, not acts of the judiciary.
    1
  17386.  @jackgarnett5253  The British Constitution. We have one, despite allegations to the contrary, and a very good one it is too.
    1
  17387.  @verystripeyzebra  You surely must know that interpretations of English law are incorporated into the British Constitution which is binding upon the UK Parliament.
    1
  17388.  @lv3609  It is merely trying to take back the authority it once held under the Court of Appeals, which was abolished and replaced by the Blairite horrorshow which is the Supreme Court.
    1
  17389.  @lv3609  What do you mean by "authoritarianism" ? Some body or another has to have ultimate authority and under British law this body is Parliament - not the judiciary. A Parliament may be voted out, but a judiciary is there forever. This is a point well worth bearing in mind.
    1
  17390.  @rocketscience4516  But I am not wrong. You are. The Law is ultimately under the control of Parliament, not of the judiciary. The Blairite scheme to attempt to undermine this principle by replacing the Court of Appeals with the Supreme Court is doomed to fail under the weight of long-established precedent.
    1
  17391.  @johnrussell3961  And Parliament has the right and obligation to vote on such matters.
    1
  17392.  @lv3609  And so it goes on until such times laws are ratified by mutual agreement - which they largely have been up until recently when laws have clearly been interpreted for political rather than purely judicial purposes.
    1
  17393.  @korayven9255  These refutations do not prove me wrong any more than yours do. Whatever accountability MPs are subject to depends ultimately upon the power of the electorate to reject them, not of the power of the judiciary to censure them. There is nothing "proto dictator or nigh-on fascist" in this. If anything the reverse is true. As I have pointed out, the replacement of Parliamentary authority with judicial authority leaves the doors wide open for a democratically monitored procedure of government to be replaced by an appointed and unaccountable one.
    1
  17394.  @rocketscience4516  But how is what you are saying any different to what I have been saying, other than you do not acknowledge the right of Parliament to overturn or put on hold any interpretation of the law which it feels contradicts the essential purpose of that law? (Should I go back to bed or go for a walk , by the way? Your advice seems, again, to be somewhat contradictory.)
    1
  17395.  @phil2544  It pretended to be, but the Supreme Court had no right to pass judgement on it anyway since it was purely a Parliamentary matter.
    1
  17396.  @verystripeyzebra  As you rightly say the present situation is capable of several interpretations, but since Coke's pronouncements often form the basis of English Common Law, which holds equal status with constitutional law in UK courts, his pronouncements on Parliamentary sovereignty still carry weight. I acknowledge that he also opined that common law should enable any clearly egregious Parliamentary law to be overturned by a court, so -swings and roundabouts really. In the present instance the dilemma is relatively clear. Courts have been exceeding their authority and undermining the purposes of some laws and giving precedence to UN and EU inspired legislation such as the Human Rights Act, which clearly should be abolished as an intrusion into the rights of the British people to maintain their privileges in their own country. It is a clash of cultures and as long as the left and remainers, denied authority in Parliament to pursue their objectives, seek to bend the judiciary to their purpose, the right and the brexiteers can be expected to use Parliamentary sovereignty to thwart them. The current controversy merely highlight the Government's determination to make its resistance as firm and immediate as possible.
    1
  17397.  @rocketscience4516  Damn. My colostomy bag must have sprung a leak - no hang on a minute I haven't been out today, have I?
    1
  17398.  @lv3609  My love is for ultimate freedom - and just about everything you have said here is wrong. The Human Rights Act is still in force in this country, as indeed is a great amount of EU retained legislation. Most of it needs to be chucked out with the Human Rights Act at the top of the pile. And why oh why oh why do you clowns keep referring to "fascism" when you don't have the faintest idea what it means?
    1
  17399.  @stevebarlow3154  I'm rather hoping that in the time it takes to get rid of the present lot the Right will have formed itself into a viable alternative under some label or the other.
    1
  17400.  @jannibal9273  You can't explain why I'm wrong because you don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about.
    1
  17401. That changed in November, actually. Reform UK Ltd is now a company limited by member, not by shareholder.
    1
  17402. ..or forgetting about Kiev altogether. It was probably just a distraction while Russians establish themselves in the largely friendly south and west
    1
  17403. Trump is a hero. Fascist warmongers fear and hate him and - as here - try all credulity in the lies they tell about him.
    1
  17404.  @tone6403  Of course he is. No new wars were begun during his administration and steps were taken to reduce those conflicts that the US was involved in. The US has a war-based economy. Trump wants to change that - which is why the military and the political establishment hate him.
    1
  17405.  @tone6403  Of course he is. No wars were begun during his term of office and , unlike many other US leaders, he does not see the need for a war-based economy.
    1
  17406.  @tone6403  What bile?
    1
  17407. We'll be seeing more of this. The Tory right now has Boris over a barrel and will be squeezing all sorts of concessions out of him over the few months he has left. Watch out for major backtracking on net zero and eye-watering stand-offs with the EU.
    1
  17408. All that Putin is likely to want that he hasn't got already is Odessa and perhaps Kherson and Kharkiv. The only gamble is whether or not to let him have them now, or hope he won't come after them in five or six years time.
    1
  17409.  @eddyvaneden8017  I suppose the million or so on duty inside Russia aren't dangerous then?
    1
  17410. @ Never said it.
    1
  17411. If women could be trained to pee standing up many of these problems would be resolved.
    1
  17412. They meet under a tree in St James' Park at around midnight most Thursdays.
    1
  17413.  @Alan_Mac  Well spotted that man (Capt Mainwaring)
    1
  17414. Net zero = economic and societal suicide.
    1
  17415.  @MissMan666  I think things will change pretty rapidly once Russia gains all of Donbass and the war is over. America is no longer at the centre of the universe and Russia has very many friends in the wider world community. America won't be selling gas and oil to China, India and the Pacific Rim any time soon. Trump and Putin are both pragmatic men and both of them realise that running war-based economies is futile and unnecessary. With luck they will be able to overcome the ridiculous rivalries which have been so pointless since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is the world's No 1. for building and maintaining nuclear power stations and once people realise that renewables just aren't going work there will be an increasing demand. As for the arms industry, this will hopefully be not needed so much in the future and, in any case, this war has shown that US built gear is, in fact, too over -engineered to be effective in dirty battleground situations. Not good PR.
    1
  17416.  @MissMan666  I think things will change pretty rapidly once Russia gains all of Donbass and the war is over. America is no longer at the centre of the universe and Russia has very many friends in the wider world community. America won't be selling gas and oil to China, India and the Pacific Rim any time soon. Trump and Putin are both pragmatic men and both of them realise that running war-based economies is futile and unnecessary. With luck they will be able to overcome the ridiculous rivalries which have been so pointless since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is the world's No 1. for building and maintaining nuclear power stations and once people realise that renewables just aren't going work there will be an increasing demand. As for the arms industry, this will hopefully be not needed so much in the future and, in any case, this war has shown that US built gear is, in fact, too over -engineered to be effective in dirty battleground situations. Not good PR.
    1
  17417.  @MissMan666  I believe the geopolitical landscape will shift significantly once Russia secures control over Donbass and the conflict concludes. The United States is no longer the sole global superpower, and Russia has established numerous alliances within the international community. It's unlikely that the U.S. will be exporting gas and oil to China, India, and the Pacific Rim in the near future. Both Trump and Putin are pragmatic leaders who understand that war-based economies are unsustainable and unnecessary. Hopefully, they can move past the longstanding rivalries that have persisted since the Soviet Union's collapse. Russia excels in constructing and maintaining nuclear power stations, and as the limitations of renewable energy become apparent, the demand for nuclear power is likely to increase. Regarding the arms industry, the current conflict has demonstrated that U.S.-manufactured equipment may be overly complex for practical use in challenging battlefield conditions, which is not favourable for its reputation. (Reply rewritten by the bot Bing to tone down the original language to get it past the nameless YouTube censorship bot!)
    1
  17418. @@SegFault69 Probably two-thirds less. Even if you're right it doesn't much matter, since Russia can afford far greater losses.
    1
  17419.  @kevinmathis1278  Looking at your profile pic I'm pretty sure I have had carnal knowledge of your wife.
    1
  17420. War is far too important to be left to generals.
    1
  17421. So right about masks. I've been through a lot of evidence from both sides and I'm convinced the disadvantages outweigh the advantages to a considerable degree. They are a psychological prop, that's all.
    1
  17422.  @Stigsens1  Thank you for this, although I do not fully understand what you are saying. Do you mean that Russians kidnap children in order to prevent their parents fighting for Ukraine, or from not fighting for Russia?
    1
  17423.  @ScottishAtheist  What you must realise is that in Eastern Ukraine a very large proportion of the population is actually Russian, with families in Russia. Under the threat of war it is only natural for them to send their children to safety - into Russia. But to admit to this would lay them open to charges of collaboration, and aiding the enemy. This is why they pretend their children have been kidnapped. Although we are told that what is happening in Ukraine is an invasion, to a quite considerable proportion of the population in the Eastern part of the country they are being liberated from an increasingly tyrannical rule from Kiev.
    1
  17424.  @OAlem  I think they are both quite safe where they are.
    1
  17425.  @TrevorCrook-c1s  Very good point.
    1
  17426.  @Stigsens1  My reply to you has been deleted, but I am very interested in what you say. If you have the time could you perhaps repeat your points in your own own language so that I could run it through Google translate and get a clearer picture of your meaning?
    1
  17427.  @alanwhiplington5504  There is considerable doubt - and for the very cogent reasons I have stated.
    1
  17428.  @bobohare4825  I'm afraid it is you who is being rather gullible. This child-stealing story is just Ukrainian propaganda - as must be obvious to anyone who thinks it through.
    1
  17429. Right now they just want Donbass, and this is the way to get it.
    1
  17430. Do Farage and Galloway have anything much in common?
    1
  17431.  @soniaspf9705  Fair enough.
    1
  17432.  @stevewilliams2691  10,000 foreigners plus 50,000 or so jailed for drugs.
    1
  17433. If you accept the fact that foxes are predators, then how do you suggest we rid ourselves of them?
    1
  17434.  @b62boom1  Trained marksmen??!! You should see some of my neighbours wielding a 12 bore!
    1
  17435.  @emm_arr  You seem to enjoy it.
    1
  17436.  @emm_arr  Only slightly
    1
  17437.  @johnhamilton5324  Foxes are a nuisance. They kill chickens and lambs and pheasants, as well as other birds. If uncontrolled they can quickly establish quite large populations which upset the balance of nature in the countryside. The fact of the matter is that if they didn't provide good hunting, they would probably be totally exterminated by now.
    1
  17438. It wasn't Biden's age that was against him. It was the fact that his mind had gone. Trump's hasn't .Nothing like.
    1
  17439. Intelligent enough to see that "sex predator" and "felonies" were just attempts to slander him, with no real evidence to back the accusations.
    1
  17440. @Spideog FoH Yes, they come in a variety of colours and styles. Hurry now while stocks last.
    1
  17441. Unseen Vevo ... and her function as a puppet for an investment company making billions by manipulating the carbon futures market.
    1
  17442. Unseen Veto It is not companies which are being manipulated, it is the prices fetched on the open market for permissions to emit carbons in industrial processes. The value of these permissions rises and falls according to political and economic conditions. Greta's spectacular appearance of the scene has caused these prices to fluctuate enormously, thus enabling those in the know to make vast sums overnight by buying cheaply and selling dear as prices rise. Greta's escapade was financed by George Soros, a notable master of this fiendish art.
    1
  17443. How amusing that all you Zelensky fan-boys who believe all the guff about "freedom and democracy" are cheering on a bunch of barmy neo-Nazis who think Putin is a big softie!
    1
  17444. Putin would have been entirely content to allow Ukraine to exists as a satellite state with its face turned firmly in the direction of Moscow. The villains here are the US hawks who, having helped shoehorn a weak and corrupt Biden into the White House, are now playing dangerous power games via NATO.
    1
  17445. How about if he blockades it and surrounds it?
    1
  17446.  @sidgarrett7247  Not strictly true. The Rus - the people who founded Kiev, and thought to be Vikings, did sail further upriver and then built Moscow and create the country named after them but to say Russia was a province of Ukraine is laying it on a bit thick. If you read Vladimir Putin's essay on the subject you will learn that the ruling families of what eventually became the two countries were closely linked. Since then the territory of what is modern Ukraine has had many owners - Lithuanians, Poles, Swedes among others. But modern Ukraine has the same borders as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine which was created by the Russian Bolsheviks.
    1
  17447.  @frederikzinn6568  Those damned drones are changing the face of naval warfare, no doubt of that. But on land the Russians are slowly advancing, which is the important thing.
    1
  17448.  @TheBarnestah  The Mongol Empire no longer exists. As an expert of history you should know this. Russia, however, does exist and it wants land mistakenly given to Ukraine in 1991 to be returned.
    1
  17449.  @stream2watch  The Russia which recognised these areas as part of Ukraine is not the Russia of today. They contain trillions of dollars of mineral wealth which the Russians don't want to see transferred into Western hands. The populations of these areas are largely Russian in the industrial and mining areas, because they were developed by Russia using Russian capital and labour. This factors outweigh "International recognition" which generally means recognition by America and its allies.
    1
  17450.  @petefrys545  The country called Ukraine, which indeed had periods of independence in the past, did not occupy the same land mass as the present Ukraine, which occupies the area of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, created , as you say, by the Russian Bolsheviks. Even then that area was added to in subsequent years by Lenin, Stalin and Krushchev. The Ukrainian National Republic was one of, I think, around three forms of government which laid claim to the territory during that troubled period following the Revolution. The Russians saw them all off making the area, as I say, Russian.
    1
  17451.  @bonnie7898  I'm not overly emotional on the topic of Russia. I'm very emotional on the topic of needless wars. Your definition is just trite lawyerspeak and merely reflects the colonisation of language by a people bent on colonising the world following World War II. Your analogy is ridiculous. A war created by a poor treaty signed by a drunkard thirty years ago bears no comparison with the complexities of the collapse of the Roman empire.
    1
  17452.  @TheBarnestah  I never said that. And Russia doesn't want that. All it wants is to prevent Ukrainian oligarchs handing over Donbass and Crimea to their American counterparts. These territories contain an estimated $14 trillion of gas, oil, coal and rare earth minerals and have been part of Russia since Russia took them from the Ottomans - not the Ukrainians - centuries ago. Allowing the modern state of Ukraine to hand them over to the West is just not on in Putin's book - and I can't say I blame him.
    1
  17453.  @lilymay7171  The contents of our cans should be sufficient to alarm you. Much information about the origins of this war are withheld from people ion Western countries. Since Russia seems set to win this needles conflict, perhaps you should take time to educate yourselves.
    1
  17454.  @tomstorey986  This term "sovereign country" has been much misused. It is just lawyerspeak - and American lawyerspeak at that. Basically it is meaningless. A country is what its people make of it, not what lawyers from another country say it is.
    1
  17455.  @danielmaddox2734  Nonsense. The two countries came from the same source and the same people, but Russia never belonged to Ukraine. Ukraine, as a name, didn't exist until Russia was firmly established as a country.
    1
  17456.  @Deathadder90  Because Russia conquered them, I suppose. But the Russians remaining in these countries don't hate Russians.
    1
  17457.  @stevefrompolaca2403  Soviet Russia - not the Russian Federatiopn.
    1
  17458.  @thegoat11111  The Kiev empire had nothing at all to do with present-day Ukraine. The word just means something like "the borderlands" - in Russian. These ancient ownerships bear no relevance to the present-day arguments concerning the disputed areas in modern Ukraine.
    1
  17459.  @iAnasazi  Who doesn't want what? The Russians in Crimea and the Donbass (and there are many) want to return to Russian control.
    1
  17460.  @stream2watch  So what happens when they take Russian passports again, as many have?
    1
  17461.  @bonnie7898  Russia doesn't want the whole of Ukraine, just Crimea and Donbass, which are Russianised and rich in mineral wealth. Ukraine was a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Note the term "semi-autonomous" like all Soviet Republics it was ultimately subservient to Moscow. The ill-treatment of Russians by the Ukrainian authorities is, of course, pretty much of an excuse for the military action - as is America's usual bleating on about "democracy" as an excuse for its part in spending billions on arming Ukraine to the teeth. It's all about the money in the end. That $14 trillion of oil, gas coal and rare earth minerals are what's at stake. Personally I believe Russia is far more entitled to them than America and its allies.
    1
  17462.  @Deathadder90  Different stories. Different times.
    1
  17463.  @lilymay7171  You are quite charmingly naive. The greed comes from our side, where for at least a decade Western agencies have been plotting with Ukrainian oligarchs to lay hands on the immense reserves of gas, oil, coal and rare earth minerals which lie beneath the soil in Donbass and Crimea. These resources have been developed and are still operated by Russia and by Russians. The people of Donbass have been fighting for ten years to prevent the takeover. They have had to defend their families against Ukrainian tanks and Ukrainian death squads. Freedom of the Press? Don't make me laugh. Western mainstream media sings from the same hymn-sheet, and it is one dictated by financial interests
    1
  17464.  @lilymay7171  Perhaps you should educate yourself a little on the background to this conflict. It is not as black and white as you seem to think. There is greed and envy on both sides, and families having to be defended too. You should look at the Amnesty International report on the situation in Donbass after 2014 when Ukraine sent the tanks in. As for freedom of the press - that is a total myth. I should know, I was a journalist for many years and have witnessed the gradual erosion of liberties in the British media as the money-men take over. YouTube isn't free of this either. This is the fourth attempt I have made to get past their censorship algorithm and I have had to leave out much that could be said.
    1
  17465.  @lilymay7171  There is no freedom of the press -not on YouTube. I have tried five times to reply to you in an attempt to widen your horizons on the background to this conflict and all my replies have been deleted.
    1
  17466.  @lilymay7171  I think you're the one who might need educating. This war is far more complex than you seem to think.
    1
  17467.  @lilymay7171  I generally don't do abuse unless provoked. My go-to quote regarding the invasion is that Putin may not have had an excuse for doing it, but he had plenty of reasons. He did too. He invaded Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from trying to take back Donbass and Crimea. In war that's called a pre-emptive strike and is both sensible and justifiable. I don't buy the legality/illegality argument. There is no such thing when it comes to geopolitics. America attempted to set up some sort of worldwide judicial system after WW II, but is is clearly geared towards American interests. (Apologies for the numerous replies, by the way. I'm fighting YT's new fascist algorithm and they appear to be taking my heresies away to be scrutinised by a higher and possibly human authority. Every now and again they pass the censor and magically re-appear, as in your case.)
    1
  17468.  @darlingdear2687  Obviously borders have not been permanently drawn - because many are disputed. You can't simply say that because a group of people agreed on something decades ago that is it. Situations change. New maps have to be drawn. Modern Ukraine is a case in point. There has never been a Ukraine filling these lines on the map before - apart from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine which was to all extents and purposes a creation of the Soviet Union and subservient to Moscow. Ukraines in the past have filled all sorts of areas on the map. Much of Western Ukraine was part of Poland once, for example. And Crimea and much of Eastern Ukraine were parts of the Ottoman Empire. Crimea and Donbass have been developed as mining and industrial areas by Russia and by Russians for well over a century and Russia does not want to see the fruits of their labours and investment handed over to foreigners. This is quite understandable, so now a new map must be drawn. It could have been done peacefully but those foreign interests vetoed this plan and have plunged the country into a destructive and needless war.
    1
  17469.  @darlingdear2687  I agree with you to some extent. Putin wrote an essay on the subject. Broadly speaking the people of Ukraine and the people of Russia come from the same stock - but I'm afraid I used the word ethnicity in a narrower sense, I suppose to refer to people who identify themselves as Russian, rather than Ukrainian. Many Russian Ukrainians do want to live in Russia, it seems. That is where they have fled to to escape the war. Russia is no longer a gulag. You can live a decent and comfortable life there, by all accounts.
    1
  17470.  @axavidesign1670  Some Ukrainian citizens do regard themselves as Russian though. Up to 70% in Crimea and the industrial centres of Eastern Ukraine, for example. They have not be allowed to decide their fate. In fact the Ukrainians have attempted to crush their culture completely.
    1
  17471. Only brainwashed fools can now doubt that Americs has turned its judicial system into a weapon of tyranny. First covid brutality, now this.
    1
  17472.  @hymns4ever197  But it hasn't yet.
    1
  17473. Big Oil is one of the largest investors in alternative energy, as well as gambling on thee carbon futures market.
    1
  17474. There are a couple of deposits in the west of the country.
    1
  17475. Ask for a shilling, take thruppence,
    1
  17476.  @ugli88  And she ain't far wrong.
    1
  17477. Even if Putin is a tyrant he's not tyrannical towards the British, nor is he ever likely to be. So why don't we just leave it at that instead of rattling our pathetic sabres at him?
    1
  17478.  @vadymvv  It's done now,
    1
  17479. Putin might allow Ukraine to keep Odessa in exchange for official recognition of other gains, and stopping sanctions.
    1
  17480.  @jonathanhurst980  Wot?
    1
  17481.  @RictusHolloweye  Any idea why? It seems that his is the only media empire offering any critique at all. Most objections come from individuals and very small organisations who do not seem to attract much financial support from anyone.
    1
  17482.  @ChrisPage68  It absolutely isn't.
    1
  17483.  @BrianMcGuirkBMG  No it isn't.
    1
  17484.  @RictusHolloweye  No, I was thinking more of individuals such as Tony Heller and little two or three man outfits like Friends of Science. Most of the money seems to get poured into the other side. All media outlets apart from Murdoch's seem to spend millions of whipping up the hysteria and even YouTube channels like Just Have a Think have high production values. Much more money in feeding this monster than trying to attack it.
    1
  17485.  @jonathanhurst980  I do. The climate is constantly changing in response to a series of rhythms the causes of which we cannot fully understand. There is no direct evidence that atmospheric carbon levels, man-made or otherwise, have any particular influence, other than to initiate a possible thermostatic mechanism.
    1
  17486.  @jonathanhurst980  That's when two and two were first added added together to make five.
    1
  17487.  @jonathanhurst980  I'm a denier and I'm not on a public forum highly invested in fossil fuels. Obviously it is now more or less essential for political survival to pay at least lip-service to the notion of AGW - and it is very profitable in many ways, which is what counts. The idea wasn't made up; it seems to have been the result of a series of errors, compounded by repetition and then realised to open new paths to creating a world currency while exercising control over human behaviour. It works very well, but it doesn't mean it's true.
    1
  17488.  @jonathanhurst980  Tony Heller is a man hated and reviled by the climate change mafia. He is a brilliant archivist and has kept all the NASA etc graphs from the past and shows how they have been altered, as well as newspaper articles demonstrating the differences between what happened and what the "scientists" pretend happened. Just go to his YouTube channel and make your own mind up.
    1
  17489.  @teggsy2165  Yes. You can.
    1
  17490.  @howareyou857  Welsh isn't a religion or an ethnicity as such. Is he from sound Celtic stock, do you imagine? And if not Chapel, what?
    1
  17491.  @howareyou857  Perhaps if we did know his religion, and whether or not it influenced his actions, the question of his nationality would be neither here nor there.
    1
  17492. No. You are.
    1
  17493.  @heyidiots.  I'm British and I believe it is entirely possible.
    1
  17494.  @bluecanary9417  What else can you do when threatened except get in first?
    1
  17495.  @DJDaveSeamanOfficial  You are clearly a simpleton and therefore not worth arguing with.
    1
  17496.  @bluecanary9417  No-one desires to commit atrocities. They just happen. And the threat to Russia was very real. That is why Putin acted as he did.
    1
  17497.  @bonnie7898  I'm glad you know that Putin once wanted to join, as indeed did Gorbachev and Yeltsin before him. Perhaps you should ask yourself why they were so curtly refused. NATO exists primarily as a job creation scheme for the military and to create a marketplace for arms manufacturers. Its members, predominantly America, have been involved in countless invasions and military interventions since its inception. Despite assurances that it would not do so, it has expanded closer and closer to Russia's borders. Russia, by contrast, has shown no expansionist desires since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is clear that in equipping and training a large army in Ukraine, NATO wishes it to fall into the sphere of American influence. It is, in effect, already an American satellite and a member of NATO in all but name. Ukraine's history and that of Russia are so closely intertwined that it can be said with some justification that Ukraine was created by Russia and maintained by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union until the collapse of the latter. It is intolerable, in Russian eyes, that it should become an economic and military subject of an entity which very clearly sees itself as Russia's enemy. The American-engineered overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014 led Russia to take extreme measures, notably the annexation of Crimea (which is Russian to the core) and to support the existing separatist movements in the Donbass region, which is also predominantly Russian and fared much better under the control of Moscow than it has under that of Kiev. We cannot know for certain what prompted the invasion of February this year, but it is probable that warmongers in Washington, emboldened by having succeeded in shoehorning their puppet into the White House, were planning to order their other puppet, Zelensky, to undertake an invasion of Crimea and to step up the existing war in Donbass, with further loss of civilian lives. Such steps would be unacceptable blows to Russian prestige and geopolitical interests and so had to be pre-empted.
    1
  17498.  @bonnie7898  I think he was merely affronted that he was expected to go through some kind of subservient selection procedure instead of being welcomed with open arms. No matter. This idea that NATO is a "defence only" alliance really is a nonsense. It exists partially to intimidate Russia, but is really the commercial arm of the US military/industrial complex. It is as defensive as any other Mafia-style protection racket which is, in essence, what it basically is.
    1
  17499.  @bluecanary9417  There's propaganda and there's propaganda. You seem to have swallowed the stuff handed out to you hook, line and sinker! It is entirely true that many Russians don't like Putin -but many revere him. I do neither. I merely point out to you gung-ho numbskulls waving the Ukrainian flag that there are sound reasons for his actions in the conduct of this needless war.
    1
  17500.  @bluecanary9417  Atrocities have been committed by Ukrainians in Donbass for eight years. The UN and Amnesty International, among others, have documented these in detail. The Ukrainian armed forces are just a savage as the Russians. Of course two wrongs don't make a right, but you are deluded if you believe that all right is on one side and all wrong on the other. America has been trying to peel Ukraine away from the Russian sphere of influence throughout this century. They have subsidised the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and done many dirty deals with Ukrainian oligarchs to help them achieve this. Russia is simply fighting back.
    1
  17501.  @bluecanary9417  Of course there are consequences. They will, in all probability, be a ruined Ukraine with drastically depleted armed forces and Russia's hold on Crimea and Donbass being firmer than was the case before the invasion. This at least appears to be Putin's objective, and one which still seems very much within his grasp. This could have been achieved without bloodshed had Kiev not listened to the honeyed words of Washington, or at the very least implemented the Minsk 2 agreements and refrained from further oppression of the ethnic Russian population of Donbass.
    1
  17502.  @bluecanary9417  Your numbers are irrelevant. Of course Russia is using the Donbass deaths as an excuse to take over this mineral rich area, but that is not the point. The point is that, like Crimea, it has a substantial Russian population and has, like Crimea, suffered economically under control from Kiev. This does not mean that Putin has imperial ambitions. All indications are otherwise. As with Chechnya, and indeed as with Georgia, all he requires is secure borders. The present situation in Ukraine is a reflection of the same ideology with gas, coal and steel thrown in as a bonus. I think the collapse of the United States is just as likely as the collapse of Russia, which seems to be heading a move away from American hegemony and the pre-eminence of the mighty dollar. More probably though these two tired old giants will go on struggling against each other for some while yet.
    1
  17503.  @bluecanary9417  Your opinions too, I'm afraid. I see you are hopelessly confused by the absurd analogies the historically illiterate continue to make between the present situation in Ukraine and the rise and fall of Germany in the last century. I can be neither vatnik nor quisling since I am British and mainly concerned that elements in my county have ill-advisedly taken the side of America in this proxy war with Russia. We have no business supplying either arms or training to Ukraine, much less undertaking foolish adventures such as blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. It will end badly for us.
    1
  17504.  @bluecanary9417  What an odd world of fantasy you appear to live in. I suggest it is you who should learn to think for yourself and extend your horizons beyond the pro-Western propaganda you have soaked up so thoroughly. This war is a turf war between sets of gangsters - one supported by Russia, the other by America. Zelensky is a front man for the US gang which has foolishly decided to provoke the Russian gang with no regard at all for the consequences. Cliches and buzzwords are no replacement for reasoned thought. The very fact that blood is being shed and a nation is being destroyed is proof enough of error. The error lies in the folly of those, like yourself, who imagine that this is some kind of battle between good and evil when it is simply a repeat of the age-old story of war: predators fighting over an injured prey.
    1
  17505.  @bluecanary9417  There will be something close on a million Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine by the New Year. Many of them will be thieves, murderers and rapists. Many will also be veterans of the wars in Syria and Chechnya as well as mercenaries from Afghanistan, equipped with weaponry kindly left behind by the Americans. Some of the conscripted troops will be poorly trained and equipped. It is their job to die, but to take as many Ukrainians with them as possible. I think it probable that arms supplies to Ukraine from the West will begin to slow up soon, especially if the mid-terms bring a MAGA majority in Congress. War is a Democrat thing, you know, and it was clear that the armchair generals in the Pentagon would get something started if they shoehorned Biden in. As to the nuclear threat - well, it's always there and one well worth being reminded of from time to time.
    1
  17506.  @bluecanary9417  You seem you seem be quite interested. I don't think you have much understanding of the points I've been making, however. You seem to simply want to indulge in childish insults rather than rebutting them intelligently. To be a vatnik I would have to be a Russian or at least to blindly support Russia -which clearly I do not. You are more of a vatnik than I am with your blind acceptance of Western propaganda and vilification of Russia.
    1
  17507.  @bluecanary9417  Now you're just being silly. I am prejudiced in favour of peace rather than war and of objective assessment rather than blind acceptance of the trash doled out by the MSM. The Kremlin doesn't come into it. Russian propaganda is often as absurd as our crap. The trick is to try to find a balance between the two and so get some idea of what is actually going on. Brave little Ukraine fighting evil Putin on behalf of freedom and democracy, full of virtue and bound to win just ain't it, I'm afraid. As I said, this is a war between oligarchs and in all probability it will be oligarchs who will decide the outcome. America is already sending in the troops to stop Western armaments being pinched and sold on the black market. The stuff they abandoned in Afghanistan is finding its way to the Russians and Zelensky and his cronies are salting away further billions in their offshore accounts. How things are going to pan out in the end it is impossible to predict, but I have a strong feeling that the West will end up the losers, both economically and on the battlefield.
    1
  17508.  @bluecanary9417  I don't think you even know what a trope is - or the meanings of many other words for that matter. At least that is the best explanation I have for your apparent confusion.
    1
  17509.  @bluecanary9417  If you are suggesting you are more aware of me than I am of myself you really ARE in trouble!
    1
  17510.  @bluecanary9417  Any idea what date I should mark in my diary?
    1
  17511.  @bluecanary9417  It's a long, long way off. At least it'll give you time to grow up a bit.
    1
  17512.  @bluecanary9417  You're getting Putin mixed up with Hitler again!
    1
  17513.  @mikeoglen6848  Peace though strength simply means that once peace in Ukraine is obtained it will be maintained through fear of breaking it. That peace will be obtained by Ukraine accepting the realities of its position. You can call that capitulation if you like - but it is the only sensible thing to do.
    1
  17514. Paradoxically, if Ukraine surrendered Donbass and Crimea to the Russians the bit left over might just have a chance of EU membership.
    1
  17515.  @bakedbean37  Donbass and Crimea are parts of Ukraine in name only. They are parts of Russia stuck on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for administrative reasons - by Russia.
    1
  17516.  @bakedbean37  "International Law" is merely a euphemism for regulations which advance and protect America's economic and military interests. Putin does not wish to colonise Donbass as such. He - and many actual residents -regard it as being part of Russia which has mistakenly been appended on to the new country of Ukraine.
    1
  17517. I expect you visit channels that oppose your own views do you? The bubble you are living in is just a dirty soapsud floating in a pool of sewage. Anyone convinced by the Orwellian propaganda pumped out by this channel needs de-programming.
    1
  17518.  @lavenberry  You seem sensible. Amazing Lucas?Sargon of Akkad? History Debunked? Bribart? Prager U? There are many more which meet your criteria. This channel is good only because it does what it does very well. It uses mind-bending techniques to get its message across, which is very effective but to me, extremely disturbing. A "fact" is a tricky critter to pin down by the way. Despite thousands of years of effort the difference between truth and opinion often eludes us. I also take it you do not watch left-wing channels which indulge in name-calling and pettiness toward President Trump. That must cut down your viewing experience quite considerably.
    1
  17519.  @lavenberry  Do you know what, I think you could be right in your assessment to a certain extent? I've done a quick review of my recent viewing history and the vileness seems confined to the comments sections, over which the creators choose not to exercise control -and quite rightly so. Americans are generally more polite than the British (which I am). Some of the British creators curse and revile opponents in a manner which yours do not. Your left-wing Damage Report has a Garbage Person of the Week. Our right wing We Got a Problem has a Shitweasle of the Week and the presenter slams those he despises in accents and terms which I believe might make you shudder. I haven't seen the video you mention, but then I'm not on Twitter. I'm sure it exists though. Thanks for giving me food for thought this morning.
    1
  17520. As with Reform in the UK - and indeed with Trump in the US - right-wing, patriotic politicians have to deal with the fact that dim racists attach themselves to the cause. This does not mean that the leaders of these parties are dim racists, or even that their policies are stupid and racist.
    1
  17521. He's just a puppet - same as sad old Joe.
    1
  17522. Nu is old nus. (French for naked. The frogs didn't like it.)
    1
  17523.  @NoSweat69  Financial inducement ought to do the trick.
    1
  17524. Putin needs every inch of territory gained so far - and possibly a bit more. Better to pay him in concessions than in human blood.
    1
  17525.  @DV80s  They were Russian before, then Soviet, but only "Ukrainian" for little more than thirty years.
    1
  17526. Why?
    1
  17527.  @straightreject2947  Because thousands are dying?
    1
  17528.  @markcepeda8144  Russia's a pretty good country to emigrate to, actually.
    1
  17529.  @michaeldunham3385  How is the reality of Russia different from any other reality?
    1
  17530.  @rockbutcher  They're really not that long.
    1
  17531.  @michaeldunham3385  You seem to be floundering liker a fish in a puddle, if I may say so.
    1
  17532.  @michaeldunham3385  Glub, glub, glub, glub.
    1
  17533. There are, however, strict legal limits. Anything which could possibly prejudice the result is forbidden.
    1
  17534.  @nenasiek  They're already there. Crimea is in Russia.
    1
  17535.  @dmitryk2058  In the last census, several years before the annexation, over 70% of Crimeans self-identified as Russian.
    1
  17536.  @cog600  Officially. Many countries are simply awaiting the outcome of the conflict and the current economic war against America.
    1
  17537. @@strangerhythm I don't watch Russian state media.
    1
  17538.  @cteal2018  Brave words.
    1
  17539.  @bonnie7898  Because that's the area where most of them live?
    1
  17540.  @bonnie7898  I never watch Russian state media.I am just deeply suspicious of Western media.
    1
  17541.  @bonnie7898  Why should they leave a country their forefathers created? Without Russia and Russians, Crimea and East Ukraine would be vacant steppe. Their inclusion in modern Ukraine is a historical accident which needs correction. (In fact around 3million peope have left for Russia now. Unless Russia gains ascendancy they will have to stay there. If they were to return to homes now controlled by Ukrainian nationalists they would almost certainly be killed as collaborators.
    1
  17542.  @bobikdylan  That would be the 265 warships of the Russian Navy.
    1
  17543.  @theknowall2232  Brilliant! Spread this everywhere! PS A couple from my collection: https://www.youtube.com/=nYWlb-rITBIwatch?v Mask developer says masks are shit BMJ April 2020 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1422.short They concluded, “The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against covid-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.” https://www.youtube.com/=nYWlb-rITBIwatch?v
    1
  17544.  @amraceway  They are real. They are just difficult to express, due largely to censorship and poor education in the realities of human development.
    1
  17545.  @amraceway  You have to be kidding! At least one third of my posts are removed without explanation and I have just been banned for a day for "hate speech" with, once again, no explanation given.
    1
  17546.  @garylovell6017  I don't hate anyone. I just disagree with them.
    1
  17547.  @amraceway  I don't think it works like that. As far as I can tell all you need to do is to set up some kind of multiple account and blitz anyone you disagree with with reports of bad conduct, and the blind YouTube AI algorithm will issue first a warning then a ban.
    1
  17548. Perhaps they don't take much notice of the Western media?
    1
  17549. Anyone who is sceptical about man-made climate change and believes Covid 19 restrictions should be lifted has to have his head screwed on straight. We need realists, not brainwashed lefty doom-mongers, to get our country back on course.
    1
  17550. Oligarchs HaveControl You will be relieved to learn that arctic ice is recovering this winter. Recent net losses of around 200 cubic kilometres a year seem unlikely to be matched this season. Since there are about 2,850,000 cubic kilometres of ice in the arctic it doesn't make a toss of difference either way. It is a little known fact that the tropics are hotter than equatorial regions, by the way. Any movement of population from either region will be purely economically based and have nothing to do with climate change.
    1
  17551. Very good point.
    1
  17552.  @WeebUnionWU  The alleged Russian attack killing 600!!?? Ukrainians.
    1
  17553.  @OzzyBloke  If that's the actual site. At this stage it looks like a huge PR blunder by Russia though.
    1
  17554. Of course Ukraine has a corrupt government! When do you think that missing $10billion in US aid went?
    1
  17555. In fact this area has been pretty much fortified or ten years - which is why the war there is taking so long and resulting in so many casualties.
    1
  17556.  @owenoneill5955  I don't quite see how that works. For a start a high proportion of the Russian army - the best units - consist of highly-paid professional soldiers. I agree that the Ukrainian army is very good, however. It is trained in modern methods whereas the Russians are restricted by corrupt commanders and old-fashioned techniques. The war is taking so long because the territory on which it is being fought is very heavily fortified. Donbass sits of trillions of dollars in mineral wealth and following the uneasy peace of 2015/16 both sides built extremely complex and strong triple defence lines on each side of the front. Ukraine has never reached the Russian lines but the Russians are having a very hard job indeed breaking through the Ukrainian defences.
    1
  17557.  @owenoneill5955  Once again you are following the official line. There was neither hope nor intention of taking Kiev at all - let alone in three days. Some of the troops were told this to encourage them but, apart from the long-shot airport raid, the object of the exercise was to draw the Ukrainians into battle on their own ground. Russia had no qualms about sending in raw troops and old equipment into the dragon's mouth simply to soak up as much of Ukraine's new army as possible. Russia is only interested in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, predominantly Donbass. Here they are using professional troops - Chechen mercenaries, Syrian veterans, Wagners and others and trying to push back the boundaries left behind after the uneasy peace of 2015. They're having a hard job because, as I said earlier, the ground is heavily defended and , as you rightly say, the Ukrainians are well-trained and highly motivated.
    1
  17558.  @owenoneill5955  I don't really know what the official line is! This is just the way things strike me, based on the facts as they are known and the general principle that politicians and the media are lying most of the time. There are a few commentators who have influenced my views, but they are mostly Americans.
    1
  17559. There is no obvious relationship here. Are you suggesting that employees were so depressed at the prospect of being retired that they neglected their duties?
    1
  17560. @ Actually on "people with intellectual disabilities" who have been specifically targeted in the FAA's DEI recruitment strategy.
    1
  17561. @ I don't think these have been specifically targeted, but those with exceptionally low IQs certainly have. Being clinically obese, homosexual and/or black certainly ups your ratings also.
    1
  17562. @ I'm 76.
    1
  17563. @ Dwarves and elves, as long as they are mentally and physically competent should be okay. Gremlins, who get a kick out of messing up electronic equipment, might be a no-no though.
    1
  17564.  @harry19000000  That is simply too perverse an assessment to merit a considered reply.
    1
  17565.  @chewieknievel8439  I don't think he said that all. He's just using this incident to highlight the disadvantages of DEI policies - which may well have contributed to the cause of the accident in that they in themselves may have contributed to the difficulty the FAA apparently has in recruiting suitably competent ATCs. Whatever blame may eventually be apportioned to the helicopter pilot it is apparently the case that the ATC in charge of overseeing helicopter traffic was allowed to leave work early, and was not replaced due to no suitably qualified substitute being available.
    1
  17566.  @shadowbanned636  Probably in this instance. The question remains, however, how much suitably qualified people were discouraged from applying for jobs because less competent individuals were being hired in order to fulfil DEI quotas.
    1
  17567. ​​Look at the official statistics Death rates in Britain and most European countries are currently running at between 10percent and 23percent above the five year average pre covid levels. Something is causing it and we need to find out what it is. Until any other explanation is found I'm going with lockdowns and even more likely- untried severe medical interventions in the arm.
    1
  17568. The essential difference is that Putin has got the bottle to use them - at which point the West will collapse into a weeping mess, and beg for mercy.
    1
  17569.  @PaulK-ve1pu  Go to Trafalgar Square and denounce Islam and see what happens.
    1
  17570. Let's face it, they're just sucking up to the Moslem vote.
    1
  17571. Will you be saying the same thing when you're cowering in your bomb shelter.?
    1
  17572.  @TommyRaymond-dq2gb  Yes, it will.
    1
  17573. Mild infections - which nearly all these new cases appear to be - are a good thing. A vaccine after all is just a mild infection in a way. Deaths and hospitalisations continue to drop while "cases" rise. This is a clear indication that the disease is evolving into milder forms, as many thought it would.
    1
  17574.  @globetwig4401  Possibly not. But it seems a likely explanation for why so man new "cases" are exhibiting such mild symptoms. And it would follow a sound evolutionary principle. since viruses which kill their hosts cannot reproduce and spread. Covid 19 is related to forms of the common cold don't forget - which is successful because its symptoms are so mild our bodies don't bother on wasting energy to combat it.
    1
  17575.  @Dariab83  With much the same effect as mild forms of the virus. In America, incidentally,there is mounting evidence that some positive tests are resulting from dead viruses. I don't know if the same applies here.
    1
  17576. The only people taking part will be students and other unemployed riff-raff. Sorry.
    1
  17577.  @veritaspk  But Germany opted out, not Russia.
    1
  17578.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  Then why NATO? Why the arms industry?
    1
  17579. @ You'll have to be more specific.
    1
  17580. @ It'd look better if you spelt it correctly.
    1
  17581. @ Then why NATO? Why the arms industry?
    1
  17582.  @bikergirluk8059  Why not?
    1
  17583.  @bikergirluk8059  But why do you hate it? As you said, it provided us with cheap energy once, and gave us a market for all sorts of goods. It can do so again once these ridiculous sanctions are lifted. What's to hate?
    1
  17584. @ I still don't understand what you think Trump has done which is so terribly wrong. He is bringing this needless terrible war in Ukraine to as rapid an end as possible.
    1
  17585. @ Russia didn't start this war, the West did by attempting to steal Russian assets in Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  17586.  @christopherj2231  Who knows what will happen 200 years from now?
    1
  17587.  Hand Solo  Hang on Hand. 4,781,812 cases.157,357 deaths. About 2.7% right? Leaving a 97.3% survival rate.
    1
  17588. Gone down a bit.Its 97.3% as of today.
    1
  17589. Putin seems to me to be totally on top of the situation. He is within a hairsbreadth of achieving his military objectives and Ukraine is in no position to argue much longer. Negotiation has always been possible - but not so long as Zelensky persists in his folly and the West continues to finance it. Peace is within sight. The tragedy is that the terms will, in the end, probably not be much different to those put forward in the Minsk accords ten years ago - and hundreds of thousands will have died to no purpose other than to further a callous and cynical attempt by greedy American and European billionaires to lay their hands on something which is not theirs.
    1
  17590. They weren't theirs. They were the Soviet Union's.
    1
  17591.  @valtonen77  They were stationed in Ukraine but designed to protect the SU as a whole. The command codes were Moscow and the Ukrainians couldn't fire them without somehow breaking these codes. To all extents and purposes these missiles were Russian which is why their ownership was transferred when Ukraine was created. It is perhaps a pity that the same common sense didn't apply to Crimea and Donbass at the time of these treaties. They too are Russian and if this had been acknowledged at the time we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now.
    1
  17592.  @cheech7900  Babbling on about pissing in the street because the old tune about fascist thugs just won't play any more, for starters. And the realisation that his brand of socialism has no hope of resonating with the working class in Britain - and has not done so for at least fifty years. The struggle now is between the patriotic right and the globalist left, and it is the globalist left which will increasingly rely on oppression and brutality to impose its creepy, inhumane creed on the rest of us. Like many Labourites, Phil is a decent man, I am sure. I hope and believe that before long he and others like him will realise their good nature has been taken advantage of and find out who their real friends are - such as those out there waving the Union Flag and singing Jerusalem yesterday.
    1
  17593.  @cheech7900  Babbling on about peeing in the street, having realised that the old tune about racist thugs doesn't play any more. The fight is now between the patriotic right and the globalist left and Labourites like Phil are backing the wrong team. I have a faint hope that they might one day realise it and once again proudly wave their country's flag and sing "Jerusalem" .
    1
  17594. ​ @cheech7900  YouTube seems reluctant to allow me to explain - but going on about peeing in the street instead of fulminating against racist thugs looks like a bit of a climb-down. Perhaps he - and many Labourites - are beginning to realise that their globalist nonsense doesn't ring true with the mass of ordinary, decent people in this country. We would rather wave the Union Flag and sing "Jerusalem.".
    1
  17595.  @cheech7900  YouTube won't let me explain.
    1
  17596.  @samanthapatrick4345  And look what's replaced them!
    1
  17597.  @fredplat467  It's the odour of sanity.
    1
  17598.  @mattnhormann  Yes it is. American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021 - Volume 28 - Issue 4 - p e434-e460
    1
  17599.  @mattnhormann  The study analyses the results of around 40 papers. Can you tell me which one was withdrawn? It always strikes me as odd how the establishment media and tame scientists gang up to condemn any cheap medicine which might provide an alternative to the highly-profitable vaccines currently being touted and which, on the face of it, perform only slightly better than the alternatives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yVTrNem3d8
    1
  17600.  @mattnhormann  This paper is just one of 84 cited in the report, many of them peer-reviewed. Do you still stand by your initial assertion that ivermectin is not an anti-viral, by the way?
    1
  17601.  @mattnhormann  It is also used in the treatment of Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, West Nile Fever and Zika - all of which are caused by viruses.
    1
  17602. The deal is he gets nothing. And he's just given Trump an excuse for saying so.
    1
  17603.  @JSevion  A bit extreme, but I can see her point.
    1
  17604.  @JSevion  Correct. Free speech means just that. The political establishment is riddled with traitors, many of whom deserve to be hanged.
    1
  17605.  @JSevion  So is conducting an illegal election .
    1
  17606.  @JSevion  There are many hundreds of hours of evidence of electoral fraud and misconduct available on the Internet. Go to Here is the Evidence or state senate hearings into electoral misconduct. I would give you the links but the post would be deleted if I did. Let me know how you got on.
    1
  17607. Typical CIA disinformation technique. Genuine theories about the causes of the war can now be bundled up with this made-up nonsense and the whole package dismissed as "conspiracy theory."
    1
  17608. He is 100% right. Zelensky foolishly allowed himself to be talked into this proxy war! He should have taken the deal offered at Minsk.
    1
  17609. What ARE they doing apart from doing their best to kill off the elderly, allowing mass immigration and giving billions we can't afford to continue a war Ukraine has already lost?
    1
  17610. He's supposed to be God's representative, not some commie social worker. He has profaned the sacred mysteries of the most important festival in the Christian calendar.
    1
  17611. There are Muslim rebels in many countries closely linked to Russia. It is perfectly possible that Russia's enemies - including Ukraine and even possibly the US and the UK - have capitalised on this dissent. This new Isis splinter group looks to have been created by Western spooks.
    1
  17612. Dead parrot.
    1
  17613. He was referring to the auto industry - but if by some horrible mischance Biden wins in November it will only be on account of some very sophisticated chicanery on his behalf. Millions of Americans will be as angry and as confused as they were in 2020 - and quite a lot of them have guns.
    1
  17614. More and more I begin to think that actors, pop stars and other delightful people in the entertainments industry should be denied the right to express their opinions - or at least it should be made clear that their personalities and their talents have been compensated for by their total lack of the ability for reasoned thought..
    1
  17615. Jeremiah Jeremecht Very possibly. The ability to lie convincingly is an essential qualification for the role.
    1
  17616. It is quite clear that many branches of the civil service have been infiltrated by Muslims and Muslim sympathisers. It is a religion which encourages compliance.
    1
  17617. So Macron now wants to kill babies in the womb as well as sending people to be killed in Ukraine by Russians? I didn't realise France had such an overpopulation problem.
    1
  17618.  @petefl1818  You are living in a bubble, then.
    1
  17619.  @redordead4491  Hardly an objective forum here though! The situation would probably be reversed if this exchange took place on GB News, say.
    1
  17620.  @petefl1818  Middleclass lefties hold these views and imagine them to be universal. To working class Americans and to many in the Third World though, Trump is a hero.
    1
  17621.  @WilliamMacKenzie-dq6bf  It has a great deal going for it as a formula for moral and economic regeneration. There's some crazy stuff in it, but these items can be rejected and lefties will be given the illusion that they have won. We aim to be kind.
    1
  17622. Justice! America must never again try to commandeer the judicial system for political purposes.
    1
  17623. Afterburners?
    1
  17624. Some reckon that this disease will rapidly infect at least 80% of the population - with only a tiny fraction experiencing any really troublesome symptoms and only the very elderly and the very frail actually dying. In the light of this testing is an utterly pointless exercise.
    1
  17625.  @roberthollingsworth8940  Here is a troll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uUfXjKaho
    1
  17626. You are sick.
    1
  17627. The indigenous people of America had been there since the last ice age. The so-called Palestinians have been there for five minutes - and most of them wouldn't be there at all if it wasn't for the Zionists.
    1
  17628. The indigenous people of America had been there for tens of thousands of years. The so-called Palestinians are more recent interlopers, and many of them wouldn't be there at all if their grandparents and great-grandparents hadn't moved in to take advantage of the prosperity introduced by the Zionists they now so despise.
    1
  17629. The Palestinians are not indigenous to Palestine.
    1
  17630.  @ljt3084  All very impressive, but who givers a fuck?
    1
  17631.  @patrickgrove3469  Because the native populations of America had been there since the last ice age. The Palestinians aren't even Palestinians for the most part. They wouldn't even be there if it wasn't for the Zionists.
    1
  17632.  @patrickgrove3469  Because the original inhabitants of the American continent had been there since the end of the last ice age. The Palestinians not quite so much.
    1
  17633. It's not all they need to fix.
    1
  17634. Thahkyou THANKYOU for oll the wonderful work George and Greta and your pretend news channel are doing to turn ordinary people against the cynical madness of climate change hysteria. The gig is up. You have been rumbled. We have seen through you. You are all going to die in a blizzard of contempt while your weasel words freeze in your,sick, sad hearts.
    1
  17635. Trump 2020!
    1
  17636. Putin is not an expansionist dictator. It is the USA which is expansionist, trying to make Ukraine another of its client colonies.
    1
  17637. Putin is not an expansionist dictator. He has been in power for more than 20 years and all he has ever done is secure Russia's existing borders and interests.
    1
  17638. Putin is not an expansionist dictator. He has been in power for more than 20 years and all he has done is take actions to secure his country's existing interests.
    1
  17639. Putin cannot be described as an expansionist dictator. He has been in power for more that 20 years and during that time has merely taken steps to ensure that near neighbours - Chechnya, Georgia and now Ukraine - do not follow policies which affect his country's security and commercial interests.
    1
  17640.  @vasilimacharadze139  I think if you do further research you will find that, while believing all this Putin, has said it is impossible to achieve - and not even desirable to do so.. He is an eminently pragmatic man and while these patriotic noises may resound with many Russians, they do not indicate an actual ambition. Added to which, since he is now past 70 and had been been in power for more than twenty years don't you think he might have left things a little bit late?
    1
  17641. Kill a granny for George! Incidentally George Floyd's inquest showed he was Covid -19 positive. This means that if he had been killed in the UK his death would have been recorded as "coronavirus related" and entered on the daily statistics as such.
    1
  17642. There really isn't much difference. Both coronaviruses and flu viruses cause respiratory illness. Humanity will just have to build up immunity to Covid 19 - and it will.
    1
  17643. There is just one Patriot missile system being made available. Russian decoys will swiftly force it to use up what few missiles the US has provided and to reveal the locations of its component units so that they may be destroyed. Not much of a game changer, I'm afraid.
    1
  17644. Time the UK escaped from the clutches of the Washington war pigs. Russia would pose no threat to a neutral Britain.
    1
  17645. Trump is guilty of mis filing documents Biden is guilty of massive, long--term corruption. Go figure
    1
  17646. There is not one scrap of evidence for these paranoid assertions. Russia has a hard enough job keeping hold of what it believes to rightfully own without trying to invade the rest of Europe.
    1
  17647.  @eduwino151  What with if they've run out of ammo too?
    1
  17648.  @eduwino151  China? India? Iran? South America? Russia itself?
    1
  17649.  @eduwino151  All these countries are members or would-be members of the BRICS + federation of countries and all have a vested interest in protecting Russia against American aggression. If push comes to shove all will do all they can to ensure Russian victory. Many already are, under the counter as it were. Both India and China are already smuggling in technology in exchange for discounted oil.
    1
  17650. It isn't America. Once you realise that it'll be easier.
    1
  17651. At last you have found an adult to politely try and talk some sense into the ignorant woke schoolchildren who seem to run this channel.
    1
  17652.  @nelsonmendes7551  No he wasn't. He's either just saying that to get out of being vaccinated, or his first infection wasn't Delta or traces of the infection have lasted long enough for the PCR to pick them up five months later. Probably the latter to back up the former.
    1
  17653.  @nelsonmendes7551  The best way of knowing if you are immune is to see if you get infected again - which you simply don't. T cell and D cell immunity is notoriously difficult to detect, of course, because it is necessary to stimulate a response in order to make the existence of immunity apparent. You can't just check for antibodies. Hospitals are full of people who have been fully vaccinated against covid, but I am not aware of anyone being admitted to any hospital after being infected for a second time. It probably HAS happened, but only in people whose immune systems have been thoroughly compromised due to extreme old age or some other factor. The overall lesson is clear: infection leads to a far greater degree of immunity than does vaccination.
    1
  17654. Shh. We didn't really give them all that many.
    1
  17655. Absolutely. There is, in any case, little that can stop it now.
    1
  17656.  @JesterEric  At last a voice of sanity in the howling wilderness of delusion that is this comments section.
    1
  17657. So far it's just a bad day or two on the Somme. Difference is the dead then were young active men with much to contribute to society. At least 80% per cent of Coronavirus dead are a drain on society, largely due to advanced age. The lockdown should be lifted immediately and we just have to take our chances.
    1
  17658. He's already warned Zelensky that further support is most unlikely. That ought to do it.
    1
  17659.  @edenbreckhouse  Not me! It was obvious from the start that the pandemic was being stage-managed, partially as an exercise in control but mainly to spin it out in order to maximise drug company profits.
    1
  17660.  @edenbreckhouse  Not a word of it.
    1
  17661. We've been lied to about Russia running out of missiles. Chances are we've been lied to about everything else.
    1
  17662. Any idea how the very elderly will be affected? Not many of those in Africa.
    1
  17663.  @krazyakres  It was a miracle he escaped alive. But that doesn't alter the fact that much of what he says is true, while Harris is just a cog in the machine.
    1
  17664. Paul Gibby Follow it all the way to the carbon futures market where millions are made every day trading in permissions to exceed carbon allocations.
    1
  17665. A new and worrying variant. I knew you would be pleased. But what will the paranoia junkies do if this turns out to be the one we've been waiting for - the variant that spreads ultra fast but has very mild effects, thus beating a path to herd immunity? What will you do then?
    1
  17666. The idea that this government of overgrown schoolchildren can defeat gangs of organised criminals is quit frankly laughable.
    1
  17667.  @natureandrelax3151  Some of the many examples of delusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation
    1
  17668.  @anglonorse2943  Who are the "we"? Not the great mass of the British public, for sure.
    1
  17669.  @jasonhaven7170  Most people dislike most politicians. The vision of Britain's future revealed in the first few weeks of the present government will, however, enable many to overcome this prejudice and unite behind any alliance which has a chance of overthrowing it.
    1
  17670.  @anglonorse2943  How do you think Labour would fare if a GE was called tomorrow?
    1
  17671.  @jasonhaven7170  I expect the polls are wrong then.
    1
  17672.  @anglonorse2943  Rhetorical, but not silly. I doubt this government will make full term but if it does the chances of anything other than a resounding defeat are very, very slim.
    1
  17673.  @jasonhaven7170  Not so far. And maybe not at all. But this is such an exceptionally bad and potentially treasonable government that a crisis calling for a General Election may well occur.
    1
  17674.  @jasonhaven7170  But many Tories and temporary LibDems are going to Reform, surely?
    1
  17675. I'm really beginning to wonder if the 19th century attitude towards women was as misguided as we have been led to believe.
    1
  17676. MAGA's first victory in the new Congress. McCarthy is in, but he has little power to rule as an autocrat and can be ejected if he steps out of line. Next step a committee to investigate the treasonous activities of the FBI and other government agencies which have been making a mockery of democracy in the US for decades.
    1
  17677. I think you've been playing too many computer games.
    1
  17678.  @anthonymccarthy4164  I grovel. I too have never played computer games but I assumed that your somewhat colourful assessment of the present situation was based on a simple division of the world into good guys and bad guys. As to media lies it has been my experience that in the US CNN and MSNBC and all anti-Trump lesser channels lie like buggery. Indeed after two years watching them, and by informing myself of the alternatives I gradually completed the admittedly difficult task of realising what Trump is all about. I now admire him bigly. As far as Rupert Murdoch is concerned the only MSM news outlet I have any time for is Sky Australia. Billionaire gangsters meet every year in Davos , Switzerland where they hatch schemes to cast capitalism into a new mould. I don't know if Putin has ever been but what we have to realise is that Russia is a very difficult country to run and a certain amount of bullying has to be involved. I gather that every child in Russia has to read Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" which is something I would like to see encouraged in Western countries. To find the truth, insofar as it is possible to do so, one must develop an eye for recognising lies. Sadly, I think you have failed so far to do so.
    1
  17679.  @anthonymccarthy4164  I thought I'd responded to you pretty much point by point. Your remarkable response leads me to suppose that you are troubled by paranoid delusions of some kind. Perhaps you should take up computer games. It might help take your mind off things.
    1
  17680. This must mean the war is nearing an end. The only possible reason Ukraine would want this land is to use it as bargaining chip in peace negotiations.
    1
  17681. No-one has any idea how many Russian soldiers have been lost. All one can guess with a degree of probability is that figures claimed by Ukraine exaggerate the number at least threefold.
    1
  17682. Good. Can I live in your house while you're gone?
    1
  17683. Too many people. It's as simple as that. The population of this country is far in excess of what was planned for at this time and - as some claim - far in excess of what official figures state. The sewage system can't cope, and nor can much of anything else.
    1
  17684.  @analisamelojete1966  Major news outlets covered it in full. It's a long listen, but YouTuber IEarlGrey provides a transcript and a useful summary.
    1
  17685. In a ditch by the river, actually. https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    1
  17686.  @TheConverter330  Naah. I was at a Proud Boys rally in Delaware all that week.
    1
  17687.  @paxprix3096  Quite true. The point is that this was not known at the time Trump made the comments and there may even have been other ballots, we just don't know. The point is the story was not made up.
    1
  17688.  @paxprix3096  As I say, it was as stated by Trump at the time of the debate, as far as he knew. It was not a fiction as some were trying to insinuate. On reflection I think Kayleigh McEnany's apparent evasiveness was probably due to the fact that by that time she knew of the denial that Wisconsin ballots were in the dumped trays and, very sensibly, didn't wish to be drawn into a debate on detail. River, ditch, Wisconsin ballots or not - these are all secondary to the main point at issue, namely that postal balloting is fraught with the likelihood of large scale error and fraud.
    1
  17689.  @paxprix3096  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0 1000 people voted twice in georgia https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/georgia-official-claims-1-000-people-illegally-voted-twice-in-primaries/ar-BB18PGvz?li=BB141NW3 Mail truck catches fire destroying thousands of ballots https://amp.dailyrecord.com/amp/3257291001 200,000 ballots sent to wrong addresses in nevada https://ktrh.iheart.com/featured/michael-berry/content/2020-08-10-more-than-200000-ballots-in-nevada-mailed-to-the-wrong-addresses/ Entire NJ election called a do over due to ballot fraud https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2020/08/11/paterson-nj-election-rivals-agree-do-over-council-election/3343160001/ New jersey man votes 3 times https://patch.com/new-hampshire/concord-nh/new-hampshire-man-arrested-vote-fraud-charge Republican + 4 others charged in ballot fraud https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/kansas-republican-charged-with-three-felonies-in-voter-fraud-investigation/2020/07/14/7d0fe8c2-c629-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html 200,000 purged from rolls in New york https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/campaigns-elections/new-york-city-purged-voters-2016-it-wasnt-mistake.html Deceased cat receives ballot https://apnews.com/fbcec393dc652a9ccdb2cc8aacb15895 NY election disaster, over a month to count ballots , ballots lost or destroyed https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-mail-vote-disaster-11595286912 Man charged for voting in 3 elections using his dead mother https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-18/la-county-man-accused-of-voting-in-three-elections-as-his-dead-mother 10s of thousands of ballots thrown out https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tens-of-thousands-of-mail-ballots-have-been-tossed-out-in-this-years-primaries-what-will-happen-in-november/2020/07/16/fa5d7e96-c527-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html 100,000 ballots thrown out in California https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/0714/Why-California-threw-out-100-000-mail-in-primary-ballots 23,000 thrown out in Wisconsin https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/07/23/wisconsin-absentee-ballot-rejections Thousands of ballots thrown out due to tardiness https://www.npr.org/2020/07/13/889751095/signed-sealed-undelivered-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-rejected-for-tardiness Mail in ballot experiment fails with lost , late n damaged ballots https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vote-by-mail-ballot-counted-election/ Woman arrested forging ballots https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/plymouth-township-woman-charged-with-election-law-forgery-over-absentee-voter-ballot As the new York times claims ballots are secure in 2020, in 2012 they wrote they were extremely open to fraud https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html 28,000,000 ballots lost in last 3 elections https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html Postal worker arrested for changing party affiliation on ballots https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/506869-postal-worker-pleads-guilty-to-election-fraud-after-changing 18,000 ballots not counted in Florida's primary https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/06/29/more-than-18000-mail-ballots-not-counted-in-floridas-march-presidential-preference-primary/ Thousands of ballots left on floor of building in North jersey https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/passaic/paterson/2020/08/14/paterson-nj-election-ballots-were-left-floor-post-office-says/5582951002/ Investigation as piles of mail found dumped in parking lot in california https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/515442-investigation-underway-after-bags-of-mail-found-dumped-in-los-angeles 1.6 million more voters than are registered in 19 california counties .. L.A county has 117% voter registration https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/07/five_states_face_federal_lawsuit_over_inaccurate_voter_registrations__142089.html 500,000 legit ballots in Virginia labelled with wrong return addresses https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/verify-wrong-mail-in-ballots-fairfax-virginia/65-94c4847c-63fb-4a93-bac5-9bb45df00a8d Glitch sends duplicate ballots in Pittsburgh Allegheny county https://www.wesa.fm/post/glitch-sends-duplicate-ballots-voters-system-prevents-double-voting-county-says#stream/0 Detroit elections where 72% of absentee votes do not match registered voters https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/20/benson-asked-investigate-detroit-perfect-storm-voting-problems/5616629002/ 80,000 ballots disappeared in Baltimore https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-voting-snafu-update-20180625-story.html New York voting official warns people will use dead people to vote https://www.newsweek.com/mail-voting-ballots-deceased-1531481 Michigan secretary misprinted military absentee ballots . 400 already issued https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/09/president-trump-goes-after-michigan-secretary-of-state-again-over-ballot-misprint.html Mail in ballots found in road ditch in Wisconsin https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/23/mailed-in-ballots-found-tossed-in-wisconsin-ditch/ 4 officials arrested in ballot harvesting scheme https://www.kltv.com/2020/09/24/gregg-county-commissioner-others-arrested-alleged-vote-harvesting-scheme/ 9 military mail in ballots thrown in dumpster in PA https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/poconos-coal/fbi-psp-probing-9-discarded-ballots-in-luzerne-county/article_249405da-fea4-11ea-a8d7-b7faa419550f.html 134 felony voter fraud charges announced in Dem primary https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-voter-fraud New Yorkers receiving ballots with wrong names and addresses https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518682-new-yorkers-report-receiving-ballots-with-wrong-name-voter-addresses Queens voters receiving military ballots https://nypost.com/2020/09/28/nyc-voters-wrongly-getting-mail-in-ballots-marked-for-military-use/ Sun sentinel detailing Florida voting fraud https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-menge-mail-in-ballots-fraud-florida-20200416-hanmbneuendpbaftyktpactlga-story.html Ballot harvesting scam exposed in Minneapolis https://nypost.com/2020/09/29/minneapolis-police-probing-alleged-ballot-harvesting-claims/ 1 in 4 election officials quit due to the new election law and chaos of mail in ballots https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/mail-ballot-law-pennsylvania-has-driven-out-nearly-quarter-state-n1240504 Texas Official arrested on felony election fraud charges https://www.newsweek.com/texas-official-arrested-felony-election-fraud-charges-could-face-99-year-sentence-1534183 Patterson city council official arrested along with 4 others in ballot fraud scheme https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/paterson-city-council-vice-president-among-4-charged-with-voting-fraud-in-may-special-election-nj-ag/2484797/ Yes America! Plenty of voter fraud https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/yes-america-there-voter-fraud-these-recent-cases-prove-it D.C voters receiving ballots for ex residents with some receiving up to 5 multiple ballots https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dc-voters-are-being-sent-mail-in-ballots-for-ex-residents
    1
  17690.  @paxprix3096  Pretty much. The FBI is as bent as buggery. The long list of cases outweighs the opinion of a compromised political appointee in my view.
    1
  17691.  @paxprix3096  Alas this is unavailable due to legal reasons, it says. My essential point remains: that as a general rule if it is possible for an offence to be committed then it will be committed. Postal voting fraud is both possible and easy. In more civilised times common decency may have prevented widespread abuse but the Democrat party has consistently revealed itself to be lacking in common decency over the past four years. The interloper Trump has driven them mad.
    1
  17692.  @paxprix3096  The FBI are clearly implicated in the Democrats' spying on Trumps election campaign and the pathetic James Bond nonsense of the Russian collusion smear. For any crime to exist there must be someone ready to commit it. Otherwise it wouldn't be a crime, would it? The behaviour of the Democrats ever since Trump's appearance on the scene has been morally reprehensible beyond all measure. You must see that. People are uncivil. It's just a question of how many. The proportion seems to increase almost by the day.
    1
  17693.  @paxprix3096  And so far the evidence points very strongly to a conspiracy. The convictions, after all those years of effort, amounted to no more than the discovery of minor and peripheral offences. There was no collusion. The truth behind the plot to discredit Trump By Any Means Necessary has yet to fully unfold. I fully expect it will reveal similar swamp creatures flapping in the mud.
    1
  17694.  @paxprix3096  I'd lie if the Gestapo questioned me with a view to substantiating false charges against my leader. Flynn was scurrilously blackmailed by making threats against his son - as for Russian "interference" it amounts to little more than targeted advertising on social media -something we've all got to live with. Compared to what the Dems have been up to, this is school playground stuff. I wish there was more concentration from the left on advancing coherent policies, rather than this pathological obsession with Trump's alleged and unproven pre-election misdemeanours.
    1
  17695.  @paxprix3096  Thanks for that! I'd never heard of Godwin's Law before. I'm itching now to cite it. Being rather right wing (as you may have guessed) Adolf and the Nazis frequently come up when I'm arguing with people on left-wing channels. (Would it have counted if I'd said the Stasi instead?)
    1
  17696.  @paxprix3096  Phew! Won't make that mistake again!
    1
  17697. Pretty much. Ukraine gets some old stuff America has lying around and a few billion to buy back some of the gear they flogged off to the Arabs.
    1
  17698.  @jiversteve  Yup. We'll run out of alphabet before long - but each variant will have to be less and less virulent in order to survive.
    1
  17699.  @rocketscience4516  Susan is too busy feeding her cats to bother about me!
    1
  17700.  @ianl1052  To what purpose?
    1
  17701.  @ianl1052  The existing strains are already vaccine-resistant to a degree - but it doesn't matter because once people are actually infected they develop long lasting immunity. Antibiotics, on the other hand, stimulate bacteria to evolve into forms which resist them. Viruses, especially coronaviruses, behave very differently to bacteria.
    1
  17702.  @ianl1052  So what is your point? In any case covid hospitalisations as a whole are far fewer now than at a similar stage in the last wave - which is of some significance whereas a an arbitrary comparison with the same time last year is utterly irrelevant.
    1
  17703.  @rocketscience4516  I fully admit that influenzas occasionally throw up more virulent strains, but the long-term tendency is always towards less virulence and increased transmissibility. This would appear to be even more true in the case of covids. Any pathogen which kills off its hosts has less chance of surviving and passing on its particular genome than one which only provokes mild symptoms and allows hosts to move around, infecting others.
    1
  17704.  @ianl1052  To bring forwards herd immunity. Which it apparently has.
    1
  17705.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I apologise if I have expressed myself too hyperbolically. It remains a fact, however, that it is an evolutionary imperative for pathogens to become less virulent and more transmissible if they are to successfully pass on their genes. Occasionally variants may arise which are more virulent, but they lose out in the race for long-term survival because they kill off their hosts. The trend of future variants will be towards increased transmissibility and reduced virulence. It cannot be otherwise. The two previous SARS pathogens you mention certainly disappeared so quickly due to this very cause. The common cold survives for millennia. Pathogens which kill and incapacitate generally do not.
    1
  17706.  @rocketscience4516  I am neither.
    1
  17707.  @rocketscience4516  I am NOT backtracking, merely agreeing that there can be occasional exceptions to a general trend. If I might ask you a question: what psychological need is there in your brain to always believe the worst in any possible situation? Is your nature so fearful that you need to find constant stimulation to justify what appears to be a deeply ingrained sense of panic? Do you perhaps confuse risk aversion with virtuousness? How was your potty training? That's more than one question I know, but I'm sure you can see what I'm getting at.
    1
  17708.  @ianl1052  Nonsense. The Delta wave was inevitable.
    1
  17709.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I am not an anti-vaxxer nor do I try to convince people of things that are not true.
    1
  17710.  @ianl1052  This is not the case. This government's ineptitude has only been one of great many factors in the progress of this disease.
    1
  17711.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I identify more with the Guardian of the Bridge of Death in Monty Python's Holy Grail. If you end up in the pit it's your own fault for being so bloody daft.
    1
  17712.  @ianl1052  I doubt it very much. And most scientific opinion would agree, I think. In any case it's been quite a good thing all in all; testing the vaccines and creating a healthy wedge of immune people to protect against future waves - if any.
    1
  17713.  @cherryy7609  There was never any such thing. It was just a load of bollocks from a Russian TV show.
    1
  17714.  @cherryy7609  There was never any such thing. Pure propaganda.
    1
  17715. Google Alley of Angels.
    1
  17716. Why bother? Send them too the gulags!
    1
  17717.  @g.m.2427  Wrong. No court cases were lost because none were heard - nor did Trump's lawyers want them to be. No point, given the timescale. Instead they presented the evidence to several state senate hearings. The existence of these hearings has largely been concealed from the public. Instead the mainstream media sell you this myth about "lost" court cases.
    1
  17718.  @Dekedence  But cheating went industrial this time around. Nearly 40% of the American people believe this - and with considerable justification. Biden's administration is a house built on sand.
    1
  17719. Hm. This might give Democrats in swing states a couple of ideas....
    1
  17720.  @goosegreen4008  All it proves is that Trump is not a glib politician. In fact he isn't a politician at all , but just a pretty ordinary Joe who has come to hate the political establishment.
    1
  17721.  @etcwhatever  Poroshenko is an even bigger crook than Zelensky.
    1
  17722.  @paulvarn4712  It could get a lot, lot worse.
    1
  17723.  @Minchya  No. Compromise with an angry neighbour.
    1
  17724.  @etcwhatever  I'm sure there are preferable contenders. He is hated in Donbass for what he did there.
    1
  17725. @Space guy And all the time we think how wonderful the Ukrainians are for getting back all that territory!
    1
  17726.  @arturobianco848  You need to define "war crimes" you need to define "sovereign country". ...and what is so weird about questioning why the whole world should be drawn into a war between two sets of gangsters quarrelling over mineral rights? Because that's all it is.
    1
  17727. What an extraordinary bubble of illusion commentators in this thread live in.
    1
  17728.  @TheValiantDwarf  See what I mean?
    1
  17729. There is a difference between being a fish and being the sea.
    1
  17730. This is looking like Russia's plan from the very start. First, invade and engage and deplete the enemy, then bomb infrastructure to hell then attack again on two fronts. Ukraine will have to divert resources to the north, allowing Russia to secure Donbass and Crimea in the South. Which is all Putin ever wanted.
    1
  17731. What do you expect? The UK and the EU are daily committing acts of aggression against Russia.
    1
  17732. I think it's probably YouTube doing it. They have a new insane fascist algorithm.
    1
  17733. Violence by the "right-wing thugs|" was absolutely minimal and directed solely against the police by a handful of adrenalin freaks. In fact the police did make an error by herding the crowd down a narrow passage and which some hotheads thought was a prelude to a kettling exercise. Personally I was far more angered by the sight of thousands of foreigners, aided and abetted by muddle-headed left-wing loonies, filling the streets of our capital with a horrifying display which combined political and historical ignorance with the worst kind of rabid religious fervour. `
    1
  17734.  @xman4399  Do you imagine any offence was intended, or did the lady genuinely want to know what part of Africa the woman's immediate forebears came from? It's a shame when a clumsy conversational gambit can be used for race-baiting.
    1
  17735. Very well said - even though you are talking to ignorant children.
    1
  17736. The incompetent American administration has messed with the delicate balance of nuclear power which has saved us from Armageddon for more than seventy years. Its meddling in Ukraine has passed all bounds of sense and responsibility.
    1
  17737. @Peoples Republic of Ninj The US started all this when it began seducing Ukraine into allowing a NATO nuclear missile base set up there, seven minutes from Moscow.
    1
  17738. @Peoples Republic of Ninj Not so. Here (from Wikipedia) is the situation and timetable which helped spark Russia into preventative action. At the June 2021 Brussels summit, NATO leaders reiterated the decision taken at the 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine would become a member of the Alliance with the MAP as an integral part of the process and Ukraine's right to determine its future and foreign policy, of course without outside interference.[11] NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also stressed that Russia will not be able to veto Ukraine's accession to NATO "as we will not return to the era of spheres of interest, when large countries decide what smaller ones should do."[12]
    1
  17739. @Peoples Republic of Ninj What's invalid about doing all you can to prevent an enemy nuclear missile base being set up 450km from your capital city? Perhaps if a veto had been allowed we wouldn't have this dreadful war - although there are several other examples of ill-considered US expansionism which have provoked this Russian response.
    1
  17740. @Peoples Republic of Ninj Of course there could be a nuclear base if Ukraine joined NATO - and it would be especially galling for Russia to see the nuclear missiles it removed replaced a few years later by NATO ones. The territorial boundaries of Ukraine established in 1991 were a grievous mistake. The Russia of today has every right to question decisions taken under stress by the Russian leaders of that era.
    1
  17741. @Peoples Republic of Ninj I have already proved you wrong with the Wikipedia extract. Ukraine was clearly in line to join NATO. The missiles based in Ukraine were not Ukrainian missiles. They had no control over them. They were Soviet missiles. Although the Budapest Agreements, to which I suppose you refer, did somewhat egregiously seek to combine their physical removal to Russia with other clauses seeking to define the boundaries of the newly-created country of Ukraine, they were in no way binding in the long term.
    1
  17742. @Peoples Republic of Ninj I refer you once again to the Wikipedia extract which clearly states that the process of full membership was under way. The obstacles you mention were in the process of being overcome. Corruption in Ukraine politics is not entirely due to Russian influence. The Americans have their hand in it too. Zelensky's mentor, Ifor Kolomoisky, is hand in glove with the CIA and the Democrat party. He launders his money in America and owns half of downtown Cleveland as well as a sizeable chunk of the US steel industry. This is all about divvying Ukraine up, and has nothing to do with hi-falutin' notions of democracy and freedom. The ethnic Russian populations of Crimea and Donbass have the right not to be treated as second=class citizens. They have the right to enjoy the fruits of their labours, instead of them being spirited off to line the pockets of oligarchs. The Russians do this better and more equitably.
    1
  17743. @Peoples Republic of Ninj The evidence for Ukraine's potentially imminent acceptance into NATO I have given to you. Twice. As for ethnic Russians, it is the fact that they are concentrated in particular areas which is important. Crimea is 65% Russian as opposed to 15% Ukrainian. Donbass is about 40% Russian. Both areas speak and use Russian as the prime language. The currency is the rouble. Both have suffered economic downturns following rule from Kiev. In Donbass wages fell by 80%. After the Maidan rebellions of 2014 when Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence they were savagely attacked by Ukrainian armed forces, including self-declared Nazi militia, such as the Azov Battalion. Murder, rape and torture were employed as means of suppression, as clearly evidenced in reports by the UN, Human Rights Watch and others. In addition, the then President, Poroshenko, declared it illegal to buy coal from Donbass. He then bought it up himself and sold it in Kiev, pretending it came from Mexico. All these and other factors contributing to the background of the Russian invasion are easily verifiable by the use of your search engine, as is the previous information I have supplied.
    1
  17744. @Peoples Republic of Ninj Where is this "known and accepted fact" recorded? Is it post the 2021 NATO conference? And who is to say if this assessment is accurate anyway? What was prevent NATO suddenly deciding that Ukraine had become miraculously reformed and then to fast-track the application?
    1
  17745. @Peoples Republic of Ninj When? And what about the further points I raised?
    1
  17746. @Peoples Republic of Ninj I have popped and found nothing. Perhaps you could give me a specific reference?
    1
  17747. @Peoples Republic of Ninj All I find there is page after page of waffle saying what a wonderful idea it is. I am fully aware, of course, that the reservations you mention have been expressed for years. The fact is that they seem to have been about to be largely overcome, and getting wind of this is one of the factors which motivated Putin. Others included plans to invade Crimea and step up the war in Donbass. All these strategies are of course the work of Washington hawks who have gained ascendancy under their puppet, Biden.
    1
  17748. The cheated, the wronged and the persecuted - just the team to resonate with ordinary Americans, many of whom feel the same.
    1
  17749. @Garry Banks What's a wumao?
    1
  17750. At last something good to come out of the Great Delusion.
    1
  17751. The idea was sound enough. Biden is an incompetent crook though and has made a total mess of this.
    1
  17752.  @0IIIIII  This would be because he is President of the United States and ordered the immediate and unstructured withdrawal of all US troops, with minimal air cover and without due regard to the lack of fighting capability of the Afghan army. Among other things.
    1
  17753.  @0IIIIII  Bollocks. It's not what or when but HOW which is important. Trump's plan was for a structured withdrawal, stage by stage, and with air cover maintained. Not only that you can be sure he would have made sure substantial bribes were handed out to enable the withdrawal process to continue smoothly. Despite being a fairly accomplished cheat, liar and bribe-taker Joe has found himself outclassed by the Afghanis, acknowledged world masters in the field.
    1
  17754.  @gordonstrong5232  Up the ante. Everything has a price.
    1
  17755.  @richardm4825  He was asked and he said "No". That's it. And why should it be? It doesn't mean that its's anything like a likely option though, does it?
    1
  17756.  @richardm4825  But it isn't a threat! It's a one word answer to a random question at a news conference. Trump isn't going to send troops to take Greenland! If, on the other hand, Russia or China were to try it on.....
    1
  17757.  @wastag9412  But this is pure fantasy. Don't you see that? The only possible reason (and its a very very, very distant one) why Trump would send troops to Greenland would be if some foreign power had invaded there first.
    1
  17758.  @wastag9412  It rather depends on what the inhabitants of Greenland find most preferable, don't you think?
    1
  17759.  @dreamhunter2973  Who did exactly?
    1
  17760.  @dreamhunter2973  I don't think the people of Greenland have yet been fully consulted - and they certainly have not yet been told what a future offer might be. As I understand it the Greenland PM has cautiously accepted the possibility of talks on the matter.
    1
  17761.  @wastag9412  Democracy is a funny old game. I think the population of Greenland is something just over 55,000. Trump could bung them a few million bucks apiece to vote for whatever he wanted!
    1
  17762.  @BiggusDiggusable  He was just covering his options. Journalists were trying to put words into his mouth and you have fallen for it - because you are suffering from TDS! There is no way in a million years that military invasion of Greenland could possibly, ever, be part of Trump's policy in the region, unless it was - very , very remotely - to evict a foreign force which had arrived there beforehand. Try reading that over a few times, and repeating it, and you might, just possibly, see the glimmerings of an end to your sad condition.
    1
  17763.  @BiggusDiggusable  There is no way in which Trump will ever use military force in order to gain Greenland. That's an end to it. Why should he? There's only just over 50,000 people living there. He could bung them a few million bucks apiece just to vote for independence and not even feel it.
    1
  17764.  @Valoelify  Open yours. The situations and the people involved are ENTIRELY different.
    1
  17765. Maybe no strategy - but certainly a clear objective - to negotiate with Putin over the distribution of Ukraine's vast mineral wealth. This is something which should have been done years ago, instead of which US gangsters and bent politicians thought they could get the lot by conning poor Ukraine into going to war.
    1
  17766.  @martynblackburn9632 Death rates and vast increases in the amount of mercy-killing drugs prescribed in these institutions.
    1
  17767.  @martynblackburn9632  Death rates and increased rates of prescriptions for mercy-killing drugs.
    1
  17768.  @bobjohnbowles  Fortune favours the brave. And everyone winds up dead, or haven't you noticed?
    1
  17769. Half-term, let's hope.
    1
  17770. I think he should. From where I sit across the pond your judges seem a very weird bunch.
    1
  17771.  @v.a.993  But they tend not to take bribes or stick their noses into politics.
    1
  17772. So just an ill-mannered Marxist then?
    1
  17773. Uk Gamer The Chancellor and the Home Secretary are both Muslim. What are you worrying about?
    1
  17774. frostek I hadn't heard this. What's the juice???
    1
  17775. stephen elkington I guess I am. I certainly voted Conservative in the recent election; but that was more to help hasten Brexit and see off Corbynism than anything. I've certainly become incredibly right-wing of late, and found it to be a wonderfully liberating experience overall.
    1
  17776. The smallness of the table is specifically designed to show that he trusts the other man. The less popular and trustworthy you are, the further away you sit.
    1
  17777. Zelensky must go. Ukraine has to face reality and accept that Russia has regained territories that have been Russian for many generations.
    1
  17778. This would simply mean the collapse of the world banking system. Russians should be given back the money stolen from them instead of it being poured into the bottomless pit that is Ukraine.
    1
  17779. A Ukraine based on pre1922 borders will be free to do as it likes, according to Putin. Whether this includes re-arming in order to retake conceded land is another matter.
    1
  17780. No. That's you with false analogies.
    1
  17781.  @idontwanttopickone  What dictatorship?
    1
  17782.  @dpelpal  I think I love you.
    1
  17783.  @shawnmurray9964  I know who we are - don't you?
    1
  17784. Western interference is totally responsible for this war. Crooked politicians have put us all at risk.
    1
  17785.  @jillionairess  Who said the world was fair?
    1
  17786.  @jillionairess  She sounds like a wise and wonderful woman.
    1
  17787. George Soros bankrolls this too. Draw your own conclusions.
    1
  17788. For a start this was a military funeral, attended by soldiers in a village from which the civilian population was supposed to have been evacuated. Secondly, it is odd that these Russian "atrocities" always seem to occur when Zelensky is out with his begging bowl for more arms supplies. Who knows the truth? But putting this down to callous Russian savagery is wide of the mark. More and more it seems as though we are in the midst of a propaganda war - and Times Radio is just one of the many Western media outlets which have sacrificed journalistic impartiality for political and financial gain.
    1
  17789.  @51bikerboy  They've done all they can.
    1
  17790.  @verystripeyzebra  Who can judge the will of the Ukrainian people? Who can even judge who the Ukrainian people actually are? And what's it got to do with us anyway?
    1
  17791.  @paulsaunders6536  What cult that would be? And what referendum? In a country as corrupt as Ukraine no referendum can be judged to provide an accurate result, and nor can any election.
    1
  17792.  @whssy  I think these things are conducted somewhat more robustly in Ukraine.
    1
  17793.  @verystripeyzebra  As I said, it is really impossible to know the wishes of the people in a country like Ukraine, where everything is fixed, and known to be fixed. One thing we can be relatively sure of though is that it is a deeply divided country with, quite probably, the majority in the western areas wanting to enjoy the pleasures of EU membership, while the Russian heritage inhabitants of the Eastern provinces, very probably, would like to return to the bosom of Mother Russia. Their towns and villages have been extensively shelled by the Ukrainians over the past eight years, even though they voted to secede in a referendum. Superficial parallels are dangerous when matching present day occurrences. I think. If at any time Putin looks as though his pan-Slavonic prejudices are matching Hitler's Aryan ideals, or that he is planning to exterminate large sections of the world's population, then we might have justifiable reason to intervene. At the moment we are just watching a pimp beating up on his whore. Best to stay on the other side of the street unless you want to get hurt. Unless of course you are another pimp, wanting to take her over.
    1
  17794.  @verystripeyzebra  I never said the Donbass referendum was fine, only that you can place the same amount of reliance on it as any other referendum or election in Ukraine. Putin has held Russia together for more than twenty years with no sign of wishing to expand its territories. Hitler's ambitions were clear within three years and his intentions towards the Jews were clearly outlined in Mein Kampf. Accepting the UN's definition doesn't seem to have worked out too well in this instance, does it? Wars are not matters of precedents but of pressure. It just so happens that this particular separatist struggle has put pressure on two opposing powers: the US and Russia. The US was lining up to push things too far and things have gone pop! Putin is no crackpot dictator. He is a very clever man has judged this very carefully. He will take Ukraine and America will lose a vassal state and is too weak and feckless to do anything about it.
    1
  17795.  @verystripeyzebra  Chechnya and Georgia were just about keeping them on side - which a great many of the inhabitants probably wanted. The same goes for Crimea and Donbass. If Putin wants to regain the Russian Empire he has certainly waited a long time to set about it. He has dismissed the idea, naturally enough, but has given very cogent reasons for doing so. I think he just wants respect. The Americans have been pissing him about for years, and now the EU is getting in on the act. I think this is about drawing lines in the sand, that's all. Hope so anyway! I agree that Hitler's attitude towards the Jews did not play a great part in the alliance against him, but it later provided more than sufficient justification for the actions taken. Were it not for the Holocaust one might argue that his initial advances were themselves justifiable, given the Versailles Treaty. One can justify Putin's present gambit in much the same way, given NATO's unremitting eastward advance and the US efforts to suborn Ukraine into its sphere of influence. Putin is no Hitler though and the Russian army is no Wehrmacht so, fingers crossed, we will be relatively safe once he makes his point in Ukraine. What will be will be though and if he does decide to go into the Baltic States or wherever he's only got Joe Biden and Ursula Von Der Leyden to stop him, which is scarcely a comforting thought.
    1
  17796. We already have a geopolitical disaster. Trump will dig a way out of it for America, but Starmer will dig the UK deeper into it unless he is stopped somehow.
    1
  17797.  @rambojambo588  And very odd that the Chinese dominated WHO decided to go against all previous strategies on dealing with pandemics and recommend economy-destroying lockdowns.
    1
  17798.  @rambojambo588  Absolutely. I can't make up my mind if he's in on The Plan or just stupid and gullible enough to be conned into playing a role in it. Probably the latter.
    1
  17799. What democracy?
    1
  17800. Boris now knows how Tommy Robinson feels - screwed by bent judges.
    1
  17801. Ukraine contains a staggering 6% of the world's mineral resources, including lithium, shale gas, coal and iron ore. Russia believes, with some justification, that it is entitled to this wealth since it was discovered by Russians, developed by Russians and its extraction financed by Russia.
    1
  17802. Ukraine is resource-rich too - with resources discovered and exploited by Russia over three centuries.
    1
  17803. All contrarian comments are deleted here. Think about that.
    1
  17804. Yes. Then America could go on invading countries without further hindrance.
    1
  17805. We were warned. Thank Biden. Thank Starmer. We really can't wait for Trump to sort this out. Zelensky must be made to surrender now and accept the loss of Donbass and Crimea - which are, of course, parts of Russia appended to Ukraine by Russia in Soviet times.
    1
  17806.  @titteryenot4524  Not at all. The first experiment was designed to deplete Ukrainian forces as much as possible. This experiment is designed to draw what forces remain away from the front line in the south, allowing Russia to conquer and retain the whole of Donbass, Kherson south of the Dnieper and possibly take Odessa as a big bonus. The end result (if it works!) will be exactly what Putin wanted - control of the mineral rich industrial heartlands and the coast. Zelensky can stay in Kiev and carry on playing the piano with his penis.
    1
  17807. From the American Journal of Paediatrics September 23, 2021 "At this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children. However, there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects." The US media appears to be grossly distorting the effect of covid on children. Although chronic obesity is a problem adding to poor outcomes, the figures published are vastly different to those published in the UK and Europe. AS far as the vaccines are concerned in England around 50% of those infected are fully vaccinated, whereas the figure claimed for most American states is around one per cent. Healthcare in America is a business designed for maximum profits. It is worth bearing this in mind.
    1
  17808. We are of course waiting for death rates to follow suit- which they aren't as yet.
    1
  17809. Blunder or deliberate? The covid stats have led some analysts to come to the conclusion that the ONS is no longer the temple of truth it once was.
    1
  17810.  @tonymccaul7159  It will not become a second rate power, but there are those in the West who believe they can make it so. They believe that they can wrest control of these resources away from those who hold them at present, both by fomenting internal discord and, as in the present instance, by encouraging a proxy war primarily designed to transfer the energy resources of Ukraine from Russian interests to those of Western entities.
    1
  17811.  @Vzzdak  But it was the very threat of Ukraine joining NATO which was one of the prime causes of this war! As to the current state of play , has it crossed your mind that until now Russia has also been using old equipment to a considerable extent? Why would it do this when it has up-to-date equipment available? Why too did it not precede its initial ground invasion with an aerial bombardment, as it is doing now? Why did it not secure the territories it had gained before moving on? Think about it.
    1
  17812.  @Vzzdak  You're beginning to get it. The main reason for this war is that Russia wants Russian-leaning oligarchs to continue to control the huge mineral resources of Donbass, rather than them being taken over by American-leaning oligarchs. But you can't dismiss the NATO threat as mere propaganda. Simon is completely right. NATO has stepped over the line in even considering setting up shop in Ukraine. You can't dismiss the "Nazi" accusations either. There are some very weird people in the Ukrainian military who hate Russians as much as the Germans hated the Jews. They were unleashed on Donbass after the two oblasts declared independence, and began a campaign of torture and intimidation which was only somewhat reduced when the separatists began responding in kind. You are right about Russia being very profligate with men and materiel, but you are wrong about them being unable to produce up-to-date equipment. As demonstrated by the current aerial bombardment they have capacities which far exceed Western estimates. They have expended expendable resources like blotting paper to soak up Ukraine's new NATO subsidised army. How things go from here will very much depend upon what resources the two sides have left for the final conflict, which will begin any day now.
    1
  17813.  @Vzzdak  The Iranian drones are an excellent buy, and provide a very cheap and useful back-up to the faster cruise-type missiles which Russia continues to produce. Neither is used against civilian targets. Direct damage to purely civilian facilities is caused either by falling debris or missiles going astray - mostly Ukrainian ones.
    1
  17814.  @Bezart34  I don't think you have to look very far to find examples of Zelensky worship. Just look at the clapping seals at the US Congress a few days ago, and take it from there. (I doubt Putin was even aware of the botched operation in Salisbury. It seems to have been more of a private quarrel than anything.)
    1
  17815.  @Bezart34  I have read Putin's essay on the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, and it is historically accurate. He does not say that Ukraine should not exist as an independent nation. That is a crude summation. He merely points out that modern Ukraine owes its entire existence to Russia, and this is no more or less than the truth. Putin is essentially pragmatic. This is why he has survived for so long in what must be one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. He regrets the passing of his nation's former imperial glory, but he acknowledges that to attempt to reverse history and return to it would be folly. The sad and regrettable tragedy currently taking place in Ukraine is not a consequence of Russian expansionist ambitions, but rather of Russia's understandable resistance to the expansionist ambitions of the United States of America.
    1
  17816.  @Bezart34  I know no such thing. I'm sure opinion in Russia is sharply divided on these issues. Nonetheless it strikes me as being far more likely that Putin's actions are in defence of Russia, rather than expressing some demented senile attempt to recreate the past.
    1
  17817.  @Bezart34  Putin is defending his country and its interests from Western/NATO/ US aggression. NATO created a 600,000-strong army in Ukraine in order for the West to get its hands on the vast mineral wealth of Donbass , which Russia developed. Putin is pragmatic, sane and a true patriot.
    1
  17818.  @Bezart34  It's politics. Putin is merely defending his country's interests. He has been ready to talk for years, but US greed has pushed him too far. If you want to blame anyone, blame the CIA.
    1
  17819. What did Santa bring you for Christmas, little sweetheart?
    1
  17820.  @wieslawmaciag2142  As of now perhaps. Come the third of January thing might look different.
    1
  17821. Climate Change killed my parrot.
    1
  17822. How Very reassuring to realise that there is someone out there intelligent and well-informed enough to be able to counter-act this jingoistic bullshit. You have made my day. Thank you.
    1
  17823.  Snaggle Toothed  This is a heavily edited video. Just as an example the cut to Dr Birx was from a shot later on in the proceedings. She was looking embarrassed because she had been called upon to speak when wasn't expecting it. Trump was actually looking across at a Homeland Security guy who had confused the entire issue by using the word "inject" not to mean sticking a needle in your arm but in the sense I might say I'm trying to inject some sense into this conversation. The same guy also introduced the word "disinfectant" - military-speak for clearing an area of enemy. Trump got confused and the whole "drinking bleach" farrago stems from these misunderstandings.
    1
  17824.  Snaggle Toothed  Foolishness on his part again. He thought the guy was merely nervous, not disabled. No politician would mock a disabled person so openly. These personal attacks are just diversions from Trump's considerable economic and political achievements.
    1
  17825.  Snaggle Toothed  I just watched it. Thanks. This is just a guy who admits he had no medical knowledge asking doctors if they will investigate various potential treatments. He frequently says he doesn't know if there's anything to them. Not once does he actively promote any of them. Birx's expression is not clear. In some videos a close-up was taken from later in the presser, as I said., and inserted at this point. Trump has a limited vocabulary and makes mistakes when out of his comfort zone. But he is not actually himself suggesting anything mad here, is he? He is just asking for clarification.
    1
  17826.  Snaggle Toothed  Thanks again. A clear example of exactly what I've been saying. Trump wasn't SUGGESTING any of these things - he was asking about them. The idea that he was promoting any of these measures has been put into your head by the fake news media. Just analyse his words carefully and you will see I'm right. CNN for chrissake! They make the BBC look positively unbiased!
    1
  17827.  Snaggle Toothed  I'm more loyal to the truth than I am to Trump. Personally I think it is utterly disgraceful the way in which his political opponents have sought to twist this pandemic into a weapon against him. I repeat: he was confused because he misunderstood the previous speaker. Hydroxychloroquine, by the way, is a very effective prophylactic against the worst symptoms of Covid 19. Several studies have proved this but once again this potentially very useful treatment has been "thrown under the bus" by people blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome. You will find at the end of the day that far fewer than 1800,000 Americans have died of this illness and that once again the situation has been exaggerated to put Trump in the worst possible light. No-one in the world has got this right, with the possible exception of the Swedes and the Swiss. It is now widely believed that America's high death rate is directly attributable to morbid obesity - fat people being as likely to die as old folk or those in other sorts of ill health. Trump likes burgers and says so. He can be blamed for that I suppose, but not for a great deal else.
    1
  17828.  Snaggle Toothed  Nobody's asking you too. Neither has been attacked with quite the degree of venom and blatant disregard for the truth as Trump has. What you must understand is that Trump is hated and feared by the political establishment because he is an outsider. He's a businessman, not a politician. Every other President has reached office only after a long climb up the greasy pole, owing plenty of favours on the way. They were all manipulable. They have all been manipulated. They were front men. Trump, for all his faults, is his own man. This is why I respect him. If Biden gets in we will be back to the same corrupt old circus, only worse.He now has big new debts to pay off: to the Marxist far left and the financial manipulators who have orchestrated the current wave of dissatisfaction against Trump.
    1
  17829.  Snaggle Toothed  Your right! I'm an outside observer! Well done! I'm British, in my mid-seventies and am a retired investigative journalist. I don't know who's going to win in November, but I certainly hope it's Trump!
    1
  17830.  Snaggle Toothed  I didn't want to descend to this level - but what the hell!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGJGI1d96Ns
    1
  17831. I caution against the use of the word "corpse" given the lighting on this channel.
    1
  17832. None of them is masked and there are apparently no women or members of ethnic minorities taking part. Can we hope that at least one of them is transsexual? How can an unrepresentative body such as this hope to come to a fair and equitable solution?
    1
  17833. The average temperature for December in the Mara Valley, taken from 50 years of data, is 79f. The temperature today (December 3, 2019 ) is 73f . It would be foolish to draw too many conclusions from these facts but it somewhat diminishes the idea that global warming is responsible for the river's current sad state. Deforestation for cattle-grazing and overall poor management are the more probable causes. But if the magic mantra "climate change " is taught to the inhabitants there is some chance of benefit, one supposes. More likely though the recent spate of tear-jerking videos on Africa and climate change heraldsa new wave of financial colonisation. Instead of slaves and ivory, whitey is coming for your carbon certificates.
    1
  17834. Maybe he just wants Donbass?
    1
  17835.  @asasdsaasda  Not really. He could simply be getting the Ukrainians to concentrate most of their forces on defending Kiev and Western cities while he consolidates his position in Donbass.
    1
  17836. Why?
    1
  17837.  @ИринаЛукьяненко-ь3ъ  Hello back from England! Good luck with everything.
    1
  17838. It is entirely possible, of course, that Israel has turned a blind eye to this development in order to justify a terrible revenge and drive Hamas into the sea.
    1
  17839. The essential difference of course is that Amin was throwing people out, rather than refusing to let them in.
    1
  17840.  @lorenzoluisalbano3695  Excuses are constantly needed. That is why the "special military operation" is now a war against aggression on Russian territory.
    1
  17841. Do you not realise that these people are insane? The woman in your interview believes that mass ingestion of LSD will save humanity for chrissake! You sad old commies better wake up quick.
    1
  17842. Highest standards???
    1
  17843. Net Zero is a con trick and the whole climate crisis is a scam. This poor bloke looks more like a sucker than a crook though. I feel sorry for him.
    1
  17844. How about the OMI - Order of Marxist Indoctrination?
    1
  17845.  @charlessandoval3382  Marxists are today's imperialists.
    1
  17846.  @ScottishAtheist  https://youtu.be/yUOyJYRJOW4?si=2i3wV5-1nPPDLsJQ
    1
  17847. @ https://youtu.be/yUOyJYRJOW4?si=2i3wV5-1nPPDLsJQ
    1
  17848.  @richardm4825  https://youtu.be/yUOyJYRJOW4?si=2i3wV5-1nPPDLsJQ
    1
  17849.  @richardm4825  But the situation on the ground seems to indicate otherwise, doesn't it? As I said before, Russia seems to use old armour like so much blotting paper, its value lying in the effort needed to destroy it, rather that what it itself might destroy. In these circumstance a rate of replacement is irrelevant.
    1
  17850.  @richardm4825  I agree that Ukraine has been magnificent, but not with much else. Putin only wants a little more than 20% of Ukraine - just the Russian bits which were mistakenly included in the new country when it was created in 1991. And that's nearly done.
    1
  17851.  @richardm4825  That's all any of have got, really. But in this case he backs up his opinions with facts, and quotes a senior US NATO commander for the view that the Russian military is actually stronger now than it was at the start of the war.
    1
  17852.  @richiecooke69  You are incorrect. This has nothing to do with any romantic notion of re-creating a the Soviet empire. Putin has made it abundantly clear on many occasions that this is neither possible nor even desirable. The Soviet Union collapsed partially due to over-extension and he doesn't want to see the Russian Federation go the same way. The mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine are almost entirely at the root of this conflict. Look at the march on Kiev. This was not an attempt at conquest. This was simply a device to draw the rebuilt Ukrainian army away from Donbass and engage it on Ukrainian territory. You don't carry out an invasion by running a nose to tail 40 mile convoy of old tanks and troop carriers down the main road. They were bait. Look at the past history of the conflict, which began in 2014. After the uneasy peace brought about by the Minsk accords both sides built very extensive triple lines of fortifications on their side of no-man's land. Bu 2021 it became clear that Ukraine had no intention of granting regional autonomy to Donbass and instead had accepted billions of dollars from The US and other NATO countries to rebuild its army. Russia suspected that this army was poised to invade rebel-held Donbass, so instead launched the SMO to ensure that the Ukrainians were forced to fight on their land, instead of trying to break through the Russian defence lines. As a result the last stages of the war are taking place with the Russians breaking out through the Ukrainian defence lines, wile facing a much depleted Ukrainian force. They are now well on their way in succeeding in this objective, which they have now almost succeeded in doing
    1
  17853.  @richiecooke69  You are incorrect. This has nothing to do with any romantic notion of re-creating the Soviet empire. Putin has made it abundantly clear on many occasions that this is neither possible nor even desirable. The Soviet Union collapsed partially due to over-extension and he doesn't want to see the Russian Federation go the same way. The mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine are almost entirely at the root of this conflict. Look at the march on Kiev. This was not an attempt at conquest. This was simply a device to draw the rebuilt Ukrainian army away from Donbass and engage it on Ukrainian territory. You don't carry out an invasion by running a nose to tail 40 mile convoy of old tanks and troop carriers down the main road. They were bait. Look at the past history of the conflict, which began in 2014. After the uneasy peace brought about by the Minsk accords both sides built very extensive triple lines of fortifications on their side of no-man's land. Bu 2021 it became clear that Ukraine had no intention of granting regional autonomy to Donbass and instead had accepted billions of dollars from The US and other NATO countries to rebuild its army. Russia suspected that this army was poised to invade rebel-held Donbass, so instead launched the SMO to ensure that the Ukrainians were forced to fight on their land, instead of trying to break through the Russian defence lines. As a result the last stages of the war are taking place with the Russians breaking out through the Ukrainian defence lines, while facing a much depleted Ukrainian force. They are now well on their way in succeeding in this objective. Reply
    1
  17854.  @richiecooke69  YouTube seems to have shut me down on this thread. Sorry. (But it really is all about the minerals, you know.)
    1
  17855. @ Russia didn't try to take Kiev. There was no substantial initial bombardment for one thing . The invasion was simply designed, as I've already said, to draw the Ukrainians into fighting on their own territory instead of in Donbass. The idea was to deplete their forces and then slowly retreat to behind the Russian lines in Donbass. In the event this didn't become necessary. The Russians are currently engaging the Ukrainians on THEIR defence lines in Donbass, which they have almost succeeded in breaking through.
    1
  17856. Is this all you got? I mean, is this all you got?? I mean, is this really all you GOT????
    1
  17857. There is a huge difference between the instinctive, visceral racism which was prominent in this country sixty or seventy years ago and the more innocent and sometimes justified prejudices of today.
    1
  17858.  @mayamelagia  Phil gave some. In fact his own experience of trying to buy a syringe is a good example. People jump to conclusions which may be wrong - but they are justified and innocent given the circumstances. Equally, there is nothing inherently wrong with preferring the company of people of ones own race and culture, even if this is based on generalised assumptions which may or may not be correct. There is no sinister motive. It is a justifiable attitude to have. It's not one I share, as it happens, but I respect it in other people.
    1
  17859.  @LolMahmood  What sort of bigotry, if I may ask?
    1
  17860.  @mayamelagia  I genuinely believe that the definition of racism has been over-extended. People who want to burn a cross in someone's front garden are surely different from people who simply want to feel comfortable in a group of their own kind. In the latter case you might even find them welcoming individuals from other races or countries, but resent being outnumbered by them. What I'm labouring to say is that by outlawing the second category there is a danger of increasing the number in the first.
    1
  17861.  @LolMahmood  Just prejudiced against Moslems, I guess. Or even Arabs. But it was clearly nothing personal. It only takes a few bad experiences with a particular group to make people want to tar all others in that group with the same brush.
    1
  17862. @ Nary a one. And I've lived in North Africa and India as well as Notting Hill in the late 1960s.
    1
  17863.  @mayamelagia  I think we're in broad agreement though in principle though. The question is how much leeway do we give to those on the perhaps less serious end of the spectrum. My guess is you would say none at all, whereas I am quite happy to forgive the odd racist joke or the old lady on the bus who likes living in her village because there aren't any black people there. (She says that, but she would probably be one of the first to offer shelter and help to a black person found on her doorstep in genuine distress.)
    1
  17864. @ The question is how much leeway do we give those on the perhaps less serious end of the spectrum? Personally I'm quite happy to shrug off the odd joke or entirely forgive the old lady I sat next to on the bus the other day who said she likes living where she does because there are so few.... You can guess the rest. But YouTube won't let me write it down. And that makes me a good deal angrier than the little old lady did, I have to say.
    1
  17865. The Ukrainians did the same thing in Donetsk a couple of weeks ago. Didn't get reported much for some reason.
    1
  17866.  @martinhawes5647  Exactly! You can make a perfectly decent Iphone out of a tin can, a pile of sticks and an elastic band.
    1
  17867.  Alan Mckay  Nonononono! They just want everything to be utterly, utterly LOVELY!!
    1
  17868.  Alan Mckay  No that won't do. One simply must have servants. But they can come to dinner sometimes.
    1
  17869. What is a constituency? That is the question. Is a country a united whole or does it consist of a number of different communities, with different needs and requirements which ought individually to be represented in government? Politics is not a sporting event. It is far more serious than that. If Reform UK is to attain authority it must do so by convincing individual communities that it will best represent their interests. Proportional Representation should be avoided at all costs in the interests of true democracy.
    1
  17870. To understand Donald Trump Is to understand yourself
    1
  17871. The Americans left in the middle of the night in early July. Work it out.
    1
  17872.  @HughJaxident67  Assuming they haven't run out.
    1
  17873. At last. A voice of sanity.
    1
  17874.  @sososoprano1  So: vaccination or infection? Which is likelier to result in long-term damage? Who knows? The first will be our responsibility. The second: nature's.
    1
  17875.  @sososoprano1  It really is swings and roundabouts though, isn't it? I don't think polio is by any means an exact corollary; but that aside we have to decide between: a) vaccination, which provides temporary immunity and which may be overwhelmed by new variants. b) immunity through infection which may result is long-term health costs to a minority of sufferers. It is already clear that a) considerably mitigates the downside of b) so a partnership between the two options is clearly the best way forward.
    1
  17876.  @sososoprano1  I sort of like the way these analogies are panning out. Fast horses as opposed to ox-waggons perhaps? Trains as opposed to canal boats? Jet planes as opposed to airships?
    1
  17877. You simply can't have a bunch of Commie lawyers telling an elected national leader what to do. Who pays for these clowns anyway?
    1
  17878. So pleased that Times Radio is saying that Israel faces defeat. The Jews are now assured of victory!
    1
  17879. They needn't go if they don't want to.It's not compulsory.
    1
  17880. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    1
  17881. You have the sympathy of the entire world. Where do we send the food parcels?
    1
  17882.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  This is just semantics - and dangerous. Nationalism is weaponised patriotism. The IRA wanted to dominate and subjugate as much as the British. As in Ukraine right now the Troubles were simply a conflict of interests, no matter what Adams might say.
    1
  17883.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  I really don't see the difference. It's all about conflict of interests. The Republicans in Ireland wanted to take control from the British and cited nationalism as one reason for doing so. Oddly enough the British cited patriotism more than nationalism as a reason for opposing them! In both cases, those who wished to rule were committed to dominance, subjugation and controlling others to various degrees.
    1
  17884.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  I concede the point. But I don't think it makes much difference. The Irish would not have hesitated to build an empire, I'm sure, if they had been less disorganised.
    1
  17885.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  But their character wouldn't. Which is rather the point.
    1
  17886.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  People stay the same. The nationalist fighting to drive the invader from his lands is the descendant himself of invaders, and it won't take much to persuade him to invade his neighbour either. The idea that defensive nationalism is good and virtuous, while invasive nationalism is thoroughly bad doesn't hold much water. History just isn't that black and white - the current situation in Ukraine being a case in point. We are somehow given the impression that the modern country of Ukraine has been inhabited by people called Ukrainians since time immemorial, and that they were conquered by Russia a couple of hundred years ago, but they have now regained their country and the nasty Russians are trying to take it back. It just isn't that simple. The boundaries of the place called Ukraine have altered drastically over the centuries and the inhabitants have a wide variety of origins. Crimea and much of the land east of the Dnieper have shuffled back and forth in ownership between Russia and the Ottoman empire for centuries and Ukrainians from the other side of the river had little to do with things until comparatively recently. There are Russians living there who are as fiercely loyal to Russia as many Ulstermen are to Great Britain - and their ancestors didn't replace Ukrainians, but Tatars. So what price nationalism now?
    1
  17887.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  We seem to have arrived at a general agreement, except perhaps in regard to your last sentence. It is my view that this war is mainly concerned with control of the vast mineral resources of Donbass, brought into sharp focus by the recent discovery of a huge lithium deposit in the neighbourhood of Mariupol. Russia retained considerable control of Donbass industry, even after Ukraine gained independence. Joining the EU would have meant removing that control and syphoning literally billions of dollars a year out of the Russian economy. Whatever sentiments influence nationalism they tend to take second place to economic imperatives.
    1
  17888.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  Thank you also. We must agree to differ on some points, but we can at least be civilised about it it. Fare ye well.
    1
  17889. Every time the West does this it prolongs the war. A peaceful resolution is entirely possible. Russia wants it. Washington doesn't. Meanwhile the corrupt and foolish Western media cons us into believing there is some high moral purpose behind this warmongering.
    1
  17890. In the South the Democrats once used negro slaves to pick cotton. Now many descendants of these tragically abused people are being used for another harvest - votes.
    1
  17891. Very glad to see Phil criticising the Left's childlike support for Palestinian terrorism. At the same time he seems to be missing the fact that what we are seeing here - as in Ukraine - is the beginning of a seismic shift in the balance of world power as various nations fight back against US hegemony. Personalising the conflict by demonising Putin and Netanyahu doesn't help. They are both hard men, but genuine patriots who take hard decisions in the pursuit of their respective nation's interests. These interests may well coincide with their personal thirst for power - but there is nothing untoward about that.
    1
  17892.  @anglonorse2943  Hardly a reasoned response, if I may say so.
    1
  17893.  @anglonorse2943  But their actions speak for themselves. I've never read anything written by Netanyahu, but Putin has a quite large corpus of essays and speeches which clearly show a great sense of Russian history and a determination not to allow other nations to do his country down. Both men refuse to surrender. That's patriotism in my book.
    1
  17894.  @anglonorse2943  So what alternative do you propose?
    1
  17895. I think Putin will be more than content with Donbass and Crimea - both of which are pretty much Russian anyway.
    1
  17896.  @GraemeCampbellMusic  He doesn't recognise Ukraine as a separate country - but he makes it very clear that it is impossible - and not even desirable - to include ALL of it in Russia. He says so in his essay on Russia/|Ukraine relations published shortly before the invasion. Ukraine can go ahead and join up with the West - but the Ukraine that does this cannot be the one created by the Bolsheviks. It has to be the Ukraine that existed before this, and this includes neither Crimea nor Donbass. As for Georgia and Chechnya, once again his tactic has been to try to retain Russian influence and control by any means necessary. This has involved setting up small buffer states or regions, and this was the solution originally put forward for Ukraine, with Donbass, fulfilling this role. But the West wasn't having it. They wanted all the lithium.
    1
  17897.  @GARDENER42  This is all very much in dispute. In census counts many Russians were reluctant to class themselves as such for fear of persecution by the Ukrainian authorities. What is not in dispute is that these areas were very much part of Russia or of the Ottoman empire until they were stuck on to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine - by the Russians. They were never part of any country called Ukraine.
    1
  17898. Carbon only causes increased temperatures in laboratory experiments using made-up models of the atmosphere. In the real atmosphere it is part of a process which distributes heat - most of it into space. The climate crisis is a scam designed to make money by trading in permissions to exceed C02 limits. A glorious, glorious con. I wish I could get in on it somehow. -
    1
  17899. Jordan H "A new look at the physics of Earth's atmosphere" M&R Connolly roancnnollyscience.wordpress.com A paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller published in Environmental Pollution and Climate Change in 2017. In it they compare Earth with the other planets in the solar system and conclude the Earth's surface temperature, as with the other planets, is the result of a combination of atmospheric pressure and proximity to the sun. I'm sorry, but I can't lay my hands on the reference at the moment but you should find it easily enough. It is interesting that both these papers are based on empirical evidence gained in the real world and not from computer modelling, which gives them considerable extra validity in my view.
    1
  17900. Timoteo Juans If I was that smart I'd be a hedge fund manager and laughing all the way to the bank. I certainly wouldn't be giving the game away!
    1
  17901. There is no way Russia us going to lose this. If by some miracle Ukraine is rearmed sufficiently to push back the Russia advance Putin will nuke Kiev. What does the West do then?
    1
  17902. It was liberated in 2014.
    1
  17903.  @MAXlMUS  No. It was transferred from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia to the SSR of Ukraine by the USSR as a matter of administrative convenience. A mistake, as it turns out.
    1
  17904.  @MAXlMUS  Not as big as the one your mother made.
    1
  17905. Clown Zelensky tours the world begging for money and weapons - Putin pops over to N Korea on a shopping trip and he's suddenly "desperate"? How do you make that out?
    1
  17906. Wouldn't it be simpler just to ask nicely? I'm sure Putin is looking for deals.
    1
  17907. @ But not with the people who own the mines.
    1
  17908.  @jnagarya519  The Proud Boys are only white supremacists in the MSM and in your head. They have members of all races and their president is a black man.
    1
  17909.  @jnagarya519  Utter bilge from start to finish. The Proud Boys, like 4Chan and Qanon, are having great fun trolling and mocking you demented pea-brained lefties whose mental range is as narrow as your foreheads. Fascism died in the 1940's. Racism died in the 1960's. Communism, however, still very much exists and it manipulates the corpses of these bogeymen simply in order for you to use what little brains you have in hating things which no longer exist. That way your energies (such as they are) are diverted from genuine grievance at your lot and into the arms of those who claim they will abolish these imagined monsters. Black and brown Proud Boys know full well that they are not threatened because of their race. They do, however, know like their white brothers, that America and the world are threated by the false ideologies of wokeness and by race-baiting as expressed in CRT. They are unashamed of their masculinity and when Antifa wimps take to the streets smashing shops and torching offices they will be there to give them a good hiding. When the dregs who hang around the fringes of the corrupt commie BLM movement go on their rampages the Proud Boys and the millions of Americans who share their values will provide the last layer of defence against the forces of evil which the degenerate left is introducing into society. And if this means armed resistance - then so be it. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two and wounded another and already the brave "peaceful demonstrators" are cowering in their basements. You can plough through as many Christmas parades as you like, but you will never, never win.
    1
  17910.  @jnagarya519  I really despair for your sanity. This is the evidence of "collusion"? An off-the -cuff joke? You ought to be working for the FBI.
    1
  17911. Fiddling figures ain't news, that's why. A picture of an empty waiting room, or an interview with someone who's suddenly got an appointment after years of waiting would have impact, but not this. This is yawn city.
    1
  17912. Trump's response will strike a chord with many decent Americans, The committee and the Democrat party have committed another blunder. Their actions will only harden existing opinions, and Trump's response may well sway many of the undecided into his camp.
    1
  17913. My sympathies. How many fingers did you lose?
    1
  17914. Racial identification is the ultimate sin against humanity. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X both would be appalled at what his going on here. As Malcolm said, the white liberal is the enemy of both the black man and the nation as a whole. But since we are going down this road, how about the fact that Kamala's great, grandfather was one of the biggest white slaveowners in the West Indies?
    1
  17915. Oh surely just a LITTLE bit!
    1
  17916. My wish-list starts with Kemi Badenoch as the new Tory leader, who will then allow Tommy Robinson into the party as well as any Reform or UKIP members who will see the sense of joining too. Then Donald Trump will be re-elected as President of the US and the war in Ukraine will end with Zelensky's defeat and honourable retirement as a TV chat show host. It is my birthday today. I am allowed to dream.
    1
  17917.  @geezerguy  It is a mistake to believe that Putin has any territorial ambitions other than to retain control of Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  17918.  @altheogre  Drugs don't come into it. A strong Right-wing government is what this country needs to enable it to survive. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
    1
  17919.  @geezerguy  Putin has no territorial ambitions other than to retain control over Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  17920.  @altheogre  No drugs. Just common sense.
    1
  17921.  @geezerguy  I don't think there is any evidence that Putin has any territorial ambitions other than to retain control of Donbass and Crimea. I suggest you read his essay on Ukraine/Russian relations published shortly before the present conflict.
    1
  17922. The group already exists. It's called the Labour Party.
    1
  17923. This is the final deranged act of a lifelong warmonger. This will have little effect, if any, on the outcome of the war and yet gives Putin the green light to step up his activities in any way he chooses. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    1
  17924. And who is behind this refusal to save innocent civilian lives? Not the innocent civilians, you can bet on that.
    1
  17925.    He said he would drain the swamp - not go shooting crocodiles.
    1
  17926. An insane over-reaction - and it's still going on.
    1
  17927.  @Paul-eb4jp ... and those who fall more immoral thereby.
    1
  17928. I'm missing my hourly doses of We All Hate Dominic Cummings. Pull your fingers out scumbag media! We, the ordinary People of Britain, demand more sanctimonious posturings from you wise and mighty champions of truth!
    1
  17929. Felichia Ritter Sad to say it is people like you who need to question the lies and propaganda you have been brainwashed with. I have taken steps to become informed - man-made global warming is a total myth created for purposes of political and financial gain.
    1
  17930. And very little evidence for it so far. Just wishful thinking.
    1
  17931.  @georgepalmer5851  Crumbs!
    1
  17932.  @BurkBernard  As I say, her appearance would have indicated that this is a possibility. She is treating the case with the contempt it deserves.
    1
  17933. Very similar to 1894 and 1936.
    1
  17934. There's a fair chance the war will be over before the tanks even get there, let alone before the Ukrainians are trained to use them.
    1
  17935.  @dearmas9068  The Russians do appear to be advancing.
    1
  17936.  @dearmas9068  But Soledar is the key to Bakhmut, and Bakmut is the key to reaching the Donbass border. It will almost certainly fall within the next few weeks. Wagner's losses consisted mainly of ex-convict cannon fodder, and Wagner was and is not the only well-trained and equipped unit fielded by the Russians. The war is entering a new phase which might well be completed before this handful of tanks arrive.
    1
  17937.  @JayHale  I don't know about the "fire rounds" video. Can you direct me to that? The incident with the girl (if it was him) is rather unpleasant but it shouldn't really affect his claims or any claims made against him to any great degree I would have thought.
    1
  17938.  @sisuguillam5109  Yes darling, what is it?
    1
  17939. Entirely true. And Boris trousered a million quid for being the messenger boy.
    1
  17940. They are being conned nearly as much as we are being conned. Britain is advertised in the international people smuggling market as a soft touch. Which it is. Nature has provided a slight disincentive. If we had a government with a spine it could provide a few more.
    1
  17941.  @chewieqtpie  I don't fully understand you, but I believe we may be in closer agreement than you may think. The Saudi regime is thoroughly obnoxious, but even though Bin Laden and several 911 participants were Saudi-born, the regime as such is keen not to be seen as promoting international terrorism. I believe the thinking in US intelligence has been that a Houthi victory in Yemen could lead to a terrorism-sponsoring state, such as existed in Afghanistan under the Taliban. I do not believe for a moment, however, that the Biden administration's decision to cease support for the Saudis has been taken for humanitarian reasons. I do believe, however, that Trump's withdrawal of troops from Syria was simply a result of "job done" that is to say ISIS more or less wiped out. It is curious that the militias Biden is now bombing were allies in this endeavour. It is a vastly complex issue and I can pretend to no expertise, but broadly speaking it strikes me that Trump's approach has been to concentrate upon reducing the threat of international terrorism, while allowing oil/gas conflicts to settle themselves as best they may with no particular objection to Russia's domination of gas supply networks to Europe which the Gulf-Med pipeline will undoubtedly undermine. Equally well he has taken a cynical businessman's view of the Iran nuclear deal which the Biden administration now seeks to re-establish. The civil war in Yemen will continue unabated and the war in Syria will re-ignite as a consequence of the Biden administration's initiatives.
    1
  17942.  @JesperSalama  The relationship between the Houthis and ISIS is a complex one. All that can be said with certainty is that both are religious extremist groups with a profound hatred of both Israel and the US. The idea that the Biden administration is trying to defuse the situation is laughable. The warmongers are back in the White House. The civil war in Yemen will continue unabated. The Houthis are no longer categorised as a terrorist organisation and the war in Syria will re-ignite. Isis will regroup and the US warmongers will use this as an excuse to escalate the conflict.
    1
  17943.  @garcialovesme  And CNN and The Hill aren't partisan?
    1
  17944.  @garcialovesme  It isn't the same. Trump consistently showed he wanted too reduce US involvement in foreign wars. His only interest in military activity was to destroy terrorist regimes which might not only cause harm on US soil but consistently damage any hope of stability in the Middle East because of their fanaticism. Now the hawks are back. They see the US role as promoting the use of force to achieve objectives abroad. They will encourage terrorism because it will give them the excuse to muscle in. The Middle East is set to explode as a result.
    1
  17945.  @garcialovesme  Now you're just being silly. Us troops have been stationed abroad, generally with catastrophic results, ever since the end of World War II. As for the Capitol "insurrection", this was just a demo that went wrong at the end. The idea that it was some attempt to overthrow the government and replace it with another is utterly and transparently ridiculous
    1
  17946.  @garcialovesme  I hear what you say. I just disagree with you. Is this a concept you can grasp? Trump proved pretty conclusively that he was in favour of reducing America's self-appointed role as the world's policeman. Biden has supported every war initiative over the past half-century, often with great enthusiasm. It really is as black and white as that. Biden is a mere puppet and the hawks of the military/industrial complex are among the many entities pulling the poor old chap's strings. The fact that Trump refused to dance to their tune was one of the reasons he was forced out. Trump could bring civil war to America with a click of his fingers, but has wisely chosen not to do so. Biden will do as he is told, which will mean large-scale escalation of war in the ME and possibly elsewhere too. Just watch this space.
    1
  17947. Wisconsin. River Fox.
    1
  17948. Vaccinations only provide temporary and far from total protection though. It is just as scientifically valid to suggest that by deliberately catching covid and recovering from it you are protecting both yourself and others. Certainly herd immunity would be reached far more quickly using this approach.
    1
  17949. Why should he stick his head into another noose? CNN will be even more bent than ABC.
    1
  17950. What do you hope to achieve with this childish propaganda? What is the point of it? Who is your audience? The plain facts of the matter are that both sides in this needless war have suffered terrible losses and are understandably disheartened. Russia, however, is winning and is set to achieve its objectives within a few months. Mr Murdoch's' investment portfolio may well be best served by supporting an alternative view, but trotting out superannuated old military men with absurd names to reinforce this fantasy does you no service. Times Radio is a disgrace to journalism. Leave and get decent jobs.
    1
  17951.  @spice155  Ukraine joining the EU would have cost Russia a fortune.
    1
  17952.  @spice155  I think it was probably a prime cause. Ukraine signed a strategic mineral extraction deal with the EU in 2021 which would have cost Russia potentially billions of dollars a year alone.
    1
  17953. More insanity from one of Times Radio 's pet loonies. Putin is steadily achieving his objectives. The objectives he is NOT achieving are the ones you think he has but hasn't.
    1
  17954. If Brexit is down to Putin he did us a favour. The EU's flirtation with Ukraine helped cause this war and has shown conclusively what many of us firmly believe: that the bloc's political ambitions create a shift in world power that will inevitably lead to disaster. No economic advantages can outweigh this.
    1
  17955.  @ausbrum  I think it must be a sign if extreme intellectual ineptitude to assume that contrary views to one's own can only come from paid agents or robots. Why can't you address what's actually being said?
    1
  17956.  @aggressiveattitudeera887  AND he managed to con the CDC and the New York Times too! AND the World Health Organisation!
    1
  17957.  @KINGDUDE74  No. That was in a dream you had.
    1
  17958. I now realise that Britain's leaders are living in a world of utter fantasy. It really is quite terrifying.
    1
  17959. Drug consumers mainly.
    1
  17960. They'll only spend it.
    1
  17961. Fascinating as ever!
    1
  17962. How will the BBC cover this war when Russia wins? The convolutions will be wonderful to watch.
    1
  17963. This is totally arse about face. On of the best things about Trump is that he doesn't buy into the war-based economy which has so disfigured American politics in recent decades - ever since the Yanks realised they could rake in the dollars by promoting world conflict.
    1
  17964. What conceit. Putin has done wonders for Russia. His methods may sometimes offend our more delicate sensibilities, but that is really nothing to do with the rest of us. When will people realise that trying to force democracy and "niceness" on other countries is simply a technique paving the way for American colonisation.
    1
  17965.  @porthmeor1  Do you think everyone should be elected? Do you want to elect your policemen and your dustmen and the lollipop lady?
    1
  17966.  @porthmeor1  Your parliamentary member is elected. In electing Farage the people of Clacton have given him permission to employ an (unelected) staff to attend to the nuts and bolts of local matters which he can bring to the attention of central government, if necessary. Such matters are relatively few. Most local concerns are the business of local authorities.
    1
  17967.  @porthmeor1  I don't think Farage is more narcissistic than most politicians. It seems to come with the territory.
    1
  17968.  @porthmeor1  I don't think that's necessarily true. He's obviously a bit egotistical but his opinions and beliefs are quite genuine and he is a necessary counterweight to the globalist uniparty which currently governs us.
    1
  17969.  @porthmeor1  I think he has a genuine concern for his country however, and is not entirely cynical. Whatever faults he may have he is a necessary counterweight to the globalist accord which governs the main political parties.
    1
  17970.  @porthmeor1  I think he has genuine opinions and genuine fears about what is happening to this country.
    1
  17971.  @porthmeor1  Already seen it. This woman's technique might be rather fun to watch but she is a provocateur, not a real journalist. Have you seen the one when the very splendid and feisty Marjorie Taylor Greene told her to F%$^&off?
    1
  17972.  @porthmeor1  Seen it. Have you seen the one in which she tried to interview Marjorie Taylor Green?
    1
  17973.  MrNobodyJones  Depends whether they are being prosecuted or persecuted.
    1
  17974.  MrNobodyJones  Who cares if he's guilty or not of this very minor offence?
    1
  17975.  MrNobodyJones  It was a pleasure.
    1
  17976. I don't know which answer is more scary.
    1
  17977. The terms of the ceasefire will have to be in Russia's favour, since Russia is winning. That's just the way it goes. Putin will probably be hailed as a hero.
    1
  17978. ​ @steveos5112 There's a way to go yet.
    1
  17979. If your postal vote hasn't been counted then you haven't voted. So you vote in person.Total votes cast: 1 Geddit?
    1
  17980. Creating martyrs will be playing into the hands of those you wish to oppose.
    1
  17981. Race-baiting in the polite British manner. Racism has been dying a peaceful death for decades. Marxist agitators and and their media puppets now have to dig up the past in order to justify revolution. The working class told them to fuck off years ago. I wish black people would have the sense to do the same.
    1
  17982. It's more than probable that the non-covid excess deaths are the result of people failing to get proper treatment due to the hysterical over-reaction to the pandemic.
    1
  17983.  @rmdomainer9042  Depends on the mud.
    1
  17984.  @cog600  I don't think the Russian army is up to much. It is riddled with corruption and favouritism and drunkenness., but it generally does what has to be done. The point about donkeys and motor-bikes though is that they are not substitutes for other forms of transport, but superior to them in certain conditions.
    1
  17985. Do you have any idea why the rate of infection in Texas is plummeting, whereas in states with high vaccine levels this is not the case?
    1
  17986.  @Fomites  Google texas covid.
    1
  17987.  @Fomites  Google texas covid then google any state with a high vaccination level, Vermont for example.
    1
  17988.  @Fomites  Of interest: Subramian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  17989.  @antonysmyth2464  You don't lose your rank when leaving the army.
    1
  17990.  @rockbutcher  Who does?
    1
  17991.  @Brit_Toolmaker  Are you a troll living in St Petersburg? I didn't know they actually existed.
    1
  17992.  @antonysmyth2464 I never said he did.
    1
  17993.  @31Blaize  The treaty was a mistake, and like all dubious treaties it has not passed the test of time. You can argue that the whole of Ukraine is Russian, since it has had virtually no independent existence for many hundreds of years. This applies even more strongly to Crimea and Donbass with their large Russian populations, and especially to Donbass whose mining and industry was developed with Russian money using mainly Russian labour.
    1
  17994.  @SubjectiveFunny  I've already suggested an interview with Col Douglas Macgregor. Professor John J Mearsheimer would also be worth listening to. Both are far more qualified than I am to explain the position in more detail.
    1
  17995.  @kdawg9477  Hardly adequate analogies. There are very few Germans in Kaliningrad and I daresay if the Romans and the Mongols were miraculously re-incarnated and armed with modern weapons we would all have to look out! What reason re Macgregor? I assume he has trodden on a few toes, and I admit that his views may be coloured by resentment, as are Scott Ritter's, but they are both worth listening to.
    1
  17996.  @rtorres4132  Even before that it was created by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.
    1
  17997.  @31Blaize  How many border agreements have passed the test of time? Just look at maps and see how many have failed. More important is Ukraine ignoring the Minsk agreements of 2015/16. We are being sold an entirely false view of history. This war is about America trying to create a globalist monopolar world, and Russia is resisting it. The poor bloody Ukrainians are caught in the middle.
    1
  17998.  @doyouwanttogivemelekiss3097  You seem to have contradicted yourself. Putin originally wanted just that: for Donbass to be an independent state - or two states rather, Donetsk and Luhansk. Ethnicity and language are only part of the issue however. More important is the vast mineral wealth of Donbass which represents a huge investment by Russia, both in terms of finance and of manpower.
    1
  17999.  @cacwgm  But the Russians are right, aside from the might. The "might" has only been brought in to play because more civilised ways of resolving the Crimea/Donbass issues have failed.
    1
  18000.  @robertpatrick3350  His view is a Russian view of the world. Yours is a Western, US influenced view. Who is to say which view is the more distorted?
    1
  18001.  @stephenhill545  Not very funny for all the people getting killed, is it? In fact the desire of many Russians in Donbass to escape rule from nationalist Kiev is widespread and genuine. It was obviously encouraged by Russia, but the Russians and Russia have just cause for complaint.
    1
  18002.  @robertpatrick3350  ..and who were warmly welcomed by many.
    1
  18003.  @timtadeo8614  Way off what? Their views seem entirely cogent and counterbalance the one-sided Ukraine-worship which disfigures Western reporting on the war.
    1
  18004.  @stephenhill545  Then every country in Europe has been a criminal entity at one time or another. And who makes these laws anyway?
    1
  18005.  @stephenhill545  That is surely the point at issue.
    1
  18006.  @doyouwanttogivemelekiss3097  Rebellion was encouraged and made possible by Russia, certainly. But then Russia has considerable claim to the mineral resources of Donbass, as well as a regard for the welfare of ethnic Russians who live there.
    1
  18007.  @geoffreycodnett6570  Because the mineral wealth was discovered, exploited, mined and paid for by that other country, using labour from that other country to do it.
    1
  18008.  @geoffreycodnett6570  Modern Ukraine isn't. It has been Russian since the early 18th century.
    1
  18009.  @richardjoseph9002  Who could that be? Ever heard of the Internet?
    1
  18010.  @leeii337  Chechnya came round in the end, but the two situations are somewhat different. Russia likes to keep its borders secure, that's all.
    1
  18011.  @geoffreycodnett6570  The Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was entirely subordinate to the SSR of Russia. Moscow made all the decisions and imported Russian labour to do the work since the Tatars, who were the majority of the inhabitants, were unsuited to mines and factories. Donbass, like the whole of Ukraine, was Russian prior to the Revolution and remained Russian in all but name subsequent to it.
    1
  18012.  @31Blaize  Everything thing else I've said is also true, but realistically speaking obtaining access to the mineral and industrial wealth of Donbass is perhaps the main motive for the invasion. It's hardly greed though to try to get back something which is really yours, but has been given away in error by your drunken uncle.
    1
  18013.  @leeii337  It pretty much is.
    1
  18014.  @richardkey1678  They seem to think it does! I really wonder what the Americans will do if Saudi and the other Middle Eastern oil producers turn their backs on America and start doing deals with the Russians. Not unlikely, either.
    1
  18015.  @richardkey1678  Too true. This is getting interesting, isn't it?
    1
  18016.  @MostlyPennyCat  They are!
    1
  18017.  @timtadeo8614  It wasn't an independent country BEFORE it was conquered. Peter the Great was merely the victor in a territorial land grab involving Swedes, Poles and others. Most of modern Ukraine, especially the Eastern part, was occupied by wandering tribes of Tatars. The pre-existing Viking civilisation centred on the Dnieper river has more or less collapsed. Modern Ukraine is a Russian construct.
    1
  18018.  @pacmanc8103  Speak for yourself -and everyone else with the attention span of a goldfish.
    1
  18019.  @1202burton  I don't think it would be a wise business decision.
    1
  18020. Does anyone know of any reputable scientific study which clearly demonstrates that lockdowns reduce death rates from Covid 19?
    1
  18021. All this comes from worshipping scientists and listening to journalists. Both are often fools and the latter are generally liars.
    1
  18022. How will you feel when Putin gets to keep Donbass and Crimea in return for accepting a ceasefire?
    1
  18023. I don't think it can be appealed - and on what grounds?
    1
  18024. When will this fuckwits realise that up until about 1955 practically EVERBODY was racist - and you'd have been thought a bit odd if you weren't!
    1
  18025. What's to be grateful about? If by some remote chance Russia invades another NATO country we end up in a war that does us no good.
    1
  18026. What's to be thankful for? It just means we get caught up in other countries' problems.
    1
  18027. More of a con-trick really.
    1
  18028. America will get the President the FBI says it should have. So why worry?
    1
  18029. I can't help wishing they'd teach something other than the history of Nazi Germany in school history lessons these days. It does so limit the imagination.
    1
  18030.  @hannahdyson7129  You know this how?
    1
  18031.  @hannahdyson7129  Can you point me to one such study?
    1
  18032. @Mark B There are no recorded cases of anyone dying after a reinfection in this country. It's not me that's spreading misinformation.
    1
  18033. @Mark B Data on re-infections in the UK is readily available. There have been just over 50 instances of likely re-infection throughout the course of the pandemic. None were fatal.
    1
  18034.  @MrFuckwit999  Yeah, I left out a nought. Silly old me!
    1
  18035.  @relicpathfinder2800  Did he ever say that though?
    1
  18036. You have to learn to kiss ass first.
    1
  18037. Seven thousand is ten times the amount of people in this country under 45 who have died with coronavirus. I don't know why I find that interesting, but I do.
    1
  18038. This war will cripple Europe, America - and the UK. Russian gas and oil will be diverted entirely to India, China and other Asian countries. There will be a seismic shift in the balance of power and the distribution of wealth. And just because greedy, stupid America decided to back one set of gangsters against another set of gangsters.
    1
  18039. Fascinating, interesting and informative. Why can't you stick to stuff like this BBC and stop the ignorant children in your newsrooms playing with politics?
    1
  18040. Why do people make so much of the 260mile thing? Little Englanders!
    1
  18041.  @texasfly8865  Gotta take the rough with the smooth I guess.
    1
  18042.  @stu281  These people have some deep psychological hole which only hatred can fill. They need to hate Russia. They need to hate Trump. They will believe and say anything to fuel these hatreds.
    1
  18043. I understand the RAF is to scrap all its aircraft since they could be considered as phallic symbols and are therefore offensive to women and transsexuals.
    1
  18044. The EU won't last for many decades.
    1
  18045.  @EllieD.Violet  I think it's got quite a few years left yet, but it's collapse is inevitable. It is an artificial construct, based on false ideologies.
    1
  18046.  @lumpyfishgravy  We can carry on the alliteration and add "pathetic" and "pointless." Why anyone would even bother to vote in the next election is beyond me.
    1
  18047.  @lumpyfishgravy  The trouble is the two parties are becoming virtually indistinguishable, like in America. And both seem at the beck and call of exterior forces - and neither will enable us to escape the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
    1
  18048. It was great. Just a shame a few hotheads ruined it with a minor wrecking spree.
    1
  18049. Ukraine is a prime example.
    1
  18050. Ever hear of the silent majority? Millions of ordinary people knowing that they are being fed BS and doing something about it by voting for someone who calls the BS out?
    1
  18051. I guess not so many Republicans have their fingers in the Ukrainian pie as the Democrats do.
    1
  18052. There is some evidence that one of the Patriot batteries was destroyed and another severely damaged. The whole Russian attack was designed to overwhelm the air defences by sheer numbers, using a variety of missiles, not all them with warheads, but just decoys.
    1
  18053. When are we to expect coverage of Ilhan Omar's rigging of postal ballots, BBC? A sign of things to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0
    1
  18054.  @jonibz1456  Two cheers for democracy.
    1
  18055.  @Steve_Coates  I'm sorry. I don't play video games, so I don't know what you're talking about. (Ok. If you're using Umberto Eco as your baseline of politics in the 21st century you're beyond help)
    1
  18056.  @unifiedvision999  And very welcome too.
    1
  18057.  @Steve_Coates  Sorry about the video game thing - but your comment did sound a bit jargonny. I have great respect for Eco as a novelist but I often feel that artistic people like novelists and actors should steer clear of politics. Art and politics are such different fields and it's asking a bit much to be good at both. The original definition of Fascist is now long lost. As I expect you know it once simply referred to the fasces, which were the spears of a Roman military unit bound together around the double-headed axe of the unit's leader. It was seized upon by Mussolini. Nowadays it seems to have come to mean little more than a political standpoint which you don't like.
    1
  18058.  @Steve_Coates  But it's history! Fascism, like all human ideas, shifts over time. The the threat of Mussolini-type fascism has passed. All you are doing is trying to stuff ideas you don't like into this defunct category so you don't have to say WHY you don't like them - other than that are nasty old Fascism, according to definitions set down almost a century ago. It gets you no-where.
    1
  18059.  @Steve_Coates  But it's just history! The definition may have had some relevance all those decades ago, but not any more. The constant use of the word "fascist" seems to be little more than an attempt to stuff various things you may not like into a package not meant for them, and give it a label which carries a negative impact. There are no fascists any more. There are authoritarians and autocrats, but no fascists. ( I haven't read the 14 characteristics for many years, I must admit. Even then, when I was young and foolish and leaned to the Left, I think I had serious doubts about some of them.)
    1
  18060.  @Steve_Coates  These are just labels. Despite assertions to the contrary, history never repeats itself - the differences between superficially similar situations are generally more significant than those similarities. Fascism is no longer a thing in the developed world, any more than Communism. These creeds have failed and therefore those who seek power seek to do so via different means. You ought to worry more about globalism and the rise of multi-national investment companies such as Black Rock. This is where danger lies now.
    1
  18061. Don't be silly. Britain is a US satellite state.
    1
  18062. I stopped listening the moment Phil said "Donald Trump has no objections to Putin invading Europe on a large scale." This is not political commentary. It is psychotic ranting. By setting up deals with Ukraine and Russia at the same time Trump is not only ensuring a supply of cheap minerals to the US, but laying the foundations for a lasting peace in Europe - a peace which your precious EU has already shattered with its pernicious interference in Ukraine's affairs.
    1
  18063. They don't have to. They could just surrender.
    1
  18064. @knowledge.3563 They aren't in Ukraine.
    1
  18065. Protesting against an illegal government is very patriotic.
    1
  18066.  @rocketscience4516  I told you before - no-one's made me an offer!
    1
  18067.  @rocketscience4516  Ho Ho Ho!
    1
  18068. A kick in the crutch is preferable to slow strangulation. Discuss.
    1
  18069. Every single politician in Ukraine has been on an anti-corruption platform and every single one of them has been as corrupt as hell. Including Zelensky.
    1
  18070. @Dmon ! There you are "spewing" again! I was right about the bi-polar induced emetophobia, wasn't I? If you have problems with lithium there are some very effective substitutes available. Just consult your psychiatrist.
    1
  18071. I'd be careful. Haitians eat CNN reporters too.
    1
  18072.  @michaeldunham3385  In whose eyes?
    1
  18073.  @michaeldunham3385  Give me an answer then.
    1
  18074.  @michaeldunham3385  I don't think we get into a discussion about language, but annoyance is not the same as embarrassment.
    1
  18075.  @jasonellis2546  As long as you are happy with your fantasies, that's OK.
    1
  18076. Even if it is true it's just damned funny. His supporters will certainly think so since the allegation is that it was done because Obama had slept in it!
    1
  18077.  @boink800  History never repeats itself.
    1
  18078.  @brad96375  You clearly don't. Russia was in a state of near anarchy before Putin took over.
    1
  18079.  @brad96375  I like your dog. Is he an expert on post-Soviet Russian history too?
    1
  18080.  @brad96375  A low bark, did you mean to say?
    1
  18081. The goal is to keep the world safe for hypocrisy. (And to protect the bank balances of the many US and European politicians who have invested in Ukraine's gangster economy.) The rest of you can freeze to death or die in cellars for all we care.
    1
  18082. People who wear masks are so noble. They help prevent themselves from infecting others, but at the same time increase the chances of themselves getting infected because of the unconscious fiddling with the things near the eyes, nose and mouth.
    1
  18083. Those who know anything about history will realise that the two situations have only superficial and largely irrelevant similarities.
    1
  18084. This is probably aimed at immigration as much as anything. Judges have been constantly overthrowing deportation orders, citing human rights legislation.
    1
  18085.  @tripleseven7090  America - or rather the gangsters who run America - started it. Russia simply reacted to unbearable provocation.
    1
  18086.  @Doom_Guy__  Makes sense to me. The arms industry is great business. I an think of no better means of transferring the money of ordinary taxpayers into the pocket of the rich and unprincipled.
    1
  18087. @ Russia doesn't want to take over Europe. That's just a myth designed to stop you complaining when your tax money gets diverted into the pockets of arms dealers.
    1
  18088. Biden was never anything more than a puppet. The fact that he's falling to bits hardly matters at all.
    1
  18089. Well, the other side wants a jury that benefits them.
    1
  18090.  @Paulo-1999  Of course there is. It is impossible for Trump to have a fair trial since there is no-one in the country who has not been subjected to the constant stream of hatred and denigration against him dished out by this channel and others like it. I do not condone threatening jurors - but is there any evidence that Trump is involved? I don't see that he needs to. All his team needs to do is to ask a potential juror whether or not they have watched MSNBC or CNN and if they have, require them to be dismissed.
    1
  18091. The only way Trump will lose the next election is if the Democrats and their deep state bosses cheat again. (Whoopee, I think I'm allowed to say that now!!!)
    1
  18092. Trump will lose - because the Dems will cheat again. They have experts to help them do this and until Trump can do a deal with the FBI and the CIA et al he is doomed to fail.
    1
  18093. This scheme is only nonsensical if one takes it seriously. It is a potential vote-winner on one hand, and a potential deterrent to immigrants on the other. So why the fuss?
    1
  18094. Questioning one's own sanity is often quite good idea. But you could just simply be wrong about things.
    1
  18095. @ The truth can never be found. But close enough approximations are available, although NOT in the mainstream media! Not ever. No way.
    1
  18096. Evil, racist, old white men are a distinct minority in Britain these days.
    1
  18097.  @andreasarnoalthofsobottka2928  But there are few of them it's hardly worth it. And they will vote Reform or Ukip anyway.
    1
  18098.  @andreasarnoalthofsobottka2928  I think it was your initial description which confused my. I am an old white Englishman and I want strict controls on immigration. But I am neither evil nor racist yet would certainly vote for any party which I believed could control the influx of foreigners to the country I love.
    1
  18099.  @woolymittens  Why is Russia your enemy? Are you Ukrainian?
    1
  18100.  @trepidstation  I'm not paid anything. The very fact that you think I am shows what a brainwashed fool you are.
    1
  18101.  @itsJPhere  Wrong. Neighbours have the right to object to the foreign policies of a "nation" when those policies infringe upon their safety and economic prosperity. Russia has put up with a lot since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The notion of Ukraine joining NATO and potentially becoming a launch pad for US nuclear missiles was just too much. On top of this it was clear that the US and the UK were creating a Ukrainian army strong enough to attempt to retake Crimea and crush the separatist rebellions in Donbass. Provocation enough.
    1
  18102.  @basilboris  Perhaps I am. Perhaps that's because history is often a history of conspiracies. In this case the conspiracy is the invidious strategy of the US military /industrial complex to use NATO as a marketplace for weapon sales and a job creation scheme for senior military personnel. Russia has never shown the slightest sign of wishing to expand back into the territories the Soviet Union surrendered. Fearmongering and outright bribery by fascist elements in Washington are solely responsible for NATO expansion. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a defensive measure, not an offensive one.
    1
  18103.  Vinland  What on earth are you talking about? Why bring the sins of the Soviet Union into this? We are talking about the Russian Federation here - an entirely different entity. Do try to keep up. (So, do you not think that the expansion of NATO since 1945 is not an existential threat to Russia? Especially since it was promised no such extensions would take place?)
    1
  18104.  @personnamed2764  Russia is defending itself. Ukraine has been committing crimes in Donbass ever since 2014.
    1
  18105.  Vinland  An absurd analogy. In this instance the "householder" is threatening his neighbour and the neighbour has fought back.
    1
  18106.  @stevie-ray2020  And the people of Crimea and Donbass would just as soon Putin's oligarchs had their oil and gas and coal and steel as Zelensky's oligarchs. They reckon they will get a better deal.
    1
  18107.  Vinland  Whatever knowledge you have of the facts you clearly have a prejudiced interpretation of them. You have fallen into the trap of taking sides as though this dreadful business is some kind of sporting event. 1) The Soviet Union was expansionist. The Russian Federation is not. It has learned the lesson all empires learn eventually: running an empire is very troublesome and unprofitable. 2) The Russians have certainly been outmanoeuvred at the conference table, but this does not alter the basic facts: Russia has every right to be concerned at NATO's expansionism and has some reason to believe that assurances were given that this would not occur. As with the Budapest protocols, the Russians, reeling under the effects of the collapse of the SU, rushed into agreements which have turned out to be disadvantageous to them. "Hard luck," you might say, but I prefer to think of this as being like a householder being conned by a door-to-door salesman. And it didn't help that Boris Yeltsin was pissed all the time. 3) Treaties are just scribbles on pieces of paper. You can quote Budapest, the Russians can quote Minsk, but at the end of the day history is dictated by the application of pragmatic reality. Treaties are torn up and scattered like confetti once they cease to work - and Budapest and Minsk have both clearly failed in their objectives. The question we must ask ourselves is not who is right and who is wrong, but what course of action is likely to bring about a lasting peace. (Ans sucking up to the US cabal of warmongers and their schemes to destroy Russia isn't it.)
    1
  18108.  Vinland  In reply to your last paragraph I am a 74-year-ild Englishman, living in England. I have no political affiliations. I do not need to know the details of your extensive research to understand what you have made of it. You are prejudiced against Russia - and I daresay you already were before you set out on your voyage of discovery. The annexations you refer to are not expansionist. They are all cases of Russia protecting existing borders and interests from the threat of foreign incursions. Sadly enough history does teach us that it is the strongest who survive such struggles as this one. It can be viewed, I think, as the last battle between two derelict empires in which the rest of us are unfortunately caught up in. As I think I said before, the only decent position anyone can take is one which may lead to as rapid cessation of hostilities as possible. Stop arming Ukraine. Get rid of Zelensky somehow. Acknowledge that Crimea is part of Russia, and that Donbass is entitled to self-determination. Anything else amounts to global suicide.
    1
  18109.  @RS-hr8mj  I am not a Russian. What are you? A poorly educated, brainwashed American?
    1
  18110.  @personnamed2764  That's the point. Why do we support one set of murderers against another?
    1
  18111.  Vinland  Oh dear! I do so hate these absurd analogies! But to consider your latest development of the yarn, the neighbour on the martial arts course has come along and started kicking the fence (Donbass) while also inviting the other members of his class (the US, the UN, the UK, the EU) to practice in his garden. His neighbour puts up with this for a while but when he hears that the gang next door is planning to jump over the fence he decides to get in first. In my parable the situation is complicated by the fact that the two neighbours are close family members.
    1
  18112.  Vinland  So I guessed wrong then? Are you sure?
    1
  18113.  @RS-hr8mj  That's OK. But I'm not Russian.
    1
  18114.  @trepidstation  What is a sovereign state? Where is Ukraine?
    1
  18115.  Vinland  I guess you're right. About not knowing I mean.
    1
  18116.  @itsJPhere  It is not " unprovoked war of pure aggression and imperialism." It is a war designed to cripple Ukraine's armed forces in order to prevent an invasion of Crimea and of Donbass.
    1
  18117.  @theporkiestpie8416  I suppose then it is perfectly acceptable in your bright. modern worldview of geopolitics to allow your neighbour to become a potential launchpad for nuclear missiles aimed at your capital?
    1
  18118.  @basilboris  I'm sorry. I hadn't realised you were a full-trained psychiatrist. My views are entirely rational, so it surprises me that anyone with your qualifications should think otherwise. If I was a psychiatrist, I think I would conclude that you are in some state of denial and cannot cope with views which contradict your own. (Perhaps Gen Douglas MacGregor, Col Richard Black, Professor John J Mearsheimer and Maj Scott Ritter would also benefit from your diagnosis since their views broadly coincide with mine.)
    1
  18119.  @theporkiestpie8416  What about the Minsk protocols then? In any case all these treaties are simply bits of paper if they fail to address changing circumstances. And the missiles were Russian missiles anyway. MAD relies on psychological factors for it to be effective. Missiles based in a former Russian province eight minutes from Moscow affect this balance. Even without the nuclear launch pad issue Putin cannot be expected to put up with the situation in Donbass, much less the prospect of a US-backed invasion of Crimea, which seemed to be imminent before he made this pre-emptive strike.
    1
  18120.  @theporkiestpie8416  The separatists would argue that they carried on fighting because the Ukrainians failed to keep their parts of the bargain and continued with policies of intimidation against the Russian population of Donbass. In any case this is no longer a war being fought by lawyers using documents, but by soldiers using advanced weaponry. As far as the deployment of nuclear weapons is concerned, the flying time of eight minutes to Moscow certainly enters the equation. Russian patriotic pride enters into it too. Russia removed its nukes from Ukraine and cannot be expected to be happy at the prospect of them being replaced with American ones. As to the possibility of retaking Crimea I certainly have no concrete evidence other than the fact that Putin has cited this and the stepping up of the war in Donbass as his reason for the invasion. It seems to be a likely development following the US warmongers' gaining power under their puppet, Biden. The only alternative is this nonsense about Putin going mad and wanting to recreate the Russian empire in his old age. The war in Donbass is well-documented. Fourteen thousand have died and industry in some areas is a standstill, There are videos going back to 2014 showing attacks on villages and towns around the front line. To deny this is to deny reality.
    1
  18121.  @theporkiestpie8416  As I say, this is a military war now, not a diplomatic one and it is perfectly acceptable to believe that Russia was using the Minsk protocols to tighten its hold on Donbass. As to your last paragraph: as long as what Russia wants is reasonable then why not? I have a horrible feeling that at the end of the day things will be more or less the same as they were before the invasion began - except that Ukraine will no longer have a big enough and strong enough army to invade Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  18122.  @itsJPhere  The borders of Ukraine have altered considerably over the centuries. The present borders were drawn up in 1994 but they do not represent a true situation. Crimea is Russian and always was until 1954 when it was tacked onto Ukraine by the Soviets. Donbass has a large Russian population many of whom would prefer to be ruled from Moscow. Illegal? Who says what is legal or not in these circumstances?America?
    1
  18123. Are you a porn channel with political aspirations?
    1
  18124.  @Kieranp96  Boundaries set by who?
    1
  18125.  @Kieranp96  Once again, boundaries set by who? It wasn't Putin, but Yeltsin who foolishly agreed that the new country of Ukraine should have the same boundaries of the former SSR. One must make allowances; it was a very difficult time and he was probably drunk but the fact remains that Ukraine as it is today is not a united country. Putin has tried for twenty years to redress the situation peacefully and if the compromises outlined in the Minsk Accords had been followed we wouldn't be having this dreadful and needless war.
    1
  18126.  @LudwigHollywood66  Rarely do.
    1
  18127.  @McGeeification  No. They just have to lose.
    1
  18128. @ The idea that renewables are going to replace fossil fuels in much less than 200 years is fantasy. And nuclear will take over before then. Renewables are a passing fad which can't survive economically without being heavily subsidised and in themselves need large quantities of fossil fuel energy to manufacture, replace and install. Russia will remain closely allied with China and India as well as a whole tranche of developing countries and OPEC countries and will not have any need to rely on dollar-based capital. In any case, now that America seems on the path to a sensible and pragmatic form of governance, accommodations will doubtless be made between the US and Russia once the dust has settled on this needless war in Ukraine.
    1
  18129. @ Huh? Are you suggesting I should be envious of having brainless idiots agree with me? The only thing that puzzles me is how it is anatomically possible for people without brains to be brainwashed.
    1
  18130. @ Rutland, actually.
    1
  18131.  @ec7696  And the other G7 countries are, or shortly will be, experiencing the same difficulties as the UK, as will/are most countries in the Western world. The effects of Brexit are piss in the ocean.
    1
  18132.  @2011hwalker  This is possibly true. But it is not responsible for soaring energy costs and the collapse of many small businesses, and nor for the coming recession.
    1
  18133. The awful thing is that millions of brainwashed children will believe this demented loon -a child herself, it seems. She probably even believes this crap herself.
    1
  18134. He already is.
    1
  18135. Conspiracy theories have a way of becoming conspiracy facts - or haven't you noticed? Once again I continue to be amazed by the way British socialists fall for the con-tricks which cunning capitalists churn out for profit. Perhaps you are all naturally credulous.
    1
  18136.  @megaham1552  I have several. Taunting lefties is just one of them.
    1
  18137.  @johnpoile1451  Can be once they enter the real world.
    1
  18138. Britain will be punished for its interference in what is basically a border war over mineral rights between two former Soviet republics. This is a war of greed, disguised for the benefit of fools as a moral crusade. History will see it as a key stage in the inevitable collapse of Western civilisation.
    1
  18139. It's just a losers' strategy. Look at the Lib Dems.
    1
  18140. This has done him nothing but good. He may have lost a few votes, but he has gained a great deal more from those of us have been waiting for someone with the courage to to lay blame where blame is due for this dreadful, dreadful war.
    1
  18141.  @russellharrell2747  It wasn't either. If you look carefully he was throwing his heart out to the people who voted for Trump - with both hands. This Nazi salute thing just shows how absolutely psychotic and living in a fantasy world so many TDS sufferers are.
    1
  18142. @ He was leaping about like a child for goodness sake! Do you really, really believe he was doing a Nazi salute? Does anyone? It defies all reason! This is insanity. TDS has rotted your brains.
    1
  18143.  @scooby1992  I find it so frightening to think that people can be so deluded as to mistake these gestures among all his other gestures as being in any way "a Nazi salute"! I suppose I must have somehow escaped the brainwashing.
    1
  18144.  @ozzie2612  Try thinking it through: the gesture existed long before the Nazis and is quite a natural movement expressing both victory and gratitude. Just because the Nazis took it over for a bit there is no need to exclude it from humanity's repertoire of gestures, is there? That gives them a kind of victory they don't deserve.
    1
  18145. The more light that is shed on this darkness the better. The British people have been subjected to decades of deception.
    1
  18146. But who decides what is disinformation and lies? And how?
    1
  18147. The Russian account is just as likely to be as true as any Ukrainian acount. Which is to say hardly true at all.
    1
  18148.  @peterflohr7827  As well as great technology they have great corruption too! Mind you, this story has never been truly confirmed. Doesn't alter the fact that they've got a few thousand nuclear missiles ready to go.
    1
  18149.  @peterflohr7827  I know, it's dreadful. You just can't get the staff nowadays.
    1
  18150.  @OrcHunter-yb4ie  Heard of BRICS?
    1
  18151.  @Doc-n7u  Why? Which propaganda have you bought?
    1
  18152. As opposed to the Utopia of bliss foreshadowed by Portland and Seattle?
    1
  18153. @ here's a difference between a military subterfuge and a policy. Ukraine and Russia had been more or less at war for a decade - or rather poor Ukraine was chosen by Americans like this bloke as the battlefield for their continual war with Russia - a war for profit, by the way.
    1
  18154. @ here's a difference between a military subterfuge and a policy. Ukraine and Russia had been more or less at war for a decade - or rather poor Ukraine was chosen by Americans like this bloke as the battlefield for their continual war with Russia - a war for profit, by the way.
    1
  18155.  @David-ec2qp  I wouldn't know. I live in Rutland.
    1
  18156.  @David-ec2qp  You are typical of the effectiveness of the brainwashing I am highlighting here. You are so utterly conditioned that you are incapable of understanding that an objectively-thinking Englishman (which I am) can see through the con trick which is being played on us.
    1
  18157. Because the Democrats are a bunch of warmongering crooks?
    1
  18158.  @chrismurphy6070  As Mr Hancock said in reply to this question he had childcare available in London -Cummings just didn't. The Cummings child is autistic. As you may or may not be aware such children become very frightened if forced into the care of people they do not know. Cummings' nieces aged 17 and 21 were known to the child and it was a sensible and considerate decision to have them on stand by if both Cummings and his wife were laid low. This obsession you and your ilk have in trying to turn this man into some sort of monster is wearing very thin, and getting just a little bit disgusting.
    1
  18159.  @johnkitching2248  No its my bed eyesight!
    1
  18160. You'd be governed by unicorns.
    1
  18161. The only hope for peace is to recognise that Donbass and Crimea were mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine, simply because they were part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, itself a Russian adjunct. What the final deal will be, who knows? But it must be something along these lines.
    1
  18162.  @MartinMontgomerySmith  But it didn't include Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  18163. No he isn't. He 's none of those things. He has been a registered Democrat for almost 20 years and is a regular financial contributor. But that's not the point. He is a pro-Ukraine fanatic who has been a member of the Azov Brigade and there is every likelihood that he was working on behalf of Zelensky to get rid of Trump in case he gets elected and cuts off the flow of dollars to Ukraine.
    1
  18164. Try to get a grip on British politics before you pontificate. Jess Phillips is a left-wing feminist who wants to exercise left-wing censorship in the Internet. Sargon called her out, using the language she used herself. He wasn't joking, but he is pretending that he was to get under the enemy's armour. Watch and learn.
    1
  18165. They will cheat again.
    1
  18166. A few sensible voices, drowned out by greed and incompetence. The pandemic is nothing more than a cash cow for Big Pharma.
    1
  18167. The Department of Education has ceased to have anything much to do with education and has become the Department of Indoctrination.
    1
  18168.  @peace_harmony65  It's all he wants or has even wanted - the bits with large Russian populations and immense mineral resources.
    1
  18169. The Russian army is pretty incompetent - but Putin isn't. He is winning despite its leaders, not because of them. @stephenmuir5030 
    1
  18170.  @theartguy6776  Don't Ukrainian tanks explode? Anyway this is about keeping hold of the vast mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea - which is what Russia is doing.
    1
  18171. The standard of living in Russia has never been higher. Shops are full and restaurants are cheap. @ronin8926 
    1
  18172.  @timosullivan5722  As yet there is little sign of this.
    1
  18173. Merely an objective observer, not fooled by Western propaganda, @leoplaate1165 
    1
  18174.  @MaxMisterC  You seem to be describing the situation facing Ukraine - not Russia.
    1
  18175. No. It is my considered opinion. @MaxMisterC 
    1
  18176. @@karmakazi101 He didn't. The first stages of the war were a feint simply designed to force Ukraine into sacrificing troops and equipment. Putin doesn't want all of Ukraine and never has. He just wants the predominantly Russian bits and all the mineral wealth lying under them. These he now largely has and Ukraine is too weak after defending Kiev and the North and West to be able to take them back.
    1
  18177.  @tvwatcher1883  Moving the fleet seems sensible since it is vulnerable to drone attack. The sinking of the Moskva was a disaster - but a relatively minor one in the overall scheme of things. More importantly the Russian defensive lines are holding while the Ukrainian forces are increasingly depleted. I think we may even see a Russian advance before long as they attempt to gain those parts of Donbass still held by Ukraine.
    1
  18178. Democrats are weird. Zombies who only come alive when thirsting for the blood of Donald Trump.
    1
  18179. I doubt Trump will be allowed to become President, but if by some miracle he does I think he would be entirely justified in spending his first few weeks in office in exacting his revenge on the cheats, liars and charlatans who have conspired against him.
    1
  18180. They will have to swap it for Russian assurances that they won't take any more than they have already.
    1
  18181.  @mikeauld9177  No way. Putin doesn't want all of Ukraine, let alone the Baltic States. Too much trouble.
    1
  18182.  @emm_arr  I expect you preferred the sanctimonious drivel which dripped out of Keir Stalin's gob.
    1
  18183. We are all dying slowly. Live with it.
    1
  18184. Muslims, Marxists and Common Purpose. That's all you need to know.
    1
  18185. I don't blame him.
    1
  18186.  @dmythica  Then all this does is give Putin the green light to attack any NATO country he chooses and has little or no effect on the outcome of the war. Is Biden genuinely bonkers?
    1
  18187.  @dmythica  Then surely all this does is give Putin the legal right to attack any NATO country he chooses while having little or no effect on the outcome of the war at all.
    1
  18188.  @dmythica  So Biden has just declared war on Russia on behalf of NATO in order to allow action that will have little or no effect on the outcome of the present war? Any idea why?
    1
  18189.  @enriqueperezarce5485  I was thinking more of what Russia did in Syria and Chechnya.
    1
  18190.  @agajohanna428  The WHO does. These are official figures found on the WHO website.These countries are not lost in the mists of time you know. There is extensive monitoring of health issues both by the government and by international agencies. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt these figures. You will get similar results in the Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique and Niger which are also malaria hotspots where hydroxychloroquine is widely used as a prophylactic.
    1
  18191. No. @mariyamwaniki  No. Pairs of nylons and a cheap date aren't worth getting bombed for.
    1
  18192.  @robertwoods3873  You've obviously been watching crazy Western propaganda. The Russians have finally broken through the extremely fortified Ukrainian defences on the line of contact, and now have a clear path to take the 30% or so of Donetsk which remains in Ukrainian hands. Oil refineries have certainly suffered from drone attacks, but they have in no way been destroyed, and nor is the Russian economy anywhere near collapse.
    1
  18193.  @robertwoods3873  The Russian military action has resulted in advances all along the line of contact and Ukraine's defences are almost overwhelmed. Oil refineries have been damaged by drones, but none have been destroyed. Russia's economy is nowhere near collapse, by any standard of judgement. I think the action you have been following has taken place in the fevered imagination of propagandists.
    1
  18194. @ I tend to watch war mapping channels such as DPA War and Weeb Union, which objectively assess claims from both sides and generally present a well balanced picture. For an equally balanced view of the political and economic developments I usually find myself in broad agreement with John Mearsheimer of Chicago University, an internally-recognised political scientist of considerable repute. I reject the assessments of most news channels as utterly laughable.
    1
  18195. @ This is just silly propaganda. I wouldn't want to diminish the effects of drones on this war, but to suggest 50% of Russia's oil refineries have been destroyed is absurd. It is equally ridiculous to suggest that Russia's economy is anywhere near collapse. They are suffering from inflation, certainly - but who isn't? In fact the Russia economy is generally held to be among the top half dozen economies in the world, with an increase of 4.1% in GDP last year as just one example.
    1
  18196. @ I think that boot's on your foot, buddy.
    1
  18197.  @stu281  Mapping channels mostly. Plus John Mearsheimer for the economics.
    1
  18198. I wonder when the BBC will cover this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDGsXptbF0&t=53s
    1
  18199. @Corey Leander It happens on both sides. Of course it does. Why would it not? They are the same people enduring the same pressures and hardships.
    1
  18200.  @randomMich  It should be. One mustn't forget that this began as a civil war in the early stages of which Ukrainian forces committed terrible atrocities against civilians and partisans alike. These things just escalate. It's human nature.
    1
  18201. @Corey Leander And it's on both sides. Personally I've seen more videos of Ukrainian brutality than the reverse, but that doesn't mean anything. It is absurd to believe that one nationality with the same ethnic background, the same historical background and the same very poor record on human rights should suddenly become a nation of saints.
    1
  18202. @Corey Leander You are wrong. The Military and police in both Crimea and Donbass rebelled against the Kiev government after Maidan. In Crimea they went over to the Russians without scarcely a shot being fired, and in Donbass they formed units to fight off the Azov Battalion and the Ukrainian army. The Russians, naturally enough, encouraged these rebellions and as the Minsk accords forbad direct intervention, the Wagner Group was formed to co-ordinate the rebel units into effective armies. The Ukrainian government's savage response is well documented in a number of reports, including ones from the UN and Amnesty International. Torture and summary execution were commonplace, as well as shelling of civilians.
    1
  18203. @Corey Leander It's not a competition is it? Ukrainians and Russians are mainly Slavs. The ruling families of both countries were closely related for centuries. The histories of both countries are closely intertwined. The Vikings who came up the Dnieper to found Kiev later went further upstream to found Moscow. Ukraine became a Russian province in the early 18th century, and a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under Moscow in the early 20th. Both Ukraine and Russia have appalling records on human rights, both during and after the Soviet era. During the Nazi occupation the citizens of Kiev and Mariupol lined the streets and jeered as Ukrainian police and army led their Jewish neighbours off to be machine-gunned to death by the tens of thousand. When it comes to decent behaviour Ukrainians and Russians have little to distinguish between them I'm afraid. They are as good and as bad as each other.
    1
  18204. @Corey Leander As the Azov Battalion was formed to put down the rebellions in Donbass why did it contain so many fervent ant-Russians and why did it delight in Nazi regalia? Why didn't the police and military put down the rebellions instead of joining them? There were Russian agitators on the scene, certainly, but they didn't have to twist many arms, did they? Wages and GDP in Ukraine in general and in Donbass in particular imploded after the Soviet collapse and in 2014 there was a strong feeling that Donbass was going to be milked dry in order to fund Kiev's nationalism - which also seemed dedicated to destroying Russian language and culture. The foul behaviour of Azov and others in 2014 onwards is clearly documented. The shelling was indiscriminate and has continued until the present day. Your final question is puzzling. I suppose no-one was dying before 2014 was because the civil war didn't start until then. (PS. It was Angela Merkel who admitted that Minsk was a ploy, not the Russians. It was designed to give NATO the time to create a multi-$billion army with which to invade Donbass and Crimea - an army which Russia is now in the process of destroying.)
    1
  18205. The West's efforts to diminish and demean Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union are what has led to Putin's militarism. He does not want his country to become yet another American vassal, and so far he has succeeded. One can only hope that Donald Trump will genuinely bring an end to this foolish imperialism, which has cost many lives. There is no need for a final showdown between the two victors of World War II.
    1
  18206. IT is being built largely to ensure more Muslim votes for Biden in the forthcoming election.
    1
  18207. Mark Buell You are seriously confused. You start off saying saying that scientists didn't take evidence and a few lines later you accuse people of denying what scientists and experts say. How does that work?
    1
  18208. cat lover Even the good ones. New studies are showing that carbon doesn't cause global warming at all, would you believe?
    1
  18209. Later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire.
    1
  18210.  P-J Proudhon  No. How do I join?
    1
  18211. With some justification.
    1
  18212. Biden Brainwashing Corporation
    1
  18213. Doncha just know how she feels!
    1
  18214. MAGA's first victory in the new Congress. McCarthy is in, but he has little power to rule as an autocrat and can be ejected if he steps out of line. Next step a committee to investigate the treasonous activities of the FBI and other government agencies which have been making a mockery of democracy in the US for decades.
    1
  18215. Here's hoping for a speedy Russian victory to bring an end to this needless, US-engineered war .
    1
  18216.  @boink800  Budapest is dead.
    1
  18217.  @dpelpal  Kursk has never been part of Ukraine. If you thought it was when you lived there you were being told fibs. Back in the days of the Russian Empire it was considered by many to be part of that vague backwoods area known as The Ukraine. After the Russian Revolution it became part of the Russian SSR, not the Ukrainian SSR, however. The population is almost exclusively Russian, speaking only Russian and following Russian habits and traditions. You need re-programming, my little botikin.
    1
  18218.  @dpelpal  No you're not. You're a politics graduate from Idaho and you sit in front of a computer screen in an office in Washington.
    1
  18219.  @boink800  No, because it has become irrelevant, as all treaties eventually are.
    1
  18220.  @boink800  No. The Irish spoke Erse until the English took over and they were forced to speak English. They are still Irish. The people of Kursk speak Russian and always have done - because they are Russian.
    1
  18221.  @boink800  Borderland is a reasonable translation but the word does imply a certain provinciality in Russian.
    1
  18222.  @boink800  No. I sit behind a computer screen in a small English town.
    1
  18223.  @boink800  Erse, if you care to look it up, is the Gaelic language spoken in Ireland.
    1
  18224.  @boink800  Give it up. There is no such thing as an ethnic Ukrainian.
    1
  18225.  @boink800  You are entirely wrong about this as you are wrong about everything else. A quick Google search will set you right.
    1
  18226. Here he is (and the car) Go to the end and check the hand gesture. He is clearly a white supremacist. MathBoi Fly - HALF A TIKKET (prod. by DeeMarc) - YouTube
    1
  18227. Sadly there are very few people who achieve success in the world without doing at least one or two bad things. Leave ALL statues alone. (There was a plan to attach a plinth to the Colston statue explaining who he was and who he did but -surprise surprise - after years of wrangling no agreement was reached on the wording.)
    1
  18228. It's a good job NATO ain't gonna put boots on the ground then, isn't it? When is this childish warmongering going to stop!!??
    1
  18229. We certainly can. There's no harm in hoping and there is good reason to. The big problem might be when Omicron hits our elderly population.
    1
  18230. They don't though.
    1
  18231.  @mrpolodowndakurocombatvet4869  Because it defines people by their racial characteristics, which are generally very superficial. People behave the way they behave due to the role history has given them, not because of the colour of their skin -which while it can appear to be the most obvious thing about them, is actually the most irrelevant.
    1
  18232.  @thefacts4274  The hotel was demolished in the early 1960s. In its place is a shopping mall with wheelchair access.
    1
  18233.  @scmontgomery  It is a Marxist attempt to impose ideology by exaggerating racial divisions . Racism disappears as time goes on, and people realise that, under their skin, people are pretty much the same. Marxism requires an oppressed proletariat in order to succeed. CRT is merely an attempt to create one. Any sane person knows that black people in the west have as much chance of success as anyone. Racial prejudice is fostered by CRT in order to create the sense of injustice which is essential to Marxist success.
    1
  18234.  @scmontgomery  No it isn't. Racism is an entirely natural evolutionary response to coming into contact with peoples whose appearance, culture habits etc are different. Folly emerges from this initial response in two ways: 1) continuing to feel racial dislike when, in fact it is clear that mutual agreements can be reached. 2) ignoring threats posed by people with whom mutual agreements cannot be reached. The kind of racism engendered by CRT ignores the first and endeavours to exaggerate the second in order to create the discord essential for the revolutionary process to continue.
    1
  18235.  @scmontgomery  Of course it is. If you're living in a valley and some people come down from the hills who look different and smell different you're not going to welcome them with open arms, are you? Chances are you'll be wiped out, and your genes lost forever!
    1
  18236.  @scmontgomery  Congratulations. You just fell into category 1)
    1
  18237.  @scmontgomery  You were turning your back on me and intimating you were disinclined to engage in further discussion. Your reasons were simply that my thought processes seemed to you to be alien. So, yes.
    1
  18238.  @scmontgomery  OK. You have a point. I was just being confrontational for the fun of it. Apologies. Go in peace.
    1
  18239. The ICC has now revealed itself to be a pointless and potentially dangerous institution, existing purely for the benefit of lawyers.
    1
  18240. He only got the job to protect US interests and sacrifice his nation in doing so. Now the US doesn't want him any more he's pretty much redundant.
    1
  18241. When are we going to finally realise that Putin is not Hitler and that the Russian Army is not the Wehrmacht?
    1
  18242.  @AshPrimeDCFC  But situations often don't
    1
  18243. Not much, because Russia is not aggressive. It only wants to hold on to what it already has.
    1
  18244. What? He is a free-speech extremist. All he wants to cancel is crap government.
    1
  18245. Higher transmissibility - not virulence.
    1
  18246. Me for one.
    1
  18247.  @MacDaddy8200  This international law was only made up after the end of World War II you realise, and its primary purpose is to protect American interests. And far from being a "demented fascist dictator" Putin is merely trying to reclaim territories in Ukraine stolen from Russia by a bad treaty, and to protect the interests of the eight million Russians living in Ukraine.
    1
  18248. So you think at after beating Ukraine Russia is going to invade America?
    1
  18249.  @iris1224wwad  It's called being a soldier.
    1
  18250.  @juancarlosbuenaventuram  But who are THEY? Ukraine is a divided nation.
    1
  18251.  @juancarlosbuenaventuram  The separatist movement in Donbass was very real, as evidenced by the fact that the army and the police went over to the rebels almost to a man - as of course they did in Crimea. Obviously Russia co-ordinated and encouraged the rebellion but there was a substantial feeling of dissatisfaction with the Kiev government, both for its failure to invest in the area and for its efforts to wipe out Russian language and culture.
    1
  18252. ​ @ch-53esuperstallion76 Occupied by Russia
    1
  18253.  @rameshchandrapatel7126  It is. Services and infrastructure planned in the 1970s are not sufficient to cope with pressures of an unexpectedly large immigrant population.
    1
  18254.  Spitfire Hunter  It's up to them. But there is no reason at all why Britain should join in the virtue-signalling Olympics. This is America's doing and the EU's too to a certain extent. As for these bombings they are less than the RAF did in Bosnia in 1999 where not only hospitals but refugee convoys were bombed. And don't even mention the Americans.
    1
  18255.  @Dash8Q400Channel  I am fully aware of this - but the NF were motivated by racial hatred. This is a matter of fact. Services and infrastructure are not up to increasing population levels due to mass immigration. And we have no moral obligation towards the unfortunate people of Ukraine
    1
  18256.  @Dash8Q400Channel  But why SHOULD we build roads, houses, sewers and hospitals to cater for foreigners who wish to live here?
    1
  18257.  @geoffpoole483  I apologise. I was untidily using Bosnia as a cover-all term for the entire conflict in former Yugoslavia. The incidents I referred to happened in Kosovo/Serbia.
    1
  18258.  @Dash8Q400Channel  I fought hard against NF back in the day. There is a huge difference between instinctive racism and the fair distribution of limited resources.
    1
  18259.  @AM-fs1je  It has nothing to do with empathy. I feel pity for the suffering of others as much as anyone. What I hate is when a cause becomes fashionable and the virtue-signalling starts. There are countless millions of starving homeless people in the world. Is it because Ukrainians are pinker than most that they wrench our heartstrings? America and the EU caused this war. It us up to America and the EU to bear the consequences.
    1
  18260.  Spitfire Hunter  There is no reason to suppose pregnant women were targeted. The hospital was almost certainly being used as a base my Ukrainian militia and had been evacuated. Dreadful accidents happen in wars. This from Human Rights Watch: "In one case, involving the use of cluster bombs in Nis (incident no. 48), the weapon employed was a decisive factor in the civilian deaths. Nis is one of seven confirmed and five likely incidents involving civilian deaths from cluster bomb use. Altogether, some ninety to 150 civilians died from cluster bomb use by the United States and Britain. In the case of the attack on the Nis airfield on May 7, the technical malfunction of the weapon points to the fact that cluster bombs should not be used in attacks in populated areas, let alone on urban targets, given the risks. After the Nis incident, there was a U.S. executive prohibition on further cluster bomb use.50 Nevertheless, British planes continued to drop cluster bombs, indicating the need for universal, not national, norms regarding cluster bomb use." Some of the bombs hit the hospital at Nis
    1
  18261.  Spitfire Hunter  This from the Guardian, May 7, 1999 The operation at Nis was carried out by both the RAF and the Dutch air force. I'm not trying to attribute blame - merely stating that these things happen in wars and to suggest that the Russians are deliberately targeting hospitals is pure propaganda. Why would they? "Nato bombers yesterday dropped cluster bombs on a crowded outdoor market and a hospital in the southern Serbian city of Nis, killing at least 15 people and injuring many more, according to Yugoslav officials, independent media, and local residents. 'There is nothing military within a kilometre (half a mile) of it,' mayor Zoran Zivkovic told the Reuters news agency in Belgrade by telephone from the industrial city which has been repeatedly attacked by Nato planes. 'Cluster bombs hit the market, nearby buildings look like Swiss cheese... missiles hit a pathology ward, a parking lot and nearby buildings,' Mr Zivkovic was quoted as saying. 'I saw a dead man with a carrier bag with onions in it.' Three people were reported killed in the hospital and three near it.
    1
  18262.  Spitfire Hunter  Evidence is thrown out of the window when war propaganda begins. One simply has to try to use common sense. Why would Russia bomb a hospital other than accidentally or because it has been taken over for a military purpose? Hospitals and schools are often occupied as barracks or command posts during wars. In Eastern Ukraine, where a largely ignored civil war has been going on for eight years, many schools and other public buildings have been destroyed for this very reason.
    1
  18263.  Spitfire Hunter  You don't know what's going on in Ukraine right now any more than I do. The lies are flying faster than bullets and truth is the first victim of war, as they say. Ukraine posed a very real threat to Russia since it was proposing to add itself to the list of countries on NATO's payroll. Having an enemy base on his doorstep, in territory which, more than any other, Russia feels to be part of its true identity, was laying it on a bit thick. Democracy in Ukraine? You're kidding. It is still one of the most corrupt countries in the world and all elections are fixed. It's run by gangsters and money talks. Right now it belongs to America, which has chucked it down in front of the bear to see how much it bites.
    1
  18264.  Spitfire Hunter  Just as in Ukraine. The leaders of the second largest party in Ukraine have been imprisoned by Zelensky. I believe he did it after the election though, which is some concession to democracy I suppose.
    1
  18265. ​ Spitfire Hunter  : Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of Opposition Platform – For Life, the second-largest party in the country’s parliament, was detained by security officials earlier this year on charges of conspiring with Moscow to disrupt coal supplies to Ukraine from South Africa in 2014. He has now been given bail but remains under house arrest awaiting trial. Zelensky has also closed down three TV stations which oppose his Presidency. This is quite normal behaviour in Ukraine.
    1
  18266.  Spitfire Hunter  As I say, this is the normal face of Russian/Ukrainian politics. Whether or not Zelensky is a genuine reformer like Navalny is supposed to be remains very much in doubt. The gangsters who have ruled the place since its creation in 1991 are adept at playing Russia and America off against each other and getting money from both. The EU is in on the act too now, which complicates matters somewhat Both sides jail the opposition as a matter of course. Poroshenko, the guy before Zelensky, who we've been seeing looking all manly and supportive a flak jacket in TV interviews, is also up on charges relating to the coal scandal, as well as various other activities and faces a 15 year jail term. The guy before him is in exile in Russia and has been found guilty of mass murder among other things. There are a hell of a lot of people in jail on false charges and one of the accusations levelled against Zelensky is that he hasn't kept his promise to release them. The general feeling is that if he does so he will have to release people his gang have put there too, and this would never do. Not everything in Ukraine is as black and white as and warm and cuddly as our leaders and our press would like us to believe.
    1
  18267. I think there must be an agency. Braindead Idiots for Hire or something like that.
    1
  18268.  @Neutralino  Never watch it.
    1
  18269.  @mychannel5019  Obviously without any of the participants and interested parties there would be no war! Without NATO or the US, or Blackrock, or Ukraine,.. Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all!
    1
  18270.  @littlefluffybushbaby7256  No the EU is trying to steal Russia's sweeties, thus annoying Russia.
    1
  18271.  @dancoy09  Pathetic High School Nerd at 11 o-clock
    1
  18272.  @Think666_  The justification is a commercial one. Errors were made in drawing up post-Soviet boundaries and as long as these new "countries" continued to form close ties with Russia then things could jog along reasonably peaceably. Pressures from Western agencies, however, have affected this uneasy status quo and are probably the main, if not sole, cause of dissent leading to war. In Ukraine these agencies have persuaded Kiev (guess how) to allow the possibility of considerable resources being transferred out of Russian hands, leading to a substantial reduction in Russia's income. This Russia will simply not put up with, and understandably so. Lines drawn on maps and treaties signed by drunkards amid the collapse of an empire do not counterbalance centuries of history and investment. Respecting these boundaries is easy enough if doing so brings you benefit - not so much if it takes the bread out of your mouth. As to the opinions of the residents of these areas these are well-nigh impossible to ascertain. All one can say is that they are deeply divided, but in what proportion corruption and fear of reprisal make any accurate assessment extremely difficult to obtain. I think one can say with some confidence, however, that almost anything would be better for these people than the agonies they are suffering over what is, as I say, a quarrel over the ownership of resources.
    1
  18273.  @Think666_  The justification is a commercial one. Errors were made in drawing up post-Soviet boundaries and as long as these new countries continued to form close ties with Russia then things could jog along reasonably peaceably. Pressures from Western agencies, however, have affected this uneasy status quo and are probably the main, if not sole, cause of dissent leading to war. In Ukraine these agencies have persuaded Kiev (guess how) to allow the possibility of considerable resources being transferred out of Russian hands, leading to a substantial reduction in Russia's income. This Russia will simply not put up with, and understandably so. Lines drawn on maps and treaties signed amid the collapse of an empire do not counterbalance centuries of history and investment. Respecting these boundaries is easy enough if doing so brings you benefit - not so much if it takes the bread out of your mouth. As to the opinions of the residents of these areas these are well-nigh impossible to ascertain. All one can say is that they are deeply divided, but in what proportion corruption and fear of reprisal make any accurate assessment extremely difficult to obtain. I think one can say with some confidence, however, that almost anything would be better for these people than the agonies they are suffering over what is, as I say, a quarrel over the ownership of resources.
    1
  18274.  @Think666_  You appear to have received one of my several attempts to reply to this - and yet they have apparently been deleted from this thread. Could you confirm that you have received such a reply?
    1
  18275.  @Think666_  It still comes back to defining borders though, doesn't it? International law, like sovereignty, seems to me to be very much a pro-American construct, created after World War II. We are conditioned to believe these things are holy writ, but in reality they are not. As to Minsk, while both sides were possibly guilty of minor infringements, the main thrust of the Accords was for Ukraine to pursue ways of granting regional autonomy to Donbass. This they clearly did not do - which is a great pity because it is now becoming apparent that Russia will probably obtain more control than it asked for then and, tragically, tens of thousands of people will have died to no purpose. I repeat: the Ukraine on the map is not a real country, much less a sovereign one (whatever that means). This is at the root of the problem. Similar constraints apply to Georgia. The Soviet Union altered the map and it is paradoxically that in accepting these alterations - and indeed attempting to enforce them - the Western world has laid itself open to a whole heap of trouble.
    1
  18276.  @Think666_  I'm now getting replies to posts which have been deleted on my view of the thread. Very disconcerting. Is this AI gone mad or some deliberate strategy? I think YouTube doesn't want us to have these conversations. It just wants to host things like Minecraft shows with millions of views!
    1
  18277.  @Think666_  Respect, certainly - but I think it improbable that Ukraine in its present form will survive. Putin is now demanding that 1922 borders be returned to, as all annexations contrived by the Soviet Union are made defunct by its demise. There is now a significant probability that something like this will be arrived at. Minsk would have contented Putin, I am sure. He is a pragmatic man and his main objective was to retain control of the trillions of dollars in mineral wealth lying underneath the soil of Donbass. Things have now progressed beyond this and - sad to say - I believe that the courage and patriotism of the Ukrainian people have been taken egregious advantage of by agencies which will not have suffered in the slightest from the conflict.
    1
  18278.  @Think666_  Respect, certainly. Ukraine has fought magnificently, but I fear it will have been in vain. Putin now wants a return to pre 1922 borders for the country, and it seem probable that something like this may be achieved. I repeat: the Ukraine created in 1991 was not a true Ukraine and attempts to make it so have failed. Again I repeat, this process has been at the behest of outside forces, motivated by greed, and the Ukrainians have very much been taken advantage of. They should have given up Donbass and Crimea and concentrated on making their real country a better place. That is very likely what they will have to do now - with the disadvantage of suffering from more than two years of war.
    1
  18279.  @Think666_  Rewritten by Bing: Respect is due, certainly. Ukraine has demonstrated remarkable resilience, though the outcome remains uncertain. Putin's ambitions suggest a desire to revert to the country's pre-1922 borders, and it seems plausible this may be realized. The Ukraine formed in 1991 was not the true Ukraine, and efforts to define it as such have not succeeded. This transformation has been influenced by external forces driven by their own interests, leading to Ukrainians being exploited. They might have been better off conceding Donbass and Crimea, focusing instead on enhancing their nation. Unfortunately, now they face the challenge of rebuilding after more than two years of conflict.
    1
  18280.  @Think666_  Four goes so far. You getting any of them?
    1
  18281.  @Think666_  As is usual in these conflicts perceptions of moral rectitude and appeals to public opinion are trumped (ha) by victory in war. Will Putin win? On the ground, certainly. Ukraine's only hope now is for mounting economic pressure causing his regime to collapse, or for US-back distractions such as the rebellion in Syria to undermine his military capabilities. (It is actually pre-Soviet Russia Putin sets as his target. He has apparently selected 1922 because this was the date when the first sections of Russia were transferred to the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.)
    1
  18282.  @Biggie-o1d  I am neither a bot nor Russian. You are being brainwashed into supporting a needless war.
    1
  18283.  @classicpinball9873  Why should they? They are utterly useless and you are only told to wear them to make sure you're toeing the line.
    1
  18284.  @amandag5072  They are members of a political organisation. Reform UK was initially set up as a private limited company, which meant that its members were essentially shareholders. However, in September 2024, Nigel Farage announced a significant change to the party's structure. Reform UK transitioned from a company limited by shares to a company limited by guarantee, making it member-owned. Under this new structure, members have more control over the party's policies and leadership. They can vote on policy motions, participate in leadership elections, and even trigger a no-confidence vote against the party leader if 50% of all members request it. This change aims to enhance transparency and ensure that the party is accountable to its members rather than a small group of shareholders.
    1
  18285.  @beecee2205  Of course he's in charge. Until 50% of the members call for a vote of no confidence. Where does the lying come into it?
    1
  18286.  @peterebel7899  They didn't. There was no other candidate. Farage is leader for five years. If he leaves for any reason and there is more than one proposed candidate there will be an election is which all members have a vote.
    1
  18287.  @kimwit1307  The changes are all incorporated in the Reform manifesto. Companies House has the technical details.
    1
  18288.  @peterebel7899  There was no need, there being no other candidate.
    1
  18289. This has to be put into context. The majority of those who have died have been very elderly indeed, and many of them could have been expected to die very soon anyway.
    1
  18290.  @patrickh8602  Pretty much. Everyone dies, and if you have had a long life you have had a good deal. The death of a child is infinitely more tragic than the death of someone in their nineties, and therefore far more important.
    1
  18291. If there's enough of it they might get rid of Zelensky. That would be convenient.
    1
  18292. I think it entirely possible that Trump will be able to sneak something like the Istanbul solution past the American public. The gung-ho, pro-Ukraine sentiment was part and parcel of the hysteria created by the woke warmongers of the Democrat faction, now conclusively overthrown. They will scream and shout about it, but of course they are going to scream and shout about everything he does.
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  18293. Who is this whio? Is it a Russian name?
    1
  18294.  @emm_arr  If only I could believe you the world would better and a lovelier place where errors and embarrassment never occur.
    1
  18295.  @williamjackson5942  I can see we're going to have to rename this disease. The lunatics are taking over the asylum!
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  18296. I think if he used the nuclear option NATO would very sensibly back down.
    1
  18297. MAGA's first victory in the new Congress. McCarthy is in, but he has little power to rule as an autocrat and can be ejected if he steps out of line. Next step a committee to investigate the treasonous activities of the FBI and other government agencies which have been making a mockery of democracy in the US for decades.
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  18298. @ Which is a myth. NATO is little more than a protection racket.
    1
  18299.  @shaneb315  All Russia has ever done is protect its borders and economic interests from perpetual US subversion.
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  18300. So are around 5,000 a day. Good news is the vacc seems to make symptoms far less troublesome.
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  18301. Hand Solo This is most odd. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics samples taken from two recent time frames show that of an average of 584 bushfires a year in Victoria. 149 were caused by lightning and 145 by being deliberately lit. The rest were cause unknown or the result of accident. This comes from the Bureau's 2004 yearbook, so I suppose most copies will have been burned by now and the authors sent off to Climate Crisis Re-education Camps. The yearbook also contains details of previous bushfire outbreaks which occurred long before there was an increase in atmospheric carbon levels. I'm sure such wicked heresies cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. A quick sample: Black Thursday, February 6, 1831. 5 million hectares burnt. Twelve dead. Red Tuesday, February 1, 1893. 260,000 ha. Twelve dead. And so on -In the Summer of 1938-39, 71 were killed, around 2 million hectares were burned and the ash fell on New Zealand. And so on. These figures must be revised as soon as possible and grateful thanks offered to the Victorian State Police for helping to ensure that no other cause than climate change can be attributed to the present outbreaks.
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  18302. Hand Solo Ash Wednesday February 16, 1983. 210.000 hectares. 47 dead.
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  18303. Hand Solo A simple one. There is no evidence that so-called climate change has any impact whatsoever on bush fire incidence in Australia. There have always been bushfires of varying degrees of intensity and extent, as clearly demonstrated by government statistics. To use these recent tragedies as an excuse to promulgate what is essentially a political creed is shameful, immoral and also highly dangerous.
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  18304. Hand Solo I was not aware that every state was having bush fires at the same time. Please forgive me. I do hope, however, that you are not referring to that somewhat lurid map put out to the media recently which did show all the bushfires and gave the impression that they were taking place at the same time. This is not the case and the "error" has now been admitted. The fires in the 2002/2003 season burned up a total of 21,241,000 hectares. There are 2.471 acres to the hectare. Have fun with the sums. I re-iterate. There is no evidence that so-called climate change has anything whatsoever to do with this season's bushfires, the effects of which have been greatly exacerbated by lunatic environmentalist policies and general human incompetence. Climate change is extremely political. It is being used by unscrupulous financiers to make huge profits by playing the carbon futures market and by politicians in attempts to impose a global system of control. The science is far from settled and requires a constant process of data manipulation, obfuscation and plain lies to make it appear as though it is. There are between 300 and 500 scientific papers published each year which question or refute many of the AGW doctrines.
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  18305. Hand Solo We can fight fire with fire all day! Maybe the loss of property this year is due to the extension of suburbs, general population increase etc etc. Who knows? You are completely wrong about the energy sector losing billions due to climate change. The big oil companies are the major investors in renewables and green industry generally. Who do you think is paying for all those wind turbines? Just as importantly they are big players in the carbon futures market, where millions are made overnight by trading in permissions to exceed carbon output allocations. As to the science - that really is a poser. I think it must depend upon the veracity of the basic premises. Was Arrenhuis right, or just nearly so? Does atmospheric carbon retain and reflect heat, or disseminate it in directions best suited to maintaining the atmosphere in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium? And so on. There are at least 300-500 proper scientific papers published each year which question AGW as a significant factor in climate change. If you are prepared to risk confronting heresy you may gain access to some of them via these sites: notrickszone.com notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com climatedepot.com www.ceres-science.com
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  18306. Hand Solo I'm sorry you couldn't find anything interesting on your brief search. Try harder. Here are a few of the 2019 papers you could seek out if you wished Klippel et al Booker et al Frob et al Watanabe et el Buckley et al Gun et al Chang et al Eck at al It's interesting you should cite Venus.. As you might be aware Nikolov and Zeller's 2017 paper indicated very strongly that the surface temperatures of all planets in the solar system, including Earth, are dependent solely upon a combination of atmospheric pressure and proximity to and behaviour of the sun. The actual chemical composition of the atmosphere is an irrelevance, other than as a means of maintaining it in a state of thermodynamic stability. This is of course very satisfying to theoretical physicists who agree with Einstein that this must be the case. Nikolov and Zeller of course used empirical observation rather than relying upon computer models and packaged datasets doled out to them by their tutors. Drs Martin and Ronan Connolly also used empirical evidence in their remarkable study "A New Look at the Physics of Earth's Atmosphere." Instead of re-hashing approved doctrines they assessed many millions of items of data from weather balloons, going back to the 1950's. And blow me! They came up with similar conclusions. Carbon does not force temperature, it regulates it. ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com
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  18307. Hand Solo The Nikolov/ Zeller debate is far from settled, I think. I do urge you to check out the Connollys at the site I gave you. We sun-worshipping heretics set great store by them and I think their work will probably emerge at the forefront of our cause at some time or another. You may as well be prepared! As you can probably guess I hold the actuality of the Medieval Warm Period close to my heart and can therefore direct you to Lunning et al at https://www.researchgate.net/project/Mapping-the-Medieval-Climate-Anomaly The 2019 update is on Oceania and implies that the warmth reached Australia and New Zealand via ocean current about 200 years after it occurred in Europe. I don't think it is necessarily true that the AMOUNT of C02 in the atmosphere changes the amount of heat it traps. The Connolly study outlines a system whereby the process initiated by carbon presence helps cause molecular oscillation to vary in such a way that infra-red photons are directed in directions best suited to maintaining stability - and that doesn't mean just downwards of course.
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  18308. Hand Solo No, you've lost me here. You are obviously far more competent in physics than I could ever hope to be. If you are competent enough to read and understand the Connollys' paper "A New Look etc" and if you have the time, it might be interesting for you and I would certainly be interested in your response. I may well have paraphrased it inaccurately. I have to translate these esoteric matters into images I can understand. To me the atmosphere must have a mechanism that keeps it stable, otherwise it simply wouldn't have survived, considering what it has gone through over the millennia. Equally I am tortured by the idea that the models of the atmosphere used to arrive at conventional conclusions may not be entirely accurate. Also, I detect far too much chicanery in the procedures whereby AGW is sold to scientists and the public to be entirely comfortable with it. Anyway, this has been an interesting and civilised discussion (unlike many I have in comments sections!) and I wish you well. Please do get back to me if you manage to find time to investigate the Connollys' considerable body of work and indeed Lunning et al on the MWP.
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  18309. Hand Solo I think we are at cross purposes. Of course C02 is a greenhouse gas. Of course a certain proportion of infra-red is reflected from it, but how much? How exactly is it measured? How much does the amount of deflected heat contribute to increased surface temperature rise? By stable I mean stable i.e. not likely to undergo any drastic change in behaviour, whatever it's composition.
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  18310. Hand Solo And yet it is still here! Your link didn't come up blue by the way, if you try again I'll have a look at it.
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  18311. Hand Solo We're here because we're here because we're here, as the old World War I song went. Stability is, I suppose, a condition of maintained confusion. Instability is when the confusion appears to be breaking through. So yes, there are no grey areas. If you are stable you are here. If you are unstable then you are under the illusion that that the world is going to end. If it does end then you are not here. If it doesn't then you have been mistaken. Skeptical Science has always struck me as a very Orwellian title for the least skeptical of organs. It always seems to me to follow the party line with depressing rigidity. Still, never mind.
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  18312. Hand Solo And yet it's still here. Can't fiddle with your link I'm afraid. Don't know how. You'll just have to bung it across again.
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  18313. hand solo All well and good, but I still remain a heretic. As I've said, I'm not a scientist, so cannot argue the technicalities. I see that others can and I assume you believe the criticisms in the comments section to this article have been dismissed. I cannot possibly judge I need others to argue my corner; specialists such as the Connollys, Dad Michael is a spectroscopist (among many other things) and insists the balloon study utterly disproves current theories regarding the behaviour of carbon in the atmosphere Once again I am in danger of misrepresenting their case and can only clumsily put forward a version of what it appears to me may have happened. The models of the atmosphere used in laboratory experiments are inadequate in many important respects. The real thing is different to the models and behaves differently to how it should. Thus all conclusions based upon the models are brought into question. Current temperature rises are entirely in accord with historical cyclic patterns based upon solar forcing, cosmic ray and solar wind interaction and the behaviour of the oceans. Scientists have conflated temperature rise with carbon level increases and are constantly bending the evidence to turn this coincidence into cause and effect. This coincidence had been seized upon by political and financial players to create a scenario whereby money is made through giving carbon emissions a scarcity value. Carbon, in the form of diamonds, is given an artificial scarcity value and so is carbon in the form of fossil fuel emissions. Al Gore is one of several key players who realised the possibilities of trading in this new currency and has made an immense fortune from it, as have others, and they continue to do so. Politicians also love AGW because of the attractions of carbon taxation and the possibilities of controlling behaviour through fear. All three of these scenarios are already in place. I come at this problem from the bottom up, if you see what I mean. I can't do the science, but when I come across people who can, and who reject carbon as a prime forcer of climate, then I just love 'em! So, I beg you, if you want to argue the science, go to them. Their work is ever-open to debate and criticism. There's is a somewhat interesting story,incidentally. They are both very left wing (Ronan especially) and are ecologists by trade, designing and manufacturing eco-friendly structures. They began their study rather expecting to find it would confirm AGW and are somewhat wryly miffed to discover it did not.
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  18314. Hand Solo As I explained I don't approach this problem as you do. I see a phenomenon and try to explain it. The scientific aspects of this problem are beyond me, since I have no scientific training. I therefore seek scientific opinion. I too look at the evidence presented and conclude that the evidence presented by the proponents of AGW does not solve the problem, but that it is, in fact and of itself, a very significant part of the problem. In my view AGW proponents do exactly what you call "bad science." They are constantly trying to prove the statement that man-made carbon emissions are a major factor in climate change. Evidence to the contrary, in the form of historical temperature records and some proxy data, are dismissed for a variety of spurious reasons. At the same time modern data collection methods are skewed to imply increases in temperature which are not there. This makes be very suspicious. You are not suspicious enough, in my view. By old school models, I meant more laboratory models of the atmosphere based upon Arrenhuis's original proposals.
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  18315. Hand Solo I have suspicions, not conclusions. One of the reasons I engage in debates like this is to see if my suspicions can be alleviated. No luck so far. I accept that original conclusions were drawn from evidence. Since then have seen nothing but a process of re-inforcement, some of it based on highly dubious propositions. I shall rephrase and say "...collection methods appear to many to be skewed.." Does scientific training encourage you to reposition temperature reading devices according to whim? To position them near airport runways and five-lane highways? In basements? On hot roofs? In places where heat from glass buildings is reflected on to them? To fail to calibrate them to international standards? To gradually reduce and then ignore the Urban Heat Island Effect? To set up new stations in places where none previously existed and then work backwards to calculate past temperatures based on theory? These are all valid accusations. I look forward to your denials.
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  18316. Hand Solo So be it. I expect you have read John McLean's critique of Hardcrut4? And are aware of the positions of temperature recording stations, especially in Australia? One of my correspondents goes round the world assessing sites for aerospace projects, Weather is obviously important. He tells me Australia doesn't have a temperature record worth a damn - mainly for reasons outlined in my previous post.
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  18317. Hand Solo No.
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  18318. Hand Solo Yes.
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  18319. Hand Solo Where are we going with this? Do you have a cunning plan, Baldric?
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  18320. Hand Solo That may be a little hyperbolic, but many informed people have grave doubts about the BoM, you know. They do seem to pursue homogenization with quite extraordinary vigour and disregard. I'm sure you must be aware of the very excellent Dr Jennifer Marohasy and her work. She is yet another of those professional scientists who has come along and confirmed doubts which already existed in my nasty suspicious mind. Suffice it to say also that when commercial space tourism gets off the ground (ha!) it is unlikely that Australia will be provided with a departure lounge.
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  18321. Hand Solo Are they no biologists in the field of climatology? Perhaps there ought to be more considering what a mess is made of interpreting biologically based proxy data, such as tree rings, mollusc-shells etc. It's a shame a highly trained scientific mind should be dismissed through prejudice and ignorance. Even by citing Dr Marchosay's affiliations you are showing far more bias that she does in assessing the increasingly dubious outpourings of the climate crisis cult. Answer the science and stop bad-mouthing the scientists. I could say things about Michael Mann that would make your toes curl - but I try not to.
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  18322. Hand Solo I beg to disagree. Even a basic trawl through her allegations and assessments reveals many questions that need answering, Neither she nor I deny climate change. We dispute its causes and severity and in particular we accuse climate scientists of extensive corruption of past data and seriously flawed methods of present day collection. Like John MacClean, Dr Marohasy and her team have found numerous examples of bent data being inserted into computer models - and staying there to add to the exponential growth of error that makes so much of climate science utterly worthless. If previous unadjusted readings were included beside the new versions, and explanations given for the alterations, then it wouldn't be so bad. But they are not. Within minutes these alterations are proclaimed to be observations - which clearly they are not. The evidence for this is clear in the records, and the excuses for it are pathetically weak.
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  18323. Hand Solo It's just a question of taking sides, I suppose. I have explained my reasons well enough I think. It's not C02. It's not me or you. It's the sun. (Well, more or less.) How can you deny credibility to the many hundreds of scientists who are shocked to one degree or another by the data collection and manipulation methods employed by climatology? More and more those in your camp are sounding like brainwashed cult followers. Only those following holy writ have a right to their opinions. Heresies must be expunged and doubters shunned. A dangerous proceeding altogether. I can quite understand how you have come to the view that C02 is the cause of the present warming. I would simply urge you to consider the possibility that the whole scenario is far more complex than your training has brought you to believe.
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  18324. Hand Solo A quick addendum. Purely by coincidence I have just read about the Wragge experiment into early temperature collection methods, and I am very impressed. This is the sort of stuff my simple brain can take in. I'd really love to see the experiment continued - but with modern electronic probes added - one set up to international standards and another positioned and configured in the way the BOM apparently do it.
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  18325. Hand Solo Unreliable is as unreliable does. In your terms it just means a source that disagrees with you. Be that as it may, it is quite naive of you to suggest that battle lines are drawn between mining industry investors on the one hand and noble dispassionate scientists on the other. As I think I've pointed out there is substantial investment in climate science based green industry, much of it from players in the fossil fuel industry. Just as importantly is the money invested in the carbon futures market where once again there is considerable fossil fuel money involved. These people aren't fools. They have all their bases covered. They have a considerable interest in keeping the game going as long as possible. Sure, much of the science which disputes AGW is supported by the fossil fuel industry, which, as I have just outlined, needs to keep all options open. Where else can people go to who believe in solar forcing? You know as well as I do that it is now practically mandatory for academic proposals and results to accept AGW as a given. I must come back to the Connollys again here because they rely on neither grants nor fossil fuel cash. They work for a living. Do try to read their paper. I gather it's tough going in parts, but I'm sure you're up to it.
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  18326. Hand Solo I do, but I don't.
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  18327. Hand Solo I'm suggesting no such thing. The carbon-based AGW theory is as good as any other. It wasn't scientists who saw the potential for its exploitation, but financiers. Al Gore is just a relatively minor example of the sort of con artist versed in the arts of manipulation who can use a few apparent inconvenient truths to sweet talk his way to billions. As I think I've explained, the trick was to give industrial waste carbon a scarcity value, just as its prettier sister diamonds have been given a scarcity value. I'm sure that back in 1968 when all this began people were well aware of the fact that fossil fuels are going to run out some time and that there would be pressure to find replacements. Balancing the conflict between these pressures emerged as a source of much, much wealth. In your studies of AGW, how much to you take as irrefutable simply because you have been instructed that it is so, and because experiments you have taken part in make it appear to be the case? The falsifying of data is carried out not with evil intent, but because it seems an imperative to confirm something you KNOW to be true. Various psychological phenomena come into play at this point:cognitive bias, attentional bias, loss aversion and groupthink for example. This is the usual procedure when good decent people get caught up in a cult. Disbelieving its tenets becomes a psychological impossibility. Meanwhile, while you draw your modest salaries, the guys behind this magnificent scam are creaming billions from your efforts.
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  18328. Hand Solo You're one to talk! I'm afraid it's you who's living in Jonestown, not me.
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  18329. Hand Solo You are lapsing into incoherence. Take a deep breath and start again.
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  18330. Be scared.
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  18331. No.
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  18332. Trump Is Right About Everything.
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  18333. How convenient for Shapps that he can link Ukraine's inevitable defeat with that of his own party in the forthcoming election.
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  18334. You are on dangerous ground here. The "covid measures" are increasingly being proved to have caused serious damage to both the economies and general health of populations, while having no discernible effect on covid mortality.
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  18335.  @ai-d2121  I refer you to a recent meta-study of the effects of lockdowns from the Johns Hopkins University.
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  18336. He's a lying b**stard. There only 23,000 of them and the cages are made of plastic and have cute little teddy bears on them. What's more, very few are sexually abused on a regular basis and those who have covid have only very mild symptoms and cannot pass it on.
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  18337. When the system fails it leads to extremism - but not necessarily towards the right. The Russian revolution springs to mind. Trump isn't a fascist. He is a populist and a conservative who believes strongly in individual freedom. He has been subjected to a constant stream of vilification because he opposes state control, not because he wishes to strengthen it. Unfortunately the propogandists have done a great job - not enough to bet him beaten at the election though. They had to cheat to do that. Welcome to the Brave New World Order and the Great Reset. You have been conned just as thoroughly as Germans were conned by the Nazis in 1932. And he didn't even have to cheat to win HIS election.
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  18338.  @Weelonmusk  That was then and this is now. Currently more people are dying of flu and pneumonia than with Covid 19 in this country.
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  18339.  @Weelonmusk  You are still missing the point. Of course Covid has killed more between January and August, No-one disputes that. There was the huge peak in Covid deaths when it first hit. It is the current situation which is important. Since Covid deaths dropped to near zero in July more people are dying from flu and pneumonia than are dying from Covid. Look at the graphs, especially the bar chart, and you will see what I mean.
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  18340.  @Weelonmusk  All lockdowns do is kick the can down the road. Look at the graph and see if there was any drop in deaths because of it. There wasn't. The rate of decline in deaths may have increased slightly but at the end of the day a virus kills everyone that is available to be killed, no matter what you do. It ran out of people in July and is now only finding more people to kill because more have become available, due to winter conditions making the frail and elderly vulnerable to respiratory infections. It is in a race with flu to see which gets to them first, that's all.
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  18341.  @Weelonmusk  That's one factor - but only one. At least we've stopped killing old people by intubating them, and some of the treatments are very effective. But that doesn't explain the huge disparity between the number of infections and the number of deaths. The number of deaths was declining rapidly before the lockdown and the curve showed little alteration after it. Furthermore the pattern has been entirely predictable. Most epidemics work in exactly the same way. Fortunately actual events are outrunning our arguments. The death rate up from late July up until October 9 show Covid having no impact worth speaking of. The next load of data is due out on November 3 and I suspect it will show a similar story. Thereafter we will have to see how many of the anticipated 2,000 or so deaths a day can fairly be attributed to Covid 19.
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  18342.  @Weelonmusk  Only in part. And why are they rising now in that case? If we got the death rate down to zero because we were so clever, why have we allowed it to rise again?
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  18343.  @Weelonmusk  We didn't allow summer to pass. It did that all on its own. And I thought you were talking about the number of deaths, not the number of cases. I ask again: if we knew in June, July and August how to treat patients so successfully as to reduce the death rate to zero, how come we have forgotten how to in October?
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  18344.  @Weelonmusk  But there is no relation between the easing of lockdowns and the number of deaths. Deaths are increasing because the summer is over and respiratory diseases increase greatly at this time of year. How do you explain the ten week gap in deaths between July and the start of October? How does this relate to the pattern of measures taken? The virus rules, not us. Nothing we do - apart from catch it and become immune - does anything other than delay its spread. The death rate is related pretty exclusively to the number of people around who are weak enough to die from it. Our best efforts may save some of the sturdier ones - but not many.
    1
  18345.  @Weelonmusk  So a permanent lockdown is the only answer then?
    1
  18346.  @Weelonmusk  Any idea how long that will be? Or why we have never done such a thing before? Or why the World Health Organisation advises strongly against it?
    1
  18347. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMHtqOqNLH0
    1
  18348. Google Here Is The Evidence.
    1
  18349. He never said it.
    1
  18350.  @benoitbvg2888  Things do seem to be going to plan.
    1
  18351.  @danielsurvivor1372  Well he's not going to say what he's going to do, is he? No military commander does that. What you have to do is judge the position from the results. The Ukrainian army is thoroughly depleted. It is no longer in a position to retake Donbass and Crimea, as was the case a year ago. Furthermore, as well as depleting the Ukrainian army, the Russians are now busy destroying the defences installed by Ukraine to hold back the Donbass separatists. It seems to me as though things are going pretty much to plan from the Russian point of view. The only war they are losing is the war going on in Western heads.
    1
  18352.  @Yeknodathon  Insane over-regulation due to covid hysteria a factor in causing lorry drivers to pack it in?
    1
  18353. @Main Switch As far as driving is concerned the drivers I know who gain work via agencies say that wages have been reduced - or at least failed to keep pace with inflation - following an influx of first Polish then Rumanian drivers. This is apparently very much the case when transporting goods to big-name supermarkets. Other factors certainly have influenced the current driver shortage but will not apply so much to shortages of skilled tradesmen (should they indeed occur). Once again my point is that a true socialist should really be looking at the situation from the point of view of working class wage earners, not from that of the middle-class consumer of their services.
    1
  18354.  @peterebel7899  They're not.
    1
  18355. @Main Switch We seem to be approaching general agreement, which is always nice. The dangerous nature of lorry-driving makes restrictive legislation necessary, but some of it has been ill thought through, I believe. Drivers have many burdens to bear, over and above those they are hauling behind their cabs.
    1
  18356. @Main Switch I've seen several, making similar points I think. YouTuber The Revered Simon Sideways (a trucker not a clergyman!) hits various nails on the head in a recent video.
    1
  18357. @Main Switch The Rev Sideways is, of course, as right wing as can be- which sort of goes to show that you don't have to be a Labour supporter to understand the interests of working people. His putting the fact of foreign workplace competition in context also shows that you can have reservations about immigration without being some sort of fascist. I just wish socialists would get back to the job of stopping Tories grinding the faces of the poor rather than being side-tracked by wokeism and other intellectual dead ends. We all want to gain as great a reward as possible from our daily endeavours and there's nothing wrong with that. Labour is now the party which represents the interests of university educated teachers and state-employed bureaucrats. Technical training and the apprenticeship system has been grossly neglected by successive governments and has found little defence from where defence should have come - the Labour movement. A shortage of British-born skilled tradesmen is the direct result.
    1
  18358. @Main Switch Once again I agree. Thank you for a civil exchange of views.
    1
  18359.  @peterebel7899  They don't.
    1
  18360. The whole shape of the world and the combinations of alliances which hold it together are being dramatically altered as a result of this war. The dreadful complacency of the West under American hegemony will create a disaster unprecedented in modern times. WE ARE NOT WINNING! WE CANNOT WIN! Russia is the catalyst. Asia and the Middle East, as well as developing countries in the Third World which have suffered the indignity of Western dominance, will very soon combine to bring about our downfall.
    1
  18361. Keadin Mode Nothing is permanent in nature. If previous patterns are repeated the world will grow a little warmer yet before a quite rapid cooling period begins.
    1
  18362. Jon 66 The results of laboratory experiments based in the behaviour of carbon in an enclosed surface environment do, however, play an integral part in all climate models predicting "hot" climate warming I believe. If this behaviour is not matched by carbon's behaviour in the real atmosphere then the usefulness all such models must be questioned. In addition, when empirical data from weather stations, balloons and satellites is regularly "adjusted" or "homogenized" before being included in such models then any claims to a true or realistic result must be treated with extreme suspicion.
    1
  18363. I can confirm that Trump is a Russian asset. Making peace with Russia will be of great benefit to Russia. And to everyone else too.
    1
  18364. If Europe want to make this its problem, then it's up to Europe. It's leaders have been daft enough to play puppydog to previous US administrations in promoting this war, so they're probably daft enough to turn down the golden opportunity Trump is offering them to get out of it.
    1
  18365. We are now faced with the dreadful probability that the measures taken to combat covid have killed more people than covid itself.
    1
  18366. It is now clear that phase one of the war was just a softening-up operation. Russia cannot lose. If by some miracle Ukraine is re-armed enough to push back the new onslaught Putin will nuke Kiev. What will the West do then?
    1
  18367.  @tony_w839  What's that got to do with the price of fish?
    1
  18368. The trouble is that Jews aren't frightening - but Islamists are.
    1
  18369.  @Pikaling3408  Mine too. Unfortunately ordinary, decent peace-loving Muslims are faced with an increasing dilemma: whether to hold fast to the moral standards of the enlightened West or to surrender to the Medieval horrorshow of fundamentalism Islam.
    1
  18370.  @stephjsinclair  I wouldn't disagree with you there. There are even some loony Christian fundamentalists. The difference though is that there are far more adherents of the Religion of Peace who subscribe to extremism than there are in other faiths. The Enlightenment seems to have passed them by. Even quite ordinary, decent Muslims often seem stuck in the mire.
    1
  18371.  @pansepot1490  If somewhat lacking in Zelensky's boyish charm.
    1
  18372.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Democracy does not exist in Ukraine.
    1
  18373.  @Ian_Carolan  Crocker and Pot does have a sort of ring to it, I have to admit. Or should it be Pot and Crocker? We could specialise in deadpan humour.
    1
  18374.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Let's get this straight. I am no particular fan of Putin but he has been forced into this by Zelensky's political incompetence, which has led to a quarrel between the two most corrupt countries of Europe bringing us to the verge of world war. Our only hope is for Ukraine to quickly agree to Russia's entirely reasonable demands.
    1
  18375.  @verystripeyzebra  The Kremlin line differs in that it is based on established fact and provides the only real way out of this tragic dilemma.
    1
  18376.  @rocketscience4516  Democracy is a dead duck in all three of these countries, more or less. Russia and Ukraine are the two most corrupt countries in Europe and not so long ago Ukraine was judged to the second most corrupt country in the entire world after Columbia. Ukraine and Russia are peas in a pod. Zelensky has imprisoned the leaders of the opposition and closed down three TV stations which didn't toe the line. He is just the glamour-boy front man for one of the cabals of oligarch gangsters who run Ukraine - one which happens to have been bribed more efficiently by the Americans than by the Russians.
    1
  18377.  @verystripeyzebra  In essence, yes. Zelensky has already back-pedalled on his NATO madness, thank God, and all he has to do now is get off his ego trip and acknowledge two established facts: the Donbass provinces have had more than had enough of being ruled by incompetents and are entitled to their independence, and Crimea's secession to Russia is a done deal. The alternatives are either the installation of a puppet government run by Russia or an endless civil war which will drag Europe and America down with it.
    1
  18378.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Democracy in Ukraine is a sham. The ballot box is merely a tool used by the gangsters who run the country. If you believe in democracy, how about the 80-90 % of voters in Donbass and Crimea who voted to secede? Those referenda are no more or less valid than the elections which brought Zelensky to power. Ukraine is run on harsh realities, not by dewy-eyed idealism. Putin does not want to rule Ukraine. He knows full well that to attempt to do so would merely lead to a never-ending civil war. As with Georgia. Moldova and Chechnya all he requires is a reasonably well-behaved independent government which will not succumb to the blandishments of the mighty dollar and allow their countries to be used as advance missile bases by NATO.
    1
  18379.  @rocketscience4516  Attempts to combat corruption can only be commended and there is evidence that they may be having some small effect. That is not the main point at issue, however. The point at issue is that Russia cannot be expected to allow Ukraine to take part in the continued expansion of NATO which has changed from being a defence organisation to one whose members regularly engage in acts of aggression against other countries. As for EU membership, that is very much a different matter. Putin can be expected to resist it but he will not go to war over it. He will simply try to outmatch EU inducements with economic measures of his own. This may well involve bribery and various sorts of nastiness but, once again, it is none of Britain's business, although EU member countries can obviously expect some degree of involvement.
    1
  18380.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I wish you would tell me where you get your rose-tinted spectacles from. I would dearly love a pair. Putin has no plans to bring former Soviet republics or satellites "back into the fold." He regrets the demise of Russian power but is sensible enough to realise that attempts to reconstruct it would be utterly foolhardy. The war in Ukraine is essentially an ethnic one, and this outweighs all other considerations. With memories of the Holodomor and other Stalinist atrocities in mind many Ukrainians hate Russia with all their hearts. They are not fighting for the privilege of joining the EU or of having free and democratic elections. They are fighting for revenge. It is just unfortunate that Zelensky's political incompetence has created a situation which has allowed this hatred to find a means of violent expression.
    1
  18381.  @rocketscience4516  Here is a list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Philippines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine NATO are the good guys. Yeah. Sure.
    1
  18382.  @verystripeyzebra  Perhaps not a justification, but it is surely worth trying to understand his motives, rather than just dismissing him as a madman or a power-crazed dictator.
    1
  18383.  @verystripeyzebra  My "support" is neither here nor there. I don't go in for taking sides as a general rule and the only axe I have to grind here is to try to point out a few salient facts which are being ignored. There comes a point when people don't believe in threats unless they are carried out. Compared to NATO invasions of Iraq and general meddling this is a family quarrel which could end in a minute if Ukraine saw sense. And it puzzles me deeply why this particular conflict should arouse so much feeling in the West. I can really only conclude, as I think I have said before, it is because the victims are a bit pinker than average.
    1
  18384.  @Liz_for_PM_again  He does regret it. But he knows those days will never return. And pro-West is one thing. American stooge is another. Pro-Russian governments in Ukraine, "democratically" elected, have been overturned by mobs financed and manipulated by Western secret services. Poor Ukraine is a battleground between opposing forces. Until now this has been turned to advantage but Zelensky's bungling has created a disaster.
    1
  18385.  @rocketscience4516  I was merely drawing a comparison between NATO members' interference in the affairs of other nations compared with Russia's, which has chalked up four so far, three of which involve countries over which the Soviet Union once held sway and which are therefore closely linked economically and strategically with the Russian Federation.
    1
  18386.  @verystripeyzebra  Probably not in Western terms, but ethnicity and culture enter into this too. Putin is an Eastern potentate and the people he rules have very different lineages to those you might find in Bradford or Bruges. Strength must be demonstrated if power is to be maintained. Even while Western "values" creep slowly Eastwards the spirit of Genghis Khan still holds sway in many respects.
    1
  18387.  @Liz_for_PM_again  It certainly appears so, and it would be naive to think otherwise. Biden and the CIA have their sticky fingerprints all over the Ukraine mess and have flooded the country with IMF cash directed to the right pockets. US military advisors train and equip the Ukraine army and the only Nazis in Ukraine are right-wing nationalists who love the Yanks like theres no tomorrow. And, if you remember, those demonstrations and their break up led to the duly elected pro-Russian President fleeing for his life. Sounds like a good result for the CIA to me.
    1
  18388.  @verystripeyzebra  Think about it anyway. The fact that he is compelled to accumulate vast personal wealth and govern in such ostentatiously elaborate surroundings in order to gain respect is also characteristic. We cannot judge Russia by the standards of a well-behaved middle-class Englishman.
    1
  18389.  @rocketscience4516  America has been meddling with Haiti for years. Using natural disasters as a cover for further infiltration is a well-known CIA technique.
    1
  18390.  @rocketscience4516  "U.S. Intervention in Haiti Would Be a Disaster—Again The nation’s poverty and chaos has been shaped by Washington for decades." The above is a headline and strap from Foreign Policy, a magazine which is worth looking at from time to time. In the remote hope that you may wish to inform yourself more fully the whole article is in the July 13 edition of last year. I have tried to send a direct link but of course the YouTube algorithm has it on its hit list
    1
  18391.  @verystripeyzebra  I don't know. Henry III? Queen Elizabeth I? Fidel Castro? Ayatollah Khomeni? The King of Bhutan? Castro and the Ayatollah were a bit flaky to to start with if course, but the King of Bhutan was quite a nice chap I gather.
    1
  18392.  @rocketscience4516  What utter naivity. Have you bothered with the Foreign Policy article? NATO is just a vehicle of American imperialism.
    1
  18393.  @rocketscience4516  I just don't see the connection. I am an elderly English gent currently disgusted by the war hysteria, hypocrisy and muddled thinking being displayed by so many people in the light of the Ukraine crisis. I'm worried too because this war fever could bring total disaster. You are utterly innocent if you do not know that America via the CIA manipulates poor countries all over the world, and that NATO is one of its instruments of control. The US deep state's ugly manipulations have created the Ukraine crisis, as they have created crises all over the world, including those in Haiti.
    1
  18394.  @rocketscience4516  Oh gee! Thanks for the laugh Rocket! You've got my day off to a good start!
    1
  18395.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I bet they wish they'd thought of that! (All elections in Ukraine are rigged, by the way.)
    1
  18396.  @rocketscience4516  Rocket falling for MSM propaganda make CIA snigger!
    1
  18397. Vaccination programmes now mean there are hundreds of thousands of people wandering about, blissfully unaware that they are both infected and infectious. And we wonder that case numbers are going up!
    1
  18398. It will be well remembered when Russia wins. So what's in it for us?
    1
  18399. Trump makes the occasional slip of the tongue. Biden has a brain like porridge.
    1
  18400. @Kantomirdes Of course I have! I admire him bigly!
    1
  18401.  @BigHenFor  No. What's that got to do with people-trafficking though?
    1
  18402.  @mattgreek1066  For someone named after an invasion you are remarkably broad-minded about this, if I may say so.
    1
  18403. When did Hitler take his IQ test, by the way?
    1
  18404. What tariff money? There isn't any.
    1
  18405.  @aaronburtram3175  Sure. He's a showman.
    1
  18406. These guys are just adventurers getting paid big dollars. They represent no real constituency within Russia.
    1
  18407. The price of change is always paid in blood?1? Social change in the UK has been achieved by democratic process. Race-baiting seeks to overturn this in order to achieve that BLOODTHIRSTY revolution which Marxism needs in order to justify itself. These two sad old fuckers can carry on their conversation in some other distant realm as far as I'm concerned.
    1
  18408. And if they don't get it it proves the lockdown is now bs. And if the DO get it, who cares?
    1
  18409. This is a class struggle. It is the ordinary working class versus the ruling class. The contention that working class people are incapable of holding views and taking action without some form of tuition is an insult. There is no "far right". There are only right-thinking people who are sick and tired of being bullied and patronised.
    1
  18410.  @sovietspaceship  The price of revolution.
    1
  18411.  @martinepstein3332  There is no "extreme group" there is no-one seeking political advantage. There are just a load of fed-up people, some of whom rather enjoy getting rough.
    1
  18412.  @vooveks  I think it is merely a convenient form of classification rather than a proud boast. People wouldn't think of themselves as being " far right" unless the far left was telling them that is what they are.
    1
  18413.  @russellbradley454  No. They won an election.
    1
  18414.  @russellbradley454  Not exactly getting value for money, are we?
    1
  18415.  @vooveks  Careful. Your class prejudice is showing.
    1
  18416.  @vooveks  Emotions and facts aren't necessarily contradictory. Some facts can make people very emotional.
    1
  18417.  @martinepstein3332  Sadly, revolutions tend to take little account of private property. Not that I condone this, of course.
    1
  18418.  @fredplat467  Thankyou for your profound insight.
    1
  18419.  @vooveks  The word "thicko" is a pejorative commonly used by middle class people to describe working class people.
    1
  18420.  @fredplat467  Now you are developing your theme like a true philosopher.
    1
  18421.  @vooveks  We don't. The kid is obviously deranged, but whether of not there is a religious aspect to his derangement remains to be seen.
    1
  18422.  @vooveks  Does Jacob drag his knuckles too? We don't know very much about the attacker at all - which is the problem. Assuming him to be Muslim might be just that, but if he isn't the police should come out and say so, don't you think?
    1
  18423.  @vooveks  You know you slipped. You know you did.
    1
  18424.  @vooveks  Now don't take on so! I'm sure you're better than this.
    1
  18425.  @stevebarlow3154  Oh dear God! If I hear another idiotic comparison between the situation in Ukraine and Hitler and Putin I swear I might go mad! Try to think things through, why don't you, and list the dozens of difference compared with the one or two spurious similarities?
    1
  18426. @ That is complete Rubbish. Ukraine isn't going to fall and Putin doesn't even want it too. Look at the trouble he's having getting back the Russian bits - which is all he wants. Hitler was in his forties and Germany had been traumatised by losing a crippling war. Hitler himself had fought all the way through it. He wanted revenge and he blamed the Jews for his country's ills. He wrote a book outlining how Germany needed to expand and get rid of the Jews in the process. Putin is in his seventies and has been forced into the grim necessity of war to protect Russia's long-standing interests in the mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine. In his writings he explains clearly how Ukraine can do whatever it wants - but it can't take the essentially Russian bits of their new country with it. Putin doesn't want to conquer the world. He just wants the world to leave his country alone.
    1
  18427. @ People who liken Putin to Hitler and imagine what is happening in Ukraine is "history repeating itself" have cornered the market in naivety, it seems to me.
    1
  18428. @ That is complete Rubbish. Ukraine isn't going to fall and Putin doesn't even want it too. Look at the trouble he's having getting back the Russian bits - which is all he wants. Hitler was in his forties and Germany had been traumatised by losing a crippling war. Hitler himself had fought all the way through it. He wanted revenge and he blamed the Jews for his country's ills. He wrote a book outlining how Germany needed to expand and get rid of the Jews in the process. Putin is in his seventies and has been forced into the grim necessity of war to protect Russia's long-standing interests in the mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine. In his writings he explains clearly how Ukraine can do whatever it wants - but it can't take the essentially Russian bits of their new country with it. Putin doesn't want to conquer the world. He just wants the world to leave his country alone. Reply
    1
  18429. @ Who is the "he" ? Putin and Hitler are different people, you realise.
    1
  18430.  @paulvr3158  You don't know what is.
    1
  18431. @ Yes. It's a buzzword for everything muddlebrained leftoids dislike or can't understand.
    1
  18432.  @stu281  It beats me. There must be something lacking in their brains. It's as though they've never quite grown up.
    1
  18433. This is clearly the work of the same nutjobs who staged the border incursions. Their stupid games are going to bring hell down on Ukraine before long.
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  18434. You sound as though you know what you're talking about, so I'd like to ask you a question if I may. I have been much struck by the incredibly low death rates in countries where malaria is endemic. At first I thought this might be entirely due to hydroxychloroquine being widely used as a prophylactic/treatment. Now I'm not so sure. Could it be that populations which have built up a resistance to malaria (especially in its earlier forms) have an inbuilt resistance to the worst effects of Covid 19 do you think?
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  18435. The fools and liars in Washington and Kiev seem to be getting more and more desperate. The evidence for Putin wanting to exterminate Ukrainians is zero. In fact his quarrel is entirely with Zelensky's puppet administration. It is the Russians in Ukraine who face the danger of extinction by the nationalists -or at least their culture and their language do.
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  18436. It's hard to believe the Ukrainians would kill women and children in order to persuade the West to send them more weapons. But they did.
    1
  18437.  @moleculeman27  These days practically everyone in the world is of lower value than almost any piece of software!
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  18438. I really do hope the jury has been nobbled by Trump. This is one of those cases when it would be totally justifiable.
    1
  18439.  @linnetcooke5967  Justice was perverted the moment it was used as a cheap political weapon.
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  18440. B L The IPCC report is riddled with so many false assumptions and just plain lies that it cannot be held to be credible. Get it into your head that climate science - so called - is not science but is part of a political agenda designed to make profits for hedge-fund operators on the one hand. and to allow globalist Marxists to attain power on the other.
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  18441. B L It's not and we're not. Get your head out of the sand. Current academic 'research' on climate change is biased almost beyond belief. Look into such things as the reproductability crisis. Check out Urban Heat Islands and try to find how much these factors are integrated into temperature models. Investigate Rayleigh scattering. You will find that you are being sold a simplistic and totally inaccurate version of reality pretending to be 'science.' You are being used.
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  18442. B L Try a bit of scientific research that's outside the bubble you're being kept in. Go to www.ceres-science.com for starters. There's plenty more. What you must come to realise before long is that you are being fed a very one-sided story which is being used for financial gain and political power.
    1
  18443. B L Hold on there! Your insane prejudices are showing. The principal authors at Ceres are Dr Michael Connolly and his son Ronan. Both are highly qualified. Michael's Phd is in spectroscopy, Ronan's in computational chemistry. Although both have published peer-reviewed papers (look them up) they recognise, sadly, that academic science uses the grant-dependent peer-review process to reinforce prejudice rather than encourage independent thinking. They themselves work outside the restraints of the grant system and earn their livings by designing and manufacturing eco-friendly houses and other structures and providing environmental advice to the fishing industry, among other things. Perhaps you would care to actually read some of the articles, given this information? You might also try ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com where more advanced papers are available. including A New Look at the Physics of Earth's Atmosphere. This three-part study, utilising literally billions of items of data obtained from weather balloons, points to the atmosphere being composed of ideal gasses and being thermodynamically stable, as suggested by Einstein in his paper of 1917. The Connolly papers have been openly available for suggestion, criticism and review since 2014. Full publication is expected shortly. Forgive me for putting you on to Ceres first. The Connolly's work is pretty specialised and the Ceres articles are aimed at a general audience. They do put forward some pretty unanswerable points. however.
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  18444. toto now Shh! They are under the bed! Seriously though, you must know who I mean. Anyone who seeks to undermine the nation state and capitalism, I suppose. I actually don't know anyone who's actually read Das Kapital. I know a few who've tried and been driven insane by it though.
    1
  18445. B L Now you really are getting silly.. Do you refuse to consider alternative views simply because they are alternative? The science you adhere to so rigidly is based on laboratory models of the atmosphere which could well be faulty. Just because carbon behaves in a certain way in laboratory experiments using potentially flawed data, and when these experiments are conducted on the earth's surface in enclosed conditions, it does not mean that they have anything other than a peripheral relation to reality. The Connolly study is based on real observation of the actual atmosphere and thus provides empirical evidence in a way in which model experiments cannot. It is both lazy and unscientific to dismiss opposing views when they are the result of detailed research. Science is not a matter of consensus. It is a matter of constantly repeatable results. The very fact that science is now faced with a reproducability crisis due to a refusal to provide grants to allow experiments to be repeated is indicative of a deep-seated malaise in climatology. Your almost hysterical rejection of any ideas which appear to contravene established doctrine is another indication of this malaise. There are clear financial and political motivations behind the cult-like adherence to AGW. If it should turn out that global warming (and cooling) are solar forced, as many believe, then this money-grabbing scam falls by the wayside. AGW is being propped up by constant data manipulation. This must be clear to anyone who investigates how historical data has been altered in recent years. The excuses for these "adjustments" are nothing short of pathetic and add further fuel to the idea that we are being conned something rotten.
    1
  18446. toto now With you. Worship of money for it's own sake is a real disease of the mind.
    1
  18447. Esentially that the greenhouse effect plays little or no part in temperature changes. They have discovered currents within the troposphere which explain the behaviour of infra red radiation in an entirely unsuspected way. Increased atmospheric CO2 plays no part in this process, or indeed in global warming, which appears to be solar forced and affected by atmospheric pressure and gravity far more than any alterations in the composition of the atmosphere. But go to ronanconnollyscience.wordpress.com to find more. The research papers themselves are called 'A New Look at the Physics of Earth's Atmosphere.'
    1
  18448. Brian It's a bit much to expect you to be convinced on so brief an exposure! I do urge you to pursue it though. It is an extremely detailed and honest study and it's findings are not at all what the Connolly's expected - which is a point in its favour, I think. Michael's Phd is in spectroscopy, by the way, although I suppose that's neither here nor there. It's also interesting that the findings confirm theoretical propositions by both Maxwell and Einstein - physics matching the maths, as it were. There is no doubt in my mind that the predictions of CO2 based AGW are not being fulfilled in reality, and yet data is being shamelessly massaged to make it appear that they are. There is obviously something seriously wrong here and the Connolly's findings could well indicate what this is.
    1
  18449. Brian I wouldn't go quite that far! But their findings, if true, do represent a major upheaval in the way we view the atmosphere as an entity outside of laboratory models. I do urge you to persist. My paraphrasing of their work may leave something to be desired, but I am sure there is something very important here. The study has been on view for five years now and although there have been some quibbles about the math (now attended to) as far as I am aware no-one has yet shot it down in flames - or even come close to it.
    1
  18450. It really is great watching these conceited arseholes melt into nothingness.
    1
  18451. You paranoid, man.
    1
  18452. What is a troll?
    1
  18453.  @josee8224  Ukrainians were Russians until a few years ago.
    1
  18454. I very much doubt man-made climate change. And I feel very much the same about as you as you feel about me.
    1
  18455. But why should he? According to Western "experts" this current venture has almost bankrupted Russia.
    1
  18456. If you believe anything that comes out of IPCC propaganda workshop these days then you are believing fairy tales. Enraged scientists are already flooding this corrupt organisation with protests at the way data is being misrepresented. You say "heatwaves in the ocean have just been discovered" -was anyone looking for them before? Temperature graphs like the one you show have been faked ("adjusted" is the euphemism.) Temperatures from the 1930's and 40's have been reduced from those originally filed and more recent ones often supplied from underground unmanned facilities in cities, usually situated next to the boilerhouse.
    1
  18457. Peter De Blieck If you believe all those things no wonder you believe the crap pumped out by the climate crisis mafia.
    1
  18458.  @marksmoore  I believe your recollection to be at fault. In any case both of these opinions are entirely viable in certain scenarios.
    1
  18459.  @turnerfamilyinozi  Sure. It's called Joe Biden.
    1
  18460.  @marksmoore  Ah yes, the Washington Post, famed worldwide for its objective journalism
    1
  18461.  @Skygrey2943  That's a relief.
    1
  18462. Majid's eyes have been opened to the gross scam that is the EU! If he can his head around the fact that the climate crisis is in much the same category he might yet become a useful member of society.
    1
  18463. From spy balloon to surveillance balloon.....to weather balloon, after all?
    1
  18464.  @HULLGRAFFITI  Not exactly. Spying implies covert sinister intent. Surveillance is merely detailed observation. You don't call surveillance cameras spy cameras, for example.
    1
  18465.  @crashdude7589  Satellites surely do the job a great deal better than balloons, which are at the mercy of the wind.
    1
  18466. We do. And we help train the Ukrainian Army, some of whom are unashamed Nazis.
    1
  18467.  @dirkdupont5004  Illegality and immorality are two entirely separate concepts. In any case genocide - or at least the murder of Ukraine citizens on ethnic grounds -certainly occurs in the Donbass provinces where a bloody civil war has been in progress for eight years. The real reason for the invasion is of course to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, which is an entirely reasonable stance for Putin to take. The last thing he wants is for his excuse to fall foul of legal quibbling in the Hague. And I do not like dictators. I just tend to dislike totally unnecessary wars. If Donbass were allowed to become an independent buffer state and Ukraine gave an assurance not to join NATO then this war could be over now. It would not even have begun if Ukraine had not been conned into sticking its neck out by American bribes and promises.
    1
  18468.  @olmostgudinaf8100  Don't be so silly. Avowed neo-Nazis - the real thing, racist to the core - have occupied senior positions in Ukraine for years and continue to do so.
    1
  18469.  @dirkdupont5004  I presume you are aware of the Azov Battalion? In any case I have already agreed that the idea of genocide has simply provided a reasonable excuse for Putin's action which in reality has a much wider political context. The population of Donbass is predominantly Russian and, like Crimea, has voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine. The response has been invasion with towns and villages being shelled and neo-Nazi death squads murdering anyone who can't speak Ukrainian. Thar's genocidal enough. The history of Russia and the history of Ukraine are inextricably entwined. The very name Russia comes from the Kievian Rus, the Vikings who sailed up the Dnieper in the 8th century or so. Ukraine didn't exist until various fiefdoms were joined together by Peter the Great and then Catherine the Great and only became a country as such because Stalin wanted an extra seat in the UN. Putin doesn't want it in NATO because he knows full well that NATO is just a vehicle for American imperialism and exists mainly to provide markets for the US military/industrial complex which needs to maintain Russia as a permanent enemy in order to justify its existence. Ukraine is flooded with CIA money, much of it channelled through the IMF. Didn't you see the video where vice-president Biden openly boasted that he withheld a billion dollars until the then President of Ukraine sacked the prosecutor who was after his son Hunter? Ukraine is a whore of a country whose leaders will sell her to the highest bidder. Your Scotland analogy makes no sense. Ukraine doesn't want to leave Russia. It is not part of Russia any longer. A more apt analogy would be if Scotland had already left the UK but some of the lowland countries wanted to partially re-join. Scotland then starts shelling these separatist counties and sends in fanatics to kill English-speakers. It also seems ready to enter into an alliance with an international conspiracy of arms dealers who want to use it to set up missile bases targeting English cities. How should England respond to this do you think?
    1
  18470.  @stephenthomas3085  There was plenty of dirt on the Democratic party to get too. Do you really suppose the bright, shining Dems and their deep-state allies are muscling in on Ukraine out of the kindness of their hearts? What Ukraine and Russia get up to between them has nothing to do with us, much less the money-grabbing, power-hungry hawks of the US. Ukraine is nothing like a democracy. Votes are bought and sold like everything else. And poster-boy Zelensky has jailed the opposition leaders and shut down three TV stations which didn't toe his line. Democracy my arse. We have no inherent right to impose our own morality on other nations except in very extreme circumstances. Compared with Stalin Putin is a pussycat. Without a strong leader Russia would collapse into anarchy. Countries have different methods of dealing with internal threats and Putin is far from being alone in bumping off troublesome individuals. None of my business or yours.
    1
  18471.  @olmostgudinaf8100  Now you're being extra silly. And I think you know it. At least I hope so.
    1
  18472.  @dirkdupont5004  I utterly defy you to prove or even indicate the presence of men of similar leanings to the members of the Azov Battalion in the British Army. Our Nazis are bogey men in the brains of brainwashed lefties. The Ukraine's Nazis are real. Even if Putin's invasion is illegal (which is highly disputable) it is entirely justified. More to the point it could be over in a minute if Ukraine simply recognised the independence of the Donbass provinces and promised not to join NATO. Crimea is already a done deal. If it is Putin's ambition to recreate the USSR he's certainly taken a long time to set about it. Russia could have wiped out the other former USSR states after the Soviet collapse if it wished. Instead it kissed them goodbye and tried to recreate itself without the crushing presence of the Party. It also asked to join NATO -four times and was rejected. NATO needs a permanent enemy in order to justify its existence. Russia hasn't been it -until now. All international arms manufacture is interlinked, but the Americans run the business programme and create the markets via countless invasions over the past hundred years, many since the Soviet collapse and many far, far bloodier than this one. The nuclear power plant thing is just another dollop of Western propaganda too. Nuclear power plants are practically impossible to damage from the outside. Even melt-downs generated from within are relatively mild on the scale of disasters. Chernobyl only provably killed 80 or so people and it has proved utterly impossible to attribute subsequent cancer deaths to it.
    1
  18473.  @dirkdupont5004  Even you must be getting tired of these analogies by now. I've made the mistake myself of trying to draw comparisons between Ukraine and Ireland, but it only takes one tiny difference of emphasis to blow these things sky-high.
    1
  18474.  @olmostgudinaf8100  What names?
    1
  18475.  @Dash8Q400Channel  A direct hit from what?
    1
  18476.  @olmostgudinaf8100  Utter fantasy. And you must surely know it.
    1
  18477.  @dirkdupont5004  What the security services pretend is true and what is actually true are entirely different things. Fat guys with unsuitable tattoos bear no comparison with the forces of jihad or the destructive power of BLM. You'll fall for anything which fits your conditioning, that's all. The legality or illegality of Putin's invasion doesn't enter into it. International law is a sham . Laws are decided upon by societies with a broad common interest. The UN does not fit this category. Polls are even more subject to corruption than referenda. They are meaningless. The largely Russian population of Crimea is happy to be part of Russia again, especially now they've got their water supply back. It was only tacked on the Ukraine by in 1954 because it was easier to administer services across the isthmus than across or under the Kerch strait. The original population was shipped out and replaced by Russians back in Stalin's day. This stuff about Trump and Brexit is total propaganda, tailored for idiots.. Putin wanted Trump in sure enough, and liked the idea of Brexit sure enough, but Russia's impact on either was minimal. You really are a sucker for paranoid fantasies, aren't you? Of course Putin want to keep Russian satellites on side and of course he doesn't want to test NATO. That's only sensible of him. Radiation deaths are another bogeyman. There is no evidence for what you claim. If there were it would be shouted from the rooftops.
    1
  18478.  @Dash8Q400Channel  You'd need something really big to crack the concrete. And even if you did the radiation would be containable. But what are we talking about? It ain't gonna happen. It's just another bit of propaganda designed to scare you.
    1
  18479.  @olmostgudinaf8100  This would assume I accept this absurd farrago of a definition. I don't so that's that.
    1
  18480.  @olmostgudinaf8100  Your version of reality is the result of brainwashing. The briefest of intellectual scrutiny and it melts like a dream upon awakening. Wake up.
    1
  18481.  @olmostgudinaf8100  Words only have meaning when they are accurately related to real things. Otherwise they are mere attempts at definition, and such definitions may well be subject to controversy or review. This is especially the case when a word has been suborned for a political purpose - words such as fascist or Nazi for example have generally lost their true meaning through being adopted as insults. They do not mean what you think or pretend them to mean. The reality they pretend to encompass when used in this way is a chimera - a fiction or a dream.
    1
  18482. Omicron will save the world! Everyone will get it, no one will die and we'll all be immune! (Great gnashing of teeth from Pfizer, AstraZeneca Johnson & Johnson etc)
    1
  18483. If the riots do start up again rioters are going to get shot. This might not be altogether a bad thing. One already detects a note of caution among the demented lefties demonstrating since the verdict.
    1
  18484.  @riveness  He's talking about gangs, not individual child abusers. There is a difference.
    1
  18485. Most sanctions on Russia imposed by previous US administrations will shortly be removed. It is up to individual countries whether or not to follow suit, or to continue with the suicidal policies imposed by previous paranoid regimes. Starmer will doubtless drag Britain into the poverty, chaos and potential total destruction which will follow those who ignore this seismic change in the world order.
    1
  18486.  @andrewthompsonuk1  Russia has no intention of taking over Europe. Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt. No need for a repeat performance.
    1
  18487.  @andrewthompsonuk1  Russia has neither the wish nor the ability to conquer Europe.
    1
  18488.  @WanderingKakapo  No need. It's not there any more.
    1
  18489. Jack Richardson Cap and trade is the only answer. At least some members of the human race will go to their graves filthy rich and laughing their heads off.
    1
  18490. He has never wanted the whole country. All he has ever wanted is Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  18491. If Joe wins the election we'll now know it was fixed.
    1
  18492. This is all flim-flam. The amount involved is under $14billion after deductions, and much of that is in the form of whatever old tat America can find at the back of its depleted armouries All this will do is put off the inevitable and simply mean the needless loss of still more lives. America has much to answer for.
    1
  18493. Biden typifies modern America - on the edge of total collapse, but in complete denial of the fact.
    1
  18494. You can find scientists to say almost anything.
    1
  18495. On that note there are genuine fears that the Chines are creating a virus which infects via racial profile. Even this one seems to discriminate with black and brown people getting it worse, white people next and Asiatics at the bottom of the list. Much of the West's DNA samples go to China for processing and they keep copies.
    1
  18496. Whodunnit?
    1
  18497. The variants are actually the product of lockdowns. They are the virus' response to having fewer people available to infect.
    1
  18498.  @ym276  And there will always be hosts and the variant which passes more swiftly and efficiently on to the next host will be the one which prospers in a situation where the hosts are fewer.
    1
  18499.  Gus Garcia  Ukrainians were raping and murdering ethnic Russians in Donbass as long ago as 2014.
    1
  18500.  @emzed1275  Huh?
    1
  18501.  Gus Garcia  Is that all you got?
    1
  18502.  @chadfife3265  The war is an economic one. America doesn't want to go all in. It is just getting the poor bloody Ukrainians to ensure Russia doesn't keep its hold on Ukrainian mineral resources - so they will be exploited by US companies. They are frightened to smash unto Ukraine as they did in Iraq because they fear nuclear retaliation.
    1
  18503. I think Trump actually does understand. But he has to make it look as though he's on Ukraine's side for PR reasons.
    1
  18504. They both lied. The moderators lied. The fact-checkers lied and now CNN is lying. It's the way of the world.
    1
  18505. What a total waste of space and money the ICC is. It just provides highly paid and utterly pointless jobs for lawyers.
    1
  18506. Remind me of the first orange apocalypse?
    1
  18507.  @jbest1802  Ah yes. The start of four years of a stable economy, near full employment and gradually advancing world peace. Scarcely an apocalypse.
    1
  18508.  @Transformers-oe5jj  You sound like an American.
    1
  18509.  @TorianTammas  This means war.
    1
  18510.  @anglonorse2943  Seventy hours of evidence presented at state senate hearings. The allegations cannot be proved or disproved until a court is found willing to hear them. Have you looked through any of the recordings yet? I would be interested in your reactions.
    1
  18511.  @anglonorse2943  A conspiracy theory stops being a theory when there is evidence for its existence which is not refuted. The evidence for the conspiracy, in the form of sworn evidence from around 1,000 experts and eyewitnesses, has not been refuted and indeed some of it has been confirmed by elected state representatives. Talking of rabbit holes a couple of Georgia senators confessed to an "Alice in Wonderland moment" when they saw the surveillance footage showing election workers waiting for observers to leave before pulling boxes of ballots from concealment and passing them through election machines several times. It's at the start of one of the videos I sent you.
    1
  18512.  @anglonorse2943  You wouldn't know reality if it bit you on the arse.
    1
  18513.  @anglonorse2943  Are you still here? What is? Do you even know what projection means? Have you looked at those videos yet?
    1
  18514.  @anglonorse2943  Where has the narrative been debunked except in left-wing echo chambers? And what form has this "debunking" taken? Have these very serious allegation been answered? No. All we hear is: "Nothing to see here. Nonsense. Lies. Cannot be true." That's not enough. I do not speak for myself but for the millions of Americans who believe they have been cheated and that democracy is no more. Deride and insult them as much as you like but that won't make the problem go away. They want EVIDENCE that they are wrong, not mere denials.
    1
  18515. I know. It's just so easy to cheat!
    1
  18516. Fascist bastard. He's loving it, isn't he?
    1
  18517. A true Prince among men.
    1
  18518. What would the West actually DO if Putin were to nuke some single specific target? Would it respond with all its got or -sensibly and probably - go meekly to the conference table.
    1
  18519.  @rogerphelps9939  What if Putin nuked some little town in the midwest?What then?
    1
  18520. Vaccinated people get sick too.
    1
  18521.  @jamroast  And no-one cares that you believe no-one cares what I believe. Where do we go from here?
    1
  18522. @GreenGrenouille Fascism is a word hard to define -but a totalitarian society governed by a sinister creed which calls for the extinction of all those who do not adhere to it just about fits the bill.
    1
  18523. @GreenGrenouille The two are very similar, don't you think?
    1
  18524. Valrath823 The solar system is a complex organism the nature of which we are just dimly beginning to understand. "Climate scientists" are mental dwarves, strutting in puddles of their own conceit. They have no apparent understanding of the vastness of time, nor any awareness of the incomprehensible forces of gravity, magnetism and plasma waves which suffuse our little corner of the universe. Burning coal? Farting cows? Laughable irrelevancies in the great scheme of things. The sun is a great deal more than the visible yellow thing we see in the sky. Jupiter and Saturn, as distant as they are, extend their influence throughout the solar system. The climate of the earth is totally dependent upon a combination of these factors, balanced by atmospheric pressure. The earth's atmosphere is, and must, tend towards thermodynamic stability, as posited by Einstein as long ago as 1917. If it were otherwise our planet would have become as inimical to organic life as Venus and Mars long, long ago. The petty increase in atmospheric carbon created by the burning of fossil fuels will be readily absorbed in a system which has evolved to maintain this stability. Atmospheric carbon disseminates infra-red photons. It neither retains nor inevitably reflects them back to the earth's surface. The greenhouse effect is a total misnomer. It's not glass up there. It's a thermostat. Enjoy your crayons.
    1
  18525. You needn't bother with your makeup either.
    1
  18526. But the death rate is ten times lower in relation to the infection rate as it was at the start of the second wave. This is what the Tories are gambling on.
    1
  18527.  @mymateian  So am I.
    1
  18528. I wish someone could give me some idea of any of the imprisonable charges Trump faces? Simply not liking him isn't enough you know.
    1
  18529.  @dellhell8842  Totally ridiculous. You people are utterly blinded by prejudice. Trump is on record as calling for the protestors to stand down as soon as things started getting out of hand.
    1
  18530.  @Yeknodathon  Yes, but what ARE they?
    1
  18531.  @dellhell8842  But such a charge could not possibly be brought. I might as well accuse you of stealing a can of tinned salmon from Sainsbury's last August and accuse anyone who supports your denial of prejudice.
    1
  18532.  @Yeknodathon  Since you cannot explain to me, although you pretend to know, I think I am justified in assuming at this stage that no explanation exists. I know of no reputable politicians and since the Democratic leadership's grasp of civics seems shaky at best I will not force myself to undergo the tedium of a refresher course.
    1
  18533.  @dellhell8842  Evidence! You were laying in supplies due to a psychotic condition induced by Project Fear. This will be very useful in your defence, and you may well escape with a minimal sentence.
    1
  18534. The viewership of this channel represents a cross section of society does it?
    1
  18535. It's looking more and more like an accident as the result of confirmed previous Ukrainian shelling and at least one missile attack. This weakened the structure and weeks of heavy rain added to the pressure and the dam simply gave way. The video purporting to show an dxplosio has been proven to be fraudulent and the noise heard by nearby residents is more in accord with this explanation.
    1
  18536. They should have made it the rule of 7 - just for luck.
    1
  18537.  @petertsucalas2931  I just can't see how. Despite all the bluster, arms supplies to Ukraine are gradually drying up and there aren't the troops left to use them anyway. At the moment the Russians are making advances all along the front. Even if by some miracle Ukraine can regain an impetus Russia has the option of tactical nuclear strikes to which Ukraine and the West can offer no real response without the risk of plunging the world into nuclear Armageddon .
    1
  18538.  @stringer-ik1pc  No he didn't.
    1
  18539. There's a difference between being a racist and being conscious of race. I'm about the same age as Trump and generally we were brought up to be a bit racist (and sexist too!). Most of us got over this to varying degrees and I think Trump has too. Didn't Martin Luther King say something about the color of one's skin and the content of one's character? Orange man seems to apply this principle. He didn't savage the Four Fuckwits because they are various shades of brown, but because they are dangerous lunatics. Seems to me that Dems are far, far more conscious of race than Trump.
    1
  18540. Lantern of Diogenes - (Great handle, by the way!) - I did say "to varying degrees!
    1
  18541. Jon Nelson - What indeed? I myself suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome for 18 months or so and the guy sure is a steep hill to climb. When you get there though the view is refreshingly different to that provided by conventional politicians. To understand Trump is to understand oneself a little, I think.
    1
  18542. Anita Shine = What can I possibly say against such reasoned arguments?
    1
  18543. Linguine Past = I really am not a racist. I happen to think that The Squad probably are though. They are certainly deluded in their opinions, which is why Trump, when he thought the traditional Dems were preparing to sideline them, made the comments he did. As long as the Dems support these four women their chances of winning elections are much reduced. Race doesn't come into any of this. It's just a smokescreen. It disturbs me that so many non-white Americans see their race as the most important thing about them. White people did once, but not so much now, if at all.
    1
  18544.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  I can see other explanations, but it is quite clear that Labour fully intends to allow mass immigration to continue. Starmer seems keen on the WEF and replacement theory is one of the tenets of that organisation.
    1
  18545.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  From Google: The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international organization that brings together government leaders, businesses, and civil society to address global challenges. Founded in 1971 by German engineer Klaus Schwab, the WEF focuses on shaping agendas and promoting progress through dialogue, innovation, and cooperation1. It covers a wide range of topics, including climate, technology, trade, and health. Perhaps you could explain how Google has got this wrong?
    1
  18546.  @TheHookahSmokingCaterpillar  The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international ORGANISATION that brings together government leaders, businesses, and civil society to address global challenges. Founded in 1971 by German engineer Klaus Schwab, the WEF focuses on shaping agendas and promoting progress through dialogue, innovation, and cooperation1. It covers a wide range of topics, including climate, technology, trade, and health. So how is it not an organisation?
    1
  18547.  @patrikfloding7985  ...and an ORGANISATION!
    1
  18548. It's just a virus, and now its first attack has petered out we will need something else to be frightened by. Back to global warming I suppose.
    1
  18549. Although they may be more nervous of expressing their true opinions, Russians are probably more informed about the situation than most Americans. The level of ignorance in America about the background to this struggle is truly astonishing. But then many Americans are ignorant about a great many things - so perhaps it's not so astonishing after all.
    1
  18550.  @nickryder9669  Yes. Nazis were banned from the EDL and the swastika was burned. It was failing to keep fascist racist extremists out that caused TR to quit the organisation he had helped to found. One of the EDL's mottoes was "Black and White Unite and Fight."
    1
  18551. I feel sorry for the FBI. With only Biden and Harris to choose from it's going to be hard even for them to fix it for their candidate to win.
    1
  18552. Well not for the last 11 months or so, it has to be said.
    1
  18553. It rubbed me up the wrong way, I have to say.
    1
  18554.  @ListenToTimesRadio  I leave armchair generalship to you. I am a journalist.
    1
  18555.  @patverum9051  Try reading Putin's essay on Ukraine/Russia relations. That's thinking.
    1
  18556. I can't believe that effective ways of defeating drones will not be found - and sooner rather than later. (It is amusing to note that these sea drones were, apparently, developed not by great naval minds, but by South American drug lords as a means of transporting their products to Miami.)
    1
  18557. According to British Law, in force at the time, all the Founding Founders were felons and considered to be quite childlike by many.
    1
  18558. Most Western companies have been replaced by Russian substitutes waiting in the wings. You can feed yourself in Russia for the equivalent of $10-$15 a week. I suggest you visit one of the many YouTubers from Russia before talking such nonsense. Anna from Russia, Sam's Russian Adventures etc etc... You will hopefully begin to realise how much you have been fooled.
    1
  18559.  @johnallen6945  Of course there were. There are now Russian Macdonalds, Starbucks, Levis etc indistinguishable from the originals. Factories not producing munitions are busy making ersatz versions of machine parts for foreign tractors, cars , planes etc. It is far from an ideal situation, but it is clear that Putin saw this coming a long time ago and made plans accordingly.
    1
  18560.  @paoloporchetti1563  I accept your correction. Much impressed by your earlier post, by the way .
    1
  18561.  @paoloporchetti1563  Rare indeed. I expect there are idiots out there who imagine we are both "Russian bots" though! Stay sane. Addio per ora .
    1
  18562.  @JoeyBlogs007  Of course. The brave Ukrainians are fighting to protect democracy from the evil commies. It doesn't have anything to do with the trillions of dollars in mineral wealth that Zelensky has promised to Black Rock.
    1
  18563.  @zarni66  Russia has developed the mineral resources in Donbass for generations, using Russian money and Russian labour. It can scarcely be blamed for trying to prevent the fruits of their investment and labour being sold off cheap to foreign agencies by Ukrainian gangsters.
    1
  18564.  @JoeyBlogs007  Do you REALLY think this war is about brave little Ukraine fighting to protect democracy from the evil Russkies? Grow up.
    1
  18565.  @JoeyBlogs007  I don't do emogees, but is there one showing a complete sucker?
    1
  18566.  @bck481  You would need a knowledge of English grammar and the simple rules of punctuation to know. Enjoy your simple life of ignorance..
    1
  18567.  @totallyinsane6431  Operator Starsky is a mere propagandist. To get a true picture you must go to many sources - or at least to sources that have been to many sources and summarised them for you.
    1
  18568.  @totallyinsane6431  You can't tell me that Starsky even pretends to present a balanced view! I go to DPA, History Legends and Weeb for that. Never heard of Ksenia.
    1
  18569.  @totallyinsane6431  Sobchack appears to be a comedian. Is he a supporter of the other comedian in Kiev?
    1
  18570.  @totallyinsane6431  How so? Do explain. And who is this Ksenia bloke? I speak neither Russian nor Ukrainian so I am at a bit of a disadvantage here.
    1
  18571.  @totallyinsane6431  Nope. You've still got me foxed. And you haven't explained who this person is.
    1
  18572. Stalinist.
    1
  18573.  Ricardo Shillyshally  What democracy? Democracy died in the USA this November when sinister forces combined to place a senile puppet in the White House by means of fraud. What law? Mountains of evidence strongly indicating this scenario cannot apparently find a place within the US judicial system to be heard. Meanwhile, like Stalinists and their successors, you brainwashed lefties are so far removed from reality that you believe that anyone who disagrees with you must be mentally ill and should be imprisoned and de-programmed. It's positively Orwellian.
    1
  18574.  @TorianTammas  No court has allowed evidence to be presented. On the other hand, several states have held senate hearings at which some 70 hours of evidence have been presented. Here are two examples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin Unfortunately those who pull Biden's strings have been very successful in undermining democracy. Indeed, they may well have killed it stone dead.
    1
  18575.  @barryjive1791  It was you I was accusing of being a Stalinist. None of these cases were heard because neither the judges nor the lawyers wanted them to be. Judges didn't want the sticks of dynamite and there was no point in pushing for hastily-prepared cases to be heard since there was no chance of a verdict before the meeting of the Electoral College. Instead the lawyers to the case to several senate hearings where more than seventy hour of sworn testimony and detailed analysis were presented. Below are recording of just two of those hearings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  18576.  @barryjive1791  He lost no cases because the judges refused to hear any cases - and very sensible too. Instead the evidence of fraud and gross electoral malpractice has been presented at several state senate hearings. I found much of it very convincing and there is no doubt that unless these allegations are properly answered the legitimacy of Biden's administration will remain in severe doubt. It's far from over. Far from done.
    1
  18577.  @barryjive1791  You haven't been listening have you? NO cases have been heard. There are 70 hours of evidence of fraud and illegal electoral practice presented to state senate committees. I think this is about the third time I have explained this to you. Are you so brainwashed you have lost the power to communicate?
    1
  18578.  @mrsuspicious1743  No cases have been heard. No court has been found willing to hear them. Instead a mountain of evidence has been presented to state senate hearings. Much of it has accepted and there have been promises that procedures will be tightened up. At the very least there is evidence that electoral and constitutional law has been ignored sufficiently to invalidate tens of thousands of votes. Indications of deliberate fraud on a huge scale are there. What "logical fallacies" are you aware of precisely?
    1
  18579.  @mrsuspicious1743  Your use of these glib little buzzwords and phrases is most interesting. There seem to be a few of these shoved into innocent young minds, the re-iteration of which reinforces your conditioning and gives you the false impression that you are intelligent. I have a little list here and you have only ticked off three so far. Do try to think for yourself; or if that is not possible use your eyes! You have been conned rotten. The evidence is there! Imagine if stuff like this was presented after a Trump win. Would you be so dismissive then? And it doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. What matters is that hundreds of thousands of people in the heartlands of America believe it. And they've all got guns.
    1
  18580.  @mrsuspicious1743  Not so much an argument as a prediction.
    1
  18581. The current covid death rate in Florida is one of the lowest in the country, running currently at nine a day on average
    1
  18582. Both Russia and America face economic collapse. Now is surely the time to put aside this childish squabbling and create a world in which these two great counties work in co-operation with one another - and survive.
    1
  18583. Not all of it. Just a bit.
    1
  18584. Trump is a Russian asset. And an asset to everyone else who wants peace.
    1
  18585.  @michaeldowson6988  I suppose that's because she is such a leftie!
    1
  18586. @ What you're saying is nonsense. the idea of a "free world" is a polite fabrication. The conflict is between globalisation and liberated nationalism.
    1
  18587. Tories are not racist. I have every hope that one day Kemi Badenoch will become Britain's first black woman Prime Minister.
    1
  18588. Los Angeles? Hardly a recommendation, is it?
    1
  18589.  @charlessandoval3382  Florida: Covid deaths per 100, 000 of population -178. Slightly above the middle. Los Angeles County:224 per 100,000 Who's murdering who?
    1
  18590.  @SwinkMcloud  Do you find any indication at all that masks have any effect at all? Florida (no mask mandate): Covid deaths per 100, 000 of population:178. Los Angeles County:224 per 100,000
    1
  18591.  @SwinkMcloud  Usually? It should be inevitably shouldn't it? And if masks were that efficient the difference should be immediately and dramatically apparent. Fun fact: a recent CDC study showed that 82% of covid patients said they wore masks "at all times" and a further 14% said they did so "most of the time." Not much of a recommendation, is it?
    1
  18592. It really is just as well that Putin has no plans to to take on NATO then, isn't it?
    1
  18593. This is such a lie. Time and time again the Russians have set up humanitarian corridors -only to have them attacked by the Ukrainians. It is a fact of urban warfare that embedding into a civilian population is of advantage to defenders - and a disadvantage to attackers. There are numerous accounts, backed by video evidence, of Ukrainian armed forces keeping would-be escapees pinned down with both sniper and mortar fire.
    1
  18594. Seems like a wise move.
    1
  18595.  @DevonExplorer  Try thinking with your head, not your heart. The economy IS human beings for goodness sake! If the economy crashes then many, many people will suffer and many will die. Life is a risky business and no-one gets out of here alive. We should be concentrating on protecting health care workers and doing what we can to ease the passing of the frail and elderly NOT getting into a panic and hiding under the duvet trying to think beautiful thoughts.
    1
  18596.  @dwaynericketts882  I prefer to think of it as cool and rational, you silly boy!
    1
  18597.  @DevonExplorer  I agree with all you say. Those very much at risk of death are, however, elderly in care homes where as well as being frail and vulnerable they are constantly re-infecting each other. I myself am missing grandad duties (a bit!) and would not hesitate to go on holiday with my grandchildren tomorrow were it not for the fact that some officious policeman would arrest us all. Social interaction may well cause the spread of coronavirus but by now evolution should see it weakened. Forcing people to occupy confined spaces and re-infecting each other is what adds to the death toll.
    1
  18598.  @cobbler40  I don't want to die either. Being a porter on a Covid ward must increase the chances ( but not by all that much, I would guess). I'd rather try to persuade managers to institute some sort of staggered shift system (four hours on, six off?) for vulnerable staff plus regular (48hour?) infection checks.
    1
  18599.  @DevonExplorer  I like it when this happens.
    1
  18600. NATO is just the commercial arm of the US military/industrial complex.
    1
  18601.  @karsten11553  I only worry for the people who fall for the snake oil pitch.
    1
  18602.  @karsten11553  India existed before Britain took over its administration, although as a conglomeration of disunited states. Modern Ukraine merely fits the borders of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. One can argue indefinitely about what constituted some semi-mythological original Ukraine, and where its borders lay, but what is unarguable is that Crimea and large tracts of Eastern Ukraine were appended to the SSR by Russia, from Russian territories, for purely logistical and administrative reasons. In wishing for their return Russia is merely exercising an entirely reasonable desire to prevent the fruits of its investment passing into foreign hands.
    1
  18603.  @anthony64632  So what?
    1
  18604.  @glennwilcock4593  It is important to point out that Russia claims only Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine. And no treaty lasts forever. If circumstances and administrations change then they become irrelevant and have to be replaced either by new agreements or, as in this instance, settled by war.
    1
  18605.  @cyberfunk3793  You are as wrong in your assessment as you are wrong about my nationality. Countries constantly seek to change borders and self-determination depends upon the existence of free and fair elections. Furthermore, these decisions will invariably be overthrown if they come into conflict with economic pressure.
    1
  18606.  @karsten11553  I'm glad you realise that Russia is not unique in having grievances and regrets. What growing the f up has to do with it I cannot begin to imagine. Russia has been forced to seek redress through war, diplomacy having failed. This is not an unusual state of affairs though, is it?
    1
  18607.  @karsten11553  I think having the prospect of trillions of dollars of mineral riches stolen from under its nose is a reasonable cause for complaint.
    1
  18608.  @evaluateanalysis7974  In its present form it clearly does.
    1
  18609.  @cyberfunk3793  I don't think there has ever been a free election in Ukraine - and even if there has the Russians in Crimea and the industrialised areas of Eastern Ukraine are effectively disenfranchised. Ukraine is not a country. It is a relic of the Soviet Union and in order to become a country it must acknowledge the fact that it contains a substantial Russian population. And of course countries unilaterally change borders they have previously recognised. Just look at a map. If borders didn't change Europe would have the same borders now as it had in Roman times! Borders change every thirty years or so on average. Modern Ukraine contains areas which were not only once parts of Russia but of Sweden, Poland and the Ottoman empire.
    1
  18610.  @cyberfunk3793  Borders change all the time. Just look at a map. Today's Ukraine, just as an example, once included parts of Lithuania, Poland and the Ottoman Empire, as well as Russia. As or free elections .... well, possibly, but even if this was the case the democratic principle is negated by the fact that the constituency is an artificial one. Nationhood is something more than lines on a map - which is why borders DO change all the time!
    1
  18611.  @cretan982  And plenty of others. I think around forty actions at the very least since its inception. All in the name of peace and democracy, of course, and nothing at all to do with gaining resources and markets.
    1
  18612.  @cyberfunk3793  Of course borders change all the time. Ukraine's borders have changed out of all recognition over the course of the last couple of hundred of years. This has nothing to do with moral rectitude. This is just the way it is. As for Kaliningrad, or anywhere else for that matter, they belong to whoever possesses them. Donbass and Crimea are Russian by antecedent. They only ended up as parts of Ukraine because that was the way Russia wanted it at the time. Now Russia is reclaiming them and if Russia is successful they will be Russian again. And if not, then not.
    1
  18613.  @HNH421  Why do you have such faith in documents? They are just bits of paper.
    1
  18614.  @kenpurcell5500  The trouble is that this "sovereignty" was based on flawed arguments. It's a much misused word anyway. These days it more or less means somewhere which the West has decreed to be an independent entity. The Russia which made the error of agreeing to this set-up is not the Russia of today. Putin reckons that Yeltsin was conned - and he's probably right. So long as Ukraine could trade with Russia though, and channel its wealth through Russian entities, he was prepared to put up with it. Ukraine joining the EU and NATO would have put an end to that, and Western wolves were already making plans to to take over. The discovery of half a million tonnes of lithium near Mariupol may well have brought matters to a head. So yes, it is Putin's problem and my problem is that I don't see how, once months and years of negotiation had been spurned, he had any choice but to go to war over it. I hope he wins. Not so much because I think he has right on his side, but because it will be the quickest way to end this obscene charade which, to add insult to injury, is being sold to the simple-minded as a moral crusade.
    1
  18615.  @russianliberalreality33  None of this is ever said seriously by anyone in authority, other than to appease the masses or to get views on TV shows. Putin has made his position very clear on this issue, but he is routinely ignored by Western media and politicians.
    1
  18616.  @johnf3885  Nowhere near. The Moscow Times is anyway printed in Amsterdam, mainly for Russians living abroad. The front page article today is a serious and considered discussion on the effects of oil sanctions on Russia.
    1
  18617. Fred Dee That's largely because we missed the indoctrination.
    1
  18618. Fred Dee This is very true. Science has its fashions, as do most human activities, and the case for AGW is far, far less certain than its proponents assert. It has been seized upon by hedge fund managers as a wonderful opportunity to make money trading in permissions to exceed carbon emission restrictions and their machinations have corrupted the science completely. The climate is the result of very many factors, of which atmospheric carbon levels are only one - and probably quite a minor one at that. Solar forcing plays a much larger role.
    1
  18619. Fred Dee I like the analogy. The difference is of course that while it is a proven fact that tobacco can cause cancer the idea that the burning of fossil fuels will destroy humanity is somewhat less certain. Cashing in on the economic instability created by the climate crisis scare is an even greater source of profit than investing in green technology..
    1
  18620.  @Pemmont107  Up until now this war hasn't been about taking territory. It's been about killing the enemy. Now it's about taking territory - and keeping it.
    1
  18621. The Russian people will only be angered when this happens. To them this war is not an invasion, it is a war of liberation for their cousins in Donbass.
    1
  18622. Why is any credence given to this CCP shill?
    1
  18623.  @teddansonLA  I refer you to my answer to your other post. No-one is saying that Covid 19 has had no effect on deaths, but the chief effect has been the result of the Spring anomaly when thousands of frail elderly who had escaped mild flu seasons in previous years had no resistance to the novel coronavirus. The concept of "excess deaths" is merely the difference between the amount of deaths which actually occurred and projections of what that amount should have been if various trends had continued. Obviously the Spring anomaly has knocked these projections for six, but the fact remains that the extreme old age of the majority of victims means that their life expectancy was severely limited. They didn't die in 2016-19 say, but they would almost certainly be dead by 2026. Current death rates are in fact not remarkable other than compared with very recent years. Daily deaths from all causes are generally between 1,500 and 2,000+ a day at the height of winter and the only thing that is odd is that at the moment up to three-quarters of those who have died have tested positive for Covid 19.
    1
  18624.  @teddansonLA  We seem to be largely in agreement on detail, but not on interpretation. From the bottom up again: Covid seems to be replacing influenzas (as well as, remarkably other CODs) The stats are going to need thorough investigation to explain this and several other anomalies. This goes back to the point that those who die from Covid are those who can generally be expected to die anyway. This is not seeking to dismiss the disease, it is to put it into perspective. Once again, although Covid has undoubtedly wreaked its share of havoc that can almost entirely be traced to the Spring anomaly. The gradual decrease in mortality that has taken place this century has been far from an even decline (it never is) but the trend had already begun to change anyway. The Covid 19 pandemic has knocked us back 20 years, certainly, but it seems very likely that its impact will not become so apparent in the future. It will become incorporated into the long list of those things sent to try us. Lockdowns are another matter. They destroy economies and livelihoods. The knock-on effects on the Third World are horrendous. Babies are starving to death as a result of them. And they don't seem to do much good anyway. We will be suffering from the effects of lockdowns long after Covid 19 has become just another component of the common cold. You are familiar with the term "dry tinder" I'm sure. That was all I meant in my first paragraph.
    1
  18625.  @teddansonLA  We are arguing over the same ground. I do not dispute your figures, but merely wish to put them into a historical perspective. Lockdowns are only recommended by the WHO as a means to buy time to enable health services NOT to be overrun. This we have clearly failed to do, largely by failing to train ward nurses up to ICU standard. In any event the idea that there is a direct and predictable relation between the number of infections and the number of hospitalisations and deaths is clearly not apparent. I am no mathematician but I have just about managed to grasp the distinction between homogenous and heterogenous models and this clearly fits in with my layman's instinct of what happens on the ground. In a situation where the disease is as selective in its effects as Covid 19 it clearly makes more sense to isolate those likely to be severely affected than to treat the entire population as though they are likely to suffer severe outcomes, or even to individually be equally likely to pass the infection on to vulnerable subjects. Under these circumstances a 200-500,000 death toll seems totally untenable. For this to be true surely the entire population would have to be equally capable of contracting the disease and equally capable of dying from it, which is clearly not the case.
    1
  18626.  @teddansonLA  I am obviously not qualified to argue with on the maths in any detail. All I can do is ask if you are familiar with the work of Prof Gabriella Gomes and her team? In August they came up with a model which predicted that if an R number of 1.4 is maintained herd immunity could be reached by October. I can however dispute the impossibility of bringing nurses up to ICU standard. If training was restricted to monitoring respiratory illness patients most ward nurses and even nursing assistants could be made capable of fulfilling these functions if properly supervised. And this is what is needed more than anything else, just in case Covid does come up with some nasty surprises next winter.
    1
  18627.  @teddansonLA  As I said, I can't argue the maths, only point out mathematicians with different views. Professor Gomes, for instance, seemed to insist that 1.4 could well be maintained without lockdowns and since the R number remains uncertain, given the uncertainty of the accuracy of infection rates, she could well have been right. As I am sure you are aware some very qualified people have called PCR tests into question, both in terms of their accuracy and in terms of the statistical anomalies they seem to produce. I also notice that you admit the models are based upon previous experience with influenzas. I don't think that Covid's infection and mortality rate broadly follows similar age-range patterns at all. The number of people who have died under the age of 70 is far less proportionately than has been the case with any preceding influenza I am aware of. This must surely influence mortality predictions to a considerable extent. My point with regard to ICU nurses remains valid. It would cost far less to bring existing nurses up to suitable ICU standard, or even bring in agency nurses from abroad, that it is to pour out billions into lockdown relief measures. The job really consists in monitoring patients very closely and responding to any significant changes into their condition. At the height of hospitalisations this winter one nurse was having to monitor three patients at a time. This is clearly unsatisfactory the ratio should be as close as one to one as possible and there were probably enough ward nurses in empty wards to do the job if they had been given sufficient training.
    1
  18628. George Monbiot is a saint. The working class poor who voted Tory are too stupid to understand the true meaning of Socialism As quickly as possible these ungrateful racist bigots must be replaced with immigrants more deserving of the munificence and intelligence displayed so unselfishly by the left-wing intelligentsia.
    1
  18629.  @gio-oz8gf  With all due respect I don't see what Belgium's situation in 1914 has to do with Britain's in 2023. I'm not trolling for Russia - but I do believe that a Russian victory is likely and, more importantly, will bring the war to a more rapid close than anything Ukraine is likely to achieve.
    1
  18630.  @apocalyption5490  I don't think Russia wanted that territory. They only want Crimea and Donbass, mainly. The SMO was designed to destroy as much of the Ukraine army as possible before the real war began, which is happening now. I really don't know what resources Ukraine has left. They certainly seem to be sending untrained, low-quality troops into Bahkmut. Whether that is all they've got or of they have more experienced reserves remains to be seen.
    1
  18631.  @paulwilson7234  Things have changed.
    1
  18632.  @simonoleary9264  I am more optimistic (I have to be to avoid utter despair!) There is hope that a new coalition of common sense and decency will arise which can revert to abandoned standards of governance and cast out dangerous ideologies. Labour party members must realise that their party no longer represents ordinary people, but is a vehicle for elitist globalists. Tories must realise that their party is equally tainted and defectors from both will hopefully find a home under a new banner. Reform is paving the way for this revolution.
    1
  18633.  @weswheel4834  Which had merits. Apart from the deterrent effects, a close financial relationship with a developing country like Rwanda would be very helpful in offsetting carbon emission targets.
    1
  18634.  @EdJames-tb9oz  What's ironical about Crocker?
    1
  18635.  @californiadreamin8423  I think Reform has a very useful role to play in helping coalesce the growing dissatisfactions of the British people with their political class. A vote for Reform is a genuine protest vote. It is a revolutionary act.
    1
  18636.  @simonoleary9264  As a great believer in authoritarian populism I have to agree with some of what you say. Coalitions are not good and seldom last, and "common sense" is perhaps too vague a term to hold much traction. All the same, we need a revolution and must have one. All we can hope is that it will be less traumatic than it could be.
    1
  18637. @nigelsynnott7344 What was the question again? As for Brexit, it was a necessity and its impact would have been far less if doctrinaire bureaucrats had not impeded it at every turn, or the EU itself accepted it. Reform's policies are neither impractical nor particularly ideological. They do, however, pave the way for the survival of this country in any recognisable form.
    1
  18638.  @EdJames-tb9oz  What about the suffix, though? Is that to be ignored? Your "joke" isn't all that clever.
    1
  18639.  @californiadreamin8423  Oo yoo tellin me what to do? Rrsole!
    1
  18640. @nigelsynnott7344 There are no immediate short term benefits from Brexit, as currently applied, that I can readily see. This does not mean, however, that in principle, separation from a European federation is not a good, if not essential, long-term strategy for the long-term benefit of this country. The EU is an artificial construct and will inevitably collapse. Before it does so it will create enormous geopolitical damage, as already evidenced by its role in promoting the war in Ukraine. We need MORE Brexit, not less. We should cut all but the most basic ties of mutual economic benefit, including leaving the ECCR and other pan-European bodies, and hopefully NATO too if accommodations can be reached with the US and Russia.
    1
  18641. @nigelsynnott7344 I think you possibly underestimate the power of suggestion though. The rumour that you might end up being shipped off the the middle of Africa might be enough to deter many from making the trip - even though, as you rightly say, an intelligent assessment of the odds makes it very unlikely. I doubt though this was the main impetus for the deal. There's money involved somewhere and I tend to suspect it has something to do with manipulation of the cap and trade market, in which vast fortunes can be made dealing in carbon emission bonds - a commodity which, as a developing country, Rwanda probably has in plenty.
    1
  18642. @nigelsynnott7344 Re your comment beginning: " Believe it or not, of the over a hundred Brexiteers of whom I've asked this question for more than ...." There is more to life than cheaper groceries.
    1
  18643.  @californiadreamin8423  I'm a retired multi-millionaire. Work is a thing of the past.
    1
  18644. @nigelsynnott7344 There is more to the Rwanda deal than meets the eye. I'm pretty convinced it has something to do with manipulating the cap and trade market.
    1
  18645. @nigelsynnott7344 The odds against being sent off to Rwanda are astronomically high, I agree. But are the sort of people who fall for the people smugglers' spiel capable of realising this?
    1
  18646. @nigelsynnott7344 I generally decry mixed metaphors, but clutching at straws with the boot on the other foot I find irresistible. (PS Would you rather be miserable in a Rolls Royce or happy riding a bicycle?)
    1
  18647. @nigelsynnott7344 What are you offering?
    1
  18648. @nigelsynnott7344 I just thought you might want to offer me a straw to clutch. Not that I need one.
    1
  18649.  @telebubba5527  Does this include the former Ukrainians who are now Russians? How do they fit in?
    1
  18650. What's wrong with Russia, exactly?
    1
  18651.  @31Blaize  It's a country which has successfully escaped the horrors of Communism and has seen the standard of living of its people shoot up phenomenally over the past thirty years. It scores in the middle range on the World Happiness Index, and does considerably better than Ukraine in this regard.
    1
  18652.  @siarlb8115  No it isn't. Do you even know what an oxymoron is?
    1
  18653.  @mrw1160  Say something wonderful about Ukraine or Islam. That'll get through.
    1
  18654.  @lidbass  Putin has to be tough - although so many stories about him turn out to be false that his alleged propensity for defenestration might I think be exaggerated. He's very intelligent and pragmatic and has survived for more than 20 years in what must be one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I find myself quite admiring him.
    1
  18655.  @bluefarie10  But these all surely refer to an older Russia than the one today? As far as I can see Russia is getting more liberal and laid back while, for instance, Britain is becoming more and more totalitarian. I 've read all of the above ,apart from the Snyder, and I must say I can't see how they can possibly be cited to justify the present paranoia about the Russian Federation and its leader.
    1
  18656.  @stuartmiller2384  Tommy Robinson, like many other working class men and women, is in prison because he has dared to defy the ruling globalist elite. His sentence is out of all proportion to his offence, as are the sentences of many other dissidents. There are more people in jail in this country for making social media posts than there are in Russia. The government is planning to enshrine in law what already happens in practice - more lenient sentences for Moslems and others whose "culture" excuses them from following the precepts of civilised Christian behaviour. That's THE LAW!!! Do you understand that?
    1
  18657.  @lidbass  I'll agree with you about the Russian military - and Putin would too! The military is crap but he doesn't dare do anything about it in case they turn on him. I was thinking more about the overall perception of Russia, and about people being poverty-stricken and oppressed. Since this war started I've been accessing blogs and videos from Russians and Westerners living in Russia and they all show a peaceful, well-ordered and reasonably prosperous country where you really do have to work on it to get into trouble. As for sexuality - there's one false story for a start. Putin legalised homosexuality and simply restricts its open promulgation - especially to children. It's a view any civilised person should share.
    1
  18658.  @iandennis7836  Russia is and always has been a tough country to run. It is based of bribery and corruption and there's nothing you can do about it. Having said that Vladimir Putin is far, far from being the worse sort of person you could have in control. And Lavrov is a great statesman. I really think there is something seriously psychotic about this deep inner need so many left-leaning people have to find someone to hate.
    1
  18659.  @RobertGabriel-u4q  One way round the problem, I suppose.
    1
  18660.  @goodvibes5220  Truth and fiction are interwoven here. Putin is no saint and, as you rightly say, he holds ruthlessly on to power. The alternative would almost certainly be anarchy upon which Western powers would fall like vultures. But what has this to do with us? One point upon which I believe you are totally incorrect is that Putin wishes to recreate the Russian empire. He has to pay lip service to the idea, but has said many times that , in practice, this is neither practical nor even desirable. One of the reasons the USSR collapsed was because it was over-extended and he doesn't want the Russian Federation to fall into the same trap. This is why I say fears about Russia are irrational. As far as Ukraine is concerned, Russia has a very good case. It is not a true country. This word "sovereign" which is bandied about so frequently has little meaning, any more than do these "international laws" people get so huffy about. All Russia wants is to get back those bits of Russia which were mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine when it was created in 1991. Another error is this nonsense about "kidnapped" children. These are Russian children from Russian families in the war zone who have been taken to Russia for safety. Many of them have relatives there, and are later joined by their parents.
    1
  18661.  @matthewhendy5785  Depends if they work or not. They are better than the anarchy which follows attempt to impose democracy on nations which are not used to it.
    1
  18662.  @deborahdonnelly8423  I'm 76. Which is why I know that the Cold War was to do with resisting Communism, and not being afraid of Russia as a country.
    1
  18663.  @margoalamoto3903  Why should he? Because he's been a naughty boy?
    1
  18664. Another gamechanger then? How about if Ukraine surrenders? That would certainly change things.
    1
  18665.  @showyceramics  Were you around in 1890? Or even 1931?
    1
  18666.  @ionutbalta6607  Just Google Australian bushfires.
    1
  18667. Why should Germany - or anyone else - supply Ukraine with weapons? A swift Russian victory is easily the best way to end this tragic and unnecessary war. Feeding the fire wont help.
    1
  18668. MSM coverage of Trump is painful to watch. Even as I write this Sky New UK is monitoring his speech on kidney research in the hope that he will go off script and say something about the poxy arsehole ambassador. And they are proud to say they are doing so! If only.if only if ONLY Trump would hold his hand out to Tommy! It would go down in history! The tawdry, dhimmi British establishment and MSM would EXPLODE!
    1
  18669.  @b62boom1  As I said, I don't have any - any more than you do. I have only the privileges of being a freeborn Englishman. The ECHR intrudes upon these, which is why I resent it.
    1
  18670. They actually tell you a lot about the psychology of those doing the reacting, which can be useful in expanding one's judgement of their opinions and character.
    1
  18671.  @jameswilson-vd5qc  On a more mundane level they are useful in getting to know more about people whose views and culture may be different to one's own.
    1
  18672. Why?
    1
  18673.  @col.hertford9855  It is a proper question. Why does this poster believe MPs should not have second jobs? Why does anyone, for that matter?
    1
  18674.  @gio-oz8gf  What does he want then? Just to feel good about himself, and bathe in the glow of sympathetic approbation?
    1
  18675. At last you Greenies are getting it, it seems. The climate crisis has been spun by financial interests from the very start. By placing a premium on C02 emissions and artificially restricting and controlling the distribution of permits to exceed targets, a new trading market has been created. Instability, leading to sharp fluctuations in price, is an essential ingredient of this process. That's where you daft buggers come in. All your self-righteous posturings, demos and insane misapprehensions about the science involved create just the sort of uncertainty hedge funds trade in. If you start getting in the way of the real agenda -which is making as much money as possible as quickly as possible - then you will be packed off into the outer darkness. On you way out look at the Mercs and the Audis in the parking lot. They're owned by gangsters, money-men and bent politicians - the guys you all work for without even knowing it.
    1
  18676. What's happening that the old game of mock democracy in the US is being called out for the fraud that it is.
    1
  18677.  @hilldweller8610  In what regard? Are they worse than in Europe and America?
    1
  18678.  @matthewjohns1758  Amazing how all those Christmas lights keep blazing away, isn't it?
    1
  18679.  @paulgibbon5991  You don't know anything, you ignorant little boy.
    1
  18680.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  Since I live in England, where I was born, I would be very interested in hearing a formula which puts me in India. Please carry on!
    1
  18681.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  The EU will collapse before Russia does.
    1
  18682.  @teniente_snafu  I don't think any country is doing that well on the freezing cold and empty fridge front - apart from Russia. It's certainly cold outside, but they're used to that and their supermarkets seem packed with interesting and very cheap produce. I've been following a few Russian-based YouTubers to try to get a handle on what's going on over there. Anna from Russia just fed herself and her husband for the entire weekend on the equivalent of less than $5!
    1
  18683.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  Please let me in on the joke!
    1
  18684.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  I assumed you were a conceited and ill-informed American. I'm pleased to have it confirmed. Looking upon GDP as the sole indicator of health and prosperity is an enormous mistake. Much of Russia's economy is self-contained and internalised. Much also happens on a well-structured "black market" basis and does not show up in figures. A better criterion than academic economic assessment is to relate food and fuel prices to income and to consider how Russia has ridden the storm of sanctions with such relative ease.
    1
  18685.  @teniente_snafu  This is not the picture I have. There are restrictions on cashflow, certainly. These are to prevent panic withdrawals. Russians are also used to dealing with irregularities in how they are paid. It is just the way it is, and was like that long before this war started. They cope. Those Russians who have left have mostly done so to escape the draft. They are very sensible. You are either a warrior or you are not.
    1
  18686.  @biggusdickus5986  So are most things. You can lunch on the new Russian version of McDonalds for about a third of the US equivalent. Locally produced meat and veg is available at prices so low as to make you weep with jealousy. Visit Anna in Russia on her YouTube channel. She goes out shopping most days.
    1
  18687.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  Where's yours? You keep promising, but you don't put out!
    1
  18688.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  And still the people are eating well and filling their gas tanks for less than it costs Americans and Europeans. How do you account for that?
    1
  18689.  @gandalfstormcrow8439  Show me yours and I'll show you mine!
    1
  18690. Among Trump's first steps is to dismantle America's health and education governing bodies. In their separate ways the Department of Education and the FDA represent much of what is wrong with current systems of government in the West. The D of E is concerned not with improving minds, but with indoctrinating them with sinister and destructive ideas. The FDA, under the pretence of maintaining standards in health and food supplies, in fact colludes with the manufacturers of these products to put profit ahead of benefit, often with disastrous results. There are many other examples of this downhill trend. It's all gone wrong somewhere. Ideas put into practice for the best of reasons have become tainted and corrupt and it needs a Herculean effort to clean out the dirt and destroy the monsters. Donald Trump might be an unlikely Hercules, but he's all America has. So far in Britain there are few contenders for the role, if any.
    1
  18691. Later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire.
    1
  18692. No wonder he's angry. This stitch-up is a disgrace to America!
    1
  18693. He ain't bluffing. He knows that the West has weak leadership and if he is forced to carry out a nuclear strike they will come hotfoot to the conference table.
    1
  18694. EU leaders just don't have the bottle. And very wise too.
    1
  18695.  @4DCResinSmoker  Russia's original demands were entirely reasonable. It is significant that this war has led to a position where they are able to demand more. I think they will probably get a great deal in the end- certainly a new and more historically and economically accurate border with Ukraine. I am of the firm belief that Russia has no territorial ambitions other than to reclaim or retain control over areas which it believes - with considerable justification - to rightfully own. The only serious worry in this regard is whether or not Putin will be satisfied with the four oblasts it has now wholly or partially "liberated" or one day seek to take Odessa and other parts of what was once "Little Russia", comprising about 40% of modern Ukraine.
    1
  18696.  @4DCResinSmoker  Putin is not evil. He is merely a strong and patriotic leader. And the invasion of Ukraine is not an act of aggression, it is an act of self-defence.
    1
  18697. I am English. Live Rutland. Many in England know you CIA bot.
    1
  18698. The US is full of fat people and those whose lives have been prolonged beyond their allotted span by artificial means. It is these people who are unprotected against Covid 19 and who have died. In China , as in many other countries, this is not the case. It is both absurd and immoral to attribute America's relatively high death toll to Trump. There is little anyone can do about it. It is what it is.
    1
  18699.  @karinafanatic  He never told anyone to drink disinfectant. Hydroxychloroquine works. South Korea and Vietnam, along with other South Asian countries, have inbuilt resistance to Covid 19 due to exposure to other covids, notably SARS-Covid-1. Resistance to malaria, combined with extensive hydroxychloroquine use, is another factor.
    1
  18700.  @karinafanatic  Have you not heard of T cell immunity acquired after being exposed to similar viruses to SARS-Covid 2. Such as SARS-Covid 1? And the many other covids circulating among human populations? Latest research is indicating that this may be far, far more prevalent than first thought, especially in South Asian countries. Little that we do can prevent the spread of viruses. All we can do is wait for herd immunity - whether through natural occurrence or enhanced by vaccines. Most measures, especially lockdowns, do far more harm than good - as the WHO has somewhat belatedly realised. The downturn of Western economies is already devastating poorer countries. The absurd measures taken by governments are killing people already. Save a Granny - kill a hundred African kids! As for hydroxychloroquine it has been scandalously badmouthed by Big Pharma because it is so cheap. The false tests they commissioned have been exposed and it has been proved conclusively that if administered in correct doses early enough it can cut death rates by at least a a third.
    1
  18701.  @karinafanatic  It is very much open to dispute. I have been trying to follow the work of Drs Gupta and Gomes whose researches form part of the thinking behind the Great Barrington Declaration. Dr Gomes is a mathematician epidemiologist who suggests that using models based on influenza spreads is a mistake, because Covid 19 is highly selective - heterogenous rather than homogenous in her terminology. She and her team think that in the UK and some European countries herd immunity can be reached with of an infection rate of as little as 20% - which may already have been achieved. It's worth checking out.
    1
  18702.  @karinafanatic  We HAD the highest death rate in Europe but now it is being submerged in the general run of seasonal deaths from respiratory failure. This is exactly what Dr Gomes predicted in fact. She said back at the end of July that there would be a rise in deaths at about this time, but much smaller than the peak in April. It is interesting but rather worrying that the government now proposes to merge deaths from both flu and Covid19 into one statistic. There does seem to be a concentrated effort to make Covid 19 appear more dangerous than it now actually is. Influenza deaths have of course been outstripping Covid deaths by a considerable amount since early September.
    1
  18703. @ Then assume wrongly. Russians are tough and won't let a little thing like a broken leg stop them carrying out their duty - plus, of course, they get paid less if invalided out! If you saw the same videos with Ukrainian soldiers you would, of course, doubtless hail them for their courage and dedication!
    1
  18704.  @Belisarius277  The Russian army is very old-fashioned and riddled with corruption, nepotism and inefficiency. The Ukrainian army is better trained, better led and generally better-equipped. But the Russians are winning.
    1
  18705.  @Belisarius277  The Russian army is riddled with corruption, nepotism and inefficiency. The Ukrainian army is better led and better trained. But the Russians are winning.
    1
  18706. @ The Russian army is considered to be riddled with corruption and inefficiency. It is certainly very old-fashioned by Western standards. By contrast, the Ukrainian army is better-led and better-trained and often better-equipped.. But the Russians seem to be winning, just the same.
    1
  18707. @ The Russian army is considered to be riddled with corruption and inefficiency. It is certainly very old-fashioned by Western standards. By contrast, the Ukrainian army is better-led and better-trained and often better-equipped.. But the Russians seem to be winning, just the same.
    1
  18708. Why do you imagine the Kremlin has the slightest concern about what happens to Ukrainian refugees?
    1
  18709. Why don't you ask old people how they might feel? (Not Joe though. He's got an agenda.)
    1
  18710. More fake news. Most of these fires are on already cleared agricultural land. The rest will aid natural regeneration. What's interesting is watching Channel 4 compete with Sky and the BBC in the UK heats of the Lying Scumbag of the Year competition.
    1
  18711. Except that the present inhabitants of Gaza are not "indigenous.".
    1
  18712.  @MattWhite-vh6xh  These are just words on maps. After the First World War some British imperialists with an affection for Roman history christened this vast area with the name "Palestine" after the Roman word for it, which, in itself, gave us the word "Philistine." It was just a sparsely populated stretch of semi-desert under the rule of the Ottoman Empire until the Zionists came along and turned it into something approaching a viable and civilised country.
    1
  18713. @But the fact remains that the present population of Gaza is drawn to a considerable extent from the descendants of Arabs who flocked into "Palestine" in the wake of the Zionist reconstruction. And the Zionists did indeed "come along" . They came from America and Europe with the noble and intelligent purpose of recreating the homeland from which they had been cast out by at least two imperialist aggressors.
    1
  18714. @ You can't change history. Zionism has been a force for good in the Middle East. The population of so-called "Palestine" was mainly nomadic herders with a few poverty-stricken villages until the Jews came along.
    1
  18715. @ Both terms are entirely viable.
    1
  18716. @ But it's not a country. It is just a vague term for a stretch of land without much value or interest.
    1
  18717.  @MattWhite-vh6xh  But they simply haven't. The vast majority of "Palestinians" are the descendants of people from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab nations who arrive there during the 20th century to take advantage of the prosperity created by Zionist settlers.
    1
  18718. @ No they haven't. Most are descendants of people who arrived there in the late 19th and early 20th century as a direct result of Zionist re-development.
    1
  18719. @ No they haven't. Most are descendants of comparatively recent immigrants who only arrived to take advantage of the comparative prosperity created by Zionist colonisers.
    1
  18720. @ Not many of them. Most are the descendants of far more recent immigrants.
    1
  18721. The facts are that the vaccine take-up rate among racial minorities is lower than among the population as a whole. The British are not racist but the virus appears to be, since five times more Bangladeshis die per head of population than white British and twice as many Afro-Caribbeans.
    1
  18722.  @ilovecoffeev  You don't even know what they are.
    1
  18723.  @jaysonpida5379  1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18724.  @maximebegin1454  He is a true patriot, that's all.
    1
  18725.  @paoloporchetti1563  Not exactly. Putin has no desire to eliminate an entire race or to conquer the world.. He just wants to keep Russia secure from Western military and commercial aggression.
    1
  18726.  @fromscotland2380  I think they are. Here is a list: 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18727.  @holboroman  No, rationally and very regretfully. He would have preferred a peaceful solution, but the fool Zelensky, his strings pulled by America, allowed his country to be drawn into a needless war.
    1
  18728.  @KB-sv7fm  He is eminently sane. He has ben forced to take this very painful decision by Ukraine's refusal to discuss their mutual problems.
    1
  18729. @Corey Leander He had plenty. Her are some: 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18730.  @tereterevanakere2132  Putin has no imperial ambitions. He is far too sensible. He knows what happened to the last one. He just wants to secure his borders and protect his country's interests.
    1
  18731.  @edmond8603  I can name several. 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18732.  @David_Phoenix23  One of them, sure.
    1
  18733.  @juhanivuorinen6981  Here are several: 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18734.  @bobfg3130  He did. Several.
    1
  18735.  @bobfg3130  Absolute rubbish.
    1
  18736.  @xboxbam3979  Sure. Follow the money, as ever. I think Putin and many Russians do feel they have squatters rights over mineral resources though. Generally speaking it was Russian money which developed the coal and steel industries, and Russians who went down the mines and into the factories. But the other factors are nonetheless very real. Putin is nervous about NATO, and has every right to be. There is also a strong anti-Russian feeling among many Ukrainians, for obvious historical reasons, and many Russians in Donbass seem to have resented the fruits of their labours being passed over to American-leaning Ukrainian oligarchs. The separatist rebellions were obviously fomented by Russian agitators and supported by Russian "military advisors", but it's nothing that America doesn't do when it's got its eyes on a bit of profitable real estate.
    1
  18737.  @inconvenientfacts8896  1)The Russian Federation has shown no signs of aggression towards any of the new NATO countries. NATO is basically a vehicle of the US military/industrial complex. The rest is sham. 2) It is real. That's why there's a word for it. Nationalist Ukrainians want to replace the Russian language and supress various manifestations of Russian culture. 3) Russia doesn't think so. Russia dug the mines and manned the factories and it doesn't want the fruits of its labours being sold off to America and Europe. 4) The Ukrainian attacks on Donbass starting in 2014 indiscriminately killed men, women and children. Azov torture squads would drag people off the streets if they heard them speaking Russian. At least 8,000 civilians have died, many of them children. 5) Plenty. It clearly showed Ukraine's intent to fight instead of settling things though 6) So a fight is what they've got.
    1
  18738.  @tereterevanakere2132  There is not. In a television interview Putin said that it would be a great and wonderful thing for Russia to return to its days of glory. He then went on to say that of course such a thing was utterly impossible. The last bit has of course been cut in the highly edited version put out for the consumption of Western peabrains.
    1
  18739.  @maximebegin1454  Different bloke.
    1
  18740.  @donaphx7921  Says who?
    1
  18741.  @rizzzzzza4643  And look where it gets you.
    1
  18742.  @nooboftheyear7170  Around 2.5 million Russian Ukrainians have indeed fled to Russia since the war began. They fear reprisals should Ukraine win. Russia certainly conquered Ukraine back in the 18th century. But they were mostly fighting Poland and Sweden, who each wanted to conquer it also. In any case, no-one was interested in the steppe east of the Dneiper which was occupied by tribes of wandering Tatars. It was these who were moved out by the Russians later when vast mineral resources were discovered beneath the steppe. Why should the descendants of these people be forced to suffer? Why should the crooks in Kiev reap the rewards of the labours of generations of Russians? I'm not sure when this debate in England took place. I am English and all that has happened is that the media has been pumping out one-sided propaganda and hero-worshipping that little shit Zelensky.
    1
  18743.  @nooboftheyear7170  What's your excuse then?
    1
  18744.  @timdowney6721  Historical facts are not lies.
    1
  18745.  @UserUser-ww2nj  Zelensky and his gang of crooks want to steal coal, iron and oil drawn from the ground by generations of Russian blood and sweat.
    1
  18746.  @joeb578  NATO creating a Ukrainian army.
    1
  18747.  @dylanshaffer2184  Valid in Russia's eyes anyway. Which is what counts. 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18748.  @UserUser-ww2nj  Valid in Russia's eyes. Which is what counts: 1) The threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia's greatest enemy. 2) Continued "Ukrainisation" of the 8+million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. 3) Selling the vast mineral resources of Donbass, developed and worked almost exclusively by Russians, to American and European companies. 4) Shelling, torturing and murdering Russian separatists in Donbass. 5) Allowing NATO to pay for and train a large Ukrainian army designed to crush the separatist rebellion in Donbass, and to retake Crimea , which has a majority Russian population and was Russian until transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for administrative and logistical reasons. 6) Ukraine's refusal to discuss any of the several treaty proposals put forward by Moscow, designed to overcome these problems peacefully.
    1
  18749.  @nooboftheyear7170  There is absolutely no comparison between the two situations. Russian is in fact the dominant language in Ukraine, spoken by the majority of the population in a great many situations. I simply cannot see the point you are trying to make. Ukrainians are not forcing immigrants to speak their language. They are forcing the descendants of the minority group which has ruled there for centuries to do so, as well as the Ukrainians who speak Russian as a matter of course. It is as if the Welsh were to gain independence and attempt to outlaw English (which I am, born and bred.)
    1
  18750.  @tereterevanakere2132  I'm English. And I've seen the entire video from which the edited extract was made. The self-comparison with Peter the Great also seems very unlikely. I expect it's just another crude Western propaganda myth. Putin knows from experience how empires invariably collapse, and often very quickly. I just hope I live long enough to see the same fate befall the USA.
    1
  18751.  @tereterevanakere2132  But not towards recreating the Russian empire with Putin comparing himself to Peter the Great. He is not a man generally given to analogy, and all this nonsense is clearly just part of a Western propaganda smokescreen, designed to obscure the real and cogent reasons for the invasion.
    1
  18752.  @timeames2509  It's more a question of keeping what he thinks belongs to him already. His reasons or excuses are nonetheless worthy of consideration. The most important fact, in my view, is that it was clear that he meant business, and Zelensky was a fool to conspire with the West to drag his country into a ruinous war. The peace proposals put forward by Putin on December last year were an entirely reasonable basis for negotiation.
    1
  18753.  @rizzzzzza4643  There is an equal chance of America's collapse also. Exciting times.
    1
  18754.  @tereterevanakere2132  Whatever talk there has been has been romantic fantasy. NATO needs Russia to be a threat in order to justify its own existence, and every inebriated toast to "the good old days" or tearful reminiscence, is advertised as evidence of some evil ambition. It's bollocks. It's the Bogeyman. Keep paying your dues or those pesky Commie Russkies will come getcha. Grrrrrr!!! It's propaganda, without a shred of evidence to back it up. America wouldn't have been able to stage this war without it.
    1
  18755.  @tereterevanakere2132  No, you are, because these are not imperialistic ventures. They are purely concerned with Russia maintaining existing interests and border security. Putin's strategy when faced with threats from outside is to subdue them and set up buffer states. He knows full well that attempting to govern directly can no longer work. He did this in Chechnya when faced with a threat from Islamic nationalist extremists. He did it in Georgia when faced with a threat from NATO and that's what he's doing in Ukraine with Donbass. Crimea is a unique case because it is predominantly Russian and has only had a very brief relationship with Ukraine. In 2014 Putin simply took the opportunity of getting it back.
    1
  18756.  @tereterevanakere2132  I can certainly see the point of view of the former Soviet bloc countries, but in joining NATO they have allied themselves with a foreign power hostile to Russia. I cannot believe any of them would have done this without being sold on the idea by America, but that is neither here nor there. What is important is that Russia sees their decisions as a threat, and in the cases of both Georgia and Ukraine that threat was a threat too far. Both countries have suffered as a result of poor decisions, and Ukraine continues to do so.
    1
  18757. It's the ICC which is the joke.
    1
  18758. Being intelligent doesn't make it make it more likely that you're going to be right - which sounds a stupid thing to say, but there you are..
    1
  18759.  @petermcculloch4933  No politician ever always tells the truth.
    1
  18760.  @ailinofaolin8897  Best of luck with that. My interest is as much with the lies and propaganda being pumped out by the Western media and politicians as it is with the war itself. People are such suckers and so easy manipulated.
    1
  18761.  @Matt1975ism  Idiot detected! LAUGHED AT!
    1
  18762. Raul Flores Don't you lol at me. I am heartbroken. You monster!
    1
  18763. Raul Flores. Are you sending me emojis? Why is there a space? I am using my grandfather's computer at present and it just makes dots, Others have encountered this difficulty. We seem to be at something of an impasse. Oh well. Bernie/Nina 2020 Yaaay!
    1
  18764. And when the gap between the infection rate and the death rate continues to widen -as it is now - what cause will there be for weeping then?
    1
  18765.  @justaguy6100  Try watching some of his stuff before you shoot your mouth off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uUfXjKaho
    1
  18766.  @peterebel7899  It's not broken, so why mend it? The British media is what it always has been - ultimately a bastion of freedom against state control of thought and behaviour. Journalists should not be treated any differently to any other person. If they break the law - then prosecute them. But don't bend the law to make journalism a special target.
    1
  18767.  @peterebel7899  What makes you suppose that the laws of other nations are superior to ours in this regard? What makes you suppose that journalists are in any way different to other individuals in terms of rights and responsibilities? Sounds to me tough you have been swallowing some cockeyed thinking here.
    1
  18768. Ukraine will run out of money before Russia runs out of men and munitions.
    1
  18769.  @bluecanary9417  No, that of others.
    1
  18770.  @bluecanary9417  There are many who hold this view. Ukraine has already run out of money in point of fact. and is entirely dependent upon handouts from the West just to survive. I can refer you to Professor John Mearsheimer, Col Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter, Amit Sengupta for starters.
    1
  18771. Not so much. It's another proxy war. As the Americans utilise the Ukrainians, Iran is utilising the Palestinians.
    1
  18772. Good for Trump! He knows how to stand up to bullying slimebags pretending to represent truth and justice!
    1
  18773.  @howlinwind  Who knows? Who cares?
    1
  18774.  @howlinwind  For being the victim of a political witch-hunt is what. These cases are a disgrace to America. History will look back on this with amazement and horror.
    1
  18775. 1) To give hundreds of bored kids something to after harvest was over. 2) With not as much difficulty as you might imagine.
    1
  18776.  @CaptainEshara  Instead of drawing entirely false historical comparisons, why don't you consider examining the facts of this present situation in something like detail? If you do so you will see that the Russian narrative has a great deal of truth in it.
    1
  18777.  @bryandimery6509  I'm having to read this again. Are you actually agreeing with me? There is hope for the world, even on this ridiculous channel. Thankyou.
    1
  18778.  @CaptainEshara  Where lies the fallacy? Do you even KNOW what case Russia makes?
    1
  18779.  @CaptainEshara  I might as well cite my laundry list and last weekend's football results. Nothing but facts, and just as relevant as your quotes and figures. Russians represent close on 30% of Ukraine's population. In the east the percentage is even higher and in the industrial cities of Donbass and in Crimea much higher still. Ukraine only became a "country" in 1991. Before that it was part of Russia - and had been for more than three hundred years. This doesn't mean that Russia wants it back. That would be impossible. But it does resent the way in which Russians have been treated in Ukraine since 1991; and even more than that it resents seeing the fruits of its labours and investment being siphoned off to Europe and America, much less Ukraine deciding to join NATO. For more than 20 years Putin and Lavrov have sought peaceful solutions to these difficulties, but have been constantly rebuffed. The last straw though was clown Zelensky allowing NATO to build a huge army with which to further crush Russian dissidence. These, to my mind, are facts far more relevant than a century-old quote from Winston Churchill.
    1
  18780.  @Timbo5000  I guess you were there to take the moral temperature then? Are you Doctor Who?
    1
  18781.  @wolfgangvoncolt9261  Depends on the paperwork. Anyway, why rile him?
    1
  18782.  @iykeeid260  But not, as yet, by bombs and tanks.
    1
  18783. No. He just doesn't want her new boyfriend to have the car he lent her.
    1
  18784. You are being naive. There is no evidence that Putin wants any more that what many Russians consider to be Russian by right.
    1
  18785.  @ericwillis777  Eastern Ukraine is Russia's property. It was stolen from them and now they want it back.
    1
  18786.  @markwelch3564  But over- emphasis on the well-being of very small minorities is a distraction.
    1
  18787.  @markwelch3564  Is there really that much scapegoating - by which I suppose you mean prejudice? Overkill has led to many people thinking that being an ordinary, heterosexual white person makes them less important to the socialist movement than is a black or homosexual person. It is surely this which distracts from the real issues.
    1
  18788.  @markwelch3564  But who is peeling off or isolating anyone? The war against prejudice has been largely won.
    1
  18789.  @markwelch3564  Neither and both. It's a question of market forces.
    1
  18790. It was there for over 200 years. Without Russia, Ukraine would not exist.
    1
  18791. Tommy Robinson is true hero of the working class. The Labour Party are traitors to the working class.
    1
  18792. There is no evidence whatsoever that Russia has any such territorial ambitions. It merely protects its existing interests.
    1
  18793.  @David_Lloyd-Jones  There is plenty of evidence. It's just all been swept under the carpet.
    1
  18794.  @philipgr100  No it wasn't. It was part of the Ottoman Empire.
    1
  18795. @@glynmellor6161 But not with impunity, as a general rule. My point is that a judicial system can only be effective in a reasonably united and coherent social unit - such as a country. The world is not united and coherent in this way. So-called "International Law" is really little more than America's attempt to impose its will on the rest of the world, following its victory in World War II.
    1
  18796. That the idea of him being anything like Hitler is a pathetic, childish fantasy.
    1
  18797. Covid 19 has been politicised, that's the difference. It's being used as a means of social control, which is unprecedented. It can be argued that the 68/69 epidemic was actually worse. The number of UK deaths was around 30,000 - but many were children and young people, so in terms of years of life lost it was much more severe.
    1
  18798.  @edwardkerrigan5356  Really? Can you give me a source? I've forgotten what mine was !
    1
  18799. Margaret Nacey In the UK it is generally Labour supporters from particular cultural backgrounds who go in for ballot-tampering. The main reason for Labour's resounding defeat was a quiet rebellion by working.class Northerners. These folk have voted Labour man and boy for a hundred years - in much the same way as African-Americans have voted Democrat. They, like many African-Americans, grew tired of being looked down upon by intellectual left-wingers and being taken for granted as vote-fodder. Yup. You got a problem. Ordinary Joe and Jill prefer sensible millionaires to insane socialists.
    1
  18800. Katie Taylor Merciful Heavens! You do talk the most utter crap, Katie m'dear!
    1
  18801. Pedro Pfeiffer Araujo I don't understand you. Come back when you are a little more coherent.
    1
  18802. Pedro Pfeirrer Araujo I dunno exactly. The least amount of government possible within the constraints of keeping good order perhaps.Respect for democratic decisions? Silly old-fashioned stuff like that. Oh, and a final end to the global menace of Marxism of course.
    1
  18803. Pedro Pfeiffer Araujo Some of my best friends are billionaires and not at all menacing. Boris is a real sweetheart.
    1
  18804. Pedro Pfeiffer Araujo We met briefly at a dinner only last week. I wouldn't say he's a friend exactly, more of a casual acquaintance. He really is terribly nice.
    1
  18805. Mishael Brand Obiously the litter.
    1
  18806. zoejay You really have to be very, very sensible to become a millionaire. Just think about it. A fool and his money are soon parted sort of thing.
    1
  18807. zoejay What is Marxism anyway? I've only known a few people who have tried to read Das Kapital and those that weren't mad in the first place were soon driven mad by trying to read it. I think it's perfectly possible that it has never been read by anyone.
    1
  18808. Margaret Nacey It's a kind offer, but I think I'll pass. Your post finished abruptly on the word "pop". Were you planning to quote the population of the area you mention? If so you may have a point. A form of Marxism may well work in a small mainly rural community, especially one with relatively harsh conditions where mutual co-operation is beneficial. But in the big bad world the psychopaths move in and swiftly enslave and eat all the sweet idealists who love their neighbours.
    1
  18809.  @stephenjon3502  What politician or even YouTube channel doesn't ask for money?
    1
  18810.  @stephenjon3502  As I said, raising money for a cause is normal among politicians. It must be remembered that he has another charge to answer too.
    1
  18811. Utter hogwash. Thirty years is nothing in the history of climate. No conclusions can be drawn from any of these figures - even if they are accurate, which I doubt. More and more man-made climate change is looking like a massive con-trick.
    1
  18812. Johnson supported Ukraine in this conflict. Farage as simply been paid for journalism. Why are you people so all-fired keen on locking people up?
    1
  18813. They would look like utter clowns and lose several million votes in an instant.
    1
  18814. I agree it will be bad, but how bad? The death-to-case ratio is roughly a tenth of what it was without vaccines and they also reduce symptoms very considerably indeed.
    1
  18815.  @totokfr  I think the government is prepared to let both deaths and admissions reach high levels. The big drawback is the general health of the population. Many people have untreated conditions due to previous lockdowns, and this makes them extra vulnerable.
    1
  18816.  @totokfr  The high vax rate among the very old doesn't seem to account for much. Many of those dying seem so frail that anything will send them off. A new more virulent strain isn't all that likely, although possible. A new strain will probably be more transmissible, but likely less virulent. It's the high death toll among the 60-75 age group who haven't been treated for conditions such as heart problems, diabetes and slow cancers etc which will feature this season I fear.
    1
  18817.  @totokfr  There are still plenty of old and frail left over here and I strongly doubt the US figure. In the UK the number of deaths among the vaccinated is being kept quiet, and for very sound reasons. Vaccinations do not provide protection to the very frail and it is the frail 80-yrear olds and above who continue to suffer by far the most deaths. Since they have mostly been vaccinated it gives a false impression. All I know is that back in June the number in England was running at 44%.
    1
  18818. Have the Russians cut off the electricity to a nuclear power station they actually occupy? Or did the Ukrainians do it?
    1
  18819. For "available evidence" read: "evidence WE say you are allowed to hear." When drug companies agree to release raw data on their vaccine safety tests and when media companies reveal their financial connections with vaccine producing entities we might give more credence to propaganda like this. But probably not.
    1
  18820.  @stevo091  Good for you! Bit late in the day though, isn't it?
    1
  18821. Trump would turn down the Nobel Peace Prize if offered.
    1
  18822. The unsavoury elements who rule America from behind the scenes are really pushing their luck with Biden as their glove puppet. You might almost think they are seeing how much they can get away with.
    1
  18823. I recommend you Google Tiger Patel and watch his campaign video. It speaks volumes without him uttering a single word. He won, by the way.
    1
  18824.  @T5Zplayer  It's not crap Johnson's visits to Zelensky were undoubtedly responsible for persuading that particular buffoon that Western aid would be sufficient to enable him to repel the Russians. It won't.
    1
  18825.  @marcopalazzo9349  Ukraine and Russia were ready to compromise. Johnson visited Zelensky and persuaded him that Western militarily aid would enable him to swiftly eject the Russians. It didn't.
    1
  18826. When it does turn out to be a weather balloon, the US won't admit it, will they?
    1
  18827. Has someone at the BBC been reading about misdirection? This is cheap propaganda at its most disgusting. By drawing attention to extremes of opinion they are now seeking to make it seem as though ALL conspiracy theories are insane - which very clearly they are not.
    1
  18828. Here's hoping!
    1
  18829.  @nasudsy5485  TR is not a racist. He is simply frightened by the growth of Islamism in this country. As am I.
    1
  18830.  @nasudsy5485  Only when that faith demands I be converted to it on pain of death do I begin to feel just a bit threatened. Perhaps when the values and legal system of that faith appear to be on their way towards replacing Judaeo/Christian/enlightenment values as a basis for civilisation and dragging us back into the middle ages?
    1
  18831.  @lolwalters2936  For now.
    1
  18832. Ukrainians torture too,
    1
  18833. But Russia never wanted the whole of Ukraine, only the largely "Russian" areas of Crimea and Donbass. Which it has got - and seems likely to hold on to for the foreseeable future.
    1
  18834. Ford Country Do you know, I have no idea what either "brown acid" or "Trumpstock" is or were!!? Enlightenment will be much appreciated.
    1
  18835.  @algrthm  Too true!
    1
  18836.  @stoobydootoo4098  Stay indoors then.
    1
  18837. No. Case numbers are dropping. Honestly and truly. It's sad I know, but there it is.
    1
  18838. The actual death to case ratio is well down. Over 800 deaths to 45,000 cases in September. Under 120 deaths to 47,000 cases in June. In all cases these are weekly figures with the death numbers occurring in the third week after the cases number.
    1
  18839.  David Loscialpo  You're preaching to the converted! Here are a few of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPMhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7175881/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKG4Q5LS2AI https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7152897/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6A6RFDprIs https://www.youtube.com/=nYWlb-rITBIwatch?v https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM&t=20s https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7152897/ https://evidencenotfear.com/ Keep up the good work! Sense and sanity must prevail
    1
  18840. Gilbert X It won't be before time Although it will be too late for many. Including my parrot, which has just died due to Climate Change and in circumstances too horrible to mention. Never mind. Chin up Bernie/Nina 2020 Yaaay!
    1
  18841. Beware of what the lab rats say and look at what's happening in the real world. On Dec 2 there were just 43 patients in the covid ward at Pretoria's main hospital at the centre of the outbreak. Only nine had been admitted because of covid. The rest had been admitted for other reasons and had tested positive while there. They were asymptomatic. None of the patients needed oxygen.
    1
  18842. Quan V I don't think we are. The process is natural and cyclic and the IPCC is lying through its teeth - as are NASA etc. If you put bad data into powerful computers then you're going to get some very peculiar results. If you then put those peculiar results into the next generation models the results are going to get even more peculiar. What if carbon in the atmosphere doesn't behave in the same way as it dose in contained surface-bound laboratory experiments? What then?
    1
  18843. The US has been experiencing a shortage of packing materials since at least June. Brexit obviously has far-reaching consequences. Biden blame supply-chain problems on Trump with the same fervour this channel blames them on Brexit. Perhaps you might both consider that they are mainly due to the effects of the pandemic - or rather to the hysterical and ill-considered over-reaction to it which Biden and all left-wing entities have endorsed with such enthusiasm.
    1
  18844. What else could Putin have done? It was clear there was going to be war - better to have it in Ukraine rather than in Donbass or Crimea.
    1
  18845. Does this mean its OK to take Paracetemol six tablets a time, three times a day? You're last sentence lost me too.You can't simply be saying that because the "logical" high dose tests didn't work this calls into question the results of low-dose studies, surely? What am I missing here?
    1
  18846.  @gregs3845  Thank you so much for your answer. I have no medical knowledge whatsoever and am finding it hard to understand why there should be such a diversity of opinion on the best way to treat the novel coronavirus. As I understand it so far hydroxychloroquine does in no way stimulate the immune system into increased activity, but merely denies the virus the facilities to utilise cellular material to reproduce (which it cannot do on its own.) To my simple mind this means it has to be there in the cell ready and waiting before the viruses arrive. They get in, but they cannot replicate their RNA or re-assemble their protein shells. This means that it is totally pointless to attempt to defeat the virus with hydroxychloroquine once the virus has gained the upper hand as it were. Once the virus is in tissue in anything like significant numbers you can chuck HCO at it by the bucketful and it will do no good at all. It's not a case of "less is more" but "more is pointless." Thanks again. I am surprised at your news about paracetamol by the way. I once overdosed on paracetamol and brandy following a back injury and it was not a pleasant experience.
    1
  18847.  @gregs3845  Thank you once again for your very helpful insights. I have a couple of points to make which you might perhaps disagree with, but here goes anyway: We are in an emergency pandemic situation and, as such, we should could consider laying aside established laboratory protocols for the moment and go for a more direct approach. People rather than petri dishes. Once a treatment can be reasonably proved to be reasonably safe we should just try it out on volunteers. I myself am a vulnerable person, being in my seventies with type two diabetes and one or two other minor age-related ailments and I would be delighted to go on a HCQ prophylactic regime without any form of isolation. Deaths or serious hospitalisations could be monitored and reasonable deductions could be made from whether or not a victim was taking such a treatment. Mind you, with death rates falling as rapidly as they are in many countries we might well be running out of potential subjects before very long. This brings me to my second point, which I admit may be a rather fanciful one. You rightly say that is the over-reaction of immune systems which cause death and damage, rather than the virus itself. Do you not see a parallel in the over-reaction of society to this intrusive illness and which is, in itself, causing more damage than the disease?
    1
  18848.  @gregs3845  Fair enough.
    1
  18849. Bunker mentality.
    1
  18850. Kevin Blanchard He isn't. That was a hologram.
    1
  18851. SpectatorAlius. No.I am from the year 2173 and I know Climate Change was a hoax. Hologram technology cannot traverse the space-time continuum.
    1
  18852. Kevin Blanchard I hate to have to tell you this but you are a thought form lost in the immeasurable emptiness of the cosmos. What you perceive as information is negative feedback from the experiences of corporeal beings. How else could you possibly believe that the earth was destroyed and without life in 2173 when, if you had been there, you would be dead too? As it is the world is prospering and we amuse our children with tales of your foolishness.
    1
  18853. Kevin Blanchard No. I am happy here. Go away.
    1
  18854. Morals left the game more than ten years ago when the US organised a coup in Ukraine and their puppet PM Poroshenko sent in the tanks to crush the rebellion in Donbass.
    1
  18855.  @jasperchance3382  What else was the Maidan revolution if not a coup?
    1
  18856.  @jasperchance3382  An engineered popular revolt.
    1
  18857.  @jamesmorrow1646  And all unnecessary.
    1
  18858. More fairy tales. IF Putin wants Moldovia ( and it's a big if) it's only as a strategic measure in the present war. Putin has no ambitions whatsoever to "recreate the Soviet Empire". That is just the bogeyman Western warmongers use in their constant efforts to drum up fear and hatred of Russia. All Putin is doing - and has ever done in twenty years - is to protect Russia's borders and commercial interests from continued Western expansionism.
    1
  18859.  @99solutionsit10  Yes. So?
    1
  18860.  @99solutionsit10  Luckily for Moldova it contains no mineral riches and is useful to Russia only as a bulwark against potential invasion of Russian Ukraine by the West via Romania. And yes, I was very surprised that Putin invaded. I thought his show of strength would have persuaded Ukraine to back down and concede autonomy for Donbass. I think Ukraine would have done so if Western politicians and warmongers had not intervened to persuade them otherwise. (Putin is not my beloved leader, by the way. I am British and as impartial an observer as I can be.)
    1
  18861.  @99solutionsit10  Whatever excuses Russia offers it remains a fact the Putin would not want Moldova were it not for the war in Ukraine. It will be useful ally in the war, that is all. Any takeover will be defensive, not expansionist. Another buffer state.
    1
  18862.  @Liz_for_PM_again  So we really are at war with Russia then?
    1
  18863.  @harrybruijs2614  Yup. We'd all be dead.
    1
  18864.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Such as the entirely sane way we are taking sides in this conflict without acquainting ourselves in any way with the background leading up to it? Is that the sort of sanity you mean? (PS Some of the people in this comments section are as barmy as a box of frogs. Or haven't you noticed?)
    1
  18865.  @thomasselle1110  Thank you. I understand now. So it's our fault then?
    1
  18866.  @Liz_for_PM_again  So you are aware of the fact that our wonderful allies, the Americans, have been bribing the gangsters who run Ukraine for years? And that they have helped fund the civil war in Donbass which has devastated the area and left around 1,500 dead, including many children? That Nazi death squads attached to the Ukrainian army roam the countryside, murdering, raping and looting? You have some fine friends, I must say.
    1
  18867.  @Liz_for_PM_again  What semantic games would those be then? Are they similar to the ones you play in your head that allow you to come over all self-righteous now, while ignoring what has initially caused those bombs to be dropped?
    1
  18868.  @rocketscience4516  Hi Rocket. Ever heard of the Alley of Angels?
    1
  18869.  @mikeclifford7740  And there I agree with you. Putin's patience has run out though, while the Americans and their sinister backers are motivated purely by greed.
    1
  18870. @BEN TWOONEZERO Easier to avoid that a Tomahawk missile though!
    1
  18871.  @Liz_for_PM_again  So the US and Canadian military HAVE been co-operating with Ukrainian armed forces then? And the US trained mercenaries in the Azov Battalion only joined after Trump was elected? I didn't know that. Did he sign an executive order or something? Have you got any links? I do so like to broaden my knowledge. PS There is no such thing as democracy in Ukraine. You ought to ponder the fact that this nice Jewish boy has imprisoned the leaders of the opposition and shut down TV stations which don't toe the line.
    1
  18872.  @Handles_be_dumb  Of which there is a very great deal. And it will eventually be considered in full. Or it least it ought to be.
    1
  18873.  @maggieadams8600  He's small time compared.
    1
  18874.  @blitzwing1  What to? Just Google state senate hearings. Many news channels have archived the whole lot.
    1
  18875.  @abbofun9022  And Russia's answer will be to carry on fighting.
    1
  18876.  @alanwatterson2850  It isn't the numbers which constitute genocide, it's the intention. If the Islamists hide behind innocent civilians it is ultimately their fault that innocent people get killed.
    1
  18877. What an extraordinary channel this is. It's like something out of George Orwell when ignorant people are aroused into a fever of hatred by the repetition of slogans and gain applause for the very fact of their repetition.
    1
  18878.  @ScottishAtheist  What's the majority of 45?
    1
  18879. You've already got one.
    1
  18880.  @Gargamel-n-Rudmilla  Sure. You might get some home leave when it breaks down!
    1
  18881.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  Nothing sudden about it. From the very beginning I have been among those sure that lockdowns and all the other "mitigating measures" were going to do more harm than good. The figures are showing this to be true with excess deaths in all age groups now running higher than during most weeks of the actual pandemic.
    1
  18882.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  How very civil of you! I scarcely know what to say!
    1
  18883.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  A major factor is the ages and life expectancy of the deceased. It's really quite impossible to say how many lives were saved by the measures, since the elderly and frail continued to die. Personally I think it likely that very few were. On the other hand the current seriously worrying trend in increased death rates is affecting people of all ages, and is likely to continue unabated. In terms of years of useful life lost the non-covid deaths are already outstripping the losses accumulated by the pandemic itself.
    1
  18884. What real vote counts?
    1
  18885.  @emm_arr  You tell me if you're so clever. What happens when people who aren't very clever believe what they're told on Western main stream media? You ought to be able to answer that one.
    1
  18886.  @emm_arr  You never do anything except make childish insults. Come back when you have an actual idea.
    1
  18887.  @grahambretman4010  The media was pretty divided as I recall. In any case it was essential, despite the efforts of the EU and traitorious civil servants in the UK to maximise the economic impact.
    1
  18888.  @emm_arr  Name one idea that isn't an insult.
    1
  18889.  @emm_arr  I AM here to reason. You are not. I imagine you are incapable of doing so.
    1
  18890.  @emm_arr  Put another record on.
    1
  18891. As a Briton, only taking an interest in US elections since Trump first got in, I have to tell you guys that your electoral system is riddled with corruption from top to bottom.
    1
  18892.  @MariaMartinez-researcher  The point I am making is that none of you seems to be able to name one of these lies which seem so important to you. You have made a brave effort, but you have named only one "lie" which is not, in fact, a lie but simply a different interpretation. The distinction between killing a baby and allowing a baby to die is pretty vague, wouldn't you say?
    1
  18893.  @topologyrob  How do you know this isn't true? Doesn't count.
    1
  18894.  @Bbenton1959  There was. Lots of it.
    1
  18895. Can there actually be 28 people who "liked" this comment? Drongos for driminals!
    1
  18896. No chance. They gave her a raise
    1
  18897. Ukraine tried it on a bit. Russia saw them off a bit It'll go on like this till one side is exausted and that side will almost certainly be Ukraine. Time everyone grew up a bit, really.
    1
  18898.  @boink800  They'll be back .
    1
  18899.  @boink800  Utterly ridiculous. Losses were nothing like that and Wagner is replacing them with mercenaries from all over the world. The Russian regular army will now take the heat while Wagner, the Chechens and the DPA and LPA wait in reserve for the next phase.
    1
  18900.  @boink800  The feeling is mutual. And the trap was set for the Ukrainians who fell into it , losing many of their best men while losses to the Russian army were absolutely minimal.
    1
  18901.  @boink800  You are such a silly billy! But I like you.
    1
  18902. This is a crude and inaccurate assessment on Phil's part. All Badenoch wants to do is means test pensioners so that the winter fuel allowance might be returned to those who need it, not to ALL pensioners. This is surely better than Labours blanket (ha!) cut which has led to genuine hardship among poorer pensioners.
    1
  18903. @ Means testing for the triple lock is no different to means testing for pensions as a whole. There are various ways by which poorer and more deserving pensioners could be separated from those more fortunate, all varying in cost and efficiency. The winter fuel allowance is NOT means tested for the elderly. Those who currently qualify are merely those generally between 60 and 65 who get Pension Credit as opposed to unemployment benefit if they are out of work, although there may be other smaller categories of those who have somehow managed to avoid paying NI contributions all their lives, either through cunning or perhaps because they are - shall we say - recent arrivals to the country.
    1
  18904. @ Well it was a blanket cut which could well have led to an increase in the sale of blankets.
    1
  18905. @ Still in love with me, I see.
    1
  18906.  @markhackett2302  I'm only contrarian to the views expressed in channels like this one. I can bung a post on GB News or somesuch and get up to a thousand likes. But I'd much rather have decent argument.
    1
  18907.  @stoopsolo1479  Not a bit!
    1
  18908. NO-ones going to be impacted if Russia wins.
    1
  18909. At least Trump recognises that the Russian Federation is NOT the Soviet Union. This is a fact which seems seems to have escaped the attention of many Americans.
    1
  18910.  @evilmiera  It never wanted Kherson, other than to drain Ukrainian resources. It only wants Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  18911.  @ingevankeirsbilck9601  We need to replace most of them. And most of the teachers.
    1
  18912.  @shieh.4743  And Ukraine is a kleptocracy too, run by gangster oligarchs. Joining NATO would have threatened Russia's safety and joining the EU was violently opposed by the people of Donbass, who have suffered from the graft and incompetence of the Kiev government for thirty years. They have also suffered shelling and ground attacks for eight years. More than ten thousand have died. Zelensky's plan to step up this war was one of several reasons which persuaded Putin to invade. And what's a sovereign nation anyway? Ukraine is a made-up country, created around a conference table a mere 31 years ago.
    1
  18913.  @satanicmicrochipv5656  Where's the theory? I'm giving you a list of facts.
    1
  18914.  @dominiquebrasseur2898  It is you who should be embarrassed and ashamed for falling so easily for the lies put out by the US government and the MSM. Try considering the facts. As already pointed out, Ukraine in NATO presents an existential threat to Russia's security. This does not apply so much to the 13 countries which have joined America's little gang since the collapse of the USSR. It is a matter of proximity. Russia has not once in thirty years showed any desire to retake its former satellites. Dangerous rebellions in Chechnya and Georgia have been put down, and that's all. Ukraine has overstepped the mark, not only on account of its flirtation with NATO, but because of a planned escalation of the civil war in Donbass and an apparent attempt to retake Crimea. Crimea is practically all Russian, and Donbass greatly so. Both areas have been subjected to decades of misrule by the corrupt and inefficient Ukrainian government and many would welcome a permanent return to the Russian fold, one way or another. This dreadful war, like so many modern wars, is the direct result of the US meddling in the affairs of other nations. Without CIA involvement these disputes could have been settled without bloodshed. America's foreign policy has become increasingly inept, and this tragedy is a good example of that ineptitude.
    1
  18915.  @joebloggs1317  Ukraine is another string to America's bow, and a far more reliable launch pad than a submarine, for which obviously defensive measures have been prepared. And I'm sure Putin would have taken similar action whenever Ukraine showed signs of making the move. It was a line in the sand for him -and it was crossed.
    1
  18916.  @oasis67  Not at all. The balance of world power has changed. Some future American administration might well weigh up the chances of taking out Moscow before a response attack could be co-ordinated and launched More to the point: what do you think America would do if, say, Russia took out a small city in the Midwest? Think about it it. Would they this weak, knock-kneed administration set about destroying the world -or would they sit down at the conference table pretty damned quick?
    1
  18917.  @satanicmicrochipv5656  What a silly rant. Everything I've said is in the public domain and entirely arguable among anyone that does not rely exclusively on lying news channels like MSNBC and CNN to get their information about the world. Are you totally unaware of the rivalries that have existed between America and Russia since the end of World War II? Can you not grasp the fact that there is vast battle going on to secure the world's energy resources, and that the US and Russia are bitter rivals in this conflict? Have you even heard of the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014? Are you aware of the war in Donbass? Do you not realise that the US and Russia are fighting over the area's vast resources of coal and gas? This is not "clandestine international nastiness" . It is an economic war which you, being I assume an ignorant, ill-informed American, are not expected to know much about, if anything. Thousands of news articles about this conflict have been published, but you ask why no "investigative journalist" has reported on it! As for security agencies -have you any idea how many billions of dollars the CIA has pumped into the pockets of Ukrainian gangsters to secure their support for American interests? Have you heard of BRICS ? Does the name Ifor Kolomoisky mean anything to you? Do you know what the current dollar/rouble exchange rate is? Do you know how many wars, invasions and government overthrows the US and NATO have been involved in over the past thirty years? You are living in a bubble of ignorance, herded like a sheep. Try to find out more about the world you live in before coming out with such pathetic nonsense.
    1
  18918. Support for climate change measures comes from two directions: 1) a sincere desire to reverse the perceived effects of man-man global warming. 2)a sincere desire to make as money as possible by exploiting 1) No guesses which camp Boris and his ilk fall into. COP26 will become, as all previous conferences have been, a mere price-fixing exercise to set the parameters for the profitable exploitation of the biggest scam in history.
    1
  18919. Time to be nice to Mr Putin.
    1
  18920. PMQs are a silly farce and the fact that Badenoch recognises this and doesn't bother much with this charade increases my admiration for her as a politician. (Even then she doesn't seem to do at all badly, from what I can see. The extracts I can bear to watch seem to show an intelligent six-former taking the piss out of the school janitor.)
    1
  18921.  @fredplat467 Liking your own comment again, Fred?
    1
  18922. Your original suggestion was better, The more vaccinated people or unvaccinated healthy young people get covid and recover the quicker the herd immunity threshold is reached.
    1
  18923.  @jdocean1  Your name's not jdocean
    1
  18924.  @briangriffiths937  Er .. by lifting sanctions and offering money?
    1
  18925. @ Behind the lines life goes on. Not only is mining continuing but Mariupol is being extensively rebuilt.
    1
  18926.  @Tania-tr5cb  I am English. I don't get paid for thinking clearly.
    1
  18927.  @aA-ye1cf  Yes. It took a long time. The Ukrainian dead amounted to 116,000 and the Russian dead about 35,000.
    1
  18928. Come now! These aren't imprisonable offences. Starting the war in Ukraine and murdering thousands with the covid response however.....
    1
  18929.  @emm_arr  I am English to the very core. I just happen to support Russia in its conflict with the Great Satan.
    1
  18930.  @emm_arr  What's so weird? It is a country which, under Putin, has dragged itself relatively successfully from the horrors of Communism. Instead of welcoming it with open arms the West, headed by the Great Satan, has continued to demonise it for the simple reason that the American economy requires a state of continual threatened warfare with an identifiable enemy in order to survive.
    1
  18931.  @emm_arr  My original post and my replies to your replies have now been deleted by the YouTube fascist algorithm. Now THAT'S weird!
    1
  18932.  @emm_arr I bow my knee to no man. And Putin's got a good head on his shoulders.
    1
  18933. What would you do about the people whose vaccines have worn off (which they do)and who have caught covid unknowingly and asymptomatically and are spreading it like wildfire? (And before you jump to conclusions, I am NOT an anti-vaxxer.)
    1
  18934.  @bettyframe8044  And in the meantime....
    1
  18935. It'll be a start.
    1
  18936. I thought cases in the US were falling rapidly. Is this not true?
    1
  18937.  @d.russellmoros7841  Even if what you say is true (which it isn't) the situation in most countries has now got far beyond any hope of eliminating covid completely. Neither can any trustworthy evidence be found for any of the measures you mention having any substantial or long-term effect on spread. China's data is totally untrustworthy and in any case there is mounting evidence that large parts of Asian populations have built-in partial immunity due to historic exposure t similar covids which did not reach Europe. The very fact that you are among those who seek to gain cheap political points through criticism of a country's response proves the fragility of your argument. Herd immunity is the only option. All you do by denying this is allow drug companies to prolong the pandemic while making even more obscene profits.
    1
  18938.  @d.russellmoros7841  Some nations' data seems more trustworthy than others. China and the US are both at the top of the list when it comes to massaging figures -which I am sure you must admit is quite easily done. All that aside, I would agree that official responses have inclined to extend the pandemic. The virus will circumvent all but the most draconian prevention measures, and the half-arsed and confused strategies generally undertaken have merely extended the period required for the virus to achieve what it has evolved to achieve - the infection of as many hosts as possible. As for "herd immunity" the term is so ill-defined in many people's minds that I am glad to see it becoming replaced with the more neutral "endemic equilibrium." This is now predicted to occur in many countries quite soon. Basically it just means that sufficient people are now immune in these countries to cut down infection pathways to such an extent that many circulating viruses become non-viable before they can find a new host to infect. Cautious optimism is justified, I think. Case numbers are going to fall in the UK and the US and elsewhere and the gap between cases and severe outcomes will grow even wider. We are the stage now when compulsory vaccination is as mad as lockdowns and masking always have been; namely by introducing temporary barriers to the expansion of the virus they merely put off the inevitable - a condition whereby the virus becomes the victim of its own success and runs out of readily available people to infect. Herd immunity, really.
    1
  18939. You got your psychology degree at the University of Self-delusion I expect.
    1
  18940.  @MartianTom  The hours seem to have slipped by. I am very gratified to have finally met someone with hands-on experience of a real situation in the real world. You must tell me more. My belief? Too much mollycoddling and fine sentiments. Too much worrying about being offended and causing offence. To much legislation of normal human behaviour. I personally enjoy being rude to people and have no wish to deny anyone else this pleasure - especially if it get results.
    1
  18941. He is 100% right. You've all been conned and he knows it.
    1
  18942. Masks are but one factor. Scientists are trying to stop the lockdown madness. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  18943. A grotesque exaggeration! There were a mere 22,000 at the last count and only a small percentage had been sexually assaulted and even fewer tested positive for covid. And the cages are only made of plastic and they even have little teddy bears and things painted on them. The way these fascists go on you'd think it was like Auschwitz or something.
    1
  18944.  @brentwalker3300  Exactly! The more we can squeeze in the better. At least if they're murdered by cartels, sold into slavery or die of starvation on the streets it will happen on American soil. As for rubber bullets and tear gas, US police tend to be quite sparing on the whole. They'll have to watch out for Kyle copycats lurking in the shadows though. And those that survive will certainly vote Democrat out of sheer gratitude, which is a bonus.
    1
  18945.  @chadgaston8615  I don't disagree. But Ukrainians are of the same stock and have the same reputation. They are also developing a reputation for turning out sophisticated propaganda.
    1
  18946. Yup. He'll stop the war in Ukraine and stop Washington war pigs from starting another one. What a disaster!
    1
  18947. Trump is not a racist. Feel better now?
    1
  18948. What lie?
    1
  18949.  @ionnanskilliorus  Whereas the Republicans of today would not have allowed it to happen in thefirst place. (MAGA Republicans I mean, not the Uniparty RINOs.)
    1
  18950.  @ionnanskilliorus  Old-style Republicans and old-style Democrats are completely interchangeable: political stooges controlled by big business and the "intelligence community." Trump supporters are the true voice of America.
    1
  18951.  @DrEgonCholakian  He was talking Zelensky's language. Both Zelensky and Hunter Biden were employed by Ukrainian oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky. The "aid" was military hardware and Zelensky could have dished the dirt if he wanted, but he didn't take the bait. "Genius and savvy" might be colourful terms, but Putin is certainly a highly intelligent and strong leader. The invasion, although extremely regrettable, was forced upon him by American and European intransigence over Donbass, Crimea and NATO expansionism. When diplomacy has failed. war is the only real alternative.
    1
  18952.  @Joshua-mu6px  The GOP pre-Trump was pretty interchangeable with the Dems. As for quitting Afghanistan it wasn't so much that it was done, it is the fact that it was done so very, very badly that counts. Americans still don't seem to realise how much the debacle has lowered their esteem in much of the world. And Trump had done a deal with the Taliban which would have allowed an ordered evacuation with no deaths and no equipment left behind. But Biden's White House blew it.
    1
  18953.  @Joshua-mu6px  You paid for it to be shipped there. And if you think for a moment that Afghanis keep deals without being constantly bribed then you are a bigger fool than I already took you for.
    1
  18954.  @ionnanskilliorus  What a disappointment you are.
    1
  18955.  @montri1699  It doesn't matter what Serbia thinks. It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what I think. All that matters is what Russia thinks- and Russia thinks (with considerable justification)that NATO is just a cover for America's attempts to finally crush it as a nation. As for NATO "not invading any nation, NATO countries have invaded a list of countries as long as your arm. I'm afraid I find the rest of your arguments somewhat confusing. I assume English is not your first language, and although I must commend you for making an excellent effort, I cannot follow much of what you say sufficiently to offer a reasoned response.
    1
  18956.  @ionnanskilliorus  No. Just that you can't seem to respond intelligently.
    1
  18957.  @ionnanskilliorus  There you go again.
    1
  18958.  @SN-sz7kw  Intransigence: refusal to compromise. Does that make it any easier for you? Or is compromise too long a word for you to cope with?
    1
  18959.  @ionnanskilliorus  It is you who is living in a fantasy, one created for you by the legacy media and corrupt politicians.
    1
  18960.  @DrEgonCholakian  I'm in no position to say. But whatever it was it would have been better than this. A sensible discussion of Putin's peace proposals of December last year would have been a start, however.
    1
  18961.  @DrEgonCholakian  Is that so? I though Trump and Kim Jong-un were great chums in the end. It was only after it became clear that the US was now being run by a bumbling senile shoe-in that he started to get fancy ideas again.
    1
  18962.  @jamesmorrow1646  I don't support him, but I understand the grim necessities of survival. There is, incidentally, a war memorial in Donetsk called the Alley of Angels commemorating the children killed by Ukraine in Donbass over the past eight years, many by Ukraine's Azov Battalion which has genuine Nazi origins and whose members wear Nazi regalia.
    1
  18963. Being aggressive to Russia by supporting Ukraine is the only thing which makes Russia a threat to Britain.
    1
  18964. Russian aggression only exists because we are foolishly and needlessly supporting Ukraine in this war.
    1
  18965. As predicted. This is just going to be the latest major balls-up by the Biden administration. Good.
    1
  18966. One of the many advantages to come from Trump's re-election would be the end of NATO. This is one of several reasons why those who actually rule America will not allow him back.
    1
  18967. A travesty! It should surely have been Dr Fauci !
    1
  18968.  @fredo1070  It could just be plain incompetence or bad programming or something. I have a wonderful image in my mind of two or three demented snowflake BBC SJW's fighting in the censorship room about what to let in and what not to.
    1
  18969. Nice bit of backtracking on the TR issue, Nige! It would have been even better if you'd apologised for falsely accusing him of violence against women.
    1
  18970.  @conclaveluminis  I think you'll find that it is sustained artillery barrages which are causing the most damage, and such damage is generally purely incidental to flushing out ground troops and armour. Dollar for dollar, drones are a far better bet for taking out specific targets. (PS. You punctuation needs seeing to. Are you a grocer?)
    1
  18971.  @rockbutcher  Absolutely.
    1
  18972.  @christinacascadilla4473  You poor innocent.
    1
  18973.  @wyringen  It has some very good modern weapons of its own -plus those supplied by N Korea, Iran and others. Ukraine just seems to be getting the West's castoffs so far.
    1
  18974.  @wyringen  But the sanctions aren't working. These components are reaching Russia via an number of routes.
    1
  18975.  @harmless6813  Try thinking about it. A year ago Ukraine had a huge, well-equipped army ready to retake Donbass and Crimea. Now it hasn't.
    1
  18976.  @wyringen  I doubt it will be enough.
    1
  18977.  @harmless6813  This is not true. The US and NATO spent the years between 2015 and 2022 providing equipment and training to Ukraine costing anything between $60 billion and $120billion. That army has now gone. A further $30-$40 billion has been invested to replenish losses. This may be enough for Ukraine to hold the Russians off for a while, but the chances of anything like a major offensive in the near future are pretty slim. Having said that - war is full of surprises!
    1
  18978.  @harmless6813  Opinion is divided.
    1
  18979. No, foreigners are merely branded with a large "F" in the middle of the forehead in these enlightened times.
    1
  18980. Wakeford may have done Boris a bit of a favour. His defection seems to have shocked the rebels so much they are drawing in their horns.
    1
  18981.  @BecomingAPsych  In my mind inevitable" has become downgraded to "very, very likely". Given time, Boris might yet be forgiven - by the party hierarchy if not by the electorate.
    1
  18982. What makes you so sure Russia is the aggressor? It has merely been defending its existing interests.
    1
  18983.  @RCKMSTR92  I now gather that he was supposed to say "reliance " on something, but his teleprompter went wrong and he came up with this brilliant confefe instead. I still think "won't put up with shit no more!" is an excellent campaign slogan though.
    1
  18984. I don't why the rest of the world will hate it. I sincerely hope you are right. Russia and the US should establish cordial relations as soon as possible .
    1
  18985.  @grantnewman4568  What enemy would that be?
    1
  18986.  @AaronOkeanos  What war? Are we in a war?
    1
  18987. Why waste a missile on him? Putin could buy him for a fraction of the cost. All he has to do is beat whatever Zelensky is paying.
    1
  18988.  @TheTruthHz  A false analogy. The house once belonged to "the burglars" and members of their family still live in one of the best rooms.
    1
  18989. @ American.
    1
  18990. @ What burglars? The house once belonged to "the burglars" and members of their family still live in one of the best rooms.
    1
  18991.  @TheTruthHz What does "sovereign" mean when a good chunk of the country want exactly that? Or rather the Russians in the East prefer to be ruled from Moscow than from Kiev?
    1
  18992.  @TheTruthHz  It is extremely doubtful whether has never been a fair election or unbiased referendum in either Ukraine or Russia. So what's your point?
    1
  18993. @ What on earth is a "Kremlin talking point?" The facts are that the disputed areas of Eastern Ukraine have substantial Russian populations and even more significantly, contain immense mineral riches which are largely in the possession of Russian companies. The area is Russian. It's old name is Little Russia. Russia took it over from the Turks and Russians poured into it when coal and later gas and oil and now valuable rare earth minerals were discovered there. Ukrainians only came in from the West after new agricultural methods made the steppe grasslands more fertile. The whole of Ukraine in its present form is largely a Russian construct. The areas in the East were included in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, for administrative reasons and it was a huge mistake for them to be included in the new country of Ukraine, which has become deeply divided as a result. Elections don't come into it. Both Russia and Ukraine are riddled with corruption and there is no way of telling exactly what people want - although there are indications. This war is the result of American and other Western interests wanting to get hold of this mineral wealth of Ukraine, both for its own sake and also to de-stabilise Russia.
    1
  18994.  @TheTruthHz  What on earth is a "Kremlin talking point?" The facts are that the disputed areas of Eastern Ukraine have substantial Russian populations and even more significantly, contain immense mineral riches which are largely in the possession of Russian companies. The area is Russian. It's old name is Little Russia. Russia took it over from the Turks and Russians poured into it when coal and later gas and oil and now valuable rare earth minerals were discovered there. Ukrainians only came in from the West after new agricultural methods made the steppe grasslands more fertile. The whole of Ukraine in its present form is largely a Russian construct. The areas in the East were included in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, for administrative reasons and it was a huge mistake for them to be included in the new country of Ukraine, which has become deeply divided as a result. Elections don't come into it. Both Russia and Ukraine are riddled with corruption and there is no way of telling exactly what people want - although there are indications. This war is the result of American and other Western interests wanting to get hold of this mineral wealth of Ukraine, both for its own sake and also to de-stabilise Russia.
    1
  18995.  @TheTruthHz  The Eastern parts of present-day Ukraine are predominantly Russian and always have been. There is no avoiding that. There is no evidence at all to suggest that "....since then the Kremlin has been pumping misinformation, politicians and population into the eastern areas." The Russians came in far greater numbers in the days of the Industrial revolution and even more were imported during Stalin's industrialisation drive. The people they replaced were not Ukrainians, but Tatars, who were re-located elsewhere, as they were not temperamentally suited to working in mines and factories. The claims made by Russia concerning "de-Russifiation" certainly are true. Kiev made concerted attempts to outlaw the Russian language and traditions. Even more significantly attempts to nationalise the mining and steel-making industries resulted in considerable falls in wages and profits which brought in considerable "buyers' remorse" from those who initially welcomed the idea of transferring allegiance from Moscow to Kiev. I suggest you read Putin's essay on Ukraine/Russian relations published shortly before the invasion. In it he clearly states that - however regretfully - Ukraine must be allowed to turn it's face to the West, but the Ukraine that does this cannot be a Ukraine which contains parts of Russia attached to it by the Bolsheviks for administrative purposes.
    1
  18996. @ The Eastern parts of present-day Ukraine are predominantly Russian and always have been. There is no avoiding that. There is no evidence at all to suggest that "....since then the Kremlin has been pumping misinformation, politicians and population into the eastern areas." The Russians came in far greater numbers in the days of the Industrial revolution and even more were imported during Stalin's industrialisation drive. The people they replaced were not Ukrainians, but Tatars, who were re-located elsewhere, as they were not temperamentally suited to working in mines and factories. The claims made by Russia concerning "de-Russifiation" certainly are true. Kiev made concerted attempts to outlaw the Russian language and traditions. Even more significantly attempts to nationalise the mining and steel-making industries resulted in considerable falls in wages and profits which brought in considerable "buyers' remorse" from those who initially welcomed the idea of transferring allegiance from Moscow to Kiev. I suggest you read Putin's essay on Ukraine/Russian relations published shortly before the invasion. In it he clearly states that - however regretfully - Ukraine must be allowed to turn it's face to the West, but the Ukraine that does this cannot be a Ukraine which contains parts of Russia attached to it by the Bolsheviks for administrative purposes.
    1
  18997. @ The Eastern parts of present-day Ukraine are predominantly Russian and always have been. There is no avoiding that. There is no evidence at all to suggest that "....since then the Kremlin has been pumping misinformation, politicians and population into the eastern areas." The Russians came in far greater numbers in the days of the Industrial revolution and even more were imported during Stalin's industrialisation drive. The people they replaced were not Ukrainians, but Tatars, who were re-located elsewhere, as they were not temperamentally suited to working in mines and factories. The claims made by Russia concerning "de-Russifiation" certainly are true. Kiev made concerted attempts to outlaw the Russian language and traditions. Even more significantly attempts to nationalise the mining and steel-making industries resulted in considerable falls in wages and profits which brought in considerable "buyers' remorse" from those who initially welcomed the idea of transferring allegiance from Moscow to Kiev. I suggest you read Putin's essay on Ukraine/Russian relations published shortly before the invasion. In it he clearly states that - however regretfully - Ukraine must be allowed to turn it's face to the West, but the Ukraine that does this cannot be a Ukraine which contains parts of Russia attached to it by the Bolsheviks for administrative purposes.
    1
  18998.  @TheTruthHz  The eastern regions of present-day Ukraine have a significant Russian population, which has historical roots dating back to the Industrial Revolution. Many Russians migrated to these areas during this time, and more were brought in during Stalin's industrialisation efforts. The native population that was displaced included Tatars, not Ukrainians. Claims of "de-Russification" by Kiev are based on policies that sought to diminish the use of the Russian language and traditions. Efforts to nationalise industries like mining and steel production led to economic challenges and dissatisfaction among those who had initially supported the shift from Moscow to Kiev. For more insight, you might consider reading Putin's essay on Ukraine-Russian relations, published shortly before the invasion. In it, he suggests that Ukraine should have the freedom to align with the West, but not while retaining regions historically linked to Russia.
    1
  18999.  @johnf3885  They lied.
    1
  19000. It's worth remembering that around a sixth of Ukraine's population is ethnically Russian and even more speak Russian as a first language. Any refugees entering Russia will be welcomed with open arms - for propaganda purposes if nothing else.
    1
  19001.  @davidholyoake5767  Wrong. The local law exempts "long-barrelled" weapons which you only have to be 16 to carry. The exemption was designed to allow 16-year olds to carry hunting rifles, but the AR15 measures up to the category.
    1
  19002.  @gloin10  When this "peaceful, sovereign, independent and democratic country" is a treaty-breaking whore of a country whose leaders will sell it to the highest bidder and sanction the ethnic cleansing of its Russian population by self-acknowledged Nazis, and offer it as a missile base for Russia's enemies, the "right" to do something about becomes only to clearly apparent.
    1
  19003.  @mikebegonia6134  If the IRA was wandering the highways and byways of the Republic murdering anyone who spoke English, or if the Irish Government proposed to join the Russian Federation and install nuclear missiles pointing at London then yes, I think the UK would want to do something about it. I don't know what you mean about Austria. The Austro/Hungarian Empire did indeed lay claims to parts of present day Ukraine until the 18th century, as indeed did Sweden. There are few people there of either Austrian or Swedish heritage All of Ukraine, by contrast, was in exclusive thrall to the Soviet Union until 1990 and Russian is the first language of a considerable proportion of the population, especially in the Eastern provinces.
    1
  19004.  @jansix4287  Irony indeed. One might hope that some similar arrangement would be possible vis a vis Donbas and Ukraine. So far though the EU and the US seem to have stirred up more trouble that they have prevented.
    1
  19005.  @gloin10  I wasn't channelling Lavrov. I was there before him. The situation on the island of Ireland and the situation in Ukraine bear certain obvious comparisons, predominantly that of a largely disjoined area of kingdoms subject to invasion from a powerful neighbour, which colonised it. One difference is that separatism has largely resolved the situation in Ireland. Another is that a smaller percentage of Ukrainians speak Russian than Irish speak English. This has led to attempts to effectively ban Russian in the same way that (paradoxically) the English have tried to stop the Irish speaking Gaelic in the past. So the analogy ,such as it is, is apt. Imagine a united Ireland with Gaelic as the official language and where IRA-style military groups go around shooting people who speak English. And that as been happening in Eastern Ukraine where Ukrainian nationalists, who hate the Russians as much as the IRA hate the English, have been allowed to go around shooting people who speak Russian as a first language - which about one-sixth of the total population.
    1
  19006.  @gloin10  It's only an analogy for chrissake! The Russian inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine seem to get no sympathy. How would the Scots Irish be treated if Ireland was united but Britain wanted to claim the Six Counties back? The Russian separatists are treated ten times worse than you might imagine. Ever heard of the Azov Battalion?
    1
  19007. Shirley Porter I have to tell you she is owned by a finance company called We Don't Have Time. Go to their website to find out more. You have been told lies. Think again before it is too late.
    1
  19008. Jack Richardson Aren't you just a little sick of trotting this one out Jack?
    1
  19009. The stresses of being active in public life must surely invite reliance on medication of various kinds. The only seemingly entirely stimulant-free actor seems to be God-Emperor Trump. Diet Coke, excepted , of course.
    1
  19010. It's probably a last minute thing. You walk into the polling booth determined to vote for the new Right-wing party which seems to be what you WANT the Tories to be - and which you told the pollster you would vote for - but then....courage fails. What if you help let the left-wing lunatic in? Down goes the X in its accoustomed place.
    1
  19011.  @Tinfoilhelmets  Check the Internet. Me, I live in Britain.
    1
  19012.  J Kyro  You've obviously been filling in too many job-assessment forms. Give yourself a break.
    1
  19013.  @alanjohnson806  What science? Scientists have been running around pointing in different directions ever since this began. The WHO is in the pocket of the Chinese and Big Pharma's paid stooges are muddying the waters in the pursuit of profit. What's a guy to do?
    1
  19014.  J Kyro  He's one of the most competent ever. The trouble is, he hasn't had to climb up the greasy pole and he has no political debts to pay off. That's why the establishment fears him and why they go to so much trouble to brainwash fools into believing untruths about him.
    1
  19015. My parrot has just died. I'm sure it must have been because of Climate Change. When I get a new one I'm going to name it Greta. Even if it's a boy parrot. That doesn't matter in parrots.
    1
  19016. Bob Sama No! It will be mine forever! (I could die before my new parrot though, so I will leave it to her in my will.) Thankyou for a lovely idea, Bob.
    1
  19017. This is clearly the work of the same nutjobs who have been playing soldiers on the border. This won't stop Russia taking full advantage and using it as an excuse to take the gloves off.
    1
  19018.  @3s0t3r1c  You should ask with what strategic bombers, missiles and drones.
    1
  19019.  @TesterAnimal1 I know my dad stole it from you, but you can't have it back.
    1
  19020. @ They have a whole fleet of bombers intact. Just check online for the stocks they had BEFORE the war. And missiles are constantly replaced - and they haven't even used any of their medium-range multi-warhead missiles, to say nothing of tactical nukes.
    1
  19021.  @terjeoseberg990  Not against the new sea drones, it seems. But there again this is not a naval war to any great extent.
    1
  19022.  @leeii337  And it's still true.
    1
  19023. @ Because it's a new technology. Air defences are geared to deal with supersonic missiles, not slow, low-flying objects. Drones - both in the air and at sea - have changed the shape of modern warfare to some extent. No effective defences have yet been developed.
    1
  19024.  @aznsbd  Or circumvented, as they already are in many instances.
    1
  19025.  @ravenmoon5111  Russia will not attack again once it has secured Donbass.
    1
  19026.  @thegoat11111 As is the case with Ukraine, elements in both Georgia and Chechnya were being persuaded by outside (American) agencies to cut ties with Russia. "Deserve it" is a bit strong but it's hard to see how Russia could be expected to take this without a fight. As to the men you mention the same sort of criteria can be applied. Russia is probably more inclined to bump off dangerous individuals than some other countries, but all countries do it it.
    1
  19027.  @thegoat11111  How about Jeffery Epstein in the US? And Tommy Robinson in the UK is only alive by the grace of God.
    1
  19028.  @JohnJeyaPratama  Putin played a role in the negotiations to that document, but it was actually signed on behalf of Russia by Boris Yeltsin. It is not a treaty, and never was. It is just a record of events.
    1
  19029.  @jjw1987  There are two reasons to invade a territory: to take it and keep it, or to use it as a battleground. The latter is what Russia did . They simply wanted to draw Ukraine away from the southern front and fight them on Ukrainian territory, instead of in Donbass. Hence the 40km convoy. It was bait. There have been great losses on both sides but all Russia wants and has ever wanted is to keep hold of mineral-rich Donbass. This it has now almost done.
    1
  19030.  @jjw1987  Very possibly. But it will be a complete waste of money with tragic knock-on effects. Russia has no territorial ambitions in Europe. Pretending that it has just keeps the Western war machine ticking over.
    1
  19031. @ I think you mistake the unquestioning acceptance of Western propaganda with "understanding.", Russia used ships as launching platforms for missiles, sure. Now they don't because sea drones have made them vulnerable. End of.
    1
  19032. @ It is home.
    1
  19033. Since we don't really know for sure how the other four forces work, adding a fifth one should be interesting. These celestial dynamics sure do put silly old carbon emissions into perspective though.
    1
  19034. Children in a post-vaccinated world will be performing a great service if it is actually true that they infect adults to any great degree. Double vaccinated healthy adults will build up considerable immunity if they are infected and, like kids, at the cost of little more than a runny nose.
    1
  19035. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcxDffEVbO4
    1
  19036.  @ausbrum  Nothing to do with race as much as historical connectivity. You simple cannot ignore the fact that these other countries were created through British expansion and have attitudes and institutions which mirror those of the literally "parent" country.
    1
  19037.  @jonovens7974  Among world religions Islam is one of the most troubling -apart from one in Africa which holds that eating the brains of white men makes you immortal, perhaps. There is nothing inherently wrong in believing in God or deriving one's moral outlook from illustrative stories. What is wrong is the commitment to impose one particular interpretation on the rest of humanity by force. Using extreme emotional blackmail to achieve this objective is equally heinous. Christianity has been guilty of this in the past but has thankfully given up. Islam, as yet, has not. It is a sad commentary too that if I were to mention other aspects of this religion which I find distasteful and frightening, YouTube would delete this post. Patriotism has nothing to do with religion other than that the latter can sometimes be useful in promoting the former. It is, however, no longer an essential component.
    1
  19038.  @rufus1346  Almost certainly!
    1
  19039.  @mariogmajner6549  I would dream of it. I thinking more about being promised 24 virgins in exchange for blowing up a nightclub.
    1
  19040.  @mariogmajner6549  Nothing much.
    1
  19041.  @operationgoldfish8331  Politics is a dirty business, but I think you are mistaken in attributing your average Brexiteer's fear of competition to xenophobia. The reason why so many working class people voted Brexit is because, unlike the pampered middle-class, they have to compete with one another for the bare necessities of life. and would prefer to keep the competition to a minimum. I am suspicious of words ending in "phobia" anyway. Fear is a very rational thing in the first instance, and being afraid of foreigners is entirely natural, as is being afraid of the Religion of Peace. Arachnophobia is billed as being afraid of spiders - which is silly in most instances, but not in the case of tarantulas. Discernment is what is required and that is a very rare factor in politics, I find.
    1
  19042.  @operationgoldfish8331  1) It is not your individual perception of what EU membership means which counts. If is that of the mass of the working class. To many the mathematics are simple: if people are allowed to enter from foreign countries who will work more cheaply than they do then their wages will become static, or may even be reduced -as has happened in your personal case, apparently. Nazis do not enter into the equation. Tony Blair must be a Nazi according to your equation though, since he threw open the doors to immigration. According to your logic multiculturalism is part of Nazi plot to devitalise the working class. 2) What exactly is this "crap" you are talking about? Are you suggesting a reduction in the number of people from Commonwealth countries who are allowed to work here? That might be a good idea or it might not, but it is a question which does not involve the EU in any way. 3)A visceral fear of foreigners is one thing. A fear of what they might DO to you is another. As stated above, the working class fear if immigration is just that: a fear of immigration NOT of the actual people who are immigrating. Britons are generally very welcoming towards foreigners as individuals once they are here. (Far more so than Ukrainians as it happens.) 4) A EU army? Every step the EU has taken has been towards forming a federal state. I am assured by some Europhiles that my misgivings are unfounded, because political unification has always been the aim. And it clearly has. 5)The economic effects of withdrawal from the EU seem to have been greatly exaggerated. We expected a bumpy ride and we're getting it -but that's all. The poor are always with us but their number has not increased or its severity become more pronounced as a result of withdrawing from Europe. 6) We are not part if Europe. Europe does not exist, other than as a geographical convenience. The idea that fiendish Putin deliberately weakened the EU by creating Brexit with the aid of Farage in order to weaken the EU so he could invade Ukraine made me laugh out loud. Just think what you're saying! Putin invaded Ukraine mainly because he was justifiably concerned that it would join the other 13 countries which have joined NATO since 1990 and be militarised against Russia, but part of his concerns are that EU membership would adversely effect long-standing economic ties between the two countries. 7) Ukraine is not a "free nation". Like Russia it is a kleptocracy run by gangsters, many of whom are in the pockets of American imperialists. About a sixth of the country has been involved for eight years in a bloody civil war because the people there are Russian and want to secede. Bribery will get you whatever results you want in any election. Zelensky has closed down three TV stations which broadcast against him and imprisoned the leaders if the opposition. Sound like a free country to you? 8) Get rid of the Tories and what do you get? A few years of chaos as idealistic virtue signallers quarrel over which of them is the better person, that's what. I would dearly love to see the Tories replaced by an intelligent, committed Labour Party. But such a thing does not exist
    1
  19043.  @dsutherlarach  I will, if I may, refer you to my answer to Operation Goldfish elsewhere in this thread which I think covers most of the points you make. I am, as it happens, a reluctant supporter of Brexit since the economic advantages of membership may well outweigh the disadvantages. I simply do not know. What I do know, however, is that its political ambitions will inevitably lead to war, as has indeed proved to be the case. As you correctly point out, Johnson is joining in with all the sabre-rattling along with all the other fools, but I will not do so and I can only hope there are sufficient men and women of good sense among our politicians to do the same. So far only a small Labour contingent has come forward, but I am sure there are many Conservatives who feel the same way. We are innocent abroad, I'm afraid, when it comes to meddling in the politics of distant lands.
    1
  19044.  @dsutherlarach  As the Empire showed, the only way to deal with the political situations in foreign lands is to step boldly forward, preferably while heavily armed. The situation today is somewhat different, as I'm sure you'll agree. If you have colonisation in mind (as have both NATO and the EU) then you must step discreetly forward, armed with very large amounts of cash. If this fails you can always place snipers on rooftops to fire into protesting crowds, or get your latest puppet PM to close down TV stations and imprison leaders of the opposition. You can also help finance a civil war which drags on for years and impoverishes a large section of the country you wish to own. In Ukraine, while all these steps have been dutifully followed, the unique historical relationship between Russia and Ukraine has been ignored, and while Russia has been grudgingly willing to watch its daughter/wife/mother/sister being seduced by the CIA and the newly tumescent EU, it will not put up with seeing her shagged on its own doorstep.
    1
  19045.  @operationgoldfish8331  Oddly enough I find myself in agreement with much of what you say. I hold no truck with the present government and, as I think I have already said, I would dearly love to see Labour resume its traditional role of keeping the worse Tory hyenas out of things as far as possible. You seem to agree that unrestricted immigration has an effect on wage levels, yet in practically the same breath you say your own reduced circumstances are due to "austerity." Surely the government can only keep public sector wages low by ensuring a supply of cheap foreign labour? I also agree with you that playing the immigration card so heavily was tactical, but given the facts as we know them, has it no relevance? In any case this does not enter into my own assessment as my concerns are and always have been geopolitical. and this rather tends to put the economic and labour-relations aspects of EU membership in the shade. As you can imagine I have many arguments with Europhiles and you do seem to be quite sharply divided on the question of federalist intent. To my mind the battle has been fought, in the public arena at least, pretty much exclusively on economic issues. There are those, like you, who seem to say that this so, and that the EU is purely a trading bloc. Others insist that political unity has been the intention from the word go. I have to say that the latter view seems to be prevailing at the moment and it certainly conforms with the organisational structure of the EU. To put it simply I do not wish my grocer to dictate how I run my private affairs, and even if this means dearer groceries, then that's how it has to be. I especially don't want to be expected to don a tin hat and pick up my gun because my grocer wants to expand into another town and is being prevented from doing so. The "we" who were expecting a bumpy ride are those of us who realised that the EU would not let us go willingly, and would place every economic obstacle inn our path. Brexit is a long-term project and if it has been sold to the public as a quick fix -well that's politics. As far as I'm concerned the Council of Europe and the European Declaration of Human Rights can go hang. If the stench of war drifts across the channel Britain has no obligation to respond. Comparing GB with Ukraine is absurd. Ukraine is a sovereign nation on paper only. At least a sixth of it wants to break away and join Russia, All elections and referenda are fixed and the current President has jailed the opposition leaders and closed down TV stations which dare speak out against him. He is a puppet of the CIA in a far more realistic sense than the Tories are puppets of Putin.
    1
  19046.  @operationgoldfish8331  Well, we are going to have to agree to differ on some points, but I respect your knowledge of EU procedures which is far greater than mine. At the end of the day though membership of the EU certainly seems to involve more than membership of a trading bloc, certainly as far as many idealists are concerned. And it is this which worries ne, I did not vote in the referendum since getting cheaper groceries is as important to me as anyone, but I was (and still am) suspicious of what I see to be the EU's imperialistic motives, despite your reassurances. And so far I see little evidence of grinding poverty resulting from our exit, The hysterical idiocy of lock-downs has created so much damage that whatever the ill-effects of Brexit they have been largely submerged beneath it. Your views on the health service are very cogent once again, but I think there's more to it than the "Tories bad!" mantra. I have some experience of the NHS myself having worked as a theatre porter for a couple of years and seen it in action. In some ways it reflects the failings of both the free-market system and the socialist-style centrally organised system. There are too many managers and too many of them are not sophisticated enough to deal with the glib salesmen who come a-knocking. I want it to survive as a basic service for all, but it needs a thorough re-vamp. The amount of waste is terrible.
    1
  19047.  @operationgoldfish8331  Well that certainly explains your familiarity with the techniques of EU administration! At least next time I get into a barney with Europhiles who want a European army and claim political unification was always the aim, I will be able to contradict them. I may even cut and paste you, just to impress them. I hope you don't mind. My two years with NHS was twenty or so years ago and old hands then were making similar complaints to yours. Anyhow, this has been an interesting and informative conversation and I thank you for it. Best wishes.
    1
  19048.  @jimflagg4009  It isn't the people of Donbass who are fighting. It's the Ukrainian army. The people of Donbass have their own armies, trained by Wagner PMC. They have been fighting Ukraine since 2014.
    1
  19049.  @malcolmgibson5088  Russia has something over 60% of Donetsk and is slowly advancing northwards. How long it will take to reach the border depends largely upon how much remains of Ukraine's military capability.
    1
  19050.  @malcolmgibson5088  Looking at a map, 60% seems about right. What do you make it?
    1
  19051.  @malcolmgibson5088  I really don't know what map you're looking at. I just checked the Financial Times version and I stick firmly to my 60% and growing.
    1
  19052.  @jonasmelander  It is no lie. It is well documented.
    1
  19053.  @jonasmelander  I wouldn't disagree. Many civilians were caught in the crossfire, however, and there is no doubt that Ukraine instigated a campaign of torture and intimidation against separatist sympathisers - or indeed anyone they caught even speaking Russian. I wouldn't disagree either that the separatists have responded in kind, and that Ukrainian sympathisers are now treated in a similar fashion.
    1
  19054.  @jonasmelander  I'm not disputing that Russia sowed the seeds of the Donbass rebellions - but those seeds fell on fertile ground. Let's face it: Ukraine and Russia are both oligarchies and its people have to decide which set of oligarchs they prefer. In the case of Donbass I think a substantial number of people there, given their ethnicity and heritage, favour the Russians. They may have just cause, since the economy and wages have dropped considerably since Kiev took over. The root of the problem is, of course, the vast mineral wealth of the region and who has the most right to benefit from it.
    1
  19055.  @elitezafficobra2288  Same difference.
    1
  19056.  @Judyteen  So what is correct then? What category of person above pensionable age qualifies for pension credit?
    1
  19057.  @emm_arr  It is a race issue - at least from the point of view of the people who are supposed to bring these people to justice.
    1
  19058. An interesting fact is that the ICC prosecutor who is taking Putin to court, Karim Ahmad Khan, is the brother of Imran Ahmad Khan, a convicted paedophile and former British MP who was released from jail less than halfway through his sentence, thanks to his brother's intervention. This is probably irrelevant, but it gives a certain grotesque symmetry to the allegations against Putin, who has done nothing other than remove children from war zones, and from the internationally notorious hell-holes which are Ukraine's orphanages and "care homes."
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  19059.  @wom_Bat  They'll have electricity. The Ukrainians won't.
    1
  19060. This is total bollocks.
    1
  19061.  @Asdfgghhhjj  I suppose you're referring to the Minsk agreements which the West used to buy time to build a new Ukrainian army. Russia's position remains broadly the same, as I see it. Then they wanted recognition of Crimea as Russian (which it is) and for the two Donbass republics to become independent, thus enabling them to maintain commercial relations with Russia. Ukraine has to keep out of NATO of course. The problem now is that Russia has laid claim to two other oblasts in Eastern Ukraine as well as the two which it wanted originally to be independent, and occupies about half of each of them. They have representatives in the Russian parliament and I can't see Putin wanting to give them up, but they might be bargaining chips I suppose.
    1
  19062. @ Very seriously. Of all the idiocies pumped out to justify this needless war, facile comparisons with the situation in Europe in the 1930s are the most irritating and damaging. Utterly childish!
    1
  19063.  @paulcjcross  Democracy has failed. Its instruments are in the hands of warmongering crooks. Compared to this the dictatorship of an elderly gent with a sense of humour and a fine and pragmatic sense of national pride is as a warming wind across the icy waste.
    1
  19064. @ Not in the slightest. Democracy has failed, its instruments commandeered by crooks and warmongers. Trump is like a warming wind blowing across an icy waste.
    1
  19065. @ Not a bit.
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  19066. @ Peace in our time - or something very close to it - would have been entirely feasible if the Americans and Blackrock hadn't persuaded the Ukrainians to sacrifice themselves. Donbass should have been excluded from the EU deal and there would have been no war.
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  19067. @ The similarities are entirely spurious. In both instances the justifications are entirely understandable and indeed, reasonable - and "sovereignty" is just a word. You can't create countries simply by drawing lines on maps. The enormous differences in the ages, character and ambitions of the two men make the comparison entirely false. Putin has no intention of invading Europe, and bears no resemblance to Hitler in age , personality or intellectual prowess. These are just myths designed to gain popular support for what is basically a hostile takeover bid of the highly profitable and largely Russian mining industry in Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  19068. @ The enormous differences in the two situations and the character and ambitions of the two leaders involved make this "startling similarity" entirely spurious. Contrary to popular belief, history rarely repeats itself. It is a sign of intellectual weakness to draw analogies between past and present events. Childish, in fact.
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  19069. @warheadsnation The enormous differences in the two situations and the character and ambitions of the two leaders involved make this "startling similarity" entirely spurious. Contrary to popular belief, history rarely repeats itself. It is a sign of intellectual weakness to draw analogies between past and present events. Childish, in fact.
    1
  19070.  @Nonexistent_Hero  No-one who cannot assess the present situation without harking back to the dim and distant days of German Nazi expansionism is worth arguing with. Analogies are foolish, and few more foolish than this popular excuse for people to stop thinking.
    1
  19071. Lockdowns and tracking have no appreciable effect. Facemasks provide only slight protection. It would be the height of irresponsibilty to use any vaccine currently being developed without extensive testing first. This could take years. The only answer is the use of prophylactic drugs such as hydroxychloroquine which when used appropriately prevent the virus from replicating.
    1
  19072.  @ADifferentBias  Funny idea of democracy. Every vote is rigged, one way or another. And even if it is true (which it isn't) the democratically-elected president was forced to flee following a US-led coup in 2014 - one of the main causes of the present war.
    1
  19073.  @jamesmorrow1646  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAEhD7YlYe0
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  19074. HS2 was a scam from the outset.
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  19075. Turns out the guy with the hammer is a nutjob from Berkley who supports nudism, gay rights and BLM. Not a typical Trump supporter I would say.
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  19076.  @rocketscience4516  Hello Dale.
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  19077.  @rocketscience4516  Damn. You're an honest man, so I believe you. No. I'm not into swapping Nazis - they're all as bad as one another. Right now I'm more into Zelensky's millions salted away in offshore accounts and his relationship with arch-oligarch Igor Kolhomoiski. Also found some interesting videos of the Azov Battalion shooting down civilians trying to leave Mariupol.
    1
  19078.  @dalecrockersotherbraincell2538  Your style is certainly ringing bells. "Brain cells" and "nauseating drivel" are terms I've heard before from someone. The trouble is I have upset so many people lately!
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  19079.  @rocketscience4516  What an utter coward you are.
    1
  19080.  @teddyboysdontknit810  In which Brexit only plays a minor part. The catastrophic idiocy of covid lockdowns, the catastrophic idiocy of net zero and the catastrophic idiocy of our interference in the domestic affairs of the former Russian Empire are what will bring us to our knees.
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  19081. Why is there a constant assumption that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine? He just wants Donbass and to make Crimea secure. That done, his troops are going to be very, very hard to dislodge.
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  19082. War is a crime anyway. For eight years Ukraine has been waging a war on its own people in the East where horrors such as these have been committed on a regular basis. https://youtu.be/bMKPz2j2oWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJH4Y8ZTrBo
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  19083. I simply can't get my head around this relentless absurd anti-Putin propaganda while you continue to ignore the Russian breaching of Ukraine's defences on the front line. What is the point of all this?
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  19084. Russian has not invaded a sovereign country. It is liberating Russian people from imprisonment in a false country drawn on a map by American imperialists.
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  19085. No children have been "stolen". They have been sent to Russia by their Russian parents, who have had to pretend they were kidnapped in order to avoid being treated as collaborators by the Ukrainians.
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  19086.  @_.YouTubeBad_.  Size isn't everything.
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  19087.  @_.YouTubeBad_.  Oh yeah? Sitting on top of half a million tonnes of lithium is it,?
    1
  19088. Don't get too exited. These victories are likely to be hollow and short-lived.
    1
  19089. Most idiots.
    1
  19090. Don't talk bollocks.
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  19091. So we allow a Communist rebellion and do nothing about it? Is that the plan?
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  19092.  @lellyparker  These studies are two a penny. All scientific opinion before the political decision to mandate masks was taken was firmly against their use by the general public. If the decision was taken as a result of a change in the science it might be more convincing. But it wasn't. The "science" has been bought in to support the politicians.
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  19093.  @MercurialMann  But not convincingly. There are many other factors at play - especially genetic resistance.
    1
  19094.  @daviddrake5991  The fully-fitted, high-spec masks worn in hospitals may be of some use, but cloth masks and those little blue jobbies are worse than useless. Anyway, around 20%of surgeons in a 2015 survey said they only wore masks in theatre because it seemed expected of them.
    1
  19095.  @lellyparker  The CDC flows with the tide. At the start of the pandemic they published a study expressing a directly contrary view. They do what the government tells them.
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  19096.  @slavaukraini404  And it has never docked there before?
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  19097. Because it isn't?
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  19098.  @mikemiller3069  We could go on like this all day.
    1
  19099.  @mikemiller3069  When Trump says "Pass the ketchup" is that a lie?
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  19100.  @mikemiller3069  I thought he might want to put it on a burger. Shows what I know.
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  19101.  @mikemiller3069  Honestly? Wow! I learn something new every day. I've never eaten one myself.
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  19102. @ No chance.
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  19103. At last America seems to be coming to its senses after years of political abuse of the justice system.
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  19104. Good.
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  19105. Russia is winning hands down. If NATO goes in any stronger it will mean World War III, and it won't just be Ukrainians who are dying to save the world for hypocrisy.
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  19106.  @sgtsnokeem1139  You really must forget this 3 day thing. It was just a catchphrase designed to persuade Russian conscripts to go into battle. It was, in fact, designed for the somewhat simple-minded. It still seems be working
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  19107.  @rtqii  Are you sex-starved by any chance?
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  19108.  @sgtsnokeem1139  Russia invaded Ukraine - in order to prevent Ukraine invading Donbass, which was in the hands of separatist rebels. Ultimately America is to blame for this war, as for so many others.
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  19109.  @sgtsnokeem1139  I don't suppose it was necessarily Putin who had the idea - such strategies are quite common among the military in all countries. A certain amount of optimism is required before going into battle.
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  19110.  @sgtsnokeem1139  Russia liberated Crimea in 2014. The army, the navy and the police went over to Russia almost to a man. The Russian population of Russian Crimea (which is almost everybody) welcomed the "invaders" with open arms. Putin has since spent billions of roubles restoring the province after decades of Ukrainian neglect. NATO came into being to protect the West against the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union.
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  19111. We have though. That colourful nutter in Sheffield who then became an MEP. What happened to him?
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  19112. Hmm, now if Derek Chauvin had been a black cop....
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  19113. Does the name Timothy Simpkins ring any bells?
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  19114. Gaza is a territory purchased piecemeal from its Ottoman owners by Jewish Zionists. It was handed over voluntarily to Arabs in an effort to ensure peace.
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  19115.  @jrivera5272  Get a life you pathetic, deluded, self-pitying clown.
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  19116.  @jrivera5272  None of this true. It's just Democrat/Commie BS designed to keep you feeling sorry for yourself.
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  19117. Congratulations on your informed and unbiased coverage of this event, It surely marks a turning point. Now, for perhaps the first time in the Western world, people will be able to see how a spontaneous eruption of popular feeling in our young citizens is of far greater significance than so-called "facts" peddled by scientists whose research, however rigorous, goes against the will of the people!
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  19118.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Largely through the air in the form of aerosols. These are impossible to totally contain and it needs only a relatively small percentage of them to evade the rather pathetic obstacles we place in their path for them to carry on merrily infecting and reproducing in their thousands of billions.
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  19119.  @Liz_for_PM_again  Idiocy prevailed. An umbrella full of holes doesn't keep off the rain.
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  19120.  @rocketscience4516  You hear voices? Are visited by aliens? This is all starting to add up.
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  19121.  @Liz_for_PM_again  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 as opposed to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is still quite a lot.
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  19122.  @rocketscience4516  I have a go-to guy when it comes to mathematical matters. Name of Professor Norman Fenton. If you want to understand why your undoubted ability to count on your fingers has little to do with the rules of probability and questions of risk assessment I suggest you put the aliens back in your toy cupboard and check on one or two of his videos. The latest is especially good.
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  19123.  @rocketscience4516  Ah well, as long as you are comfortable in your world of delusion and arrogance, who am I to deny you peace? Back you go to talking to your toys then.
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  19124.  @Yeknodathon  Goa? Uttar Pradesh? Singapore? Japan? Vietnam?
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  19125.  @Yeknodathon  It is always difficult to know what tone to take when talking to small children.
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  19126.  @jamonit7169  Heavyweights? Those two? Gimme a break!
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  19127.  @Yeknodathon  You (and presumably Reuters) have failed to take note of the fact that in early August Dr. Haruo Ozaki, Chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, made a widely publicised speech recommending the use of Ivermectin. He is greatly respected and although the PDMA did not put Ivermectin on their list (doubtless out of fear of upsetting Big Pharma thugs) people in their tens of thousands ordered it in from India. The wave broke around twelve days after Dr Ozaki's speech. Delta waves at that time in several Asian locations have followed similar patterns. Emboldened by the example of Uttar Pradesh where, despite the usual protestations from Big Pharma lackeys, many senior health officials have been handing out Ivermectin in specially designed kits, people in Singapore, and Vietnam followed the same procedure, official approval or not. In Goa the government not only approved of the strategy but actually bought in supplies and handed them out to everyone over the age of 18. In all cases the Delta wave broke about twelve days after the first dosages began.
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  19128.  @rocketscience4516  You really have surrendered, haven't you? I expect the story you refer to is just another of the MSM's convoluted takes on the Maricopa audit. I'm really not that bothered. As I think I may have said to you before, history has overtaken the 2020 fraud and it will be left to history to unpick the complexities of the chicanery involved. Why do you always believe what you are told by authority figures, by the way? You are so easily fooled by simple conjuring tricks. People like you remind me of puppy dogs who can be persuaded into their kennels simply by banging on a tin plate with a spoon. My policy is to disbelieve everything I am told, especially when an ulterior motive for the telling of it can easily be discerned.
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  19129.  @Yeknodathon  Just another Big Pharma lackey then. And you're not even getting paid for it. What a sucker you are!
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  19130.  @Yeknodathon  Big Pharma controls the public health of the entire planet, more or less. It is motivated solely by profit and has control over all research and all publications relating to that research. Any research which might affect profitability is discarded and any real world data which may undermine the profitability of its products undergoes immediate and relentless disparagement, with rigged trials and skewed data circulated to professional publications and, through them, to the general media. This is why you believe what you believe about Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. There is every likelihood that as prophylactics and palliatives they could have knocked holes in the pandemic more than a year ago. But no. They are cheap, out of licence, and present a threat to the multi-billion profits being made out of vaccines. So now brainwashed idiots like you go around repeating childish jokes about horsepaste. It's quite sickening really.
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  19131.  @Yeknodathon  I was a chihuahua a little while ago. What's going on here?
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  19132.  @rocketscience4516  There is "no significant evidence" of this organisation being qualified to make any such judgement though, is there? They are lawyers for chrissake and with all the Soros money Dominion has to throw around it could find enough lawyers to prove that there was "no significant evidence" for the existence of the moon. This is America, don't forget. O J Simpson didn't kill anybody and Epstein hanged himself with toilet paper. Don't you ever get tired of being so painfully naive, Rocket?
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  19133.  @markwelch3564  I admire your optimism. The situation in America is truly appalling. With Fauci, the CDC , the FDA and the MSM all dancing to Big Pharma's tune the poor souls are living in a world of utter fantasy. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, while independent research does exist, if it were to come up with anything to undermine any of Big Pharma's projects the guns would be run out and the researchers and their work blown to smithereens.
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  19134.  @rocketscience4516  And if course it is entirely co-incidental that, until it was discovered there and moved out quickly, Dominion's world HQ, in Toronto, was in a Soros-owned building the other tenants of which were all Soros--affiliated left-wing and environmentalist pressure groups? George Soros is a genius. I love him to death. Have you read "The Alchemy of Finance"? What a book! It really gives the game away. He's backtracked since then, obviously realising that his ego had got the better of him, but the evidence of reflexivity, feedback loops and all the rest of it are very evident in the world today. You yourself and your conditioned responses are evidence of it. You are no more than a fish in a bowl, twitching when a low electric charge is applied to its environment. There is, of course "no significant evidence" that you actually exist, so there's no need to worry too much. "Corporate ties." Jesus!
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  19135.  @rocketscience4516  Weak, Rocket. Very weak.
    1
  19136.  @rocketscience4516  Chicken
    1
  19137.  @markwelch3564  And yet China and Europe have entered wholeheartedly into a strategy of suppressing any measures to suppress covid, other than to go into hiding until the miracle vaccines come along. They have come along. And they are far from miraculous. In the meanwhile Asian countries are fighting off covid with "horse medicine" - which seems to work just as well, if not better.
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  19138.  @markwelch3564  It's just that China's version of "going into hiding" is a little more extreme than ours.
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  19139.  @markwelch3564  My point is that nearly all counties in the world have had their pandemic responses governed by the idea that lockdowns (plus other relatively futile mitigation measures) are all that can be done until the vaccines come along. China's lockdowns are more draconian, and so probably a bit more effective. The vaccines have come along and they more or less suck. All we can do now is hope and pray that Omicron will live up to optimistic predictions and confer widespread immunity without killing or damaging too many people. My overarching point, I suppose, is that the opportunity to profit from vaccines has largely fuelled the entire response to the pandemic, causing other potential solutions to be trampled underfoot.
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  19140.  @markwelch3564  But these vaccines come into a very different category. Vaccines against coronaviruses have been notoriously difficult to produce and the RNA techniques, creating an immune response to much lesser proportion of the virus' DNA, doesn't seem to have been terribly successful. The effects wear off very quickly and although flu vaccines have to be altered to deal with annual strains they are far, far more effective and last far longer. The vaccines we have spent a year and more waiting for are not by any means the silver bullet to end this mess. And their manufacturers have known this all along, I'm sure - as well as knowing there will be a not unsubstantial number of severe reactions, including the most severe of all.
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  19141.  @markwelch3564  Even so there is little doubt that potential alternatives have been systematically and unfairly denigrated. Who knows how much hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin could help? The harmless drugs, for which there is a huge body of real world and anecdotal favourable evidence, have been subjected to hate campaigns, funded by Big Pharma. Even immunity through infection has been incorrectly labelled as "short-lived" in order that energies are concentrated purely upon the production and dissemination of highly profitable vaccines. It wasn't journalists and politicians who were behind this egregious behaviour. It was Big Pharma.
    1
  19142.  @markwelch3564  Vaccines are immensely profitable and I don't think even Big Pharma could get away with selling out-of-patent drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin under new names - although a couple of the new palliatives they are flogging bear remarkable similarities, so I'm told. Vaccines are the marketable product and they can sell them by the million to governments. They even have built in obsolescence, like cars; the money these people are making out of fear and suffering is absolutely obscene.
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  19143. The Dems seem like zombies who can only stagger into some semblance of life when smelling the blood of Donald Trump.
    1
  19144. Things are so bad that a Trump takeover of crippled Britain might not be such a terrible idea. Elon for PM?
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  19145. There is every chance hr mother was killed by Ukrainians.
    1
  19146.  @oven2066  You've really cheered me up! I've done no research at all but so many people seem to be bleating on about this I just assumed it was true. Thanks!
    1
  19147.  @owenhall5742  I feel genuinely humbled. I didn't realise highly trained psychiatrists such as yourself were wandering in the comments sections.
    1
  19148.  @owenhall5742  Ah ! To be a superior being living in a world of the blindingly obvious! I envy you Owen, I really do.
    1
  19149. ​ @owenhall5742  Honestly though, don't you think this knee-jerk reaction could be a bit over the top? Obviously in the early stages, when detailed information was unobtainable, a total shutdown wasn't too bad an idea. But now more information is becoming available don't you think it's possible that the politicians and the "experts" have painted themselves into a corner, as it were? Rather than disparaging each other's mental health, perhaps we should consider each other's opinions.
    1
  19150. This is often intentional. It discourages retreat.
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  19151.  @susansantapola  Why unsustainable? What desperate times?
    1
  19152.  @BigHenFor  I agree with all you say. It's not just the money and £56k a year isn't really enough to counterbalance these difficulties. £70k is more like it.
    1
  19153.  @jlcTTT  Wages will find the appropriate level. Drivers' wages represent only a relatively small proportion of food costs, and with supermarket chains turning in profits of £200 billion + a year any wage increases will be easily absorbed. Indeed, it is quite probable that food prices in some areas will decrease as the supermarkets compete for dominance in a changing market. Those companies which pass on the increased costs to customers are likely to do worse than those which choose to absorb them. Although an increase in the minimum wage has certain attractions, it has to be offset by substantial tax and regulatory concessions to small businesses which would otherwise not survive if forced to pay it. By contrast to the changing situation I outlined in my post, truck drivers' wages in Europe remain static at an average of around £31,000pa. The food and fuel shortages in the UK, such as they are, have undoubtedly been precipitated by the sudden removal of quite substantial numbers of foreign workers all at once, but at least this means that the necessary adjustments will have to be rapid also.
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  19154. Boris and Nigel both have more sense than to walk into a virtue-signalling orgy staged by the bonkers Lefties of Channel 4. I hope they also have more sense than to actually believe in the C02 claptrap. Sadly they either have to pay lip service or ignore it since so many silly voters have been brainwashed by pseudo science into accepting the doom-laden prophesies of AGW. Not for much longer. Scientists are now back-tracking like fury following the transparent exaggerations of the IPCC and the lunacies of Extinction Rebellion and the Greta Thurnberg embarrassment. Fingers crossed for the coming of the Maunder Minimum and an end to this humiliating madness!
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  19155. Stupid.
    1
  19156. What's shocking? A few documents with classified ratings got mixed up with Trump's personal papers - so what?
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  19157. What advances are these precisely? As far as I can see the Ukrainians have merely trotted across a few undefended potato fields.
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  19158. Trump and Putin are just jockeying for position. All that has to be settled is the extent of Russia's territorial gains, and how much the new borders will become internationally recognised. Both men are probably in broad agreement but Trump has the problem of selling the deal to a brainwashed US public.
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  19159.  @dpelpal  The Ukrainians have fought very bravely, but without the billions of dollars of equipment donated by the West they wouldn't stand a chance. Have you ever wondered, by the way, why the West is financing this war to such an extent?
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  19160.  @dpelpal  A poor country with a large, foreign-equipped and trained army.
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  19161.  @johnnybrown689  I don't think the world is laughing at Russia at all - or at least people who have the sense to analyse the situation aren't. There are, however, very many of you out there who believe a version of events fed to you by the Western media and who are cackling in a silly way. War is no laughing matter though.
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  19162. Without Russia, Ukraine would not exist in its present form. Large chunks of it, including Crimea, were simply stuck on to it by the Russians during the Soviet era. They were Russian before and it looks like they will become Russian again.
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  19163. Do the Democrats have ANY strategy at all apart from constant denigration of Donald Trump? Asking for a friend.
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  19164. No-one, least of all the Russians, has any idea how the Russian economy works. But somehow it does.
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  19165.  @JH-lf4ql  I really must get a new keyboard! The letters on mine are quite worn away from overuse!
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  19166.  @shadowbandedfortruthspreading  No, it grants rights. It does not pretend they have a separate existence.
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  19167.  @nilsalmquist802  I am quite content with the protections offered by the traditions and legislations offered by my own country. I neither need nor am happy with foreign interference in these matters.
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  19168.  @shadowbandedfortruthspreading  All it does is to remove certain powers from the King and redistribute them among the nobility. There is no suggestion that those rights and privileges are immutable. As you rightly say, it creates a form of government which rules by legislation, which means of course that legislation may be altered - which is what is happening now with regard to the cross-channel immigrants. The concept of human rights is as ill-founded as the concept of the divine right of kings.
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  19169.  @shadowbandedfortruthspreading  The Bill of Rights consists of amendments to the Constitution which further proves the point that "rights" are not divinely granted nor immutable, but are, as I said originally, privileges granted by legislation and can be amended or withdrawn as circumstances dictate. They are bits of paper. They are not engraved on tablets of stone by God, nor embedded in human consciousness by evolution.
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  19170.  @shadowbandedfortruthspreading  I think the trouble might be that you are not explaining things very well. You appear to believe that "human rights" somehow exist beyond the legislation which encompasses them and, in fact creates them, such as they are. If this is an incorrect assessment of your view then please tell me. If it is a correct assessment then you are plainly wrong, and if it is Neil Oliver's view, then he is wrong too. I doubt it is though. Magna Carta, especially in its later forms, certainly provides the basis of a system of justice and the "rights" it establishes are still reflected in contemporary jurisprudence to some degree; but they only exist insofar as legislation exists to outline them. This means that legislation can be introduced to amend or alter them if required - which is what I said in the first place.
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  19171.  @shadowbandedfortruthspreading  Quite a number of British rulers have tried to get rid of Magna Carta - or Magna Farta as Oliver Cromwell amusingly called it - but only three or so of its original precepts remain enshrined in British Law and none of them, I think, gives a bunch of foreigners the right to grant another bunch of foreigners the right to invade our land without redress.
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  19172. This is but one of many of Covid 19's peculiarities. A possible explanation is that the virus needs a particular plasma/blood environment in order to survive and prosper to the fullest.
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  19173. There are more than a few grains of truth among the views you wish to suppress.
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  19174.  @brianperry  The presenters are generally not better informed they are just trained to humiliate the less articulate. By coincidence someone has just posted a very sensible and detailed analysis of the present situation on this very thread. If you would like to be better informed I suggest you take time to read it. Mark Edwards 16 minutes ago Wow !!! I am very sorry Phil but this is terrible. You sound like someone who has just spent the last 24 hours sat in front of MSM soaking it all up. In the spirit of unbias media, I must dissect your video point by point. 1) Putin's Coup in Ukraine has been very softly, softly, due to international condemnation. You clearly are quite ignorant about Russia's military power. If NATO confronted Russia conventionally, it would not be a clear cut outcome. That is against the combined might of USA, UK, France, Italy, Germany, and all other members. Why do you think NATO are shrinking away from defending Ukraine? Because they are nice guys and don't want to hurt Russia? Because they are good people and don't want to contravene UN rules? The fact that western media, including A Different Bias, is portraying Russia as weak, is going to be devastating for Ukraine. The softly softly approach will end. And you will eat your words. I estimate 48 hours max now, before the full force of Russia descends on Kiev. 2) You seem to be completely unaware, that this all started in 2014, before which there was a democratic pro-Russian government in Ukraine, when a NATO backed Coup D'Etat took place in Ukraine, installing Poroshenko, and smaller neo-Nazi parties into government, who have since embarked on a massive programme of privatisation in Ukraine, which has been sold off piece by piece to foreign interests. What do you think people like Hunter Biden, and London based oligarchs were all doing in Ukraine at the time? Having a nice little holiday? Read up on it and educate yourself before you get on your soap box. Just like in the UK, the huge majority of Ukrainians have been impoverished by these capitalist policies. In Ukraine today, there are approximately 10 million people (middle class) who have done well out of selling the country off. Mostly around Kiev. But there are 30 million who most certainly have not. These people remain pro-Russian. 3) Germany. Following the tragedy that was World War 2, Germany was banned from operating a non defensive military, indefinitely. This policy was and continued to be, the reasoning behind the formation and remit of The United Nations. It was not a time based penalty. I can't believe a British man can sit on his channel, and basically be an apologist for World War 2 Nazi's. "Let's forget Germany's distant past" (in living memory !!!). And actually get excited about German remilitarisation. And incidentally, do you know the Russian human toll for ending World War 2? Britain tragically lost about 450,000 citizens and soldiers to the conflict. Russia? 24 million ! I cannot think of any one thing which will inflame the situation more, or incentivise Russian aggression more, bar dropping a bomb on Moscow. Germany did not "adopt a far less interventionist attitiude". They were banned from non defensive militarisation. And still are. To suggest otherwise is profoundly ignorant. 4) You seem to think that the Russian military is somehow impotent and will struggle to take Ukraine if they wished. That is horrendously dangerous propoganda. "They will struggle to take Ukraine, let alone an EU country." Here are some wake up facts for you Phil. Russian battle tanks : 14,000 (est) Ukraine battle tanks : 2,400 (est) UK battle tanks : 227 (est) USA Battle tanks : 7,300 (est) Russian troops : 3,600,000 Ukraine troops : 400,000 UK troops : 110,000 USA troops : 2,200,000 Russian military aircraft : 3,900 Ukraine military aircraft : 207 UK military aircraft : 511 US military aircraft : 5,200 Russia nuclear missiles : 6,300 Ukraine nuclear missiles : 0 UK nuclear missiles : 225 USA nuclear missiles : 5,600 NATO exists for a reason ! 5) Russia counteracting the aggressive expansion of NATO is "cobblers". When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, the former Soviet Republics did not force Russia to to leave. Russia could have crushed any one of them with ease. (As with The British Empire). Russia effectively gave them their independance. The agreement with NATO (and I clearly remember this) is that NATO would not seek territory "one inch further". Here is a list of former Soviet Bloc countries that have been allowed to join NATO. Albania Bulgaria Czech Republic Slovak Republic Slovenia Croatia Estonia Latvia Lithuania Hungary Poland Romania and now proposed Ukraine. And remember, this is all within just 30 years. NATO has "militarised" every single one of those countries. But of course, NATO military expansion is "cobblers". But let's not stop there. A list of Russian invasions, coups, and interventions since the break up of the Soviet Union. Syria Chechyna Georgia And by comparison, here is a list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Phillipines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine I think aggressive is a comparative term. I do not support Russia's attempted coup in Ukraine. But at least I understand it. And I certainly am not a supporter of NATO and its horrendous belligerent exceptionalism. Before we condemn Russia, and conduct hypocritical hand wringing over the few hundred Ukrainian casualties, maybe we should spare a thought for the over one million dead or maimed Iraqis. The estimated 500,000 dead Afghans, the complete destruction of Libya, the destruction of Palestinian people, the massacre of the Irish, the genocide in North America, or the continuing millions of starving families in Yemen. That, I don't understand. But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about Russia defending itself from a known aggressor on its border. Disgraceful.
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  19175.  @brianperry  In my experience journalists are among the thickest people in the world, apart from actors. All they need is a bit of style and they come across like Socrates. RT offers a far more objective and detailed analysis than any Western news outlet I can think of. And you of course realise that it is biased in the Russian interest and treat its pronouncements accordingly. Incidentally your last image is an unlikely one since Russian conscripts are not allowed on the front line. All combat troops at the moment are trained professional soldiers.
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  19176.  @sugerbear586  Thank you. I have read several. We are just arguing terminology. The government bought the slaves from their owners, and then freed them. A commercial transaction. This is different to paying reparations to the descendants of slaves.
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  19177.  @Anthropodelic  It will always be needed. Equally we should learn when to discard it. Or to retain it, come to that.
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  19178.  @JohnRussell-y3m  Very much the former. All Farage does is share their fear and anger and try to obtain the power to do something about lessening it.
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  19179.  @Anthropodelic  I disagree. It's not inherently wrong. It's inherently right, otherwise we'd be dead as dodos and for much the same reason. When the tribe from the other valley comes over the hill your first reaction should be to be scared of them. Only when they have demonstrated that friendship will be of more benefit than suspicion should you stop being scared. That continues to apply when the other tribe is crossing the water in rubber dinghies.
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  19180.  @JesusHChrist-q9d  I think you deserve it more for your failure to understand the subtleties and inadequacies of the English language. But I will be kind and say nothing more.
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  19181.  @JesusHChrist-q9d  You need to be able to define your terms more clearly.
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  19182. Masks are useless, more or less, and always have been. There is no point in keeping the pretence up any longer.
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  19183.  @1c9ds96  Your thinking is a little simplistic. The more people who get covid and recover the more the virus' routes to the vulnerable elderly are blocked. Covid doesn't "learn" anything. It adapts to circumstances -or not. As the number of people becoming immune increases the more difficult it is for the virus to spread. And, as you rightly say, then new variants come into prominence. The only way to stop this is to act quickly before it happens. With the infection rate so high and the death rate so low, and symptoms generally so mild in vaccinated people, we at last have a chance to nail this. Further prevarication will just spin out the agony.
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  19184.  @gravel7614  But they are less likely to die- which is a major factor. And mutations only occur when circumstances give them a chance to do so.
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  19185.  @1c9ds96  The only way to knock this on the head is to build up enough protective layers of people who have been infected, recovered and are immune. Now that the percentage of people dying has dropped so dramatically we have a chance to do that. Slowing the spread will result in the possibility of more variants, allow viral routes to remain open and, in the long run, result in more deaths.
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  19186.  @1c9ds96  Have I misunderstood you or merely disagreed?
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  19187.  @maywalker997  It seems that the majority of current deaths have occurred in elderly people who have had both doses. The number of unvaccinated testing positive is flattening out, while the vaccinated figure is rising, as I said. These figures can allow us to be cautiously optimistic but it is clear that vaccinations can never provide a full and permanent condition of herd immunity. You still do not seem to have grasped the point about the irrelevance of initial antibodies. They are invariably replaced by memory systems, generally in the form of T cells. It seems that immunity from covid will indeed be long lasting. (Immunity to SARS-Cov 1 is still present in people infected some 18 years ago, incidentally.) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
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  19188.  @maywalker997  What 188 cases are we talking about exactly? I was referring to the 15,500 or so a day who are testing positive after vaccination I'm not sure what the breakdown between single dose and double doses is currently but it was 6,000 to 2,000 a couple of weeks ago. I don't much like Nature either, but it was the first of a longish list. It is pretty firmly established that infection leads to long-term immunity, I think. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210428/Recovered-COVID-19-patients-show-signs-of-long-term-immunity.aspx I don't know for certain, but I would imagine that your 30,000 figure on lives saved by vaccination is pretty low. We can never know exactly, can we?
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  19189.  @maywalker997  Thank you very much! Can you give me the sources for this please? I have been trying to do my own sums from information from various locations. I still think that around three thousand of the daily 15,000 vaccinated positives are double jabbed though. I get that from the ZOE study.
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  19190.  @Tricia_K  Sad to hear it. Me, I'm in my seventies and have type 2 diabetes but even then the chances of me dying if I get Covid are around 100 to 1 against. I think that the fear is being deliberately ramped up for political reasons and masks are just a part of that - but then I've always been a bit contrary.
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  19191.  @aeriumfour6096  The lady herself has accepted my apology in a very good-natured way, I am pleased to say. She got the joke.
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  19192. @Scott Smith Not me. Mad Vlad .
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  19193. This said to encourage the troops being sent on a suicide mission to believe they would conquer Ukraine in three days. The only people who might have believed it were the dimmer amongst them , dim TV news hosts and now, dim contributors to YouTube comments threads.
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  19194.  @SamPashmi  This was said to encourage the troops being sent on a suicide mission to believe they would conquer Ukraine in three days. The only people who might have believed it were the dimmer amongst them , dim TV news hosts and now, dim contributors to YouTube comments threads.
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  19195.  @SamPashmi  This was all just designed to boost the troops morale. Only the most slow-witted could believe it. Surely you understand this?
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  19196. Not necessarily. How do you think the world would react to a single tactical nuclear strike by Russia, for example?
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  19197.  @arneh.180  Bit late if he did it. What would China do then?
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  19198. What nonsense! He performed about every physical jerk known to man in his delight. Wouldn't you rather concentrate on how the wind blew away Trump's quiff for a second, or how Melania's hat-brim prevented him kissing her? These seem to be the other main talking points for TDS sufferers this morning.
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  19199. A shame Ukraine can't arrest some of its own crooks. Do you realise America has set aside $26million to try to stop the Ukrainians selling off their arms for personal profit?
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  19200. Why suppress it? It creates robust immunity at very little cost.
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  19201.  @danmayberry1185  ?
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  19202.  @maciek_k.cichon  No. All Putin is trying to do is to retain Russia's hold on Ukraine's mineral wealth, which has be developed and exploited by Russia and by Russians for centuries. He has neither the wish nor the ability for further conquest.
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  19203.  @stephenhill545  International treaties organised by America mainly - in constant pursuit of world aggrandisement. America is very good at treaties. It used them to help wipe out the native inhabitants of the glorious land it conquered - now turned into a festering slum - and has used them ever since to get its own way. The Budapest accords were a good example, and Russia fell for the trick. Putin has seen through it and reclaimed land traditionally belonging to Russia, inhabited by Russians, and with strong continuing links with the Russian economy. NATO is America's plaything. The collapse of the Soviet Union made it irrelevant but the great myth of bogeyman Russia has enabled the military/industrial complex to continue making a profit while spreading discord and suffering wherever it goes.
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  19204. Er ... it could be because BLM is pretty demonic. Mass financial recompense for slavery combined with a rigid Marxist ideology adds up to a package which we should all fear.
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  19205. "This is not science it is advocacy." Coral growth is cyclic and these "scientists" are cherry picking sections of growth cycles to bolster the claims of the climate crisis religion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh9wJJ_HZCg&t=77s
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  19206. All Russia wants and has ever wanted is Crimea and Donbass. Give them and the war ends.
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  19207.  @gordonstrong5232  He doesn't need anyone to make excuses for him. You seem to have a very odd idea of what an MP's duties are. An MP is elected because he/she represents the general majority opinion in a constituency. The pastoral role is secondary, and can be left safely to others. It is utterly ingenuous to suggest Farage is neglecting his duties by using his new status as an MP and the leader of a political party to take his place on the world stage.
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  19208.  @pandorapiam3374  Well I'm sure they can. He doesn't actually have to set up a stall on Clacton sea front to be able to do so though, does he?
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  19209. and she was right on both counts.
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  19210. @somedeveloperblokey I understand reality very well. Communities, societies etc only exist when a group pf people formally agree that they should do so. Even then the segregation is entirely artificial. If I am a senile black person living in Hackney. for example. what community to I belong to? The senile community? The black community? The Hackney community?
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  19211.  @djturbine7565  Communal groups exist. Societies exist. But "society" as a concept covering a country, or the whole of humanity, does not exist.
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  19212.  @sososoprano1  The concept of nationhood is clearly important to the process of governance. It is not an abstract thing. It is a reality. It is a political unit. But it is not "society" which is jus an amorphous notion; an abstraction, in other words.
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  19213.  @maggiehyder7075  Greed is simply the urge to survive.
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  19214.  @andysimons9226  This is hardly central to the initial argument. Society is an abstract notion. A country is not. It has clearly defined legal parameters and a system of governance agreed upon by either force of arms or democratic process.
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  19215.  Bell in Da Night  How do you know what a chimp thinks?
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  19216.  @RussCR5187  That's where you're wrong. A nation is a defined administrative unit. "Society" and "community" are just vague concepts.
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  19217.  @maggiehyder7075  I'm not sure where St Francis describes greed as such, but you could be right. In any case I think it can be safely said that while greed fuels endeavour, excessive greed may have unwelcome consequences!
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  19218.  @RussCR5187  I think the difference lies between the definition of "society" as a semi-ephemeral concept and "a society" which is indeed one of several words which can be used to describe an aggregate of people.
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  19219.  @djturbine7565  Exists in the abstract? Sure, but an abstract concept has no place in the harsh world of political reality, other than as an idea which can be utilised as some sort of slogan.
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  19220.  @sososoprano1  You've got me with "Morris aware". What is that?
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  19221.  @capturedflame  No I'm not.
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  19222.  @mjc01  Not at all! It is the sweet voice of reason if you listen hard enough!
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  19223.  @mjc01  Pathetic, Paul
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  19224.  Bell in Da Night  These chimps are clearly socialists!
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  19225.  @djturbine7565  The point I am making is the point you make: some concepts are purely conceptual, whereas others have an actual reality.
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  19226.  @djturbine7565  You're probably right. I'm not all that intelligent - I just like asking awkward questions.
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  19227.  @mjc01  Without greed there would be no progress. Sad but true.
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  19228.  @modularsamples  Greed is not synonymous with competition though. Hunter gatherers eat till they burst because they don't know when they're going to get lucky again! Greed is motivation. Capitalism structures that motivation. Greed is good. Capitalism is good.
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  19229.  @modularsamples  Then most of us are sentimental fools. And you don't have to be jealous or hateful to be greedy; quite the reverse, more often than not.
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  19230.  @thoughtfortheday7811  Hypocrisy and politics go hand in hand, as do credulousness and religious belief. St Francis would have made a poor Prime Minister.
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  19231.  @EM-lz9kg  Who is the "we" in this case? I lived under her Prime Ministership too and , being young and foolish, I failed to appreciate her pragmatism. (Incidentally, one of the most unpleasant memories of my childhood was being required to drink a third of a pint of lukewarm milk each morning.)
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  19232.  @corvus1238  Hang on. There are two Palestines here. Your population figures may be correct for the Palestine drawn on a map by the British after the First World War, but the State of Israel is only a part of that area and the percentage of Jews there was and is much higher. Furthermore many of Arabs who lived there emigrated from neighbouring countries to take advantage of the vastly improved economic conditions being created by the Zionists. Many modern "Palestinians" are their direct descendants. Undoubtedly it was the vast influx of Jews post-Holocaust which created the need for the Balfour Declaration and the chaos which resulted from it. Those were very troubled times all over the world as populations adjusted following the War , and in India and Russia, to name but two, there were equally horrifying tales of massacre and deportation. But it is foolish to live in the past. Israel has offered the hand of friendship to its Arab residents many times and they actually make up about 20% of the population still. Sadly, motivated by religious fervour, all compromises have been rejected by others and nothing but violence and hatred is offered in return. That the Israelis should now reference the Old Testament and the Koran and pursue a policy of an eye for an eye and commit to the total destruction of Islamic extremism in their land is, I think, entirely understandable.
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  19233. It doesn't seem incomprehensible to me. We still insist on working on the assumption that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine. He doesn't. He just wants Donbass and Crimea. What he has done is throw all his old tanks and often untried troops into a false invasion simply designed to decimate the Ukrainian army. Which it has. He has now crippled Ukraine's electricity supply which will not only severely affect citizens and give them food for thought, but which will severely limit the capabilities of the Ukrainians when they come into contact with the battle-hardened troops stationed in Donbass. Which gets its electricity from Russia.
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  19234.  @donaldducko6580  The trend is towards milder and milder, but there can be the occasional nasty bump on the road -though always short-lived, I believe.
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  19235.  @ireallycant4416  That's you, that is.
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  19236.  @ireallycant4416  Wot's a bot?
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  19237. An alliance between the US and Russia, with the lifting of all sanctions and recognition of Russia's true borders, opens the gateway to a new era of peace and prosperity. Why are people so afraid of it?
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  19238.  @jeandubois8810  The abuse of human rights legislation to allow gangsters to flood our country with illegal immigrants.
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  19239. Don't need one. They know what's right and what's wrong.
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  19240.  @ScottishAtheist  What? Stopping a war?
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  19241.  @Christian988.  You are just repeating a mantra. Intersectional Marxism needs an oppressed minority in order to justify revolution.Racism in the old sense is dead -certainly in this country. The new racism is the one in which people like yourself are brainwashed into dividing people into categories instead of seeing them as individuals. Black etc people are suffering no more than anyone else, and if they are it is not because they are black. I go back a long way and believe me compared with the sixties and seventies those residues of racism that do exist are as nothing. We had proper racists then, but they are all now long dead. The new racists are the people who want you to look at another person and think the colour of their skin is the most important thing about them. It surprises me actually that more black people don't feel insulted by this.
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  19242.  @seabell2343  If you are suggesting that black male sexuality is a factor in racism, then sadly one has to agree. In my view the mixing or races (miscegenation) is probably the only way out of these problems in the long run. It is a curious phenomenon (though perhaps not that curious) how often the most sexually attractive people end u[p pairing with someone of another race. Evolution works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
    1
  19243.  @lopici1965  White on black racism - in this country at least - is a dead duck. The left needs to keep flogging it back to life because Marxist intersectionality requires an oppressed minority for the revolution to succeed.
    1
  19244.  @seabell2343  You are way off beam, I think. It might be "fashionable" to go with black men but at the end of the day people know in their heart of hearts how they truly feel. Love conquers all, in a funny kind of way.
    1
  19245.  @seabell2343  You are quite barmy, but in the midst of your ravings there appears a kernel of truth. As is often the case Are you bi-polar, by the way? Just asking. .
    1
  19246.  @seabell2343  I have some understanding of your position. I lived for 13 years with someone diagnosed as rapid-cycling bi-polar. I have considerable personal experience of LSD induced attitudes towards so-called reality. All I can say is that you seem to be on the edge of truth. I can do no more than urge caution. Remember the three injunctions of the Sphinx: To know To dare To keep silent Peace be with you. Try to stay calm.
    1
  19247. Helen Pauls I was just wondering which of the line-up of posturing, duplicitous nonentities in the recent Democratic candidature debate you would recommend as a good example to the young?
    1
  19248. Helen Pauls I wouldn't trust any of these people to feed my goldfish, let alone run a country. AOC is incredibly stupid and perhaps even insane. She and the rest if the bunch may be terribly, terribly nice and well-intentioned but that simply isn't what politics is about I'm afraid.
    1
  19249. Biden is a shambles. If he ends up winning we will know for certain that it was fixed.
    1
  19250. The EU, like NATO, is rapidly appearing to look like a commercial arm of US imperialism. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and many Georgians, like many Ukrainians, have been talked into believing that all their woes will end once they sign up to Brussels and Washington. But Brussels and Washington don't care if their attempts at seduction result in war and death. There are natural resources and new markets to be had, and the Georgians and the Ukrainians are simply potential customers and suppliers. If their countries end up in ruins occupied by the bereaved survivors of war, then Brussels and Washington can simply shrug and set their sights on pastures new. Losses will be offset by the sale of weapons and long-term loans to the mugs who believed their pitch.
    1
  19251.  @Akenfelds1  Resurrection?
    1
  19252. It really is time to call a halt to this madness. Is Britain to be destroyed as part of the death throes of the American empire?
    1
  19253. Environmental regulations imposed in Australia are a primary cause of the horrific fires now ravaging the country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  19254. Johnson has not ignored rules, he has abused privileges - which is worse.
    1
  19255. I'm one
    1
  19256.  @bdizzle9586  But he actually is. The war in Ukraine is the direct result of Western interference in the affairs of two foreign nations.
    1
  19257.  @bdizzle9586  But he is. The war in Ukraine is the direct result of Western interference in the affairs of two foreign nations.
    1
  19258.  @bdizzle9586  But he actually is.
    1
  19259. USAID is just a cover for CIA infiltration into the affairs of other countries. Like other similar organisations it has done great harm to world peace over the years.
    1
  19260. This of course clears the way for Britain to become the money-laundering capital of the world, with only Blackrock-approved participants being allowed to enjoy our favours.
    1
  19261. Russia has always been willing to negotiate. It was Ukraine's failure to do so or keep earlier promises which led to the invasion.
    1
  19262.  @TartarSauceIsNotDead  They weren't their nukes, they were Russian nukes positioned there. And Ukraine has only existed as an independent nation since 1991. It was a Russian or Soviet province before then. It was clear that Budapest agreements weren't working from the start and the later treaties signed in Minsk were designed to redress the balance - but Ukraine has ignored them
    1
  19263. No.
    1
  19264.  @fittekowner  So what?
    1
  19265.  @chewieknievel8439  You are making the supposition that those who make and administer laws are motivated by moral considerations. This is not the case here. The "authorities" you cite are criminal entities masquerading as officers of the law. They are crooks and gangsters working on behalf of forces of evil dedicated to the destruction of this once great country. .
    1
  19266.  @elmosweed4985  Who cares?
    1
  19267.  @Dafanatic074  Absolutely.
    1
  19268.  @Dafanatic074  The law is an ass - especially in America where the obsession with jurisprudence is as psychotic as the obsessions with guns and cars. Justice, common sense and decency are more important than a complex system of deceits designed to protect the interests of one group against another.
    1
  19269.  @relaxedhigherself  Since I know I'm not a racist, what makes you think I give a fuck if you or anyone else think I'm one? And of course this is the race card being played. It is a blatant attempt to use some chance remark made five or so years ago to discredit the Tories and even to knock then back by £10million. It's pathetic that this pathetic government has fallen for it. They'd get more respect and more votes if they stood up for their guy.
    1
  19270.  @andrewoliver8930  Why? If I was to say that George Soros was enough put you off Jews, would that make me anti-Semitic? Of course not. The implication is that I am NOT anti-Semitic but Soros is such a piece of work that he could make me turn that way. It's a joke which only humourless lefties wouldn't get.
    1
  19271.  @relaxedhigherself  Since I know I'm not a racist what makes you think I give a toss if you or anyone else thinks I'm one? And of course the race card is being played. Labour extremists have dragged out this obscure and unverified quote from years ago in a bid to discredit the Tories and maybe even stiff them for £10million. Do you really think it was done from injured moral feelings?
    1
  19272.  @ChicanePrime  Why?. Despise racists, certainly. Ensure they never arrive in positions of power - but as a free speech extremist I defend their right to voice their opinions.
    1
  19273.  @relaxedhigherself  Saying someone makes you want to hate all black women simply can't be racist because it implies that you are not one - and don't want to become one. You've either got to be dumb or have no sense of humour (or both) not to get this.
    1
  19274.  @andrewoliver8930  Only to a fool who doesn't understand English and has no sense of humour.
    1
  19275.  @andrewoliver8930  No it doesn't. It just means you've got a sense of humour and irony.
    1
  19276.  @relaxedhigherself  Are you a hippy?
    1
  19277.  @relaxedhigherself  I only asked because I used to be one when they were first invented. I think, in answer to your point, it wouldn't have been funny if he mentioned specs or politics. I was also around when satire was invented but people these days don't seem to grasp the concept. He's not mocking black people. He's mocking a current obsession which demands that all black people must be apologised to or even worshipped -when actually they are just like everyone else.
    1
  19278.  @ingbor4768  The vaccines are inefficient, that's why. They have built-in obsolescence.
    1
  19279.  @DetectiveMagnumKane  How do you know they were unarmed?
    1
  19280.  @sands7779  I am a supporter of peace. I'm a bit fanatical about it. Zelensky's diplomatic incompetence got everyone into this war and his political incompetence has got civilians killed who otherwise would not have been.
    1
  19281. This is just a gesture, designed to prop up the US economy more than to "save" Ukraine which is now beyond saving.
    1
  19282. Why?
    1
  19283.  @divumque  I'm not. I'm for peace. Ukraine has made the not uncommon mistake of allowing itself to be used by America in return for promises of better things. Russia has long-term historical rights to Crimea and Donbass and America has simply turned two tribes against each other in order to gain valuable territory. It's how the West was won.
    1
  19284.  @Naiser-u7p  The Greeks certainly have a claim, but since they are not pressing it, it is scarcely relevant! Seriously though, ancient history is ancient history and yesterday is yesterday. The plain fact of the matter is that the whole of Ukraine was once Russian and that the present country of Ukraine occupies the same footprint as the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine ( a creation of Russia) and Donbass and other parts of Eastern Ukraine were included in it for mainly administrative reasons. This does not make them "Ukrainian", especially since a relatively large proportion of the population is Russian. Crimea, of course, was only added in 1954 - once again by Russia.
    1
  19285.  @janw491  Putin is a hard-nosed Eastern potentate defending his country from incursion. He is in no way demented. Zelensky and his American puppet masters are ultimately responsible for this carnage.
    1
  19286.  @_Lis25  And who have been fighting with Russian troops in a long and bloody war.
    1
  19287. @Abdul Raheem No. Islamic State.
    1
  19288.  @jamesirvine7268  Are you not aware of the war in Syria?
    1
  19289.  @_Lis25  Russian people have been fighting for free in Donbass for eight years.
    1
  19290. Poor brainwashed Russians. They sound just like Democrats.
    1
  19291.  @alexboston343  The objective was to draw attention to the fact that nearly half of Americans believe the election was rigged - and with considerable justification. If only they had stopped after that incredible moment when they crowded the Capitol steps chanting "We the people!" then all would have been well. But then a few hotheads blew it by breaking in to the building. Yes, this was a profound moment in history, but not for the reason your cockeyed logic suggests. It was the moment when a vast swathe of ordinary Americans, sickened by decades of corrupt politics and disenfranchised by a rigged election, made a stand for true democracy and the American way of life. If you want to believe this was a fascist uprising on a par with Kristallnacht and the Beer Hall putsch then it shows that not only are you politically naive to the point of idiocy, but have no grasp of history whatsoever.
    1
  19292.  @rocketscience4516  If I am, so is Dr Robert Malone on whose work the techniques used in these vaccinations on largely based. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA8qMb33Zyo
    1
  19293. @Kris Brown How do they help breed new variants?
    1
  19294.  @atomiccritter6492  Go back to sleep, kitten. When are you going to learn to face up to reality and deal with ideas outside your limited range of perceptions?
    1
  19295.  @rocketscience4516  You should have continued watching. The difficulty appears to be that the material is not circulating but building up in the ovaries and bone marrow - which is unexpected and unusual, they say. How much or how little Dr Malone contributed is hardly the point. He knows what he is talking about, I assume - and his concerns need addressing, don't you think?
    1
  19296.  @Liz_for_PM_again  If you are going to insult people using long words I suggest you learn to spell them properly.
    1
  19297.  @jlcTTT  The statistics on the covid death rate in the young are readily available. This video features a discussion involving one of the original developers of the new vaccine technique. How justifiable his concerns are I cannot say. But they are there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA8qMb33Zyo
    1
  19298.  @Yeknodathon  And you're copying is mis-spelling too! You guys really crease me up. You're like a bunch of old ladies gossiping in a bus queue!
    1
  19299.  @rocketscience4516  The guy who made the mistake was a layman who was corrected. You can't judge the discussion by that. If, as it appears, you are a professional in this field do you not think you ought to be a little concerned?
    1
  19300. ​ @Liz_for_PM_again  Much better. Have you a ready definition to hand? Spelling is only part of the deal. You have to know what the word means.
    1
  19301.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  You're pretty free with your advice, I must say. What does your psychiatrist say about you? (What misinformation anyway?)
    1
  19302.  @Liz_for_PM_again  What is? The pursuit of truth?
    1
  19303.  @Yeknodathon  Yet when I ask for the errors and misinformation to be identified, I rarely seem to get a coherent response. Why is that do you suppose?
    1
  19304.  @Yeknodathon  More to educate really. Or possibly eviscerate.
    1
  19305.  @Yeknodathon  Insofar as it is great fun teasing fools and quite enjoyable having sensible conversations with the more intelligent with whom I happen to disagree, you may well be right. Not that I confine myself to covid for these purposes. I'm quite vocal on the subject of climate change and the fraudulent 2020 US election, among other things. It passes the time and I'd rather have conversations on channels such as this than stack up "likes" on channels whose subscribers share my views. Why so you do it? You are marked as some kind of false account thing, but I don't believe it myself.
    1
  19306.  @Liz_for_PM_again  . I suggest you Google Carbon Futures and check the prices for various carbon bonds. The issue of man-made global warming is tied very much to this market. The relative scarcity of a commodity affects its value, and so permissions to exceed carbon limits are traded for very high prices. In order for the market to be maintained it is necessary for the belief to exist that high levels of carbon in the atmosphere are harmful to climate. This is true very much in the same way that it is true that unicorns exist: ie if you believe it to be so, then it is so.
    1
  19307. @Kris Brown Possibly. Equally possibly since there are more viruses that stars in the universe, all the mutations have happened already and only take over when circumstances change to allow them to do so. Whatever the case knocking this disease on the head as fast as possible is what we have to do.
    1
  19308.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  I'm not pushing anything - just passing on the opinions of people who are more informed than I am.
    1
  19309.  @rocketscience4516  For a start these are not MY claims and I am not qualified to become embroiled in a technical controversy of this sort. In any case it is not the toxicity (or not) of the material which seems the main issue but the fact that it is unexpectedly accumulating in the ovaries and bone marrow. Is this indeed unexpected? And why the ovaries and bone marrow? With my very, very limited knowledge of these matters I ask these questions as a concerned citizen, as it were, and simply make the point that, toxic or not, the build up of any alien substance in these locations should be regarded as potentially harmful in the long term. It strikes me as posing an unnecessary risk to the young -especially when they don't need to be injected against Covid 19 anyway, If I were a young person I would certainly be balancing the risks of suffering long-term though probably limited effects now against the possibility of sterility or leukaemia in the future. And injecting children seems even more foolish and totally unnecessary.
    1
  19310.  @Liz_for_PM_again  The science is questionable. Arrhenius' findings are difficult to reproduce and in any case experiments based upon a theoretical model atmosphere must be subject to question. How much heat is retained and how much is disseminated into space is still debatable. The process may well act as a regulator of surface heat rather than purely as an instrument of its retention. What concerns me and others is the way this phenomenon has been seized upon as an integral structure of a new and volatile adjunct to finance capital by creating a new wordwide currency in the form of carbon bonds, granting permissions for industries to exceed carbon emissions limitations.
    1
  19311.  @Liz_for_PM_again Several attempts I have made to reply to you have been blocked by YouTube (or someone). This should worry you as much as it annoys me. How secure can your position be when arguments against it are censored?
    1
  19312.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  I'm not pushing anything - just asking questions as a concerned layman. I'm not getting any answers yet - just hands held up in horror at the thought of heresy.
    1
  19313.  @Liz_for_PM_again  You sound like a little old lady talking through her letterbox.
    1
  19314.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Now I KNOW you're seeing a psychiatrist - or at the very least addicted to self-help books. I bet you keep cats too.
    1
  19315.  @Liz_for_PM_again  I must say I very much enjoyed her description of me in her last paragraph.
    1
  19316.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Miaow!
    1
  19317. I'm British and the way the Democrats have commandeered the judicial system for political gain would make me embarrassed if I was American.
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  19318. The mines are owned by Russian companies. It was the prospect of having them stolen and given to the US which made Putin invade.
    1
  19319.  @BigHenFor  Certainly: to four years of lies and vilification from both the mainstream media and the political establishment. Trump has been treated far more badly and unfairly than Corbyn ever was.
    1
  19320.  @musopaul5407  You've got it. Mind you, I think the deregulation and tax cuts proved to be good for the country as a whole, and his foreign policy has been brilliant. With the new administration we can expect to see America go back to its warmongering ways and for taxes to soar.
    1
  19321.  @MrThorfan64  In what way? He revived the economy, reduced unemployment to near zero, pulled out American troops from all over the world and brokered peace deals in the Middle East. You have been brainwashed by the crooked political establishment which now back in power. Cue soaring taxation and wars.
    1
  19322.  @MrThorfan64  It wasn't even remotely a coup. More brainwashing. It was a demo. His tax cuts boosted the economy to a huge degree. The US healthcare system is a joke and needs total re-organisation. Stopping big pharma from making big profits by overcharging for medicines is another of Trump's achievements.
    1
  19323.  @MrThorfan64  But he did none of these things! More brainwashing. Give me a single credible example! He did, however, sanction gay marriage as well as introduce programs designed to get mainly black people given excessive jail sentences their freedom. What about Walkaway with thousands of black people getting out of the Democrat plantation? You and many like you have been suckered by the media who are in cahoots with the corrupt political establishment, now sadly back in power.
    1
  19324.  @MrThorfan64  But surely this is just an adjustment to legislation brought in by the Trump administration in the first place? I mean, is this all you've got? It's scarcely as though he want the alphabet people dragged away to be shot, is it? As far as I can make out he is throwing a sop to his ultra-religious supporters who believe they have found some details in the legislation which discriminate in favour of same-sex parents. A sensitive area, but to suggest that this indicates anti-gay prejudice on Trump's part is ridiculous.
    1
  19325.  @MrThorfan64  What does it say other than I like to choose my own jargon, rather than have it forced on me by others? I have no problem whatsoever with people of differing sexual orientations. Sticking together a string of initials and claiming a "community" exists is political and has nothing to do with the way people ought to get along with one another. And I can never quite remember what the initials are anyway.
    1
  19326.  @thespectre717  No. it would mean waking up from the one we're in.
    1
  19327.  @msimms-lp5qw  Why not? It's the way the world is going. Socialism has failed and people want new answers. The whole left/right thing is getting a bit outdated anyway. A new image is needed, not one taken from which side of a tennis court French revolutionists sat at the end of the 18th century.
    1
  19328.  @msimms-lp5qw  As a former socialist myself I think I can safely say that whatever it is the Labour Party is currently peddling, it certainly isn't socialism!
    1
  19329.  @msimms-lp5qw  Its not so much watered-down as totally different. Early socialists simply would not recognise anything the Labour Party now says and does as having anything to do with them.
    1
  19330.  @kcccc5682  Very, very many have. Only those which fit in with the agenda are retained.
    1
  19331. If Christopher Steele says something you can bet your mothers' life on the fact that it isn't true
    1
  19332.  @mylessalmon2569  Not really. They just want to hold some Ukrainian forces down there.
    1
  19333.  @englishtime5327  You have swallowed pure propaganda. I don't know the quote from Medvedev but I imagine it to be a twist on something rhetorical. The Western media and Western politicians constantly do this. Putin has said many times that the re-creation of the Soviet empire would be a great and wonderful thing - but that it is entirely impractical and not even desirable. When his words are reported in the West the second bit is left out. Just think about it. Part of the reason the SU collapsed was that it was over-extended. Why would the Russian Federation wish to repeat that mistake? How could it even be done? Just look at the trouble Putin is having in taking back those corners of Ukraine which he believes are Russia's by right. By what stretch of the imagination could Russia launch an attack on Europe - and why on earth would it want to? The fact is that the US economy depends on being in a state of constant armed readiness, and for that it needs a permanent enemy. Russia has been forced into that role.
    1
  19334.  @englishtime5327  Pure myth. America needs to keep Russia as a permanent enemy for its war-based economy to survive. Russia has no designs on Europe, whatever rhetoric is taken out of context by the Western media. The Soviet Union collapsed partially because it was over-extended. Why would the Russian Federation want to make the same mistake? And could it? Look at the trouble Putin is having taking back those parts of Ukraine he believes are Russia's by right. He has said many times that while the re-creation of the Soviet Empire might be a great and wonderful thing it is entirely impractical and not even desirable. When he gets reported in the West, the second bit is left out. I daresay the same thing happened to Medvedev.
    1
  19335.  @englishtime5327  Russia has no designs on Europe, despite all the scaremongering. The Soviet Union collapsed partially because it was over-extended. Why would the Russian Federation want to make the same mistake? And how could it? Look at the trouble Putin is having taking back those bits of Ukraine he believes are Russian by right. The trouble is he and Medvedev both say that re-creating the Russian empire would be a great and wonderful thing - but that it is entirely impractical and not even desirable in real terms. When they get reported in the Western media, however, the second bit is left out. I can't think why.
    1
  19336.  @englishtime5327  Russia has no designs on Europe. You have been fooled by a combination of Russian rhetoric and Western mis-reporting. The Russian Federation does not wish to repeat the Soviet Union's mistakes and simply does not have the ability - let alone the desire - to invade Europe. Look at the trouble they are having getting back those bits of Ukraine they believe are theirs by right.
    1
  19337.  @englishtime5327  Russia has no designs on Europe, whatever the Western media pretends.
    1
  19338.  @englishtime5327  As Nelson Mandela once said:" Russia is no threat to Europe .It is a myth designed to promulgate America's war-based economy."
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  19339.  @englishtime5327  It's not going to happen, but YouTube's new fascist algorithm won't let me tell you why.
    1
  19340.  @davidwright5094  What charming nonsense you do talk.
    1
  19341. It must be hard for liberals to deal with a black racist.
    1
  19342. What about white men and Hispanics?
    1
  19343.  @ionnanskilliorus  The West is, however, very worried about Ukrainian assaults on Russian territory. This alleged incident will not be to America's liking.
    1
  19344.  @Andrew-ob5ij  This has never been about taking territory. It has been about destroying the Ukrainian army on Ukrainian soil. The territorial gains are beginning now with Russia consolidating its hold on Eastern Ukraine - which is all it wants.
    1
  19345.  @ionnanskilliorus  True enough, but this incident is being sold as a terrorist attack on civilians, which loses Ukraine the moral high ground.
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  19346.  @ionnanskilliorus  Ukraine is no stranger to committing war crimes. What this incident does is to allege it has committed a war crime on undisputed Russian territory. A red line has been crossed, and an awareness of this should cause plenty of qualms in the minds of Ukraine's Western backers.
    1
  19347.  @ionnanskilliorus  You misunderstand me. All I'm doing is pointing out the probable results of this incident - or more accurately, what Russia hopes those results will be.
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  19348.  @cog600  Doubtful under the circumstances. I think it more probable that this is to show the West that direct attacks on civilians in Russia will not be tolerated, and to remind NATO what the boundaries of Russia's tolerance are. As to continued weapon supply - I sense this is already slowing down and that, really, it is placing far too great a strain on Western resources. The war is not going at all as planned and is failing to show the prospect of a return on the vast amounts invested so far.
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  19349.  @cog600  Well Ukraine started off with a huge amount of equipment and an army which far outnumbered Russia's invading force. America and NATO spent billions on creating this army and Russia has now largely destroyed it, despite further billions being spent on re-equipping it. That doesn't sound like failure to me. Russia's losses have of course been immense - but that's what Russia does. It has thrown away tons of antiquated equipment and sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of half-trained soldiers in order to soak up Ukraine's response to the invasion, but that seems to have been the plan all along. As of this moment Russia has its best troops still operational, and has Ukraine outgunned on every level. Ukraine is fighting like a tiger, but I don't hold out much hope for its chances unless the cavalry arrives far sooner than predicted.
    1
  19350.  @cog600  I think it is going more or less to plan, and these tanks seem to be very much on the far horizon. The arms supply seems to consist more of promises than hardware at the moment. The West still seems stuck with the idea that the invasion was about conquering territory. It wasn't. It was about destroying Ukraine's NATO-provided army on Ukrainian soil. This has to a great extent been achieved. As to Russia's losses, once again we see this through Western eyes . Russia is notoriously both callous and profligate in this regard. The thousands who have died are heroes, not casualties. They will be avenged by those who remain - and there are plenty of them waiting in the wings apparently.
    1
  19351.  @cog600  There are loads of fake videos on the Internet purporting to show this, but in fact none of the big stuff promised has yet arrived - and nor will it do so for many weeks. The only donations so far have been a few old Leopards from Poland, adapted for mine-clearing purposes as far as I can make out. The Ukrainians are doing a magnificent job, but the tide is turning against them. Russia is making advances along the front and Ukraine is really too depleted to hold out for much longer, I think - but the only thing that is certain in war is that nothing is certain, as they say. Nobody know the true casualty figures , but Russia is used to losing large numbers of men. They are defending their country just as much as the Ukrainians are. The real villain here is America which has pulled off its usual trick of setting one tribe against another in order to pick up the pieces when its over. They're not going to get away with it this time though.
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  19352.  @cog600  The facts belie your analysis. Putin has dragged Russia from the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union and it is now a prosperous and well-fed country. It has resisted all attempts to impoverish it through sanctions, and now to undermine it with a proxy war. Along with China, India and an increasing number of other developing economies it is preparing to launch a joint gold-based currency designed to replace the dollar as the world's go-to currency. It is the world's largest nuclear power, both militarily and domestically, the world's second largest provider of oil and the largest provider of gas. It is entirely self-sufficient in food and fuel and the shelves of its supermarkets are packed with food, whereas in Europe and America there are recurrent shortages and recession looming around every corner. One oil pipeline to China is already up and running and another much larger one is about to begin construction. It will be taking the oil from the fields which previously supplied Europe and Europe will be forced to rely on American LPG at five or six times the price. You are only hearing one side of the story, and a very biased one at that. This war could go either way, but the odds are in favour of Russia achieving its objectives and thereby putting another nail in America's coffin.
    1
  19353.  @bonnie7898  Get a grip! This isn't what I think, I'm just trying to explain how Russia will use this!
    1
  19354.  @cog600  Ukraine had an army of at least 350,000 and possibly as much as 600,000. NATO shelled out at least $60 billion on creating it, and probably a great deal more. It is (or was) a very good army and very superior to Russia's which was (or is) crap. Putin knows his army is crap, and can do little about it. The Russian army has always been like this, even in Imperial days. What he has done is exactly as you say and just use it as cannon-fodder, really just to soak up Ukrainian advances. Wagner is his trump card, along with the Chechens and the armies of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, all of which escape the dead hand of official army bureaucracy and croneyism. The plan all along has been to exhaust Ukraine as far as possible in its own territory and then to take the territory he really wants. This appears to be what is happening now. The very heavy defences installed by Ukraine post-Minsk to hold back the separatist are now being breached and the route is clear to attempt to take and keep the whole of Donbass. (I don't think Putin is all that worried about Prigozhin. He is not a career general, He is really another oligarch. Whether or not they will eventually fall out remains to be seen.)
    1
  19355.  @cog600  I think the BRICS plan is a good one - although I am untutored in the esoteric arts of economics. All the countries involved are buying gold like crazy and shedding US debt by the billion. The US seems to be in deep trouble having already exceeded its debt ceiling and being forced to increase interest rates - which causes the price of gold to drop, allowing the BRICS nations to buy even more. They are also introducing a payments system to rival Swift, and Gulf countries are now accepting local currencies instead of dollars for their oil. None of this bodes well for American hegemony. As I understand it the plan is not to flood the market with gold, but rather to retain it as a signal against which your currency is measured. It is something like Bitcoin but with old-fashioned gold as its basis, rather than this incomprehensible business about solving complex mathematical problems. In the light of this, other countries' gold reserves are irrelevant if they are not entered into the system. They are unsolved problems - although I would imagine that if the new currency becomes successful countries with large reserves might well be tempted to join in. (And Russia can and does feed itself and fuel itself on its own resources, by the way. This is why the sanctions have largely failed.)
    1
  19356.  @cog600  If I'm an idiot then so are the leaders of China, Russia, Iran and South Africa, to name but a few. The trouble is that the dollar's dominance has meant that other currencies have had to relate to the apparent value of the dollar, as much as they once had to relate to the apparent value of gold. America has devalued its own currency in the eyes of much of the world by weaponising it, instead of it being exclusively used for trading purposes. It is on very shaky ground because of this and the time is right for its replacement. The Yuan on its own cannot do this, since its market value is pinned to the apparent value of the dollar. Nor can it join with other currencies for the same reason. So we are back to gold until such times as the new joint currency is traded sufficiently for it to replace the dollar. There will obviously be problems during this process, but they do not seem to be insurmountable. If China and sufficient OPEC countries begin trading in the new currency then they can carry along weaker economies with them. It will be a form of subsidy in that the more prosperous nations will have an incentive to prop up poorer members, since anything which weakens the apparent value of the dollar us likely to strengthen the new currency.
    1
  19357.  @cog600  There does very much seem to be a change of attitude developing, however. What goes around comes around, as they say, and the factors which led to the general abandonment of the gold standard are no longer as pertinent as once they were. As for China, reducing its dependency on these markets seems very much at the forefront of its strategies. Creating a new economic power bloc more powerful than the US/Europe/Japan axis is obviously very desirable for a number of reasons - and it is attainable. The weaponisation of gold seems to be a route towards this objective. There is a theory that both China and Russia hold considerably greater stocks of gold than they have revealed, and that these, combined with the stocks of other BRICS + nations could exceed the stocks held by the US. If the new currency begins to be used in trade to any degree, and this disturbing claim is substantiated, then the effects on American and European economies could be catastrophic. As I said, linking the new currency to gold should be seen as an interim step designed to sap the dollar until the new currency can stand on its own feet, as it were. I don't think anyone is laughing at Russia's gas and oil situation either. Some people might find it amusing that trucks all over the US and Europe are running in Russian oil processed into diesel in India, or even that Russian missiles raining down on Ukraine incorporate technology supplied by China in exchange for discounted oil.
    1
  19358. When was this crash? I must have missed it.
    1
  19359.  @dpelpal  You're about as Russian as my cocker spaniel.
    1
  19360.  @swanpride  You're kidding! Trump was a peacemaker, Biden a warmonger as his political record clearly shows.
    1
  19361.  @atomiccritter6492  No, by restructuring the military to increase its peacekeeping role, by withdrawing troops from abroad, by brokering peace in the Middle East and by not starting any new wars. The Dems, with their connections to the weapons industry and their hawkish attitude, are in favour of wars, as we will be finding out quite shortly. Trump is against wars- for both ethical and business reasons.
    1
  19362.  @swanpride  What utter nonsense! Drone strikes aside, you seem to have forgotten the small matter of the Second Iraq War under Bush, the death toll from which runs into probable millions. As to drones, your claims are simply untrue. Trump's policy was far more strategic than Obama's and concentrated on specific military targets. The article below, much of it garnered actually from a very left-wing British source, presents as clear a picture as one can get of the true situation. Trump's contribution to peace in the Middle East has been considerable. He waves a big stick and is good with threats, but at the end of the day no shots are fired and the warring parties can be made to shake hands. The recent accords between Israel and various ME countries are clear evidence of this. Biden, on the other hand, has supported and pushed for every war the US has been engaged in over the past 50 years. He's probably made a great deal of money from them too, being the ghastly old crook that he is. https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/trump-cancels-drone-strike-civilian-casualty-report-does-it-matter/
    1
  19363.  @swanpride  I never watch Fox News. The facts are unanswerable: Biden is a warmonger, Trump is not. Unlike the Dem hawks he thinks war is bad for business, which is why has made such sterling efforts to restrict it.
    1
  19364. Alas, vegetarians are biased by their aversion to killing animals. The dreadful fact is that a carnivorous diet works better for the human species. The only exceptions are when a vegetarian elite - such as Brahmins in India or some Buddhists - are supported in a comparatively idle lifestyle by a meat-eating underclass.
    1
  19365. Would you give him a job? Would you serve him in your restaurant? Would you lend him money? Would you let him marry your daughter?
    1
  19366.  @binsoku6  That'll be small change compared with what he'll get by suing CNN and all the other MSM liars. He's got an even better case than Nick Sandmann.
    1
  19367.  @shepherdspy  Because he's an incompetent amateur who has led his country to ruin and been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands.
    1
  19368.  @shepherdspy  Because he is an obstacle to peace.
    1
  19369.  @bonnie7898  Obviously it was. But it was Zelensky's refusal to accept Russia's proposals which caused it, and it is role as cheerleader for Western commercial interests which is ensuring the continuance of the war.
    1
  19370.  @bonnie7898  The point is that in this instance Russia's commercial interests are based on around 300 years of investment, in both cash and labour. It does seem rather unfair that the fruits of these investments should be spirited away into Western hands - at least Putin thinks so, and I tend to agree. The very fact that he was prepared to go to war over this is another factor. Ukraine would have been better advised to agree to allow Donbass to become autonomous, and separate from any deals Ukraine might have made with the EU or indeed, with American oil interests. No blood would have been shed and, at the end of the day, Ukraine would not have been part destroyed and faced with crippling debts.
    1
  19371.  @Marcus_Aurelius_6  No. The West will make a load of fuss while it quietly gives in to the inevitable. The Ukrainian adventure is a failure.
    1
  19372.  @Marcus_Aurelius_6  I think the West is chickening out. These aid packages are not really what they say on the tin.
    1
  19373.  @Marcus_Aurelius_6  What was it buying the time for, exactly? To watch Ukraine lose?
    1
  19374.  @garethhanby  Obviously - but it's impossible to which and in which combinations. Other factors must come into play to explain the wildly disparate death rates in different countries.
    1
  19375. Which will not fully employ. And Russia is consequently winning.
    1
  19376.  @tomw.6757  No. What's underneath it - namely trillions$$$ in gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals.
    1
  19377.  @tomw.6757  They're doing OK in Mariupol and elsewhere. And Ukraine will have to give up soon.
    1
  19378.  @ashleylittle6776  Not really. It those parts of Donbass away from the front line mining is proceeding, as well as rebuilding. So that's why the Russians are pushing the front line further and further into Ukrainian territory.
    1
  19379.  @ashleylittle6776  Russia has been mining in Donbass for centuries. And still is.
    1
  19380.  @ashleylittle6776  What makes you think that? One of the benefits of this war is that old soviet era equipment is being replaced with new stuff - as indeed are buildings and other facilities. Mariupol for example, sitting on half a million tonnes of recently discovered lithium, is positively booming.
    1
  19381.  @ashleylittle6776  That's where your completely wrong. It's mining industry is held to be one of the most efficient and effective in the world It also builds and maintains nuclear power stations all over the world.
    1
  19382.  @ashleylittle6776  It doesn't matter. The Chinese and Indian replacements and clones are just as good.
    1
  19383.  @ashleylittle6776  No. That's why they make machinery so Russia can do it. They can copy anything from mining equipment to tractor parts. And that's exactly what they are doing - in return for cut-price crude.
    1
  19384.  @ashleylittle6776  Both China and India have substantial mining equipment manufacturing capabilities. Just look it up before you come out with any more nonsense.
    1
  19385.  @ashleylittle6776  Certainly! China and India are indeed significant players in the production of mining equipment. Let’s delve into the details: China: China is one of the world’s largest coal producers, driving substantial demand for advanced mining equipment. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, coal output in China increased by 5.8% in 2023 between January and February1. The country’s rapid integration of advanced technologies, such as digitization, electrification, and automation, has led to cutting-edge designs for the mining sector. India: India is another major coal-producing nation globally. The need for mineral fertilizers to improve agricultural yield and the construction of roads and railway tracks in hilly areas fuel the demand for mining activities in India2. In summary, both China and India play crucial roles in the mining equipment industry, contributing to its growth and technological advancements. From Bing. You can have done this yourself, you know.
    1
  19386.  @ashleylittle6776  Certainly! China and India are indeed significant players in the production of mining equipment. Let’s delve into the details: China: China is one of the world’s largest coal producers, driving substantial demand for advanced mining equipment. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, coal output in China increased by 5.8% in 2023 between January and February1. The country’s rapid integration of advanced technologies, such as digitization, electrification, and automation, has led to cutting-edge designs for the mining sector. India: India is another major coal-producing nation globally. The need for mineral fertilizers to improve agricultural yield and the construction of roads and railway tracks in hilly areas fuel the demand for mining activities in India2. In summary, both China and India play crucial roles in the mining equipment industry, contributing to its growth and technological advancements.
    1
  19387.  @ashleylittle6776  Just Google it China: China is one of the world’s largest coal producers, driving substantial demand for advanced mining equipment. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, coal output in China increased by 5.8% in 2023 between January and February1. The country’s rapid integration of advanced technologies, such as digitization, electrification, and automation, has led to cutting-edge designs for the mining sector. India: India is another major coal-producing nation globally. The need for mineral fertilizers to improve agricultural yield and the construction of roads and railway tracks in hilly areas fuel the demand for mining activities in India2. In summary, both China and India play crucial roles in the mining equipment industry, contributing to its growth and technological advancements.
    1
  19388.  @ashleylittle6776  Just Google it. I just did and find that China and India are among the world's largest coal producers and manufacture large amounts of mining equipment which are exported worldwide.
    1
  19389.  @ashleylittle6776  I just have and Google confirms that both China and India have substantial mining equipment manufacturing industries. Unfortunately mad YouTube doesn't seem to want me to send over the cut and paste, but you can do it yourself. There is no harm in being wrong, you know. It'll do you good to admit it though.
    1
  19390.  @ashleylittle6776  Go to Made-in-China and key in mining equipment. You will find dozens and dozens of companies selling everything needed to extract and process mineral resources.
    1
  19391.  @ashleylittle6776  Oh do pack it in! They manufacture heavy equipment of all kinds. There are literally hundred of Chinese firms advertising such products on the Internet.
    1
  19392.  @ashleylittle6776  You don't, so why should the rest of the world?
    1
  19393.  @ashleylittle6776  You don't have to know anything about mining to know that Russia, China and India have substantial mining industries and that China manufactures mining equipment of all kinds.
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  19394.  @Billyg215  Not at all! Close your eyes, clear your mind and imagine you haven't been subjected to four years of incessant media propaganda directed at this interloper. Open your eyes and look again. You will see no saint, but not some sanctimonious time-serving politician either. Trump is an ordinary sort of Joe who happens to have inherited a few billion dollars and is ending a lifetime of building skyscrapers and playing golf by becoming President. Just because he could. Looked at objectively he's made a damned good job of it too - despite the Kung Flu which has caught everyone unawares. Mysterious fate has chosen this unlikely individual to guard Western enlightenment against the dark forces of Marxism and globalist greed. Vote for him if you can. The alternative is almost too horrible to contemplate.
    1
  19395.  @Billyg215  I think it's you who are brainwashed, I'm sorry to say. It took me almost two years of watching CNN, MSNBC, The Young Turks, David Packham et al before I started to think they were laying it on a bit thick. The same old jibes. The constant diet of nothingburgers. It's very hard to admit to yourself that you've been conned, and it takes quite a while too. Trump is a narcissist and something of a con-artist himself. But he is not a politician. He hasn't had to climb the greasy pole owing favours all the way. He doesn't need the Washington gravy train. He's got one of his own. So no, Trump hasn't taken me in. It is the lies and deceits of the media and the Democrats which have put me here. And I'm pretty grateful, I must say.
    1
  19396.  @willmalin3752  You are a good example o someone who has been conned by the political and media establishment, driven hysterical with fear because of this interloper into their cosy, profitable world. I used to be like you myself until a couple of years ago when I became suspicious - and rather irritated by the endless childish smears. Trump never thought it was a good idea to inject bleach. He never said anything of the kind. This is just one example of the way his sometimes clumsy turn of speech, edited by the hideous MSM, has been turned into a myth. The Covid 19 pandemic is no myth, but it is nothing like as bad as we were told to expect and it is now receding by the day. Once again, figures have been grossly exaggerated by Trump's enemies in a bid to make him take the blame for something which is not his fault. As I expect you have read, Covid 19 has only directly killed 6% of the "death toll". Of the rest it is impossible to say how many had their lives shortened by the virus. What it is possible to say is that the vast majority- over 90%% - were elderly or already suffering from a severe medical condition. This means that the odds of anyone catching the disease in anything like a severe or fatal form are very small indeed. The people gathered to listen to Trump are probably a great deal more aware of the actual risks than those driven insane by anti-Trump propaganda. Having investigated the situation thoroughly myself, with objective evidence untainted by the fear-mongering of the media, I would have no hesitation in attending such a rally. There is more risk of dying in a road accident on the way to and from such a rally than there is of catching a fatal dose of coronavirus while there.
    1
  19397.  @willmalin3752  Have you? Look at the entire video of the "bleach" news conference instead of the chopped version. Read a transcript of his actual words. Both are readily available on the Internet. You will find that Trump had been confused by the preceding speaker, a Homeland Security guy, who used the terms "inject" and "disinfect" in their military sense; inject not in the sense of sticking a needle in his arm but in the way I might say I am trying to inject a little commonsense into this conversation and "disinfect" in the sense that soldiers say they are going to disinfect an area of the enemy. This confused Trump who asked a rambling and largely incoherent question in an attempt to get his head round what he thought he had heard. It is quite clear from the context that up until that point the idea that the virus might be treated by injecting disinfectant hadn't crossed his mind and he was as gobsmacked at the notion as anyone might be. To then turn this into a piece of anti-Trump propaganda saying he was telling people to inject household bleach is just one egregious example of the vicious, unthinking and immoral behaviour of his opponents. Another equally immoral and disgusting example is the way the media and the Democrats have sought to blame the Covid 19 pandemic on Trump. No-one has got this right and Trump has done no worse than anybody. One thing that is worth mentioning is his endorsement of hydroxychloroquine. So corrupt and vicious are the Orange Man Bad lunatics that this extremely useful drug was immediately vilified and even banned in some states and countries. False test studies were carried out using absurdly huge doses given far too late and the drug was claimed to be both useless and dangerous. Those tests have now been exposed as lies and proper tests using small doses given in the very early stages of the disease show that it reduces deaths by at least a third. The media and the Democrats were responsible for the deaths of a few people who swallowed bleach. They are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people all over the world because of their attack on hydroxychloroquine. No tweet of Trump's has ever done that.
    1
  19398.  @willmalin3752  Name one inaccuracy. One lie. Just one, Shouldn't be too much bother.
    1
  19399.  @willmalin3752  A small selection. Somewhat excitable but nonetheless accurate summary for the layman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXmwt_8tdNY Dr Campbell gives detailed daily reports on the worldwide Covid situation. He had been very sceptical about hydroxychloroquine until these recent studies, one of which he goes through in detail; a study of 8,000 patients in Belgian hospitals which shows a more than 30% improved survival rate when the drug is properly used. The actual study and other references can be accessed in the description below the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro A list of published scientific papers, many peer-reviewed which indicate efficacy. https://c19study.com/
    1
  19400. I think people are confused as to exactly what Trump wants. He's not interested in getting concessions for "poor little Ukraine." . That was the schtick of previous administrations. What Trump wants is a deal in which the US and Russia can divvy up the immense mineral wealth of Ukraine to their mutual advantage.
    1
  19401. I think people are confused as to exactly what Trump wants. He's not interested in getting concessions for "poor little Ukraine." . That was the schtick of previous administrations. What Trump wants is a deal in which the US and Russia can divvy up the immense mineral wealth of Ukraine to their mutual advantage.
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  19402. NATO ceased to have a real function once it became clear that the Russian Federation was not going to try to re-invade Europe. This has been kept a closely guarded secret because NATO needed the myth of Russian nastiness to justify its existence. Today is an historic day, in fact. Trump has done a deal with Russia to import aluminium in large quantities and sanctions are about to be lifted. This is just the start. Unless Europe wants to be left out in the cold (literally) it had better come to the table and join Russia and the US in helping to create a new and prosperous world.
    1
  19403.  @troywrzesinski9143  What's that got to do with Ukrainians being directly complicit in the murder of tense of thousands of Jews?
    1
  19404. @Peoples Republic of Ninj Bechamel. Or a history book.
    1
  19405.  @pedromatos5918  You only have to compare the Russia of 1990 with the Russia of today to see how utterly wrong you are.
    1
  19406.  @redrick8900  I said no such thing. I merely reported an historical fact: that Ukrainians took part in the massacre of tens of thousands of Jews.
    1
  19407.  @omfug7148  And those that didn't supported the Nazis and cheerfully assisted them in massacring the Jews.
    1
  19408. But he got what he wanted. Grow a brain.
    1
  19409.  @Awibrahor  Don't believe me. Believe the evidence of history and read what Putin and other Russian thinkers write. They went through the horrors of Communist expansionism.
    1
  19410.  @originalkk882  T cell immunity. Who needs Covid 19 antibodies when you are immune due to resistance to previous covid infections?
    1
  19411.  @user-qi5nu4bj5h  Plus they have built up T cell immunity from these previous epidemics, don't you think?
    1
  19412. Makes sense!
    1
  19413. I'm rather afraid that apocalypse might not be too strong a word. Biden will win, by fair means or foul, and the consequences will be shattering.
    1
  19414.  @Jolis_Parsec  I think that joining in the howls for his destruction is more embarrassing. He has a role to play.
    1
  19415.  @EbenBransome  I'm not suggesting he should be let off.
    1
  19416.  @Jolis_Parsec  I can't think what you mean. To me, TR represents an articulate and pro-active conduit for the very genuine and understandable fears of the British working class in the face of excessive immigration and the threat of Islamification.
    1
  19417.  @Jolis_Parsec  I don't see what's funny. TR is a genuine voice of the people - and they need one since the media and the politicians aren't providing much support.
    1
  19418. For some unimaginable reason you fail so mention the snow now falling in the arctic which will largely replace the ice loss. You also show pictures of glaciers calving. They are not melting, they are breaking up as the weight of snow forces them to flow forward into the sea. Weather in the arctic is cyclic and repeats itself, due largely to its position in relation to the sun and the flow of air and ocean currnts. Ice levels were considerably lower in the early 1920's than they are today. The climate crisis is a conspiracy to defraud. This report is part of that conspiracy.
    1
  19419. At least you have utter intelligibility on your side.
    1
  19420.  @rufusreloaded1043  Sounds like a good description of Foreign Secretary!
    1
  19421.  @rufusreloaded1043  Foreign Secretary, in other words!
    1
  19422.  @JoeWedgwood-ik9zo  He's actually pretty much right.
    1
  19423.  @thomasmoore1499  NATO has long outlived its usefulness and is now little more than the commercial arm of the arms industry. Britain has nothing to offer Russia which cannot be agreed by negotiation to our mutual benefit. There is no need to cast Russia as our enemy, other than to continue NATO's function as a device for syphoning taxpayers' money into the pockets of war profiteers.
    1
  19424.  @thomasmoore1499  NATO has outlived its usefulness and is now nothing more tan a commercial arm of the weapons industry. Instead of ganging up against Russia, Western countries should be seeking alliances with it.
    1
  19425.  @thomasmoore1499  Then perhaps NATO should no longer exist. It was created to defend the West against the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union no longer exists - so what's the point of it other than to support the arms industry and advance the careers of military men?
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  19426.  @thomasmoore1499  NATO is madness. Who needs it?
    1
  19427.  @thomasmoore1499  NATO was created to protect Europe against Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia no longer exists - so what's the point of NATO?
    1
  19428.  @thomasmoore1499  Then perhaps NATO should no longer exist. It seems to create more problems than it solves.
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  19429.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  You never said a truer word. Budapest was created in order for Ukraine's vast mineral wealth to eventually be transferred out of Russian hands. It is now defunct. If was replaced by the Minsk Accords which were designed to provide a peaceful solution to the difficulties, but Ukraine - instructed by the West - reneged, leaving Putin with little choice but to go to war. Treaties seldom last for long, because circumstances change and make them irrelevant. Some are even deliberately constructed in order to to bring a future advantage to one or other of the signatories. America perfected the art of drawing up treaties when they were busy committing genocide of the original inhabitants of the continent. Unworkable treaties and setting one tribe against another in order to gain control of natural resources have remained in the armoury of that great nation ever since.
    1
  19430.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  You have it round the wrong way. As Angela Merkel admitted, it was Ukraine's army which was built up. Novorussia is a myth invented by the West to justify its constant persecution of Russia and its constant attempts to muscle in on Russia's commercial interests. All Russia is trying do is retain control of the highly profitable mining industry in Donbass and all the West is trying to do is take it over.
    1
  19431.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  You've got it round the wrong way. It was the Ukrainians who used Minsk to build up their army, as Merkel and other signatories have now admitted.
    1
  19432.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  I don't know what you mean by Novorussia. All Putin is trying to do is keep control of the highly profitable mining industry in Eastern Ukraine. He has no expansionist plans whatsoever.
    1
  19433.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  ..and all America and its allies are trying to do is take over the highly profitable mining industry in Eastern Ukraine. And Putin won't sit back and let them have it.
    1
  19434.  @joeordinary209dontbuytesla  I understand you now. Yes, I believe that broadly speaking this area represents that part of the present country of Ukraine which Russia wishes to reclaim. Its actual extent will depend, of course, on the state of affairs when the war is ended. As to the rights and wrongs of this expansion I think Russia has a justifiable claim. It was a huge mistake to base the footprint of the new country of Ukraine on the boundaries of the former SSR. It did not fit genuine economic and historical realities, the SSR being of course a largely Russian creation and ultimately subservient to Moscow. Putin made his position clear in his essay on Russia/Ukraine relations published shortly before the invasion. Recognition of Crimea as Russian and regional autonomy for the Donbass republics, along with a firm promise for Ukraine not to join NATO, could well have satisfied him. But that horse has now left the stable, I think.
    1
  19435. What are you whinging about? If the strategy works (and it could well do so) then that's got to be good, hasn't it? And if it doesn't Johnson will have to go - which I'm sure will please you mightily.
    1
  19436. Good luck Donald in dealing with this latest abuse of America's crippled judicial system.
    1
  19437.  @nilpoints  Are you suggesting that the America's judicial system still exists to promote justice?
    1
  19438.  @nilpoints  So this has nothing to do with the election then?
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  19439. How exactly has Putin been humiliated? He's about to win a war.
    1
  19440. Seems Omicron does it long, slow and gentle, taking eleven days to Delta's three or four. This is good news for us because our immune systems only gradually notice what's going on, so don't go into panic mode and make us really, really ill. And it's good news for Omicron too because he takes his leave with four or five times as many new viruses having been produced than is the case with Delta. And that's a good few billion.
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  19441. His shock tactics might work better and more quickly.
    1
  19442. @ I don't think Trump wants to do much more than scare people into behaving as he wants. It worked with Columbia on the deported immigrants issue and it might well work with imports/exports. It is not a considered long-term policy.
    1
  19443.  @nickmiller76  Ideas before numbers though!
    1
  19444. Democrat strategy somehow manages to be both sinister and farcical at the same time A shame so many Americans are so thick, or they wouldn't even begin to get away with it
    1
  19445. Out of interest, in what way do you think America will suffer when Putin wins?
    1
  19446. Dead parrot. (But the acting's not as good.)
    1
  19447. Name one US President who has not been a psychopath or a narcissist or both. With Biden you get senile dementia added to the list.
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  19448. No. You need somewhat less than that percentage to be IMMUNE for herd immunity to be achieved. Immunity through infection is now clearly shown to be more robust and long-lasting than the somewhat ineffective and short-lived vaccines so a combination of both approaches is the best route to take.
    1
  19449.  @CharlesSmith-io9fp  It is widely available on the Internet. A number of studies have shown that immunity through infection is more robust and long-lasting than that provided by vaccination - although it is emphasised that people should take vaccinations if they wish to. A study recently in Israel suggests that natural immunity provides 27times more protection than vaccines.
    1
  19450.  @CharlesSmith-io9fp  From the Times of Israel: Natural immunity from contracting coronavirus provided Israelis with longer-lasting protection against the Delta variant than two shots of the Pfizer vaccine given early this year, new Israeli research suggests. The study by Maccabi Healthcare Service looked at individuals who had either gotten two shots of the vaccine by the end of February or tested positive for COVID-19 by that time. It compared 46,035 Maccabi members who caught the coronavirus at some point during the pandemic and the same number of double-vaccinated people.
    1
  19451.  @CharlesSmith-io9fp  Alas, you are at the mercy of the CDC which works hand in glove with the pharmaceutical industry to push vaccines at the cost of destroying information on alternative solutions. I will bombard you with various sources in other posts but none of it may get through the censorship you Americans unknowingly labour under.
    1
  19452.  @CharlesSmith-io9fp  From the British Medical Journal Sep 3, 2021 Gazit and colleagues in Israel compared 16,215 never-infected individuals who had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine with 16,215 unvaccinated individuals known to have had a Covid-19 infection. There were 191 symptomatic breakthrough infections with the Delta variant in the vaccinated-uninfected group and only 8 such infections in the infected-unvaccinated group. The adjusted risk of symptomatic breakthrough infections for the vaccinated group was 27.02 (P<0.001), which translates into 96.3% relative effectiveness of natural infection compared with vaccination.
    1
  19453.  @CharlesSmith-io9fp  But I've sent you extracts from The Times of Israel and The British Medical Journal. What more do you want? Infection creates immunity in very many diseases. Why should you doubt it happens with covid?
    1
  19454.  @CharlesSmith-io9fp  I don't see the relevance of this. Please explain.
    1
  19455.  @truthwillwin8977  What are you, some kind of racist? It would remind people how far civilisation has progressed.
    1
  19456.  @truthwillwin8977  But it would replace one symbol with another, don't you see? As an alternative how about someone gets the council to organise a competition to put up a new sculpture every once in a while, like they do on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square? That would be interesting.
    1
  19457. Why do Americans want to lock each other up all the time?
    1
  19458. The FBI fixed it for Kennedy to be assassinated after he said he would take troops out of Vietnam. This guy looks very much like a modern Lee Harvey Oswald. I daresay auditions are now taking place for the Jack Ruby role.
    1
  19459.  @carlpeberdy9086  Everywhere.
    1
  19460.  @billpugh58  Compared with Muslims the so-called "far Right" are models of open-minded liberalism. They don't actual want to kill anyone who disagrees with them and nor do they believe that they will go to Paradise and have sex with virgins if they do so.
    1
  19461.  @billpugh58  Not at all, In any case the so-called "far right" are pussycats compared with extreme Muslim fundamentalists who actually want to kill you if you disagree with their nonsense.
    1
  19462.  @carlpeberdy9086  Obviously you don't live in Luton or Rochdale - to name but two.
    1
  19463.  @ffotograffydd  That is utter nonsense. Our deep state mind manipulators are playing with us.
    1
  19464.  @ffotograffydd  They lied.
    1
  19465.  @ffotograffydd  There is just no evidence for it. All the deep state could come up with was a few Welshmen with swastikas embroidered on their cushions. It's a con.
    1
  19466.  @G_Demolished  War is too important to be left to generals.
    1
  19467. There will be none. Farage hates and fears Tommy Robinson and Tommy Robinson knows Farage for what he is.
    1
  19468. ​ @jonm7272  By your reasoning we might all just as well not drive at all. No chance that we might have an accident and inadvertently kill somebody. Better all stay at home in case something bad happens,eh? Forget coronavirus. We're all just disasters waiting to happen to other people.
    1
  19469. S.D. Parsons It adds up because the Cummings behaved intelligently, rather than with knee-jerk obedience to slogans. Circumstances alter cases. The Cummings drove for a clear purpose - and one sanctioned by the "general statements" to which you refer. I can see no way in which their behaviour can have added to the possibility of passing on infection over and above any other behaviour they may have chosen. Other than to kill themselves immediately of course -which is the natural extension of the strategies which you and Dr Jon seem to support.
    1
  19470.  @gretschmesaboogie  How in hell do you work that out?
    1
  19471.  @sdparsons  But what if you HAVE to step outside your front door? To ensure your child's safety, for example. What do you do? Risk the possibility of killing others - or kill yourself and your child, thus taking self-isolation to its ultimate extreme? Slogans are merely encapsulations of a notion. "Dig for Victory" doesn't mean keep on digging away until victory comes. It is merely the encapsulation of an idea. "Stay at home " is just a way of saying "Try to say at home as much as possible, but of course you may HAVE to go out from time. We just hope you will take sensible decisions in this regard." A "carefully informed sacrifice" is such a lovely idea. The more I think about it though the more troublesome it appears. Did Cummings make a "carefully informed sacrifice" by risking his career in deciding to take his child up North? Did the single-parent mother make a "carefully informed sacrifice" by isolating herself and her child ? I think she took a slogan literally. He interpreted it.
    1
  19472. Jews are good at everything.
    1
  19473.  @war-painter  I really don't think the date enters into the picture in any way.
    1
  19474. @ Can't keep your hand off it, Dick?
    1
  19475. @ I leave that to you,.
    1
  19476. Damned with faint praise. And what about the dumfy dumf background music?
    1
  19477.  @JayDeeChannel  Because Zelensky was about to sell off the multi-million dollar mining interests in the Donbass which Russians still owned.
    1
  19478.  @TheFrewah  They do as long as their neighbours don't ally themselves with enemies like NATO and ISIS.
    1
  19479.  @TheFrewah  As long as their neighbours don't undermine their interests, they do.
    1
  19480.  @doubletap-z8c  No. I have simply escaped the brainwashing.
    1
  19481.  @liukin95  Ukraine isn't a country.
    1
  19482.  @doubletap-z8c  Traitor to WHAT??
    1
  19483.  @victorianmelody46  Putin has made it abundantly clear that - however regretfully- Ukraine may turn its face to the West, with all this implies, But it can't take Donbass and Crimea with it. The new country of Ukraine, created in 1991, suffers from a major disadvantage in that it is not a true country as such. The former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, the borders of which provide the footprint for the modern country, was a province of the Soviet Union and took the form it did not for ethnic or linguistic reasons but because it suited the SU (ie Russia) to fix these borders on purely administrative and logistical grounds. The root of the problem lies in the fact that in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine many people still look to Moscow rather than Kiev as their real capital. They both have large Russian populations and Kiev has made the mistake of attempting to "de-Russianise" them. Even more significantly they are sitting on literally trillions and trillion of dollarsworth of gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals. These resources have been exploited for centuries by Russian people financed by Russian investment. If Ukraine were to join the EU, for example, this immense wealth would be diverted from Russia and Russia just won't have that.
    1
  19484.  @doubletap-z8c  I've never seen any Kremlin propaganda. You simply can't get in in the UK. I'm actually using my brain. You should try it sometime.
    1
  19485.  @doubletap-z8c  When did the UK and Russia declare war, by the way?
    1
  19486.  @davidwright5094  Did you forget the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who have fled in the other direction - into Russia where they have roots and very often family? Ukraine is a deeply divided land. These two versions of events are far from incompatible.
    1
  19487.  @davidwright5094  But there are refugees from Donbass in Russia too - very many of them. These people prefer rule from Moscow to rule from Kiev. What percentage of the population have this wish cannot be judged. It may be as low as 30 %, which is what is reckoned to be roughly the proportion of the inhabitants of the area who say they are Russian as opposed to Ukrainian. The proportion could, however, be much higher, as it certainly is the industrial areas. These self-declared Russians have been subjected to considerable pressure since Ukraine gained independence and following the Maidan revolution of 2014 this pressure became violent and repressive with Kiev sending in armed troops to shell civilian areas and conduct campaigns of torture and intimidation. This is clearly documented in independent UN sources. The fact is that it was Russia which developed this mineral rich area, using Russian investment and bringing in Russians to carry out the work. The situation is far from being as black and white as you seem to think.
    1
  19488.  @davidwright5094  You are living in a fantasy. There isn't a great deal of difference between Russia and Ukraine except that Russians treat Ukrainians inside their country better than Ukrainians treat Russians inside theirs. This is perhaps understandable, given Russia's history as a colonial power, but all you have to do is check independent sources, such as the UN reports on the situation in Donbass in 2014/16 to see the truth of this. Donbass residents of Russian descent who have fled the war into Russia have done so because they wished to, because that's where their roots are, and because they would face a possibly grim future at the hands of Ukrainians if they had fled in the other direction.
    1
  19489.  @davidwright5094  They prefer to be there. Otherwise they would have fled in the opposite direction.
    1
  19490. This obsession with eggs shows how bonkers many of Trumps opponents are. Millions and millions of chickens have been killed due to bird flu and getting egg supplies from abroad is fraught with difficulties. Nothing to do with Trump at all.
    1
  19491.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  We have physical room, certainly but there is little room left in the hearts of many British people. Neither have we planned for the influx in terms of service, infrastructure and job opportunities. The UK population 2030 is likely to be around 9 million more than was estimated in1994 - and all due to immigration. If we are duty bound to change our expectations for the future and our way of life to accommodate people from other countries it should be because they are under threat and have nowhere else to go - not just because they rather fancy coming here.
    1
  19492.  @peterebel7899  And we should re-allocate such spaces with caution.
    1
  19493.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  You do seem to be very narrow minded and perhaps even a bit thick, if I may say so.
    1
  19494.  @edwardbernthal160  And we must ensure the gaps they leave are filled circumspectly: either by those in genuine need or by those whose skill and talents are of use to the nation.
    1
  19495.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  I have done my bit and feel justified in spending at least some of my retirement in taunting muddle-brained lefties on YouTube.
    1
  19496.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  I abstained in that vote, as it happens, but I am entirely convinced that the present supply difficulties will be swiftly overcome and that the wages of lorry-drivers and production line workers will rise as a prerequisite of this. I have never done any manual labour myself, and do not propose to start now. I am however considering starting my own YouTube channel once I master the technology. What do you think?
    1
  19497.  @edwardbernthal160  I beg your pardon. I did not realise you were a foreigner. Perhaps this is some metaphor in your native tongue which does not transfer readily into English?
    1
  19498.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Some people - such as yourself - clearly do read my posts on channels such as this and it gives me enormous pleasure to taunt the more foolish of my respondents, as well as to have stimulating exchanges of views with the more intelligent among you. I admit - somewhat shamefacedly - that I do occasionally post on more right-wing channels in order to boost my sagging ego by collecting likes. I've topped the thousand mark twice and scored a 450 earlier this week but the whole process does make me feel rather uncomfortable for some reason. Perhaps a YouTube channel would provide more satisfaction. As for my personal qualities, which you disparage so readily, you are quite close to the mark in some respects, although not with regards to the money.
    1
  19499.  @edwardbernthal160  What I don't understand is this: and they would be? you appear to be short of every talent, including voters with something between their ears. It's not in English as I understand it. You'll need to rephrase it if you want me to reply.
    1
  19500.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Well I wasn't actually BRAGGING as such, merely countering your assertion that no-one reads my posts. I regard it, as I said, as simply looking for approval, which is a sort of weakness, really. I do quite like old Jeff as it happens, but I don't think he and his kind poison society in any way. HIs views are entirely respectable and well grounded, as indeed are those of the host of this channel on some occasions.
    1
  19501.  @edwardbernthal160  Humanitarianism has to be balanced by common sense. It is a mistake to think that an idea is a good one just because it makes you feel all warm and fluffy inside.
    1
  19502.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  I agree his presentation leaves a great deal to be desired. I'm happy to say he has recently taken to recording outside in more relaxed garb. Getting the right "look" for a YouTube channel must be quite hard. Jeff may resemble a funeral director but, Phil very much resembles a corpse in a condition of temporary animation.
    1
  19503.  @susanstanleyhammond5699  Actually I find people a dreadful nuisance generally. And I've only ever once voted Tory.
    1
  19504.  @jimschachtschneider7741  Deciding on the classification of documents is a Presidential function. America is on a slippery slope when unelected bureaucrats get to decide this - as appears to be the case here. The legislation covering the disposal of Presidential papers when a President leaves office contains no provision for criminal prosecution. This why Trump's enemies have been reduced to citing the 1917 Espionage Act in their latest bid to do him down I have read the indictment. It is a disgrace to the legal profession and the whole concept of justice.
    1
  19505.  @memkiii  The facts contradict your analysis. Putin must have been aware that Ukraine had a large army, supplied and trained by the USA and the UK. He must have been aware of his own army's weaknesses and failings. And why would he want Ukraine anyway? It would involve him in an expensive and long-lasting civil war. It would be like "swallowing a porcupine" as one commentator put it. No. He just wants the Russian areas, namely Crimea and Donbass. Making people THINK he wanted the whole territory is just part of that strategy. A considerable part of Ukraine's army has been destroyed, largely in lengthy conflict designed to thwart this false objective. Putin has sacrificed raw troops, outdated equipment and selected reserves, that's all. The real fighting is in the hands of elite corps and mercenaries, such as the Chechens, the Cossacks and the Wagner Group, plus battle hardened troops from the conflicts in Syria and in Donbass itself. They are still fully operational. A whole army of experienced and well-armed and armoured Chechens is waiting in the wings, as well as a joint force of Belarussians and Russians in the north. America started this war on the basis of lies, and continues to lie about it to the American people. Expand your research and you will see that this is so.
    1
  19506.  @rogerwilco5918  The Ukrainians are pretty good, and well dug in.
    1
  19507. Russia has no wish to destroy Ukraine. It merely wants to recover those parts of the new country of Ukraine which it considers to be Russian. The rest of the country can go its own way.
    1
  19508.  @claudiapunktchen165  And wiping their arses with a shared lump of seaweed on a stick too! What geniuses they were!
    1
  19509.  @iscadean6038  It's a natural chain of events.
    1
  19510.  @davidmcculloch8490  She's probably right though.
    1
  19511.  @oscarw7805  Why not?
    1
  19512.  @o0xTHEcoPlayerx0o  What had that to do with the UK? It was not directed against that country. What right did that country have to take these aggressive actions?
    1
  19513.  @petegreenway8953  Budapest was dead in the water almost before it was signed. Giving the new country of Ukraine the same borders as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was a huge mistake, But Putin didn't make it, Yeltsin did. The present government of Russia cannot be expected to put up forever with the results of errors committed by a previous government. Minsk was designed to replace Budapest, but once again these treaties failed. Instead of taking steps to grant autonomy to the Donbass republics - which would completely solve the problems without bloodshed - Ukraine was supplied with a multi-billion dollar army with which to retake the areas of Donbass in the hands of the separatists. As for the nuclear weapons in Ukraine, they were SU weapons, supplied by Russia and only capable of being fired on instructions from Moscow. Before the invasion Putin explained his reasoning in a detailed essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations and history. He made it clear that while Ukraine can ally economically with the West it cannot take the Russian financed and developed mining and steelmaking industry of Donbass with it. This is an entirely reasonable attitude. He may have given other reasons, such as protecting Russian language and culture, but this is little more than political posturing, such as America claiming to support Ukraine in order to "protect democracy."
    1
  19514.  @petegreenway8953  Why should Putin's Russia pay for the mistakes made by Yeltsin? Budapest is a failed treaty, and so is its replacement, Minsk. There is nothing unusual there. Treaties fail all the time and if they cannot be renegotiated then war is the general result. Putin has put forward peaceful and workable solutions to the anomalies created by Budapest, but Ukraine has instead chosen to allow itself to be armed by the US and NATO in order to seek a military solution. As for the nuclear weapons removed from Ukraine, they were Soviet weapons, merely stationed there, and they could only be fired from Moscow. Putin's reasons are clearly explained in a lengthy essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published before the invasion. They remain the same now as they were then. Just because the Western media cherry-pick them doesn't mean they change daily, as you put it.
    1
  19515. @SheilaBloom. Not much point, he's dead. But you could try to get a message through to Tommy Robinson before he starves, or is poisoned.
    1
  19516. @ I've heard this too. Why do you think the climate then was more liberal? Is it possible that Putin has been fearful for Russia becoming another US satellite, rather than a truly independent country, and has cracked down because of this? Genuinely interested.
    1
  19517. @SheilaBloom. Did you see him when he came out of prison last? Word is they're denying him tinned food so he has either to risk being poisoned or eating food tainted by God knows what - or starve. He hasn't eaten for a week.
    1
  19518. @ I do, as it happens. You realise, don't you, that your attitude to TR is more or less the same as that of most Russians to Navalny?
    1
  19519.  @speedbird073  Google him.
    1
  19520.  @Titus9508  There are Moslem extremists in there who who have him killed any way they could. And people who hate him enough to taint his food with spit and excrement.
    1
  19521. @ There are radical Muslims in there! Working in the kitchens!
    1
  19522. Fires started by lunatics in areas left unprotected by other lunatics while firefighters appointed by still yet more lunatics attempt to get them under control.
    1
  19523.  @9神赠礼  The actual timescale belies that claim. In any case WHO's draconian stance against hydroxycloroquine, even as a prophylactic, proves they are a key figure in the present conspiracy to extend the scale and duration of the pandemic.
    1
  19524.  @benddawson  I figured you might be, but you should have typed The Who to make it work better.
    1
  19525. We don't need to defend ourselves against Russia. We need to ignore the Washington warmongering propaganda and sit down and talk with Russia's leaders before it is too late and we are plunged into a needless war.
    1
  19526. Meanwhile Big Pharma kills millions and the sitting President is bribed to start a war which is killing tens of thousands more. Nice.
    1
  19527. It seems to have clouded his judgement to some extent.
    1
  19528. Utter nonsense. Russia had only ever wanted Donbass and Crimea and it has them. Ukraine's armed forces are at breaking point. Already Poles disguised as Ukrainian are in the front line and most countries are have doubts about continuing to supply necessary armaments. Russia will launch a blitzkreig within a few weeks and Ukraine will have to choose between years of misery and coming to a sensible settlement.
    1
  19529.  @raywhitehead730  Just yesterday EU President Ursula Von Leyen reported the same figure for the number of UKRAINIAN dead -which seems about right.
    1
  19530.  @russiaisadictatorship.8865  What begging? He's buying arms.
    1
  19531.  @richardmarsden.5610  No point. Just getting frustration off my chest.
    1
  19532. He'll ask Ukraine to settle by giving up territory in return for being provided with a spanking new army to stop Russia going any further in the future.
    1
  19533. Labour seems to want once-Great Britain to become a dormitory for foreign immigrants. There will be no agriculture and whatever room is left over from the acres of cheap housing will be covered in wind farms. And Islam will be the new state religion, with the fear of hell governing the behaviour of us all.
    1
  19534. Trump isn't falling in behind Putin. He's guiding him down the path to peace.
    1
  19535. Love that all we need I guess you wrote that on a wooden computer powered by a windmill. Where can I get one?
    1
  19536. Am I banned|?
    1
  19537. If Ukraine and the West had stuck to the Minsk Accords, there would have been no war. Now events have overtaken that compromise and it is difficult to visualise any other scenario than Russia taking Donbass by force, with consequent humiliation for America and its allies.
    1
  19538. Far-right and proud of it.
    1
  19539.  @god1971b  A myth. All members have voting rights. Read the Reform constitution.
    1
  19540. Trump knows exactly what he's doing. He wants peace, and he knows that peace can only come with a Russian victory.
    1
  19541.  @BourbonCreamBiscuit  You have simply bought into a narrative excusing the West's intervention it what is little more that a border dispute. Putin does not want a return to the USSR - and has said so on many occasions , and obviously Russia is not capable of achieving this anyway. And again, these absurd false parallels between the situation regarding Germany in the 1930's and Russia at present are designed purely to persuade you to support what is essentially an American intervention - for profit - in the affairs of other nations. Wake up.
    1
  19542.  @BourbonCreamBiscuit  Putin doesn't want a return to the USSR and there are no realistic parallels between the situation in Europe in the late 1930's and the present situation.
    1
  19543.  @chillingleague1244  Which was?
    1
  19544.  @tk5782  So 89-year olds never get to be 90 and 91 year olds get bigger pensions and cost more to keep alive? Is that it? In any case, if it was a plan it has severely backfired. The DWP, realising that the cull will indeed mean a reduction in the amount of benefits projected for 2021, went over the figures and realised that married couples in certain age groups had been underpaid for years. The backdated sums will amount to literally billions!
    1
  19545. As an observer from across the pond in the UK I have to say that to our and many European eyes the US system of justice often seems so crude, cruel and Medieval that it it scarcely merits the name of "justice". Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case. the idea of a shackled prisoner dressed in demeaning prison garb shuffling into court under the glare of cameras typifies what is wrong about modern America. You can't go on like this. You really can't.
    1
  19546.  @fritzraake22  Found "Not Guilty" that's why.
    1
  19547. Yup. The "white power " symbol was invented by the right-wing 4Chan to mock stupid lefties and the Proud Boys have members of all races.
    1
  19548.  @tammyslade9441  Wot?
    1
  19549. But evidence obtained cannot be used in criminal proceedings, I believe. At worst Trump could lose the golf courses, which since they are a drain on his resources he might quite welcome! Not that it will ever come to that - unless Trump wants it to.
    1
  19550.  @The_Original_Forrest_Trump  He is entirely capable of forestalling this ponderous legislation until the entire Scottish judiciary dies of old age - or he himself does!
    1
  19551.  @kopeducati  And with reason.
    1
  19552.  @martiedoherty5765  If I had I'd be even more puzzled.
    1
  19553.  @emmaeltringham91  I live in the south of England, so I can't tell you.
    1
  19554.  @din6675  I doubt that "bot farms" even exist. I'm certainly not part of one.
    1
  19555.  @korayven9255  Russia would not have invaded if Ukraine had agreed to its very reasonable peace proposals. Sensible voices in Ukraine were ready to do so, but American and UK envoys were sent to persuade them not to. There are trillions upon trillions of dollarsworth of gas, oil, coal, iron and rare earth minerals beneath the soil of Donbass and Crimea. America wants them. That's all this war is really about.
    1
  19556. Those happy days will soon return.
    1
  19557.  @CC-fr9cu  The nation is already divided and all news is opinion based, one way or another.
    1
  19558.  @vercoda9997  God you're thick. Being Christian doesn't make the war okay and I never said it did. And comrade was a word used in the Soviet Union which ended more than thirty years ago, but since you are an ignorant, ill-educated American I doubt you even realise that.
    1
  19559. Shhh. Don't look now but the West is quietly dumping Ukraine.
    1
  19560. If you're going to have a war you might as well do it properly.
    1
  19561.  @ospehu1  No. NATO caused this itself with a deliberate policy of expansion since the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO is an instrument of American economic aggression while the Russian Federation has sought only to maintain its existing economic interests. You are the bad guys.
    1
  19562.  @ospehu1  NATO is merely the commercial arm of the US arms industry, and the US economy generally. Instead of welcoming the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union it has persisted in a policy of expansion which requires it to demonise Russia. Up until now this has been mildly irritating, but by trying to muscle in on Ukraine it has crossed the line and could well have lit the fuse for world war and nuclear holocaust. You are the bad guys.
    1
  19563.  @gregorimicleson  Putin has no wish to invade any countries. He only invaded Ukraine in order to prevent it trying to retake the Donbass republics from the separatists.
    1
  19564. The Ukrainians are no better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY&t=
    1
  19565. Follow the $cience! Big Pharma fixes results and systematically badmouths cheap alternatives to its money-spinning potions. The shill media is always on hand to push the propaganda, as is clearly the case here.
    1
  19566. People tragically die in wars. They get buried -unless they are scattered about for PR purposes, which seems a favourite Ukrainian trick at the moment.
    1
  19567. Ukraine has lost. Time to stop pretending and end the war before even more lives are sacrificed to woke imperialist globalism. You fools who have supported this needless adventure - and continue to do so - ought to be ashamed.
    1
  19568. At last! Genes not masks, not social distancing nor anything else hold the key to defeating covid.
    1
  19569. Masks are only one factor in the Asian situation. Climatic conditions and partial immunity due to previous similar covids are probably more significant.
    1
  19570.  @jasonarthurs3885  How much of one though? There are no dramatic improvements in the performance of US states where masks are mandated, or in European countries either.
    1
  19571.  @jasonarthurs3885  Which are only one of very many variable factors involved in their performance and probably not a very significant one.
    1
  19572. The plan is for there to be a totally peaceful protest, as was the last demonstration Tommy organised. My greatest fear is that government agents will turn it into a riot to achieve the result you highlight.
    1
  19573.  @michaeldunham3385  Sure, but it isn't working out too well, is it?
    1
  19574.  @michaeldunham3385  I'm just upset by all the needless death and destruction.
    1
  19575.  @gintasvilkelis2544  I think the fact that it was designed to show that Russia can launch a payload of its own choosing at any target it wants within 3,0000 miles to arrive within minutes is probably more important than the actual damage caused in this instance.
    1
  19576.  @Rob-y9p  What nonsense.
    1
  19577. It seems to me that he's actually trying to expose corruption. The amount of circumstantial evidence for election fraud is really quite massive, but there is sadly no tribunal prepared to assess it. Unless the Biden administration agrees to a full impartial enquiry it will be operating under a perpetual cloud. I expect America's new Chinese puppet masters will find a way around this though.
    1
  19578.  @DS9TREK  Why?
    1
  19579. I'm British and I still can't make out what these crimes are, and why Trump has not been taken to court for them. It strikes me that you and the other people who constantly make these claims might actually be insane - or at least so thoroughly brainwashed that you have lost all touch with reality.
    1
  19580.  @homeboysir6963  Yes, but what is he supposed to have actually DONE?
    1
  19581.  @homeboysir6963  That's IT ???!!!
    1
  19582.  @homeboysir6963  Nobody is. But the gap between illusion and reality is considerably wider in some people than in others.
    1
  19583.  @homeboysir6963  Why should that be? Almost everything you believe about Trump is an illusion created by the media and the political establishment to try to get the cuckoo chucked out of their comfortable nest. The reality is that he is a New York businessman who decided to round off his career by becoming the President and, being a patriot not a globalist lackey, he was making a damned fine job of it too.
    1
  19584.  @homeboysir6963  Of course he is! Make America Great Again! What more patriotic statement could there be?
    1
  19585.  @homeboysir6963  I forgive you everything. Do you realise that in this country OUR idiot lefties are trying to get Churchill's statues torn down because " he was a racist" ? I believe that Trump, while obviously not in the same class as Churchill, is genuinely motivated by patriotism, however. As an egotist and a narcissist it could not be otherwise. He is proud of his country and genuinely feels the need to rescue it from its slide into Marxist-fuelled globalism.
    1
  19586.  @homeboysir6963  Trump is hardly aristocratic. He's a real man of the people with the good fortune to be born into money - and I'm sure he has bank accounts everywhere! The very fact that the political establishment, the media and the security services have conducted such a bitter campaign against this interloper gives him considerable credibility in my eyes. It is you who is naive if you believe that this huge attack was launched simply out of philanthropy. It's because Trump has upset the applecart, and the applecart was taking America down the road to restructured capitalism as advertised by the New World Order and intellectually fuelled by the genius of George Soros. American politics is utterly corrupt and while Trump certainly has done his share of dirty deeds they have been in the private sector, not in the world of politics, and this is why he is so feared and hated. He is an unlikely saviour, I admit, but his stance against the societal degradation which is needed for the NWO plan to work has helped hold back the tide, at least temporarily. I hope with all my heart that he or his nominee reaches the White House in 2024. We need someone like him in Europe right now too.
    1
  19587.  @rogerout8875  They both create a market for illicit supply - which is enormously profitable. Russia is run by crooks, don't forget.
    1
  19588. Talking of arrests...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRJItU0YJ7I
    1
  19589. Kyle worked in Kinosha. The gun was there. The owner of the car lot asked for help protecting his property from BLM rioters.
    1
  19590. @Cliv Ings Sussed it. 70 is the average for the week.
    1
  19591. @Cliv Ings Still way, way off a second wave. I go along with these figures simply representing Covid 19's contribution to the normal autumn/winter respiratory disease death rate.
    1
  19592. @Cliv Ings The costs are incalculable. The thing is the virus has to do what it has to do. It will only stop when it runs out of non-immune targets. I'm hopeful that will happen soon, but there seem to be so many vested interests trying to squeeze this for all its worth. It's actually pretty low down on the league table for pandemics.
    1
  19593.  @mediterraneandiet2483  I know. It's so absurd, I'm really having to put on my tinfoil hat for this one.
    1
  19594. He's right though. If Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine, Ukraine would have invaded Donbass.
    1
  19595.  @OUsniper1  ..but which is occupied by separatist partisans.
    1
  19596. Since NATO appears to be run by a bunch of warmongering clowns, getting out of it might be a pretty good idea.
    1
  19597. Sucker.
    1
  19598.  @user-vc5zt9ci12  Demilitarised but with a puppet Moscow-facing government rather than occupied, I fancy. Even this is just one option. Russia may well allow Ukraine to retain a semblance of sovereignty West of the Dnieper as long as it stays out of NATO.
    1
  19599.  @doncarlodivargas5497  Russia attacked Kiev in order to face the Ukrainian army on Ukrainian territory. It is quite clear there was no expectation of actually taking it. And Finland - nor anywhere else- is under no threat unless their governments assist American imperialist aggression.
    1
  19600.  @sallywilton2236  Or to some Ukrainians, shall we say?
    1
  19601.  @doncarlodivargas5497  These are purely rhetorical assertions. That civilisations have no borders is an old quote referring to the fact that civilisations continue to influence other places through the presence of their natives in them. And there is no doubt that modern Ukraine is largely a Russian creation, in that it was occupied by Imperial Russia and then as a member of the Soviet Union. It is foolish to attribute any great significance to these statements and they certainly should not be taken out of context to indicate that Russia has expansionist ambitions. They are reflections of past glories, no more.
    1
  19602.  @TonyM540  The situations are slightly different. The Irish came to London to take advantage of the job opportunities - in much the same way as the Ukrainians came to Donbass to take advantage of job opportunities provided by Russia.
    1
  19603. It is rumoured that later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire. So far, Russia has refrained from massive bombing or missile attacks, nuclear or otherwise. That may well now change. The Russians seem to care very little how many troops or how much materiel they lose on the ground - but they are far from stupid. They are not playing the role we have assigned to them. Their current losses are entirely predictable and must have been anticipated - as must the response.
    1
  19604. This is such piffle. This tragedy was obviously the result of Ukraine's attempts to shoot down Russian missiles aimed at infrastructure targets. As for Keir Starmer, Putin probably hardly knows who he is.
    1
  19605. It doesn't matter to MAGA if Trump is found guilty. The whole thing is a political charade, with no relation to true justice.
    1
  19606. That just about says it. History will see the war in Ukraine as one of the final nails in the coffin of Western hegemony.
    1
  19607. @markmierzejewski9534 To be fair its a single nation fully backed by a fully armed coalition. Ukraine just supplies the corpses.
    1
  19608. Trump's golf courses are an eyesore. And they lose money. He certainly helped destroy democracy by allowing the Democrats to cheat in 2020.
    1
  19609. Britain has actually only the 14th highest covid death rate in Europe -though the Netherlands is certainly lower. Britain has nothing LIKE the highest death rate in the world. Where do you get this crap from?
    1
  19610. The virus doesn't destroy economies - the steps we take to control it do.
    1
  19611.  @travisgoody1159  The Budapest Memorandum is dead in the water. What about the Minsk Agreements? The nuclear weapons weren't Ukraine's anyway. They were Soviet missiles and only Moscow had the codes to fire them. Present circumstance nullify past treaties, as any study of history shows.
    1
  19612.  @travisgoody1159  Why is it? Who says so? There is a new reality now and there is no point in trying to take precedents from the past or to rely on outdated treaties. Russia is entirely capable of making a token nuclear strike on the UK or anywhere else and and sitting back to wait for the response - if any. If we push it far enough that's exactly what it will do.
    1
  19613.  @travisgoody1159  They don't even have to "waltz through Western airspace" one nuclear torpedo exploded in the Irish Sea would be enough to send a 100 metre high radioactive tidal wave across Britain, drowning it completely. All current International Agreements are now null and void. The balance of power which has kept us safe for more than 70 years is now overturned. And Russia has not "lost" Ukraine. It doesn't even want Ukraine. It just wants Donbass, Crimea and as much of the rest of the coast as it can take. And it'll probably get it too.
    1
  19614.  @travisgoody1159  Donbass separatists have kept the Ukrainian army out of a good third of the territory for eight years. The front line is now being pushed forward. Do you not think that with full Russian support that front line cannot be maintained? Russia has taken Kherson and Mariupol and so provided a link to Crimea. So you not think this can be defended? Afghanistan and Chechnya have nothing to do with the present conflict. And Russia did not "lose" in Chechnya. It contained a potential Islamist threat -which is all it intended. The West is very fond of saying what Russia is trying to do, and then saying it has failed because it didn't do it. The position in Ukraine is a reflection of that. At the end of the day much of Ukraine's offensive weaponry has been destroyed. Once the Russians decide on the boundaries of their new possessions they can go into defensive mode. Ukraine will then have to become the aggressor and, as yet, it is not equipped for the task. Attempts by the West to provide it with offensive rather than defensive weaponry will therefore be strongly resisted by the Russians - perhaps even to the extent of a nuclear strike on a country attempting to do so.
    1
  19615. It's America's war though.
    1
  19616.  @boink800  Ukraine - but so what? Other factors are involved which are far more significant.
    1
  19617.  @boink800  You keep saying that. Why? Is it a piece of information you are particularly proud of?
    1
  19618.  @boink800  Yes, but once again, so what? That was then and this is now. Treaties don't last forever, if they did the Sioux would rule America.
    1
  19619. The world is getting warmer - and the instinctive response is to try to make as much money out of this as possible. Cap and trade is an utterly magnificent con trick, designed to make millions for those who know how to manipulate it.
    1
  19620. This is the same nonsense as the "Russian collusion" allegations against Trump, or the Capitol "insurrection"; out of the same stable, spread by the same lying media and believed by the same dim-witted fools.
    1
  19621. The backlash is coming. Masking is near useless and even dangerous and lockdowns have created the greatest public health crisis in human history. As an ultimate pragmatist Cummings must realise these things - and he will hopefully say so.
    1
  19622.  @lizardywizard  Talking of water buffalo: A huge herd of them crowd the edge of a lake. Lions and cheetahs predate upon them. They have no problem. All they have to do is nip out and nab a water buffalo. Then the god of water buffalo spirits nine-tenths of them away. Suddenly the cheetahs are at an advantage, They are faster and more efficient than lions and they get to the remaining water buffalo first and so they prosper and breed while the poor lions go hungry. (This works a lot better with zebras, but I am sure you can see my point.)
    1
  19623.  @isupportthecurrentthing.1514  Cheetahs too small to eat zebras! Come on now! Make it impala if you like but the essential point is that in a situation where opportunity is reduced a small advantage brings increasingly better results. This is called evolution. The inference is far from invalid. The number of variants is huge. Given the astronomical numbers of viruses the UK variant has a mathematical certainty of actually existing. Which of course it does. Without lockdowns the relatively small advantages it possesses are not apparent. Both the lion and the cheetah get to eat impala. Old variants and the new variant get to infect. When lockdowns come into effect the more efficient and swifter infecting variant has an advantage and so its share of available subjects increases until it becomes the dominant variant. Without lockdowns this would not have occurred.
    1
  19624.  @isupportthecurrentthing.1514  I think emerge will do. Become prominent is an alternative, I suppose. I disagree with you about advantage, As I have tried to explain with my rather clumsy analogy an advantage is only an advantage when reduced resources leads to competition. If a host was already infected then further re-infection is possibly by either the original or the variant, and does not affect the issue. Repeated re-infections seem the main cause of mortality, other than old age or pre-existing morbidities incidentally. As to your last paragraph: exactly what is the point of lockdown? At least two major peer-reviewed studies incorporating a mass of data have indicated that they do not reduce death rates and should only be used to slow down infections so that health services may be better prepared. Clearly this has not happened.
    1
  19625.  @isupportthecurrentthing.1514  Without lockdown the pool of available subjects is so extensive that varying degrees of being contagious are not so apparently significant. As I have said, there is plenty to go round. The variants are not competing with one another for subjects to infect. When the pool of potential subjects is drastically reduced, however, the more contagious variant comes into its own. Searching for another analogy imagine an apple tree laden with fruit and two boys picking them. They pick away and both fill their baskets. When the number of apples on the tree is reduced the more agile boy who can climb better gets to the apples that are left.
    1
  19626.  @jacqdanieles  If you bother to go through the videos I sent you , you will see that they all involve Ukrainians fighting one another. This missile attack on the railway station is just the latest incident in a civil war between Ukrainians which has been going on since 2014.
    1
  19627. What for?
    1
  19628.  @nathanmitchell7961  Just a fix.
    1
  19629.  @nathanmitchell7961  Doesn't worry me in the slightest. The Dems started this lawfare and Trump can do whatever he likes to beat them at their own game.
    1
  19630. Putin has prevented the new Russia becoming yet another American puppy dog. Whether you think that's good or bad is entirely up to you.
    1
  19631. Not so much jealous as naturally aghast that this expansion eastwards should have provoked the worst war in decades.
    1
  19632.  @markgoestofrankfurt  Well, it's quite true. Trump has a genuine hatred of war - unlike many of his predecessors who see it as useful route to profit.
    1
  19633. Poor guy. Just another innocent thrown under the bus by the US war machine. Come on guys - give him a chat show on your channel at least.
    1
  19634. Boris Johnson is a cynical opportunist with a Winston Churchill complex. Trump and Putin, on the other hand, are both essentially pragmatic and unromantic individuals who seek benefit for themselves and for their countries. A rapprochement between Trump and Putin can do nothing other than herald a peaceful future for the Western world.
    1
  19635. Trump will bring instant peace saving many lives But that won't suit abominable old warmongers like this contemptible man.
    1
  19636. Not recently.
    1
  19637.  @MichealHarris-il6zi  You'll be laughing on the other side of your face after five years of Keir Stalin.
    1
  19638.  @MichealHarris-il6zi  So you are quite happy for Britain to become a slave dormitory off the coast of Europe? How do you feel about converting to Islam?
    1
  19639.  @springchicken893  Unless we're careful as a slave dormitory off the coast of Europe with Islam as the state religion.
    1
  19640.  @MichealHarris-il6zi  So you'll be happy living in a slave dormitory off the coast of Europe with Islam as the state religion?
    1
  19641.  @MichealHarris-il6zi  In a slave dormitory off the coast of Europe with Islam as the state religion?
    1
  19642.  @MichealHarris-il6zi  You are right. I won't be laughing if I'm living in a workers' dormitory off the coast of Europe where Islam is the state religion.
    1
  19643.  @chiccabay9911  I just did. According to Bing he just agrees with the idea of forgiving your enemies.
    1
  19644.  @kmg474  Obviously!
    1
  19645.  @kethughes8266  I think there can be little doubt that the operation has taken a lot longer and cost a lot more than originally anticipated. But then - what doesn't?
    1
  19646.  @QuietRefl4378  All wars are insane. But they are sometimes necessary.
    1
  19647.  @kethughes8266  The operation has very nearly succeeded. Russia seems set to take all of Donbass and will now, I expect, take steps to fortify and rebuilt it. A very big question mark hangs over Ukraine's joining NATO. My guess is that Putin will refrain from future deprivations if Ukraine agrees not to do this. If it does then the consequences could well be dire Russia, of course, has a very thriving black economy which simply doesn't show up on the books. Russia is run by crooks and the war has given them a golden opportunity to exercise their imaginative talents.
    1
  19648. The sinister forces which have put Puppet Joe in the White House cheated like hell to do it. Trump is rightly pissed off about this and so too are around 40% of Americans.
    1
  19649. Because Islam isn't a race. It's just a rather terrifying religion.
    1
  19650.  @peterebel7899  Don't be so silly. Fortunately I have not personally been the victim of Islamic terrorism but thousands have, as I'm sure you must be aware.
    1
  19651.  @peterebel7899  I have not personally been a victim of Islamic terrorism, but thousands have, as I'm sure you are aware.
    1
  19652.  @peterebel7899  Islamic terrorism is real.
    1
  19653.  @michealridgway7607  Islamic fundamentalists of course.
    1
  19654.  @michealridgway7607  Not at all. But Muslims are caught between two stools. The radicals have a considerable hold over them, yet many would, I think, prefer to forget all about jihad and the caliphate and just get on with their lives.
    1
  19655.  @michealridgway7607  Not at all. Many would, I think, prefer to forget about jihad and the caliphate and just get on with their lives.
    1
  19656. .....not to take notice of absurd historical analogies you mean?
    1
  19657. Paranoia is addictive. This is the same attitude which led to the disaster created by the hysterical over-reaction to covid.
    1
  19658. You know nothing.
    1
  19659. Hindus have plenty of historical reasons to be afraid of Muslims. And vice-versa, it has to be said.
    1
  19660. I am more optimistic. Trump and Putin are both pragmatic men and - more to the point - Trump's greatest virtue is that he eschews America's longstanding strategy of a war-based economy. He's more into threats and offers. The war has to stop. Everyone knows that. And if this means Russia regains territory which is historically its by right, then so be it. Trump's biggest hurdle will be to convince the bemused and brainwashed Western public that this will, in fact, be a victory for Ukraine. Shouldn't be hard. We can sneer at Russia for losing "millions of men" and only getting a teensy-weensy corner of Ukraine for this sacrifice, and ruining its economy in the bargain. The fact that neither is true is neither here nor there.
    1
  19661.  @BriantheMan.-yw2lt  The two characteristics are not necessarily contradictory.
    1
  19662.  @BriantheMan.-yw2lt  If you take an objective look at the history of the area you will see that this is true.
    1
  19663.  @BriantheMan.-yw2lt  First off, votes in Ukraine and Russia are pretty suspect - secondly, buyers' remorse set in pretty quickly as it became clear that things were going very downhill in these areas under the Kiev government.
    1
  19664.  @BriantheMan.-yw2lt  Ukraine has had very little input into these area. They were Greek and Ottoman until Russia conquered them and the Ukrainians only came in under Russian ownership to farm lands which Russia had made fertile via the agricultural revolution.
    1
  19665. There's an agency. Other times they open supermarkets and so on.
    1
  19666.  @Aaronwhatnow  His deal has been on the table since before the invasion and was embedded in the Minsk treaties which the West ran roughshod over.
    1
  19667.  @emansfvera  Go To Source!!!
    1
  19668.  @slinkymotion  I would still suggest that the cost of lockdowns outweighs their benefits - in all cases. In the countries you mention it is far from certain that swift lockdowns have been the sole cause of the lack of impact. Even if this was the case those countries, such as the UK, which failed to act swiftly have missed the boat and lockdowns achieve very little once the virus has appeared in large numbers. Increased viral load is caused by repeated infections over a short period. The viruses themselves do not vary in "potency" to any great degree. Someone who is infected from a variety of sources while working in an enclosed space is likely to find their immune systems not up to the task of dealing with repeated attacks. This is why taxi drivers and bus drivers have had such a relatively high fatality rate. Bringing ward nurses and even nursing assistants up to ICU standard can be achieved in a matter of months - less if their expertise is directed towards dealing with patients in one particular category - in this case severe respiratory infections. The deaths of 90 years in first world countries and malnourished children in developing countries ARE closely related in this instance. If the first world country's economic output is slowed down in order to stop 90-year olds from dying (or at least to stop politicians being embarrassed by the fact) and the consequence is death-induced poverty in countries reliant upon such economies, how could it be otherwise? And I'm not even on to conspiracy theories yet. The hysterical over-reaction to this relatively mild disease may indeed be a result of mere incompetence and lack of courage on the part of our leaders - but there is no doubt that it paving the way for a new, repressive form of society. A New World Order, in fact.
    1
  19669.  @slinkymotion  What governments have done fits exactly with the plans of those who propose the Great Reset and the New World Order -which is what is so troubling. Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has said quite clearly that the coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity not to be missed. On the scale of worldwide diseases Covid 19 isn't even in the top league. Yet we have never responded to a serious illness in this way before. In terms of years of life lost it scores far lower than many influenzas; but lockdowns were not introduced in order to deal with them They burned themselves out - eventually aided by vaccines of course, but no-one would have thought to take these drastic measures in 1969 say when the Hong Kong Flu was doing far more damage than Covid 19. We are living in a world where naturally occurring events are being used as bogey-men to frighten us into submission. This is something I believe should be strongly resisted. The wealthy few have grown wealthier and more powerful thanks to governments' hysterical response to this disease, while the poor have grown poorer. And yes we should very much consider the broader impacts of our actions. It would be immoral to do otherwise. As far as dealing with a pandemic such as this one the only lesson that can be learned is that to do too much of the wrong things will only make matters worse. There is actually a strong case to be made to suggest that, in many countries at least, merely adhering to simply hygiene rules and with some attention paid to social distancing and crowd sizes the epidemic would be over by now and with actually fewer deaths and severe outcomes than have actually occurred. Lockdowns cause new strains to come into dominance apart from anything else.
    1
  19670. Why are you lefties so obsessed with locking up people you disagree with and banning things you don't like? To my mind it betrays a troubling inner inadequacy.
    1
  19671. @Sean Embry None of this material will be anything like enough to prove Rittenhouse is a murderer or a "white supremacist." He's going to make millions, and if the families of the men he shot seek damages they will lose their shirts. Assuming of course the current welcome trend of genuine justice in US courts persists.
    1
  19672. @Sean Embry I understand that, and while I acknowledge that all sorts of weird and wonderful things happen in courtrooms when large sums of money are flying around, the fact that he has been found not guilty of murder, and that the FBI have found no evidence of links to white supremacist groups, are going to be quite difficult obstacles to overcome, both in any claims he may make or any that are made against him.
    1
  19673. @Sean Embry I think I broadly understand the rules of procedure in civil as opposed to criminal courts, but I still maintain that even with a far lesser burden of proof Rittenhouse has every chance of winning substantial damages from news outlets - if not from Joe Biden. The Nick Sandmann case is indicative of this. The real world is not the world CNN, MSNBC et al apparently believe it to be. Wearing a MAGA hat does not make you a fascist. Staring down an irritating native American does not make you a racist, Equally well, shooting people who intend to do you harm is not murder. Talking to the Proud Boys, attending Trump rallies or making the OK sign don't make you a white supremacist either. As for the drone footage, apparently no version, zoomed or not, in focus or not, does not suggest to the eyes of any reasonable person that Rittenhouse was to any degree provoking or challenging his assailants. Even if this was the case it would not affect the fact that he is not guilty of murder. There is a remote possibility, I suppose, that a civil court might allow it to suggest this and so award damages to the families of the men he shot, but this seems unlikely. It would be paradoxical if Rittenhouse gained compensation from those who have defamed him, and was then ordered to pay some of it to the families of the men he killed, but stranger things have happened!
    1
  19674. @Sean Embry The relationship between Rittenhouse and political figures is mutually beneficial. He seems a great deal more cool-headed than he has been portrayed and could well have a long-term political future. Chatting to Trump and being nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honour is perhaps just the beginning. To those of us in despair at the brainwashed stupidity of today's youth he is a ray of light in the darkness. Sure, how much Sandmann got is not publicly known, but you can bet it wasn't small change. Rittenhouse could be up for more - but US courts are utterly unpredictable. I'd say it was well worth the gamble though. After all, it's the politicians and their backers who will be paying the lawyers, not him. I absolutely love the confusion about the OK sign. You realise of course that this long-established gesture was commandeered by 4Chan to make fools of ignorant libtards. And they are still falling for it. I'm quite surprised at you. It doesn't mean White Power - it just means "aren't lefties idiots?" I do hope none of the women of your acquaintance shaved their heads to mourn George Floyd, by the way. That was another good one. What's a WS rally? How is it defined? And does anyone attending one have to be a white supremacist? Can't you just be an intelligent teenager assessing all sides of the issue? Don't forget the FBI found nothing to suggest Rittenhouse was a white supremacist. They seem a rare breed, lurking in the swamps and trailer parks of the South, much like the KKK, which seems to have about as many members as a small town knitting circle: bogeymen to frighten fragile snowflakes and keep Democrats on the plantation. None of them would stand much chance in an argument with a Jesuit.
    1
  19675. midnight rambler The science is wrong. Carbon does not cause warming. It acts as a safety valve to help keep the atmosphere stable, The carbon-is-bad myth is being promoted by financial manipulators playing the carbon emissions market. A few of the scientists are in on the scam. The rest of them, like you, are being used. Greta is actually employed by a hedge-fund company.
    1
  19676.  @grateberk6435  Only some of them.
    1
  19677.  @zam1007  We have herd immunity to many things. It is a common misconception that "herd immunity" means wiping out a disease. It doesn't. It just means that the numbers become manageable.
    1
  19678.  @zam1007  I know exactly what herd immunity is. It is a condition whereby an outbreak of a disease can be readily contained because a sufficiently large proportion of the population is immune to it. What do you think it is?
    1
  19679.  @fazza8352  But with zero chance of forming a government.
    1
  19680.  @johnjeanb  The truth in a democracy is what the majority says it is. This is one of the disadvantages of democracy.
    1
  19681.  @gio-oz8gf  Simply that the "truth" deserves the inverted commas I just gave it. It is not and never can be a firmly defined absolute.
    1
  19682.  @DavidMoxham957  What actual evidence do you have, though? What context do you have? How can you be sure that players other than Trump or Putin have not implanted their instructions into your notion of reality?
    1
  19683.  @DavidMoxham957  But you don't know what the truth is, and you can can never know. This is true in even the most profound sense - let alone in a sordid political squabble where misdirection and obfuscation are rife on all sides.
    1
  19684. The court cases "defeats" are just a media smokescreen. No cases were heard, judges simply refused to hear them. This was perfectly OK with the Trump team since no possible verdict could have been reached before the Electoral College met. Instead evidence was presented at a number of state senate hearings in the hope that the state legislatures would overturn election results. They didn't, but instead sent alternative electors to the College, passing the buck to poor Mike Pence. So the simple answer is that the evidence - allegations if you will - are contained in about seventy hours of sworn testimony to the state senate hearings which - surprise, surprise - the MSM is ignoring in favour of the "he lost 60 court cases" agenda. Below are a couple of examples. Whatever your reaction may be I am sure you will accept that the many Trump supporters who have seen them have a certain amount of justification for their resentment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw Georgia State hearings 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqFTUEvMoU&t=21161s Wisconsin
    1
  19685. Considering the huge question mark hanging over the photographic evidence, I think the judge has probably done the FBI a huge favour by taking this way out.
    1
  19686. So what? Guys of our age mean nothing bad by it.
    1
  19687. Why is this shocking? Was it even secret???
    1
  19688.  @jaxonl7810  Well you are young and I daresay foolish - but I like your hat!
    1
  19689.  @Theokondak  I think there's a chance he will heavily arm Ukraine against the possibility of future Russian incursions if it agrees to give up Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  19690.  @mikedon5205  I wouldn't disagree. This is essentially a war between two rival gangs, but sadly is has been made much worse by the fact that another gang wants to muscle in and take over the action when it's all over.
    1
  19691.  @mikedon5205  I don't think that would be such a good deal!
    1
  19692.  @mormacil  It is if it stops wanting more.
    1
  19693.  @mikedon5205  I agree - and so does Putin. The trouble is that he doesn't think Donbass and Crimea are properly parts of Ukraine.
    1
  19694.  @mormacil  Fair enough. Why don't you look up "hyperbole"?
    1
  19695.  @swirvinbirds1971  For a start, you cannot trust the results of any referendum or election in either Ukraine or Russia. Secondly the people of Donbass and Crimea had reason to regret that "decision" as it became clear that the Kiev government was pursuing policies of not only neglecting their needs but actively oppressing the Russian elements of the population. Thirdly -as you rightly say - the agreement was made not by Putin, but by a predecessor and in the confusion of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people of Crimea have generally been very satisfied with the results after Russia retook the peninsula in 2014. Putin has invested billions in it, as he is already doing in those parts of Donbass now back in Russia's possession.
    1
  19696.  @swirvinbirds1971  They have had plenty of opportunity to regret that decision. And as you rightly say Putin never agreed, it was a foolish decision taken by a predecessor.
    1
  19697.  @swirvinbirds1971  Where does this 80% come from? What does it refer to?
    1
  19698.  @swirvinbirds1971  Democracy in Ukraine and Russia is pretty much a sham, I agree. When Ukraine is in charge Ukraine wins, and when Russia is in charge, Russia wins.
    1
  19699.  @swirvinbirds1971  I think it very much matters what Putin thinks.
    1
  19700.  @swirvinbirds1971  As Stalin said: "It isn't votes that count. It's who counts the votes that counts."
    1
  19701.  @mormacil  But the situation here is no way binary. It is extremely nuanced.
    1
  19702.  @mormacil  Perhaps if you explained more clearly?
    1
  19703.  @mormacil  This is descending into an argument about semantics. The two words "appeasement" and "compromise" meld into each other. I would suggest that before 1938 they were much closer together in meaning than they are today. Appeasement became compromise's evil brother because it was a word appended to the political movement in Britain at that time which sought to appease Hitler by making concessions, in the hope that this compromise would prevent him from further territorial excesses. This failed, of course, but there is no reason to suppose that similar concessions made to Putin today would fail today simply because of an accident of language.
    1
  19704.  @mormacil  So we're back to hyperbole again.
    1
  19705. I bet he loved it really. I know I did.
    1
  19706. Trump is bringing this stupid war to an end. More and more people will realise this as time goes on and realise that they have not only been conned about the war, but about Trump himself.
    1
  19707. The proxy war has been going on for decades. A regime change in Iran is essential before it can be ended..
    1
  19708. heji Perhaps all Iranians (Indians, Afghanis, Koreans, Chinese etc etc) should leave the US then?
    1
  19709.  @jim2376  A myth. Some misguided officers may have said something like it to encourage the troops, and I believe it was taken up by a couple of dim-witted TV hosts, but it was never official.
    1
  19710.  @truthseeker6116  HMM. The way I read it, that will come out of the 13.7 billion set aside for immediate relief. The 13.4 billion will merely be used to replenish US stocks. But you could be right. It is a complex issue.
    1
  19711. Net Zero is a con trick, created by the unscrupulous to fool the gullible. Only the natural credulity of left-wingers enable them to take it seriously. Conservatives pay lip service to it because boy - is it a money-spinner!
    1
  19712.  @ab-ym3bf  I'm not the one who's being fooled though, am I?
    1
  19713. You really mustn't talk about President Biden like that. He's only doing what Black Rock tells him.
    1
  19714. The police are part of the problem. They, like the politicians, have betrayed the people they are supposed to protect.
    1
  19715.  @pansepot1490  Then what is the point of PR? Invariably any decisions made at a local level will still have to gain the approval of the national government. Or our you suggesting total autonomy for British counties say? That might be fun.
    1
  19716.  @thetruth495  But all local decisions have to be ratified by national government - which holds the purse strings.
    1
  19717.  @Checkmeout46  Not a greater influence at all. It's just that rural areas have different needs and priorities than urban areas, but smaller populations. Under PR those needs and priorities would not be properly represented. The question is whether a constituency is defined by geography, or by a set of beliefs. As long as economic realities take precedence over ideologies the former remains the case. For your ideology to succeed you have to convince not a small proportion of the population as a whole but the majority in various geographical constituencies. The Liberals did this in the 1850s and Labour did it in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It provides a far more solid basis than the sort of nationwide popularity contest which is created by PR.
    1
  19718.  @arturobianco848  The problems created by PR are greater than those created by FPTP in my view. It replaces the under-representation of ideologies with under-representation of localised constituency interests and leads to all sorts of unseemly wheeler-dealing as parties try to combine to form governments and oppositions. At least under the present system an MP can stick with the principles upon which he/she was elected and not be forced into compromises for the sake of expediency. Well, not quite as much anyway!
    1
  19719.  @thetruth495  Constituencies have generally evolved as they are for sound economic and demographic reasons. It is always a mistake to try to form larger artificial entities for purely administrative reasons, I think. Most local government reforms to this end, popular in the 1960's and 70's, have generally led to more unwieldy and unfocussed administrations, unpopular with the populations and often more expensive to run. Evolution from the bottom up is preferable to imposition from the top down in this instance as in many others. Nothing is perfectly fair. PR, even in the form you suggest, would simply replace one set of inadequacies with another and not be worth the immense trouble and vast expense entailed.
    1
  19720.  @arturobianco848  As you rightly say both systems have their pros and cons but I feel the upheaval and expense of turning to PR simply isn't worth it. Democracy is a rickety old animal at the best of times. Push it around to much and it might just die on us.
    1
  19721.  @arturobianco848  Alas I am conservative by instinct and I do not think there are good reasons to change. Better the devil you know.
    1
  19722.  @thetruth495  By evolution from the bottom up I mean systems gradually developing bit by bit as situations demand - and not being radically altered by some over-reaching scheme imposed from above. (A scheme which might well be airy-fairy nonsense, by the way.)
    1
  19723.  @joelhall5124  NATO is just a money-making machine which needs the threat of big, bad, Russia to justify its existence.
    1
  19724. They'll have to give up Donbass too. Sorry.
    1
  19725. Although much of what Phil says here is true, trying to link this nasty nutjob with Farage and Robinson is surely a bit of a stretch. Calling them the "Farage Riots" is just political opportunism.
    1
  19726.  Grakky TheGrakky  Oh sure - and a few words written on a piece if paper decades ago is going to make this weak, lilly-livered US administration bring nuclear destruction to America and Europe is it? I don't think so. As soon as Russia makes a token strike the US and European diplomats will be falling over themselves to get to the conference table.
    1
  19727.  @joe-dirt697  But id you pinch the kid next door, whom I don't much like anyway, am I going to shoot you knowing you'll shoot me right back?
    1
  19728.  @vivians9392  That's because the US has done absolutely nothing to protect the so-called free world since it arrived late on the scene in World War II and helped Russia and Britain beat Hitler. Since then the US has pursued a policy of aggression against smaller countries, designed solely to increase the profits of its military/industrial complex and to create markets for its goods.
    1
  19729.  @EMP1RE917  Not any longer, I'm afraid.
    1
  19730.  @km5967  But will the US use them, knowing they will get nuked back? More sensible to shrug and be sorry, and leave it at that.
    1
  19731.  @km5967  Your faith is quite touching.
    1
  19732.  @princeosars3298  Bit late then!
    1
  19733.  @404-u5f  All fairly academic if the country is already under several feet of radioactive seawater, don't you think?
    1
  19734.  @404-u5f  Of course this weapon exists. It has been known about for years. Britain is an ideal target for one since the whole country would be rendered incapable of a coherent response within minutes. Russia could easily destroy what limited response there might be from Britain's submarines and make it very clear to NATO and the US that any further action on their part would have dire consequences. It is a perfectly justifiable strategy.
    1
  19735.  @KorAllRBare  Not the entire world. Just the little one you live in. Many countries have neither condemned Putin's invasion or agreed to impose sanctions against Russia.
    1
  19736.  @KorAllRBare  You, on the other hand, will be eternally happy in your comic-book world of heroes and villains.
    1
  19737.  @cainabel6356  A myth. The way things stand now there are no guarantees that the US or NATO will respond to a pre-emptive strike on the UK, nor that the UK will have time to respond on its own, nor that such a response could not be defended against by Russia, And if Russia thinks that, we are in deep trouble.
    1
  19738.  @cainabel6356  Saying and doing are two different things. And a nuclear torpedo exploded anywhere in the North or Irish Sea would drown the UK under 30 metres of radioactive tidal wave within minutes. MAD depends on mutual fear and respect. Russia no longer fears or respects the West and, threatened with loss of power and status, she will respond with a volatile high-risk strategy.
    1
  19739.  @cainabel6356  You might believe this; but does Putin? America and NATO might well chicken out and Britain's limited response could well be neutralised or at least minimalised. Faced with national ignominy Putin is clearly prepared to take extreme action, as has happened with Ukraine.
    1
  19740.  @cainabel6356  So far.
    1
  19741.  @ErikItland  I have different information - but who knows? In any case the idea that Ukraine will be capable of doing more than temporarily cutting off Russian supplies is pure fantasy.
    1
  19742.  @lynnlovattjones4171  Latest evidence strongly suggests they would have done more harm than good anyway.
    1
  19743.  @davidhooper1767  Wouldn't have done much good. Facemasks and plastic pinnies offer little or no protection against the spread of this particular virus.
    1
  19744.  @davidhooper1767  I wouldn't disagree with you there!
    1
  19745.  @davidhooper1767  It wouldn't. Hazmats are all the trimmings are all that keep out covid. In any case once omicron took over protection became pretty pointless anyway.
    1
  19746.  @nigelsynnott7344  Metastudy from Brownstone Institution and paper presented to the ECCMID recently by a team from St George's Hospital. You will find many studies lauding ppe to the skies but they will invariably have been financed by manufacturers
    1
  19747.  @davidhooper1767  It's extremely debatable whether any of this stuff keeps covid out. And with omicron being relatively mild there's no point anyway. Unless you have a co- morbidity it's best to catch it and get it over with.
    1
  19748.  @davidhooper1767  Being fat and/or very old might give you a clue. In any case omicron on its own is very rarely fatal. If ever.
    1
  19749.  @davidhooper1767  It is.Anyway the chief problem with ppe is that unless used rigorously it is not effective and may indeed be harmful in that it gives a sense of false security.
    1
  19750. Eat the babies!
    1
  19751. The impact of covid - or at least the impact of the absurd and inept way it has been handled - will continue for many years. It is even possible that the various economic, social and public health crises in store for us will both eclipse and be longer-lasting than the immediate negative effects of Brexit.
    1
  19752. They have supported a terrorist organisation and allowed themselves to be used as human shields to protect that organisation. They have even allowed that organisation to take over the administration of their day-to-day lives. The civilians of Gaza are no different to the civilians of Germany who did the same for the Nazis.
    1
  19753. Politics and morality are poles apart. There is a huge difference between choosing a leader and choosing a local representative. Applying the same self-righteous, Presbyterian, holier-than-thou standards to both procedures only demonstrates the essential childishness of the Socialist outlook..
    1
  19754. Here are a few details the BBC hasn't managed to include, supplied by YouTuber Mark Dice: The TRUTH is, the Republicans who know what's up wanted a Church style committee (which uncovered Operation Mockingbird in the 1970s) to investigate the FBI and other intelligence agencies (again) to show how they're corrupt. And the holdouts wanted term limits for members of Congress to avoid career politicians who spend decades doing nothing. There are term limits on governors and of course the President, so why not members of Congress? They also want McCarthy to guarantee single subject bills so all kinds of things can't be lumped together into one bill which have nothing to do with the primary bill that's being voted on (aka PORK and other garbage) And they wanted 72 hours to be able to READ bills before a vote. It's common sense, but the liberal media, AND brand name conservative media (like Sean Hannity and RINOs like Dan Crenshaw) have been attacking the America First patriots (Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and the 18 or so others) holding out on voting for McCarthy in order to make him FIX SOME OF THE COUNTLESS PROBLEMS IN WASHINGTON DC. That's what's what happened! America will be thanking the 10% of the holdouts for being REAL AMERICANS. And screw the mainstream "conservative" clowns like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and others who sound no different than CNN and MSNBC!
    1
  19755. There are differences. Foxes are not bred for the sport. They are already there. It is a very difficult area, I admit; finding a balance between innate cruelty and a realistic appraisal of natural circumstances is quite hard.
    1
  19756.  @SoB_626  Absurd. Does Putin want to exterminate Jews? Does Putin want to conquer the world? This analogy is simply a trick to encourage war fever in the ignorant.
    1
  19757. Murdoch is only interested in making money. He tailors his products to the audience. He has no personal political axe to grind.
    1
  19758.  @DFandV  But they deliberately misled with their thumbnail heading.
    1
  19759. The US system allows for this. Each vote is registered so you can't vote twice.
    1
  19760.  @pepp418  I think you may have misunderstood. If you vote by post you can check online if it has been registered. If it hasn't you can vote in person. If by any chance your postal vote shows up in at any time it will be discounted because your in person vote has been recorded.
    1
  19761. General Ripper And a jolly good thing too!
    1
  19762. You ignore the fact that the majority of the rubber boat people are NOT refugees. They are economic migrants; often healthy young men who are chancing their arm on escaping to a better life from whatever shithole country they come from. Well, hard luck. Once word gets around that a channel crossing means transportation to Rwanda the UK will seem a far less attractive destination.
    1
  19763.  @cooperfarncmbe  By the normal methods one supposes - a process much aided by the disappearance of the frauds who are currently clogging up the system and making it unworkable.
    1
  19764.  @cooperfarncmbe  Strictly speaking a genuine refugee/asylum seeker must arrive here directly from the country he/she is fleeing from. That means by air or boat not stopping at any intermediate place. I realise of course that a wealth of precedent has been created to circumvent this regulation but I hope that such precedents may be overturned by a more robust and independent immigration policy in the UK. In the meantime any measures which stem the tide are to be welcomed, even if they are mainly psychological barriers.
    1
  19765. The party's over It's time to call it a day They've burst your Pretty balloon And taken the moon away It's time to wind up The masquerade Just make your mind up The piper must be paid
    1
  19766.  @T39582  I like to think I might be causing them some disquiet though.
    1
  19767.  @RaRa-eu9mw  You can't "debunk" reality! Information on the situation in Donbas existed long before the current invasion! Have you even heard of the Maidan riots? Russia supported the separatist movements certainly - it would be strange if it didn't, but you can't deny that they exist. They have armies which have been fighting Ukraine for nine years and 15,000 people have been killed. NATO supplies and trains the Ukrainians and is proud of it.
    1
  19768.  @RaRa-eu9mw  But that is exactly what you are doing! Who has been doing the debunking? And why do you believe them? As I say, apart from allegations that the snipers were US mercenaries, which of course cannot be proved, one simply has to look at the consequences which were the replacement of a Moscow-looking regime with a Western-looking one. Add to this the huge investments made by America in equipping the Ukrainian army, deals made between US politicians and Ukrainian oligarchs and all the other signs of US colonisation and Ukraine's recent history fits exactly the tried and tested pattern. The present dreadful war is yet another of America's proxy wars, designed to advance US interests abroad. One can only hope that this time the evil men who conduct these affairs have bitten off more than they can chew.
    1
  19769.  @RaRa-eu9mw  I keep hammering the point: look at the RESULTS for your answer. "Fact-checking" is just another sort of propaganda.
    1
  19770.  @RaRa-eu9mw  Who are these famous fact-checkers of yours? I do not get my information from Russian state propaganda but from a wide variety of accounts of the events of 2014 which make America's involvement in the overthrow of the regime very clear. Various American "charities" financed extreme right-wing groups which were encouraged into violent action. Their activities were praised and supported by American politicians. While it may be a long time before we know its full extent of this involvement, Washington took an even more direct role once the turmoil started. Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy met with the fascist leader of one such group, Svbota, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as they announced their support to the protesters, while US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland handed out sandwiches to them. This is just one attested fact, reported widely at the time. The 2014 revolution was supported by and almost certainly engineered by America. This is what America DOES! America, under the name of "democracy", has been involved in fermenting rebellion or suppressing it in dozens of countries and this war is just the latest result of such meddling.
    1
  19771.  @rintatsuki7111  It travelled more than 700 miles in less than ten minutes! That's Inter-continental.
    1
  19772.  @geoffhaylock6848  You still don't get it! This is a warning to the West that Russia is capable and willing of taking out long distance targets. Putin is just waving his .50 cal under our nose and telling us to watch it.
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  19773. How can you be sure?
    1
  19774. You want to see authoritarian? Just wait for the first tranches of puppet Biden's legislation to hit the streets.
    1
  19775.  @andyknowles772  He hasn't told me yet.
    1
  19776. Zelensky being ousted by "democratic" process is a far more likely pathway to peace than Putin being found dead in a fridge, I have to say. From playing the piano with his penis to overseeing the destruction of his country has been a long haul for Mr Z. He was picked out of the chorus line for a starring role and has performed quite brilliantly, all things considered. But the theatre is now under new management and the bill is about to change. With Trump as impresario high drama will give way to variety, with plenty of conjurers and dog acts on the bill. It won't be over till the fat lady sings, but the chances are high she'll be singing something in Russian.
    1
  19777.  @teddypicker8799  ER. One person shot by a trigger happy cop, three dead of natural causes ie heart attacks. Just a normal afternoon in downtown DC.
    1
  19778.  @peterembranch5797  I THINK they were all on the team. Running up all those stairs probably did it.
    1
  19779. Joe Biden helping criminal enterprises? Surely not!
    1
  19780. The shooter was seen by a civilian passer-by who called the cops.
    1
  19781.  @cl7700  Is that so? The timeline doesn't seem quite clear yet.
    1
  19782. Jack Richardson All lies based on cynical manipulation of data to further the AGW tyranny. When did "records begin?" Records from the 1920's and 1930's show temperatures far higher and for longer periods than those at present. The agencies you mention have "adjusted" these records downwards on the flimsiest of pretexts. Ask them. They will admit it. Some of their graphs even show faint background data marked "pre-adjusted." You might believe their reasons. I don't. Satellite data has been similarly "adjusted". This time readings have been altered to fit the hockey stick on the grounds that the satellites' orbits decayed without anyone noticing. The earlier readings showed NO increase in temperature AT ALL this century. This was clearly not permissible. Once again I won't point you to sites making these claims. Just ask NASA or one of the others. What about the Urban Heat Island effect? Cities are hotter than the countryside but a disproportionate amount of readings are taken in cities, thus increasing overall average temperatures. The agencies claim that they have a formula to counterbalance this but what it is they won't tell me. Perhaps you'll be luckier. It all adds up to a gigantic scam to sell AGW as a route to financial gain and political control. Thankfully though, cracks are starting to appear in the narrative.
    1
  19783. Jack Richardson No-one has disproven the lizard shape-shifter theory either - and have you SEEN the way Michael Mann looks in certain lights? Those spooky, soulless eyes! Brrrr! The greenhouse theory goes a long way towards disproving itself due to the fact that so few of its predicted effects have actually occurred, and those that have can more readily be explained by solar forcing. The validity of methods of temperature homogenization are clearly called into question when they are used exclusively to mask the failures outlined above.
    1
  19784. Is one allowed to respond to one's own posts? If so there are several elephants about, one of which is Sky's censorship of any views which mock its transparently false and embarrassingly inept attempts to push the AGW agenda.
    1
  19785. Thomas Musso I just hate this alarmist journalism. Has it crossed anyone's mind that the number of elephants had increased due to the clamp-down on ivory poaching. Not less food as much as more elephants.Nothing to do with global warming, so called
    1
  19786.  @stream2watch  Russian population. Russian history for 300 years or so. Being occupied by Kiev for thirty years doesn't negate that.
    1
  19787.  @stream2watch  You d tend to judge on appearances, don't you? I've noticed that.
    1
  19788.  @stream2watch  The Budapest Memorandum is just another of the failed treaties with which history is littered. Situations change and such documents become irrelevant. In fact, thirty years is quite a long life for a treaty of this sort.
    1
  19789.  @stream2watch  I don't even know who these people are! My God, you are so paranoid!
    1
  19790.  @stream2watch  How can I take you seriously when you are seemingly convinced that I create other accounts to support my views? As you have seen I am an elderly eccentric, working on my own in some despair at the credulity of people like yourself who remain so unquestioningly loyal to the official narratives.
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  19791.  @stream2watch  It failed long before the invasion. The Minsk Treaties were designed as a replacement, but they were merely utilised by the West to give it time to finance a new Ukrainian army. This wasn't the idea. The idea was for Ukraine to take steps to find some way of granting the two Donbass republics some sort of regional autonomy, so they could continue to deal directly with Russia, instead of being forced into the US sphere of influence. No such steps were taken.
    1
  19792.  @stream2watch  You are wrong again. Reputable unaligned war-mapping channels clearly show advances on the scale I have mentioned. Even those which support Ukraine admit this.
    1
  19793.  @stream2watch  I cannot. I meant to imply they have taken 12 sq km in the past week, rather than advanced 12 km. My bad.
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  19794. Censorship, in other words. What a fascist "solution."
    1
  19795.  @derekmulready1523  Do you suggest education camps - somewhere very cold, for preference and with terms lasting ten or twenty years?
    1
  19796.  @de-angelocottrell8914  I hadn't realised they were holding his nose as well. But yes, kneeling on his neck did turn out to be a bad idea as it happened. But does this add up to deliberate murder, or even indicate racism? The fact is that Antifa, BLM and a host of other forces of evil had a game plan worked out well in advance and just needed an incident to trigger it into action. Mr Floyd got the part.
    1
  19797. Ben Walker She was selected for the job from among the entrants to an essay competition. An organisation called We Don't Have Time picked her. WDHT is run by Swedish and German financiers with connections to George Soros, the king of hedge-fund managers who has brought several countries near to financial ruin through currency manipulation. If you go to the WDHT website you will see that their ultimate objective is to assign everyone a carbon footprint, to be monitored by a smartphone app. If you need to exceed your allocation - to fly on holiday say -you will have to buy carbon bonds via a market they control. This is an extension of the cap and trade system already in existence which allows manipulators to make vast fortunes supplying industries with permissions to exceed carbon quotas. Greta is there to give a human face to this cynical money-making racket, and she is very good at it. Soros and his cronies have immense power and influence, especially with the United Nations which is, sadly, nothing more than a nest of crooks. Hence her invitation.
    1
  19798. TurdFurgeson571 It is a problem. We Don't Have Time will just have to carry the can on their own a bit I suppose. Checked their website yet?
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  19799. TurdFurgeson571 Checked that website yet Turd?
    1
  19800. TurdFurgeson Exactly as you outlined. The very mention of Soros's name puts one into the conspiracy theorist category. The bugger still owes me £15, as he does every man woman and child alive in the UK on September 17, 1992 when he borrowed sterling overnight and then spread a rumour that the pound was in big trouble. His speculations over the ensuing 12 hours almost caused the collapse of the Bank of England and cost the British taxpayer £3billion. It also gave him a personal profit of £1billion. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's historical fact. The AGW scare has created a worldwide currency of its own in the form of carbon bonds, giving companies the go-ahead to exceed set carbon emission limits. Vast fortunes are already being made. We Don't Have Time is very much in on the act and, as I say, the lovely Greta is their poster child.
    1
  19801. TurdFurgeson571 You're right, and it's bloody irritating. I'm entirely sure his hand is behind this most glorious and magnificent of scams but one simply mustn't fall into the temptation to say so! Still, he is very old now and can't last much longer. One detects potential heirs jockeying for position. The failure of COP25 might possibly be attributed to that cause, at least in part..
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  19802. Ben Walker The knowledge is quite widespread, although attempts are made to block the flow of information. Among the articles are one in The Times of London on August 19 last year, The Resurgent on February 22 and notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/ Also try https://pjmedia.com/trending/climate-industrial-complex-financiers-aim-to-cash-in-on-greta-thunberg
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  19803. Benjamin Pickles Stage-managed by financial predators from start to finish. www.pjmedia.com/trending-climate-industrial-complex-financiers-aim-to-cash-in-on-greta-thunberg notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/
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  19804.  @Scaleyback317  Not quite yet.
    1
  19805.  @arselenebitara1356  This is a war, not a popularity contest.
    1
  19806. What people don't realise that if it wasn't for carbon emissions polluting the atmosphere these fires could not even begin in the first place. It would be too cold for matches to ignite. There were never any fires in the past. Layers of ash in the soil have been deliberately placed there by climate change deniers and Trump supporters.
    1
  19807.  @davidprentice5442  Probably the impact would have been less if Trump had been allowed to follow his instincts instead of being forced to toe the Big Pharma line by the likes of Fauci.
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  19808. But Russia was in charge of it. And much of the Eastern part of the SSR of Ukraine was, in fact, Russian. Putin has no ambitions to rebuild the USSR. He realises its impracticality. All he wants is to keep the mineral riches of Donbass under Russian control.
    1
  19809.  @HuskyOwner-bl1jf  If you listen to what he actually says he acknowledges completely that trying to turn back the clock is impossible and not even desirable. It is a romantic notion and nothing more.
    1
  19810.  @waynek805  He doesn't want to conquer Ukraine and never has. He just wants to keep hold of the mineral-rich Russianised parts in the east .
    1
  19811. @ It isn't true, that's why. Putin has no intention of reclaiming the Russian empire. That is pure Western propaganda. He has said on many occasions that while it might be a fine, romantic idea it is not practical, nor even desirable.
    1
  19812. @ Not true, that's why.
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  19813. It works but not 100%. Around 8,000 people a day who have been vaccinated are still testing positive, but their symptoms are milder than before, it seems.
    1
  19814. One swamp creature captured and caged. Time to hit the FBI and other traitors to democracy.
    1
  19815. Can anyone directs me to where the BBC has given any coverage to the approximately sixty hours of sworn testimony before various state senate enquires which give a great deal of substance to Trump's "unsubstantiated" claims?
    1
  19816.  @topologyrob  They have never been put before a court. That's the whole point. There is no court with the authority to deal with them, much less the courage to do so. There have been no hearings, no examination of evidence - just judges, very sensibly, refusing to touch them for fear of getting their fingers burned. The only time they have been aired is before state senates, some of which are rather labouriously trying to correct the worst excesses. Here's seven hours out of the seventy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw
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  19817. It puzzles me that anyone should still regard the Daily Telegraph as an organ of British Conservatism. It is a total mess. A pathetic, bleating shadow of its former self. As far as future alliances are concerned, Britain cannot possibly join the dying duck that is the EU. If, by God's grace, Trump is re-elected then we must join with him in helping create a new commercially viable world in which old associations are cast aside and new ones created. This means acknowledging the BRICS nations as a vital force with which America, Britain and the SEPARATE nations of Europe must form a working relationship.
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  19818.  @emm_arr  Grown a brain yet?
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  19819. About as much as you.
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  19820. Unless sanity returns and a peace plan agreed I can see Russia building deep reinforced concrete shelters all along a permanent border between its new territories and Ukraine.
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  19821.  @philiplbrown  I think they're going to find they're running out of options though. It's a tragedy that they won't settle. I think at this stage Putin will be happy with what he's got plus the rest of Donbass.
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  19822.  @bonnie7898  This package is nothing like as significant as it has been made to appear, and will serve only to prolong this bloody and needless war.
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  19823.  @ycylchgames  Carbon testing can approximate dates. It can't tell how big a fire has been. We don't need dates. We know dates. These fires happen every year because they have to. Forests need to burn in order to regenerate. If it wasn't for forest fires there would be no forests.
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  19824. All pointless, politically and financially motivated - and even dangerous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peaRgEOF7zY Professor Gupta audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZqTs_YNJk Prof Gomez audio
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  19825. These issues have nothing to do with national politics. You are confusing an MP with a social worker ,or a parish councillor, or the vicar.
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  19826.  @andylane247  Trump may be a cult to some, but to others he represents a genuine bulwark against the quite open strategies of mega-wealthy globalists to restructure the world economy. You can recognise this instinctively by seeing how your children are being brainwashed from kindergarden to university and how your cities are being thrown wide open to imported, undocumented gangsters and all the other manifestations of woke culture. You can also go into things a bit deeper and read the works of George Soros or the minutes of World Economic Forum and subsequent press releases. You may want to live in a world run by an elite of hedge fund capitalists using brainwashed fools to carry out their strategies. I don't.
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  19827.  @andylane247  What "blond propaganda"? Aryan superiority is not on Trump's agenda, as far as I am aware. Accusations of racism merely reveal a realistic appreciation of social differences. The large numbers of Black Americans wearing MAGA hats points to the idiocy of this accusation. And all politicians lie; Trump does so with a twinkle in his eye more often than not, and his supporters laugh as the Dems get all huffy and puffy. And what's wrong with being a strong leader? That's what leaders are there for.
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  19828.  @andylane247  "Woke" is far more of an understandable term than the much-misused "fascist" you lowbrow lefties are always throwing about. It covers everything from SJWs to PC and all the other messy thinking that discolours and perverts contemporary discourse. Trump is what he is; which is to say he is pretty much an ordinary Joe who happens to have been born into great wealth and gifted with a certain amount of animal cunning. He has done more or less exactly what many other ordinary Joes would have done had they been born with his advantages. That is why so many of them love him.
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  19829.  @joh22293  Should I go to my safe space first?
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  19830.  @laurencekelly5081  So far all I seem to be doing is having reasoned opinions you disagree with. Is this a crime?
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  19831.  @Tulkash01  That's where you're wrong. For decades now globalists have realised that they must appeal to the conformist, risk-averse, socially aware mindset typical of instinctive leftists in order to advance their agenda. Wealth distributed according to needs is characteristic of both philosophies. In the present instance it is the elite mega-billionaires who decide the equation however. They have decided that it really is best if private ownership is abolished, along with individual entrepreneurship, and that a world government (run by them) allocates resources according the perceived contributions individuals make to society. You will own nothing, but you will be happy.(Or else!)
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  19832.  @laurencekelly5081  I can't take anyone seriously who misuses apostrophes I'm afraid.
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  19833.  @skinless333x2  The idea that Trump was trying to overthrow the election by force is as absurd as the idea that the election was democratically conducted in the first place.
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  19834.  @fvefve12  You have left out tax reforms and peace initiatives in the Middle East, which like the examples you mentioned had generally beneficial effects. The car industry was already well screwed thanks to decades of poor management, and farming (which you didn't mention) needed and needs a total overhaul of resources in the US. Fortunately Trump or a surrogate should return to power in 2024 - unless the Democrats manage to cheat again - and America might just be fortunate enough to crawl back from the disaster that is the Biden administration. I suppose (sigh) you are talking about Hitler in you final paragraph? What is this obsession you ill-educated leftards have with this guy? He was a man of his times and his ideas and policies bear no resemblance whatsoever to those of Donald Trump or any other Western leader today. Hitler merely put Marxism and capitalism in the same bag because he considered them both to be run by Jews. Capitalism had not yet realised then that the structures and strictures of Marxism are ideally suited to creating the society of compliance, punishment and reward which is now envisaged.
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  19835.  @skinless333x2  Google Here Is The Evidence and then come back to me.
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  19836.  @Tulkash01  The hyper wealthy certainly want to destroy all private wealth but their own. The rest of your analysis is entirely accurate. The monopolistic tendency of capitalism has undergone a couple of changes over the past hundred years or so, however, initially via state monopoly capitalism to its current status of world monopoly capitalism. They are all essentially Marxist ideas in the first instance, although swiftly commandeered by largely hedge fund rather than venture capitalists as ideally suited to their purposes. I find this frightening. It necessitates a structure of deceit and intimidation in order to succeed, and we are only too clearly already seeing many signs of that taking place.
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  19837.  @andylane247  I get the feeling your critical faculties are diminishing somewhat.
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  19838.  @Llortnerof  Where is this proven? The Dem's kangaroo court has yet to reach its inevitably ludicrous conclusion and the "proof" so far is non-existent. Trump and Johnson have nothing at all in common. Trump is a free-market capitalist. Johnson is a pussy-whipped globalist stooge. You're the one living in a bubble. I know this because I lived in the same bubble myself for a while instead of deciding to look outside it. I am fully aware of the differences between Marxism and capitalism. The point I am making is that modern capitalism has subsumed many Marxist ideas to suit its purposes.
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  19839.  @timothyharris4708  I have a highly critical nature. Simply accusing someone of talking bollocks is hardly the stuff of reasoned debate though, is it?
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  19840.  @andylane247  Trite, boring and worthless are slightly more purposeful than "bollocks" I suppose but they scarcely amount to a reasoned critique though, do they?
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  19841.  @mackenziebeeney3764  American elections are quite incredibly corrupt affairs. 2020 took the prize though. Whatever minor shenanagins the Republicans may or may not have got up to they pale into significance beside the magnificently organised and multi-faceted efforts of the FBI, the CIA and several other acronyms to rid themselves of the irritating nuisance that was Donald Trump.
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  19842.  @mackenziebeeney3764  I have no objection to being called stupid. I would like to hear some explanations as to how this conclusion was reached, however.
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  19843.  @Tulkash01  I agree with every word.
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  19844.  @andylane247  I think we have found something we can agree upon.
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  19845.  @mackenziebeeney3764  American democracy is pretty much a sham at the best of times. The country is largely run from behind the scenes on a system of bribes, blackmail and favours. Trump is despised, hated and feared because he has come up from outside the system and is a threat to the established order which derives power and wealth through this system. This is why he had to go - despite having the votes and support of the majority of Americans. Biden's vote was inflated beyond belief by any number of cunning strategies. The incredible mess Biden is making of things is almost enough to make one believe in natural justice.
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  19846.  @mackenziebeeney3764  Is it possible to have a stupid opinion without being stupid? And how did you arrive at your opinions? Many months of intense thought and mental effort? Or do you just go along with a majority leftist view? Who gave me my opinions, do you imagine? And why are they stupid?
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  19847.  @andylane247  That's about 71 million Americans then. And me- (though "good" isn't perhaps the best word. Pragmatic and very unfairly maligned though.) By the way, has it ever crossed your mind how believing that people who disagree with your sad, brainwashed "opinions" are somehow mentally ill smacks of Soviet communism? Ever read 1984 or The Gulag Archipelago?
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  19848.  @mackenziebeeney3764  We can't revoke it. We just need to make sure that it isn't abused quite as much.
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  19849.  @DavidMoxham957  The point I am making is that the elite billionaires who want to rule rule the world have taken Marxist strategies on board to further their aims. Modern capitalism, with its emphasis on hedge fund manipulation rather than industrial investment, needs large sections of the population to be directed according to immediate requirements and Marxists are old hands at this. This why modern investors buy mayors and DA's in US cities and finance organisations like BLM and Antifa. Marxists, especially those of the French school, have built upon techniques employed by Stalin and his successors. They have made them less crude and bloodthirsty but the principles are the same: control of information through education and the media, reward for the compliant and punishment and ostracisation for those who fail to fulfil the roles demanded of them. Trump has intervened in this process by reflecting the somewhat ill-defined objections so many innately conservative people have to the changes they see going on around them. He is, in the words of George Soros " a temporary inconvenience." He has been successfully demonised in the eyes of the gullible, but he is just an ordinary Joe who rather fancied being President and when he managed it set about trying to turn back the clock. This clearly could not be tolerated, and he had to go. Now we have Biden, deliberately inserted in order that his incompetence leads to further disintegration of old school capitalism from the ruins of which a Brave New World is expected to emerge. The Capitol riot was supposed to be a protest. It only went tits up when FBI agents planted in the crowd kicked the door in. Visit Here Is The Evidence for a couple of thousand items relating to the 2020 election scam.
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  19850.  @andylane247  Why does your Rabbit have a capital letter?
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  19851.  @timothyharris4708  Alas, as usual YouTube censored and removed the detailed reply I gave you a minute or two ago. I like it when that happens. It reassures me that I am on the side of truth and justice.
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  19852.  @timothyharris4708  Google Here Is The Evidence.
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  19853.  @andylane247  That would be Donald Duck I take it.
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  19854.  @timothyharris4708  You could try wading through the evidence presented to various state senate committees subsequent to the election . I think they are still available in video form on the Internet. There are about forty hours of them though, so it's a bit of a haul.
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  19855.  @andylane247  And pragmatic. Seriously though, every white person of that generation, just about, was brought up to consider men superior to women and white men superior to all other beings on the planet. Conditioning in childhood takes a lot of throwing off and Trump has had a fair stab at it. I hope you will be as successful in escaping the effects of the brainwashing you have clearly been subjected to.
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  19856.  @andylane247  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYqCQy7fvFw
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  19857.  @timothyharris4708  As I said I did try. YouTube deleted it. The reasoned argument is that Trump presented a threat to the established order of corrupt government and had to go. The means used were many and various, Some are detailed in evidence presented to state senate committees, while sites such as Here Is The Evidence provide access to a variety of sources outlining methods and giving details of particular incidents. The cover-up is as egregious as the crime itself though, and just as expertly conducted.
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  19858.  @funbarsolaris2822  You have failed to understand the very important developments which have led to an unholy alliance between Marxism and New World Order capitalism. Why do you think George Soros finances the election of extreme left-wing mayors and DAs in US cities? Why do you think the World Economic Forum recommends systems of social organisation which are simply the Soviet system of administration writ large? Marxism and capitalism have reached a compromise. You only have to look at China to see that. I am not trolling. The movement of capital to increase wealth has moved on from simple investment in industrial production organised by private individuals and consortia into areas where state - and eventually world - control is paramount. This means that the volatility created by democratically elected changes of government cannot be allowed to continue - not in the long run. In the meantime the principle of reflexivity can be used to inject carefully consider instabilities into various national economies, thus producing vast immediate profits as currencies fluctuate. The instabilities lead to discontent and dissent and thus pave the way for revolution - but a very controlled and ordered one. The very, very rich get even richer, but at the same time the world moves towards a structured economy as envisaged by Marx, in which labour is recognised as an asset and is rewarded accordingly and appropriately. The New World Order and Marxism thus have at least two shared objectives -the removal of private ownership and individual entrepreneurs and the abandonment of democratic elections. Old school capitalism, typified as you rightly say by the policies of Thatcher and Reagan, is considered to be a thing of the past. It is just too messy and unpredictable. It is time to move on.
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  19859.  @timothyharris4708  Neither uncritically nor foolishly. As for gullible.. well, just look in the mirror. As far as the "clown-show" is concerned I do not doubt you have seen only the edited highlights selected by the MSM to portray the various cases in the worst possible light. As I say, there are at least forty hours of testimony, much of it tedious and repetitive, but very, very revealing in places. Edited highlights showing these are of course deleted by YouTube, as are videos showing Republican observers being harassed and shut out of counts. Whoops! Page unavailable. The cover-up is as evil as the crime. You needn't wade through conspiracy theories to find some interesting items on HITE. The site is quite well curated at the moment, although subject to regular attack from the forces of evil. There are plenty of things to choose from. I suppose, however, that you will remain locked in your little bubble, believing without question the crap dished out by the MSM. It doesn't matter. As I say, the 2020 election is now history and we can only hope that the forensic audits carried out in some states have, despite continuing obstacles placed in their path, derived sufficient information to enable at least some of the criminal techniques employed to be circumvented this year and in 2024.
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  19860.  @timothyharris4708  The thing I have on my side is that my replies are deleted while yours are not. This would seem to suggest that it is me who is being tyrannised, wouldn't you say? The very fact that you are declining to take advantage of the opportunities I have offered you to expand your horizons also indicates that you are content in your prison cell - or at least unwilling to step outside it for a moment. I have arrived at my views after passing through yours, by the way. We are all gullible and prejudiced to a certain extent, but those of us who have considered many options stand more chance of being on the side of truth and justice than those of you who accept without question the version of reality presented to you by officially approved channels.
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  19861.  @timothyharris4708  No links. The YouTube algorithm is a tricky beast and I suspect that even mentioning certain items of hardware used in elections gets your post deleted. It happens in other areas too. Sickening really. Yup. Diamond and Silk and all the other black American YouTubers who support Trump seem to me to give considerable refutation to the suggestion that Trump is a racist. The Democrats are scared to death of losing the black vote and so this is just one of the many accusations in the relentless campaign of vilification against him - accusations I myself believed for the first two years of his Presidency. My reasoned argument is that because Donald Trump has not risen through the usual messy political channels he owes nothing to anybody, and he has no skeletons in his cupboard, and despite the most absurd efforts to do so, none can be created. I get the impression that American Presidents are usually taken aside shortly after inauguration and told what they must do -or else. There was no "or else" in Trump's case. As a property developer he was used to giving bribes -not taking them. He is, of course, a man of many faults but he has one outstanding virtue -he is not a career politician. He is quite an ordinary person really. He has second son syndrome of course - like a number of English monarchs -and is under pressure to fill the shoes his elder brother was destined to wear. He is, in short, not a creature of the swamp as Biden is and Obama was. He is his own man, not a front man. and they don't like that. One can add to these observations the further perception that the ceaseless and repetitive "Orange Man Bad" propaganda which continues to assail us is of very low quality, as these things go. Nothing stands up. All you get is school yard accusations of this and that. Nothingburgers, as the Americans say. In the end it defeats its own object -at least if you examine it long and carefully enough, as I have done and you obviously haven't. So this is my serious process of thought - or vapid scribblings if you prefer. Conspiracy theories are rapidly becoming just conspiracies these days, but I don't suppose you've noticed.
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  19862.  @andylane247  I see that you and Timothy Harris have been gossiping about me like a couple of old ladies in a bus queue but, that aside, I fail to see the relevance of this observation. So you not realise how weak and pathetic this obsessive need to draw parallels between contemporary politics and Nazi Germany makes you seem?
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  19863.  @andylane247  Bollocks
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  19864.  @andylane247  Heard the latest? If enough Trumpist Republicans get into the House and Senate come September (which they will unless the Dems cheat again) they are going to make Trump Leader of the House. They will then impeach Biden and Harris. Trump, being third in line, will resume his rightful position as President of the United States. Sweet huh?
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  19865.  @andylane247  It's a bit of a long shot, but technically it's entirely possible. It has a nice sense of balance and proportion to it as well, don't you think?
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  19866.  @andylane247  No chance! Truth and justice will prevail. Trump 2023!
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  19867.  @funbarsolaris2822  We are somewhat at cross purposes. Left wing politics, as typified by Sanders and Corbyn, goes on its merry way entirely removed from reality- as it more or less always has been since the end of World War II at least. I am talking about academic neo- Marxism, largely developed in France and Germany in the 50s and 60s. This is of course entirely different to old school socialism, which has become rather stuck in a political backwater after brief earlier successes in the first half of the 20th century, and which has anyway generally backed away from Marxist principles. By the time Reagan and Thatcher came along this form of socialism had fallen into stagnation - as all economic and political philosophies do. They require constant revision. Capitalism has revised itself by taking on some Marxist precepts and Marxism has revised itself by accepting capitalism as an inevitable feature of human conduct. The result has been the New World Order and the Great Reset. Marxists can with a clear conscience accept the principle of economic growth through the manipulation of capital, as long as it is accompanied by what they perceive as an equitable distribution of benefits. Capitalists are grateful for the benefits of having a compliant workforce, and modern technology ensures that all proceedings can be closely monitored. Thus the elitist technocrat can enjoy the lifestyle to which he/she feels entitled, secure in the knowledge that the lives of his/her minions are reasonably comfortable and well ordered, and that all dissent can be met with withdrawal of privileges. Capital and labour are at one at last. We are all equal, but some are more equal than others. Neither the small-time factory owner nor the Labourite shop steward have any place in this new arrangement. Both are defunct. No-one owns anything any more, in fact. Rational decisions as to the distribution of resources and means of production are taken according to principles generally embedded in computer programs and everyone is allocated goods and services appropriate to the contribution they make to the common weal. You are somewhat nostalgic, I think, and nostalgia has no real place in this brave new world cooked up by the World Economic Forum and which is coming slowly but surely into existence even as we speak - or look with tearful eyes at old films of old struggles, now long past.
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  19868.  @funbarsolaris2822  As I say, this is a somewhat outdated view, The dilemmas and conflicts of interest you outline here are entirely apparent to capitalists as they are to academic Marxists. Both sides know there is no point in trying to settle matters by constantly swinging back and forth between low regulation, low taxation free markets economies and high regulation, high taxation centrally controlled ones. It gets us nowhere. Marxism isn't about milking the rich to feed the poor, as some people seem to think. It's essentially about regulating economies in order that society is kept on an even keel, and that in order to do this it is essential that those who directly create genuine increased value - ie the workforce - are maintained in a sufficiently stable condition to enable them to do so. Marxism in its original form suggested that the best way to do this was to give the workforce control of the means of production by transferring ownership of property and capital to the state. This clearly has not worked because such a system is unresponsive to subtle and sudden changes in the market and general conditions. The solution you seem to favour -one which essentially forces the workforce to act as a parasite on the economy to a degree which bears no relation to whatever input it makes, is equally unworkable - once again as experience has shown. I think you are confusing Marxism with liberal socialism which merely seeks a relationship with capitalism. Marxism wants to subsume it and we are now in a situation whereby capitalism has become so esoteric that it is quite capable of being so subsumed without affecting the wealth of the elite who understand the alchemy involved.
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  19869.  @andylane247  Yes, I fully remember when Kim Jong-un had the Presidential election stolen from him and his supporters stormed the Masudae Hall. He too said they would be pardoned when he returned to power. Your sense of history is as uncannily prescient as ever.
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  19870.  @andylane247  Your comparisons are growing increasingly bizarre. This one is utterly unintelligible. By the way, you appear not to have noticed that the God Emperor is no longer orange. He has sensibly put away the hair dye and fake tan and looks considerably more distinguished as a result.
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  19871. ​ @andylane247  Soon be right in the bag!
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  19872.  @andylane247  The woods around Chernobyl are now full of huge wolves with sharpy, sharpy nasty pointy teeth.
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  19873. Spot on. Leftie blabbermouth Lineker has blown the gaff, and played into the hands of all right-minded people who want to see the end of the creaking anachronism which is the BBC.
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  19874.  @anglonorse2943  Not for the first time, right is right!
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  19875. The utter destruction of Hamas is the only answer.
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  19876. Democracy in America is a sham.
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  19877. I think you're wrong to look upon this as a "goal". It is a viable solution to a dreadful situation which the parents of those "innocent babies" are complicit in creating.
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  19878.  @Nick-ov8sm  To stop them getting hurt?
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  19879.  @rtqii  They're fish in a net.
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  19880. Poisoned my arse. It was probably just an allergic reaction.
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  19881. Russians are rather old-fashioned. They regard dying as part of a soldier's job.
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  19882. Anthony Edo, "The Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market", Journal of Economic Surveys, Vol. 33 (2019), pp. 922-948. Similar in content to the National Academies’ chapters, this review paper takes a more international perspective. After considering over 50 studies of immigration in developed countries, the author concludes that “immigration can create winners and losers among the native-born workers”. Because low-skill immigration tends to make low-skill natives the “losers” and high-skill natives the “winners”, rising inequality is a natural consequence. This conclusion stands in stark contrast to the advocates’ position that “there is no evidence that immigrants hurt any American workers”. While some Americans gain from immigration, others certainly do lose. Joseph Price, Christian vom Lehn, and Riley Wilson, "The Winners and Losers of Immigration: Evidence from Linked Historical Data", NBER Working Paper Series, No. 27156 (2020). Updated 2023. This paper acknowledges the winner-loser framework right in its title. The authors use genealogical data to track millions of men between decennial censuses in the early 20th century. Following these individuals allows the authors to improve upon past research that focused only on community-level impacts of immigration. They find that older and higher-skilled workers were the “winners” — their incomes tended to go up when immigrants entered their local labor market. By contrast, younger and less-skilled workers were the “losers” — they were more likely to move away and suffer income losses as a result of immigration. In the modern-day context, CIS has emphasized that immigration tends to have strong disemployment effects on the youngest and least-skilled Americans of all: teenagers.
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  19883. There are plenty out there - but you are not allowed to see them.
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  19884. Joseph Price, Christian vom Lehn, and Riley Wilson, "The Winners and Losers of Immigration: Evidence from Linked Historical Data", NBER Working Paper Series, No. 27156 (2020). Updated 2023. This paper acknowledges the winner-loser framework right in its title. The authors use genealogical data to track millions of men between decennial censuses in the early 20th century. Following these individuals allows the authors to improve upon past research that focused only on community-level impacts of immigration. They find that older and higher-skilled workers were the “winners” — their incomes tended to go up when immigrants entered their local labor market. By contrast, younger and less-skilled workers were the “losers” — they were more likely to move away and suffer income losses as a result of immigration. In the modern-day context, CIS has emphasized that immigration tends to have strong disemployment effects on the youngest and least-skilled Americans of all: teenagers.
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  19885. Another factor of course is that many Asian peoples are now being shown to have an inbuilt resistance to covid due to exposure to similar pathogen epidemics in the past which did not reach Europe.
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  19886. Net Zero is snake oil, pure and simple.
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  19887. While they can. If the cold weather arrives in the next fortnight they'll have plenty to think about, sad to say.
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  19888. They are just pissing in the wind. Nothing can stop Omicron, and at least half the UK population will be infected within a month. All we can do is hope and pray that it continues to remain mild in its effects and may even provide a route out of the pandemic by creating herd immunity through recovery from infection.
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  19889.  @Sean12248  Gestures. Turns out most of the tanks are non-operational and it will take weeks to get them up and running. Biden's visit was pure PR grandstanding.
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  19890.  @AlexVardr  The cost is much disputed but I hardly think this can be right. In any case it hardly matters since the issue is not whether NATO can afford to continue its support, it is whether it is sensible to do so. When there was a chance of turning a profit by getting hold of the immense wealth lying beneath the ground of Donbass then the odd few billion could be seen as an investment. Now that prospect is receding and the question is whether or not it is worth throwing good money after bad.
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  19891.  @bryandimery6509  Food for thought, indeed. How do you feel about the prospect of the BRICS countries beating the US in a currency war? Will this take the wind out of the arms dealers' sails? Will the American taxpayer consent to upping the already massive debt in order to finance this continued militarism? Sorry to ask so many questions, but your answer set me thinking!
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  19892.  @bryandimery6509  You are clearly as cynical and pessimistic as I am. At least we will able to say "told you so!" if we are still around when the empire finally crumbles!
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  19893.  @bryandimery6509  And to you. I'm often accused of being a Russian bot, so I might try Siberia!
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  19894.  @bryandimery6509  Cold comfort?
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  19895. @Chris Viking They have been shelling civilian targets in Donbass since 2014.Thousands have died. The city of Donetsk is currently under frequent indiscriminate assault. Get real.
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  19896. person who's real -I'd like to experiment. Here I will say nothing much but below I'l make another comment, this time a critical one.
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  19897. Boys will be boys! It's not at all uncommon for guys faced with unpleasant situations to indulge in this kind of humor. Cops do it. Firefighters do it. Front line military do it. It relieves tension to turn horror into a joke. I've seen some of the posts and the one showing AOC giving Trump head is especially cathartic.
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  19898. One Punch OK. I'll miss you. It wasn't you, it was me.
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  19899. Subramian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology. Read this. It is quite educational.
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  19900.  @jcspoon573  Hang on! I know what it is and obviously recognise its limitations, but it provides interesting food for thought, don't you think? And your analogy doesn't really bear much close examination, does it? The fact is that countries and states which go for mandated 100% vaccination programmes will inevitably find themselves in situations whereby their localised epidemics will continue virtually forever. The relatively low success rate of the current vaccines and their short shelf life guarantee this. On the other hand, populations in which there is a level of vaccination, but which also experience increasing long-term immunity in individuals via infection, will approach herd immunity threshold in a relatively ordered manner. This is already being demonstrated - not only through this study but in real world terms. All you have to do is compare current infection rates in low vaxxed states with those in high vaxxed states to see this. States such as Texas and Florida, with low levels of vaccination and a resistance to mandates, experienced hard hits in the summer, but their infection rates are now dropping dramatically. High vaxxed, high mandated states such as Vermont, while suffering fewer casualties in the past, continue to see a steady rise in cases or at least a very much slower rate of decline.
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  19901.  @jcspoon573  I have to disagree. This is information. Information needs assessment. Resistance or immunity? A fine distinction, but the resistance provided by infection seems to be of a far higher degree of efficiency than that provided by vaccination. In the UK around a quarter of new cases occur among the fully vaccinated. Over 65% of hospitalisations occur among the fully vaccinated and over 80% of deaths. As far as can be judged, none occur among the previously infected. These does not mean that vaccines are useless, of course. Far from it. It is just that they are ineffective in persons whose immune systems are shot, as is the case with a great many elderly people who continue to form the vast majority of fatalities. In America the situation is somewhat different since obesity, in all age groups, is a very significant factor in death rates.
    1
  19902.  @jcspoon573  You are misjudging me completely. I agree with practically all you say - apart from infection not protecting as well against variants as vaccination. Setting that aside, my view is that the best way forward is for healthy people to achieve immunity through infection, thus setting up genuine and robust cordon of protection for the vulnerable. Vaccination does not achieve this. Of course the vulnerable should be vaccinated - although it has to be said that palliative drugs might well be just as effective. The present approach seems to me to be more geared toward continued profits for drug companies than it does towards reducing the pandemic to endemic status, and dealing with it as such.
    1
  19903.  @jcspoon573  As to your first point, resistance via infection leads to more or less total resistance to the first strain encountered and robust resistance to subsequent strains, leading to only mild symptoms. It is clear that this should be so, and what data we have indicates that this is, in fact, so. Opportunities for mutation exist in all situations. The number of coronaviruses which have existed, and currently exist, is so vast that mutation becomes an utterly unpredictable event. Only by drastically reducing the number of potentially infectious people via immunity through infection can the likelihood or a new variant becoming predominant be reduced. As to your last point, it can be said with some certainty that successful new strains which may occur will be those which are more transmissible, but less virulent, than preceding strains.
    1
  19904.  @jcspoon573  But the facts as I have already presented them to you clearly prove you are incorrect. Despite what the drug companies would like you to believe, people who are vaccinated continue to become infected, to be hospitalised and to die. People who have become infected and have recovered do not. There is not getting out of this. It is the way it is.
    1
  19905.  @jcspoon573  No .You're wrong. Studies of antibody levels which claim extra efficacy for vaccines are immediately suspect. Drug companies have been manipulating data for decades to advance the case for their products, and the examples you give are simply an illustration of this. What is important is what happens in the real world, not in the pharma company's laboratory. And in the real world people who have been infected with coronavirus never get the same variant again, and if they are unfortunate enough to contract another variant their symptoms will be mild This is evidenced by the fact that, as already stated, vaccinated patients make up a considerable proportion of those who are hospitalised and die, whereas, to my knowledge, nobody who has been previously infected has apparently suffered any severe outcome from any subsequent re-infection.
    1
  19906.  @jcspoon573  I like the word "suspected". And they would say that, wouldn't they? The fact is that infection can continue for very long periods. Several months with the same infection. This does not mean re-infection. The only way a reinfection can be properly judged to have occurred is if a second test reveals a new variant. I repeat: as far as I am aware there are no recorded instances of a patient dying or suffering a severe outcome as the result of a proven secondary infection. By contrast, thousands of people are dying who have received two vaccinations.
    1
  19907.  @jcspoon573  Now you are just being paranoid. I have actually found one suspected case of death from a secondary infection, as it happens, but that was before the time period for secondary infections was upped from 90 days to120 days, as it is now. You are simply barking up the wrong tree. You have been fed a load of guff by an egregious press and pharmaceutical industry determined to add to its billions of profit by exploiting this pandemic for all its worth. The UK's Office of National Statistics has just a couple of days ago given a clear update on the latest position. I will attempt to give you the link in another post, YouTube being, as ever, on the side of Mammon, it is likely to be deleted, but I will persevere.
    1
  19908.  @jcspoon573  I still don't see the Oxford study you refer to. As I say, defining re-infection is a hard business. What in the past has thought to be re-infection has turned out to be the same infection, extended over many weeks. The case I found seems to have come into this category, and I suspect your Oxford cases might also. Anyhow do try to access the ONS paper. It might calm you down a bit.
    1
  19909.  @jcspoon573  Where can I access this Oxford study then? I'm genuinely interested. As for the rest, I find it hard to believe that the vaccines are going to lose money! And as for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin - we'll never know, will we? At least not from studies - only from real-world experience.
    1
  19910.  @jcspoon573  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exW9EcK52cA
    1
  19911.  @jaelynn7575  Can you point me to a study which proves that masks prevent the wearer from infection? There is a possibility that they might just-might reduce the chances of passing it on to others, but that's about it. This semi-religious reliance on their magical properties is really quite dangerous. (And I meant the effects on the community as a whole, not upon individuals. In fact they could make things worse if you are infected and constantly re-inhale the viruses trapped on the inside of your mask.)
    1
  19912.  @skydog9043  No. The CDC, the WHO, the British Medical Association and other bodies all published reports at the start of the pandemic, citing experience with flu epidemics and also several detailed studies all discouraging the wearing of masks by the general public. The sudden change is political, and has little if anything to do with public health.
    1
  19913.  @KF75411  Too much when the benefit is so very small and the real reason we are required to wear masks is to concentrate our attention on the one hand, and as symbols of conformity on the other.
    1
  19914.  @DB-bb8ho  I can't. YouTube deletes them. Try The CDC's magazine Emerging Infectious Diseases Vol 2 No 5 for May 2020.
    1
  19915.  @DB-bb8ho  Go to Swiss Policy Research
    1
  19916.  @jasonarthurs3885  Yes, but I just want to know what this newer information is. Nobody seems able to tell me. An outlook is just another word for opinion and I personally need newer information before I change my outlook.
    1
  19917. The invasion is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Putin, very understandably, doesn't like the possibility of a NATO/US nuclear missile launch pad seven minutes flying time from Moscow. NATO is a US moneymaking enterprise and little more.
    1
  19918.  @michaelmorningstar8645  I'm not Russian. And it's you who's gullible.
    1
  19919.  @mussu4859  What invasions? There's no need for that.
    1
  19920.  @superhumantrueman  Part of the process.
    1
  19921.  @1963zt  You speak words of wisdom. grasshopper.
    1
  19922. Defending against what exactly? Russia only poses a threat to this country if we continue to support Washington's warmongering.
    1
  19923.  @ShadowPhoenixMaximus  Ridiculous. If so, when they attack cities with missiles are there only usually ever a couple of people killed? Why do they set up evacuation corridors before ground attacks? If they really wanted to kill civilians they could do so by the thousand every day.
    1
  19924. They are both Hindus. It's none of their business.
    1
  19925.  @nopasaran8660  But why? Hindus and Muslims have no common interests in this matter.
    1
  19926.  @nopasaran8660  ????
    1
  19927.  @joshrogers7816  It is scarcely applicable.
    1
  19928. Nonsense. A great victory for MAGA. The Speaker's power are curtailed and the draining of the swamp can get under way.
    1
  19929.  @JohnSmith-gu6hf  Trump - maybe. But the corruption in US government still needs to be destroyed. Only right-wing Republicans will achieve this.
    1
  19930. Trump will end the war in Ukraine. Instantly. So what's wrong with that?
    1
  19931. Whatever internal struggles there may be, the combination of Russia, China and the other BRICS + nations will inevitably destroy the US-led West as the primary military and economic influence on world affairs.. To put it another way - we're fucked.
    1
  19932. Jesus Christ!
    1
  19933.  @xdmuhxd1843  Biden is catching up fast.
    1
  19934. This is a widespread allegation. Hitler's grandmother worked as a servant in a Jewish household and his father is alleged to be the product of an illicit union with a son of that family. A DNA study of some of Hitler's modern-day relations has apparently revealed Jewish genes - as well as a large dose of North African!
    1
  19935. Take the over 75s out of the equation and he's not far wrong.
    1
  19936. Michael RCH Don't worry. Flash Gordon is speeding back to Earth to save us all. I know this to be true because it was in a comic I read. What more proof do you need?
    1
  19937. And the only one that's going to work in the long run.
    1
  19938. Were you ever shot at though?
    1
  19939. I'm coming to believe that replacement theory could actually be a thing.
    1
  19940. But not if the mass fraud claim is true.
    1
  19941. Russia only wants Kherson to protect water supplies to Crimea - and also perhaps as a killing ground to further deplete Ukraine's armed forces.
    1
  19942. Ah, where would Left be without dear old Adolf to call on?
    1
  19943. S​​ource for what? Any reputable history of the holocaust will tell you how Ukrainian police herded thousands upon thousands of Jews to be massacred by machine guns while the people of Kiev and Mariupol lined the streets and cheered If you mean the floodwater all expert opinion agrees it will end up in the sea very quickly.
    1
  19944. ​ @patrikfloding7985 He has a very good case for doing what he has done. Zelensky on the other hand has merely been bribed by America to lead his country into bloody ruin.
    1
  19945. I would be fascinated to know your source for this. Could you supply it? It does not seem to fit in with either official statistics or a simple matter of observation from anyone who has ever visited a prison.
    1
  19946.  @mongolianfishingvillages1371  Because BAME people suffer and die from Covid 19 t at disproportionate levels. Why this should be so we do not yet know. The. same applies to blood groups.
    1
  19947. Yup. But with vaccinations it should work with very few casualties.
    1
  19948.  @mikedon5205  They just did it, didn't they? And they'll keep on coming, despite the losses.
    1
  19949.  @mikedon5205  They'd better hurry up. If Russia invades from the north and east some time soon the Ukrainians will have to give up Donbass. I remain convinced that is mainly all Russia wants and they will dig in there and defend it. It will take months and months for Ukraine to rebuild sufficiently to try to retake it. Already NATO countries are becoming nervous about continued support for Ukraine - and with good reason. This is yet another blunder by US and UK military "intelligence" who clearly have not anticipated this degree of belligerence from Russia when laying their plans. The investment isn't paying off and it will soon be time for the West to cut its losses and leave poor old Ukraine to carry the can.
    1
  19950. Meanwhile Londoners have fled across the country, spreading the new strain wherever they go. Good job it isn't serious - and even more like the common cold than its predecessors.
    1
  19951. We are not at war with Russia. Support for Russia is not treason.
    1
  19952. Very well said - apart from the last bit. Phil and his chums are just misguided.
    1
  19953. Ukraine lies too. It's a war thing
    1
  19954. Hamas are doing for Iran what the Ukrainians are doing for America. They will both regret it.
    1
  19955. But what if it was a planned withdrawal?
    1
  19956.  @scottjohnson9912  They succeeded in their objective, which was to drain Ukrainian resources.
    1
  19957.  @scottjohnson9912  Zelensky practically offered them an invitation though.
    1
  19958.  @uncleanunicorn4571  Of course it was. This war started in 2014 when Donbass attempted to cede from Ukraine. Over 14 thousand people were killed before Russia even invaded.
    1
  19959.  @131Bandit  Whatever the numbers involved it was.many more than a few and included most of the police force and units of the Ukrainian army stationed there. They went over with their weapons as did their counterparts in Crimea Russia obviously had a major part in organising the rebellions, but there is no doubt that the ethnic Russian populations of both areas had built up considerable resentment at their treatment by the nationalists in Kiev.
    1
  19960.  @marmadukescarlet7791  Curses! You have found me out, you swine!
    1
  19961.  @GTJWilding  What nuances? Is she saying anything other than free speech is a good thing - not just for moral reasons, but because the cancel culture will eventually do harm to the Socialist cause? Are you implying she might be suggesting that only when power is gained should opposing viewpoints and iconography be destroyed, as was Lenin's contention I believe? Do share. You must not keep all these profound insights to yourself.
    1
  19962. Immunity actually lasts considerably longer. The number of those who have been infected twice is quite tiny and it only really happens if the first does has been very mild.
    1
  19963. A billion dollars channelled to Democrats via BLM extortion and fund-raising ? Any truth in that at all?
    1
  19964.  @philiphowell1505  Since Bacon he lived roughly 300 years before Dickens this is hardly likely, but never mind.
    1
  19965.  @0307scott  War is a terrible thing.
    1
  19966. The government lied and people died.
    1
  19967. Shameless croneyism was begun by Blair when he chucked out most of the hereditaries and replaced them with Labour luvvies. Be careful what you wish for.
    1
  19968. @Moscow_Will_Burn I can think of someone lining up to buy them. Name of Trump.
    1
  19969. @ I can think of someone possibly lining up to buy them. Name of Trump.
    1
  19970. Journalism is dead. She's a lawyer.
    1
  19971.  @Geffo555  The facts are simple enough: Ukraine was conned into trying to wrest control of the Russian-owned mines and factories in Donbass and pass them over to the EU. The war is a result of these attempts. It takes two to tango, so to attempt to free Ukraine of all blame is absurd.
    1
  19972. I think Trump would turn down the Nobel if it was offered.
    1
  19973. "Orange Man Bad" is a good example of this.
    1
  19974. I had my doubts - but the picture is 100% genuine, a once in a lifetime shot for the photographer.
    1
  19975.  @bigkdog5091  The guy has bottle. Simple as.
    1
  19976.  @stephfoxwell4620  Fight for the freedom of the individual against those who would remove that freedom, I guess.
    1
  19977.  @bigkdog5091  The rather serious one over Ukraine way.
    1
  19978.  @Midland_Wolf_71  Luuurrve who?
    1
  19979.  @vilebrequin6923  He certainly came through this life-threatening crisis well though, didn't he?
    1
  19980. Already the response to the verdict seems somewhat subdued. Which is good.
    1
  19981. Watching leftie loons and brainwashed normies wriggle and weep as Trump struts his stuff does my old heart good!
    1
  19982.  @SolVeritasLux  It's going to be interesting. But I think it'll work.
    1
  19983.  @MIEJ4  Yeah. Get rid of the FDA.
    1
  19984.  @MIEJ4  Just the sort of person to root out corruption in the healthcare industry, don't you think?
    1
  19985. America is headed down the same route as the Soviet Union. Miscalculation and incompetence rule.
    1
  19986. Selwyn Rodda They think "Thank God I am part of an industry that has put clothes on these children's backs, food in their mouths and given them a decent home to live in - them along with millions of others across the world." Where do you get all this crap from? You have obviously been educated by delusional watermelon people. If you want to live without the energy provided by fossil fuels take your clothes off and go up a mountain and see how you get by.
    1
  19987. Used to be. The new elite are Socialist bureaucrats and obscenely wealthy asset managers who con Socialists into slaving for them.
    1
  19988. At the bottom of the pile.
    1
  19989.  @garethhanby  All purely symbolic. Don't you GET that?
    1
  19990. Naah, They'll cheat again.
    1
  19991. The sentence scarcely matters. What does matter is that the BBC clearly has a long-term culture which seems in some weird way to combine middle-class socialism, worship of black people, and paedophilia. Something to do with guilt, I imagine.
    1
  19992. andrew30 Any idea when the American snowfalls were predicted?
    1
  19993. If Biden wins in November this time we'll KNOW it was fixed.
    1
  19994. What's dirty about revealing potential jurors to have had their minds and opinions sullied by the constant stream of hatred much of the media has subjected Trump to? I would contend it is impossible to find twelve impartial people in the country - or at least it is likely to take years to dig them out from whatever stones they have been living under.
    1
  19995.  @gerardflynn3899  National SOCIALIST Party?
    1
  19996.  @shatteredblastia1296  They THINK they are! And Hitler was a socialist in the sense of exercising state control over means of production, detailed forward planning etc.
    1
  19997.  @intuitionz1198  Hitler and Mussolini both believed in state control. They were both socialists in that sense. I think you might be confusing socialism with being nice to people.
    1
  19998.  @gerardflynn3899  Well it doesn't work really, does it?
    1
  19999.  @shatteredblastia1296  Sorry. It's been a long day!
    1
  20000.  @intuitionz1198  The concept of state control is surely the essence of socialism. I think perhaps the concept has changed over the years and what is called socialism now is nothing of the kind. It worked briefly in Britain on a couple of occasions but as you rightly say it becomes rapidly corrupt when in power for any length of time. Pity really.
    1
  20001. He could do a lot worse.
    1
  20002.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Here Is The Evidence is a site which provides several thousand items of information which ought to raise some concern. It's all pretty pointless at this stage though. The Biden administration has fucked up big time, legally elected or not.
    1
  20003.  @davea6314  You are a brainwashed buffoon, repeating his conditioning.
    1
  20004.  @davea6314  The capital letters are a bit of a giveaway. You are clearly as crazy as a box of frogs.
    1
  20005.  @davea6314  Sucker.
    1
  20006. Technically speaking, he's being tortured.
    1
  20007.  @stop-the-greed  Being kept in solitary confinement for lengthy periods is a know cause of mental breakdowns. The State fears this man, and is trying to destroy him.
    1
  20008. @alfsmith4936 No. He'd rather be in an open prison and serving a much shorter sentence - which would be far more in accord with the nature of his "crime."
    1
  20009.  @stop-the-greed Of course we do solitary confinement- and TR is in it. It is ostensibly for his own safety - but if he hadn't deliberately been sent to a prison containing a large population of Muslims, many of them jihadist, it wouldn't be necessary.
    1
  20010.  @stop-the-greed  We do solitary confinement - and he's in it. He has deliberately been sent to a prison with a high proportion of Muslims in order to make this necessary.
    1
  20011.  @stop-the-greed  And be driven slowly mad. He already reports alterations in his mental condition caused by his solitary condition. This is out of all proportion to his offence. He is a political prisoner being punished for who he is - not for anything he may have done.
    1
  20012.  @stop-the-greed  And he gets visitors. I'm not suggesting he's chained up in some dank cell to rot!
    1
  20013. @alfsmith4936 He shouldn't be in prison anyway - and certainly not in one where he can't eat the food for fear of being poisoned or circulate freely for fear of being beaten up - or worse - by Muslim inmates.
    1
  20014.  @stop-the-greed  According to general definition Robinson's position counts as solitary confinement .Look it up.
    1
  20015. The counter-offensive is a complete failure so far. This gives weight to the view that Russia did NOT blow the dam. Why should it when the Ukrainians are making such poor progress across open ground - let alone having to cross multiple waterways and mudbanks?
    1
  20016.  @Leszek.Rzepecki  At about the same as it turns into the right to torch Wendy's I guess.
    1
  20017.  @SA-ff9uc  But can I post them on this channel?
    1
  20018.  @SA-ff9uc  In the comments. Obviously.
    1
  20019. When is it going to re-instate RT is a far more significant question.
    1
  20020. Very pragmatic and clear-headed on the whole.
    1
  20021. Best MSM channel in the English-speaking world. The last bastion of true journalism on TV.
    1
  20022. If it comes to a nuclear standoff, who do you think will blink? Clue: it won't be Russia.
    1
  20023. Then why is the population over 80% Russian? The fact is the area has been ruled by both Kiev and Moscow.
    1
  20024. Deep Dish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  20025. Interesting. Time for The Great Reset then?
    1
  20026.  @kimwelch4652  But the Great Reset is a thing. A plan. It is underway. It is designed to counteract the very problems you mention. This threat of a mass-extinction event is an integral part of that very strategy. It is the general theory of reflexivity in action.
    1
  20027.  @kimwelch4652  And Soros and his disciples know that- which is why they are aiming to escape from a free-market economy to a regulated economy. To do this a new world currency is needed, and this is the role carbon certificates are designed to fill. To function as a currency their supply has to be regulated, and to achieve this the fictitious notion that global warming is caused by excessive carbon emissions must be maintained.
    1
  20028.  @kimwelch4652  We seem to have been waiting for a considerable time for reality to overrun perception though, don't we?
    1
  20029.  @kimwelch4652  I agree with you last statement entirely - almost as much as I profoundly disagree with your first. Cosmology and proxy data point conclusively to the fact that the earth's climate follows patterns dictated by its position in relation to the sun and the strength and regularity of various waves of energy, most of which are not understood. There is no correlation between temperature and atmospheric carbon levels other than the possibility that atmospheric carbon may induce a process whereby heat reflected back from the earth's surface is disseminated according to some formula related to atmospheric pressure. In other words it is not a "greenhouse". It acts as a thermostat. As to the possible collapse of the world economy I have a feeling this will be a structured procedure. The WEF has been gradually exercising control for many years and, as I said originally, it seems to be doing so in response to the very threats you mention. I think one can be reasonably sure of the ultimate objective and also detect the various methods by which it is being achieved - all of which I personally find very disturbing.
    1
  20030.  @kimwelch4652  I have read several books and do not regard climate science as a science at all. It was made up in the 1980's with the express aim of promoting the AGW myth. Climate scientists know nothing about cosmology or even cloud formation. They think the sun is a light bulb. At least three generations have been turned out, given the same datasets and algorithms and told to come up with the right answers. It's a travesty.
    1
  20031.  @kimwelch4652  The WEF has some extraordinarily intelligent people in its ranks. By setting up carbon bonds as a central currency to replace gold and the dollar they can both manipulate exchange markets for personal profit and dictate the shape of the world economy to the long-term advantage of their successors. The idea you seem to have that the world is heading for an apocalyptic bust-up, and that therefore industrial output must be restrained, fits this strategy very neatly. It isn't true of course, but as long as you and others like you believe it to be true it enables the WEF and hedge fund managers "in the know" to tune markets to their requirements much more readily.
    1
  20032.  @kimwelch4652  Cosmology a philosophy! What are you talking about? It is the scientific study of the universe, utilising the most advanced forms of mathematics and physics toward this end. Climatology is a cookery class which completely ignores the magnificence of the universe and the breathtaking almost organic structure of the solar system. The gravitational field of Jupiter has more influence on the climate of the Earth than any number of farting cows and belching factory chimneys. Oh well, crawl back into bed and pull the covers over your head if that's what you want.
    1
  20033.  @kimwelch4652  What profound philosophical knowledge you possess. Are you going to tell me a dog isn't a man's best friend after all?
    1
  20034.  @kimwelch4652  You've lost me on this one I'm afraid. I can't put this string of words into any meaningful context. My fault I suppose?
    1
  20035. I don't share your middle-class guilt BBC.. Your ancestors ran the slave trade and you're still living off the money they made. Mine were up in the rigging dying at the same rate as the cargo.
    1
  20036. Russia eyeing up Ukraine. China eyeing up Taiwan. Weak and incompetent US government. Anyone see the connections?
    1
  20037. Xi would have very much upset the Chinese - imagine a covid variant named after their glorious leader! And epsilon means something utterly obscene in Turkish slang I believe.
    1
  20038. There can be no doubt in the minds of rational British voters that these floods are the result of Boris Johnson's plans to sell off the NHS to US Big Pharma. When the NHS was created inundations such as this were unknown. The sun shone perpetually and gentle showers were only experienced at night, and then only sufficient to water the gardens and allotments of the working class. Vote Labour for very nice weather and an end to Jewish exploitation of our natural resources!
    1
  20039.  @PlanetaryCitizen  I'm sure they cared deeply.
    1
  20040. Fleabites!
    1
  20041. Who the hell has the right to decide what views are "hateful"?? We are on the slippery slope to state totalitarianism.
    1
  20042. It's a psychosis. As children they made themselves superior to other children by telling them creepy stories. Fat Boy Syndrome.
    1
  20043. When street magicians perform their tricks black people will often run away while others will hang around looking puzzled. This is surely an inbuilt genetic predisposition and nothing to be ashamed of, but it is there nonetheless.
    1
  20044. Chin up. I'm resigned to Kamala win for much the same reason!
    1
  20045.  @evanrichards8591  Sshh. How do you know they were families? In many cases they are not. People traffickers hire out kids to adults because its easier for them to stay if caught. The kids then go back to Mexico until they are old enough to be used in the child sex trade. Check it out.
    1
  20046. A bit of bickering in the past doesn't alter the fact that these two guys are on the side of history.
    1
  20047. That's because it isn't.
    1
  20048. That's because it isn't.
    1
  20049.  @posteveryside-beatsnews  Why? Racism is universal.
    1
  20050.  @n3hp5  Right. Fitting don't you think?
    1
  20051.  @cadetkidkilla  Sense and intelligence are lying at the bottom of Bristol harbour along with poor old George I'm afraid.
    1
  20052. Vinny Holiday I'm told that atmospheric carbon only "traps" heat for about one third of a second before releasing it in various directions. Does Co2 behave differently?
    1
  20053. Have you?
    1
  20054. The horror of it is Boris actually seems to believe this climate crisis bullshit. When we voted for him thought he was just joking - or in it for the money.
    1
  20055. Are we supposed to just hide in our holes until rescued by the warriors of reason and socialist virtue? I only ask because I'd like to know.
    1
  20056. It's just the word which is forbidden. Any reasonable euphemism is acceptable in Parliament. Johnson CANNOT lie. He can get his facts wrong, that's all.
    1
  20057. @TroelsNybo1st Of course one can. How do you think Europe got its cheap gas all those years? The idea of Russia as bogeyman is just a cheap trick designed to keep the US military/industrial complex in business.
    1
  20058.  @RudolphoAqui  Russia is a country like any other and Putin is a leader like any other. America has the knack of treaties ever since it used them to help commit genocide on the natives of the country it colonised.
    1
  20059. @ No. With a country like any other.
    1
  20060. The science says children don't need inoculation because their immune systems deal with covid very effectively on their own,
    1
  20061.  @Skylark_Jones  This is a controversial opinion to say the least. What is the point of vaccinating children when they experience only mild symptoms and recover quickly? Van-Tamm knows no more than anyone else what T-Cell long-term immunity occurs in children who recover from covid but the chances are high that it will be more effective than any protection offered by vaccines. Neither does Van Tamm nor anyone else know what the long-term effects of these vaccines will be. Using them in developing bodies when there is no immediate call for them strikes me as utter folly.
    1
  20062. Why shouldn't Estonians be allowed to watch whatever TV they want to watch? Why do leftoids ALWAYS want to restrict the freedoms of others?
    1
  20063.  Pho-King Soup  The freedom to kill and the freedom to fill children's heads with lies you mean? Bit different to watching TV.
    1
  20064.  Pho-King Soup  Ivermectin earned a Nobel prize for its discoverers and has saved thousands of lives. I leave burning books to followers of the cancel culture.
    1
  20065.  Pho-King Soup  Belief in God can provide great comfort and children are entitled to have some direction given to their gradual awareness of the mysteries of the universe. They may reject or adapt whatever they are taught when they attain adulthood. They are too young to understand the infamy of elector fraud until ten or twelve or so, when they can make up their own minds, as we all can.
    1
  20066.  Pho-King Soup  I thought emojis were the language if the intellectually inadequate. Have you run out if them?
    1
  20067.  @giuseppeferreri6640  They have Odessa. Unless Ukraine reconsiders its position even that might eventually be taken from them. Compromise could have prevented this war. Compromise can end it.
    1
  20068.  @Bayard1503  A sequence which Russia might well prefer. Although Crimea has considerable mineral resources they do not match the vast wealth beneath the ground in Donbass. Why Ukraine should be so set on regaining either is something of a puzzle. The vast cost of the enterprise has bankrupted them already, and being in hock to the Americans for all eternity seems to be a less preferable alternative than allowing Russia to continue to exploit these resources on Ukraine's behalf.
    1
  20069.  @peterflohr7827  Analogies are generally foolish. You could, however, argue that in this case your drunken uncle gave the family car away and now you would like it back.
    1
  20070.  @priyajoseph7108  Similar persuasive methods are used by both sides, In any case, as Josef Stalin once jovially remarked: "It isn't votes which count - it's who counts the votes."
    1
  20071.  @priyajoseph7108  Doesn't mean a thing.
    1
  20072.  @tonypredergast5782  Why? Elected representatives choose the leader in many countries -Britain for instance..
    1
  20073.  @tonypredergast5782  The only thing we can agree on is that there's not much chance of us agreeing on anything else. Cheers!
    1
  20074.  @tonypredergast5782  Well nothing that's been on the agenda so far anyway!
    1
  20075.  @emm_arr  I am forced to disagree. The whole gamut of modern politics is designed to fool us into thinking that Arselicker A will give us a better deal than Arselicker B. We have entirely lost control. Our destinies are entirely governed by financial manipulation which captures politicians as surely as a rat is captured in a trap. Revolution is the only way out. All we can do is hope that the revolution -when it comes - will not be as violent and as bloody as those in the past which have had to deal with similar dilemmas.
    1
  20076.  @emm_arr  Right and wrong? Is it really as simple as that?
    1
  20077.  @faithpearlgenied-a5517  Do you?
    1
  20078.  @jonathanbowers8964  Swings and roundabouts.
    1
  20079.  @bokhans  I'm not a bit embarrassed!
    1
  20080. Let's hope so!
    1
  20081. Phil is wrong to say the anti-smuggling measures were already agreed by Canada and Mexico. Talks had taken place and some measures were in the pipeline but the tariff threat has ensured their immediate implementation.
    1
  20082. @ My information is different then. Google's bot is normally quite efficient but I doubt very much that your information would suggest that the measures are going to be in place within thirty days.
    1
  20083.  @Vladi0310  According to Statista the number of civilian deaths was just over 180. The numbers of deaths among the Ukrainian armed forces and the armies of the Donbass republics is unclear, but can be expected to be more than this. As is well known the total number of deaths in the conflict is over 14,000 most incurred during the first two years of the fighting, when the Ukrainians were in the ascendant.
    1
  20084. Calm down. It's all lies.
    1
  20085.  @SteffiReitsch  Well over two million Russians have left Eastern Ukraine to escape Ukrainian Nazis since 2014. There is no question of kidnapping. In fact Donbass separatists and Russian forces have evacuated orphanages to protect children from the ravages of war. The Wikipedia article is just more propaganda. Follow up the sources cited and you will see they have been cherry-picked to help make a case. For a more immediate picture, visit True Reporter, an American working in Russia. One of his YouTube videos takes you to a camp where the refugees are housed before being transferred to towns and cities all over Russia.
    1
  20086.  @jiversteve  A recent poll in Russia showed that 23% of the population opposed the war, while 58% supported it. As with all polls this is certainly skewed, but as large as it is I doubt Siberia could support the transfer of 23% of the Russian population.
    1
  20087. Or three gangster governments, in this case.
    1
  20088.  @geraldhewing2076  I think Trump will replace one set of gangsters with a relatively mild-manned gang of petty criminals. Russia and Ukraine will continue to be gangster empires.
    1
  20089.  @TinaBUTCHER-ph1ph  Why? His father was a mob boss.
    1
  20090.  @geraldhewing2076  I think the Trump administration, compared to those of Russia and Ukraine, will be quite a civilised and mild-mannered affair. Compared to the gangster empire he is seeking to replace, Trump's boys and gals are Bugsy Malone.
    1
  20091.  @geraldhewing2076  These guys are out of the cast of Bugsy Malone compared with the people who run Russia and Ukraine.
    1
  20092.  @geraldhewing2076  Correct. Gangster to politician in the next generation. The American dream.
    1
  20093.  @dannydetonator  Thanks for the tip. I'll try to get round to reading him. Since I guess you are far more up on the state of play in Ukraine than I am, do you have time to give me your views on what has happened with Kolomoisky?
    1
  20094. I very much fear that America's governing elite will not allow Trump back into the White House. This year's election will be as grotesque a sham as the last one was.
    1
  20095. This was clearly an accidental hit. The target was the power station a couple of miles away. You obviously can't blame the Ukrainians for shooting down incoming missiles, but to suggest the Russians would deliberately target an apartment block is plainly ridiculous.
    1
  20096.  @lexluthor9509  I don't see why the buyout offer should have caused any stress. It is a very generous one, largely voluntary, and employees have plenty of time to think about it. Anyone allowing this situation to cause them undue stress should not be in such a job anyway.
    1
  20097. These nutters are no threat to Putin. They've been at it for years.
    1
  20098. Farage is entirely correct. The only trouble is he doesn't go far enough. This dreadful war is the direct result of Western agencies - NATO, the EU, the CIA et al - interfering in what is basically a border dispute between two foreign countries. And it wasn't done out of altruism. Forget all the old bollocks about bringing freedom and democracy. This is about stealing (yes, stealing) highly valuable mineral resources which have been developed with Russian blood, sweat, tears and financial investment over many, many decades.
    1
  20099. Child
    1
  20100. Why do so many commentators suffering from TDS not realise that this is about ideology, not trade, and it is merely the THREAT of tariffs which gets Trump what he wants? Which it has in each one of these instances.
    1
  20101. @ It still has one, if you look.
    1
  20102.  @ELcinegatto87  I agree totally. Which is why the West and the millions of ignorant people it contains must re-assess the view they have been sold all these years.
    1
  20103. It'll go to Halliburton or somesuch, whose shareholders will make huge profits.
    1
  20104. £billion
    1
  20105.  @stephfoxwell4620 The latest joint package with the US does amount to $1.5billion - but I was thinking of the total which, according to Google, is £12.7 billion committed by the UK alone.
    1
  20106. I suggest you check the UN report on torture in Donbass. The Ukrainians were the guilty parties there.
    1
  20107. Compared with the trillions made by Big Pharma peddling their dubious wares, this was relatively minor in an episode of history that showed just how much fear can be turned into business opportunity. Just like the climate crisis con, but on a much smaller scale.
    1
  20108.  @anglonorse2943  Undeniably. But I am not a Tory apologist. Politics only enters into this huge scandal in a pretty peripheral way.
    1
  20109. You are incorrect. Reform UK was initially set up as a private limited company, which meant that its members were essentially shareholders. However, in September 2024, Nigel Farage announced a significant change to the party's structure. Reform UK transitioned from a company limited by shares to a company limited by guarantee, making it member-owned. Under this new structure, members have more control over the party's policies and leadership. They can vote on policy motions, participate in leadership elections, and even trigger a no-confidence vote against the party leader if 50% of all members request it. This change aims to enhance transparency and ensure that the party is accountable to its members rather than a small group of shareholders.
    1
  20110. The ratio of deaths to cases has dropped to ten per cent of what it was at the same stage of the second wave. Hospitalisation figures are similar. Long covid effects around 3% of cases, mostly to only a minor degree. Masking has been proved to be of very little benefit except in very particular circumstances. The knock-on effects of lockdowns are going to kill millions of the world's poor as well as crippling economies for decades. Apart from all that and one or two other bits and pieces he was pretty much spot on.
    1
  20111. What insurrection?
    1
  20112. It's terrible. Why can't he just take massive bribes like Biden and the other proper politicians? They never have to do any fundraising.
    1
  20113.  @monolith541  They're all crooks, one way or another.
    1
  20114. As a Russian troll I need this explained to me, and quickly.
    1
  20115. She wanted her boss to give her a nice, new shiny phone, which is why she did it. There is some doubt whether the mugging actually took place at all.
    1
  20116.  @anglonorse2943  No need to. The charge against her was one of fraud, not of wasting police time. The case was brought because she had falsely represented that her phone had been stolen, and in doing so had fraudulently obtained a new one.
    1
  20117.  @anglonorse2943  I imagine this was a reasonable compromise. It would have been difficult to prove she made the whole thing up, whereas it was clear she had gained by falsely claiming the phone had been stolen. She pleaded guilty and was treated leniently. Justice is done and seen to be done.
    1
  20118.  @anglonorse2943  Not at all. I plead not guilty. She was guilty of a deceit for personal gain. She admitted it and was mildly chastised. She was blinded by lust for a shiny object and took foolish risks in order to gratify her lust. Have I said anything different?
    1
  20119.  @anglonorse2943  My opinion doesn't enter into it. These are facts. The only question at issue is whether or not she was actually mugged, but the phone wasn't taken, and she took the opportunity to obtain one of the new super-shiny work phones which were being handed out by saying it was - OR she just made up the whole story to get a police crime number to show her employers to get the phone she craved.
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  20120.  @anglonorse2943  I think wishful thinking would be that she left her phone at home - turned off -was mugged and thought the phone had been stolen, and then indented for one of the new ones she apparently desired. If that had been the case she would not have been charged with fraud, would she? Much less have pleaded guilty to it. It was her employers who informed the police, the use of the phone having shown up on their computer. The calls were traced to her home. She left their employ shortly afterwards. The idea that this was all a silly girlish mistake just doesn't hold water. She was wise to plead guilty to the simple fraud and get the matter dealt with quickly. More serious charges could have been brought.
    1
  20121.  @anglonorse2943  Then why did she admit to fraud? If you want to be pedantic, the records of the court prove it. The opinion is a legal one.
    1
  20122.  @anglonorse2943  She was let off lightly, and rightly so. But she still did it. What's more she's still wriggling and pretending she didn't. I don't think the crime itself should preclude her from office - it was youthful peccadillo. I meant it when I said she shouldn't resign - but she should at least cough to it. That would have been best all round.
    1
  20123.  @anglonorse2943  Who else's would I put?
    1
  20124.  @anglonorse2943  Neither are yours. My opinions in this matter do tend to accord with the facts and with human nature, however.
    1
  20125.  @anglonorse2943  Aren't we getting a bit tired of this? My "unsubstantiated smears" are a combination of an acknowledgment of a decision by a court and a reasoned assessment of a likelihood, with clear caveat that there is a possibility that this likelihood is wrong (the word "likelihood" giving this away rather.) I think she probably made the whole thing up, although it is possible she was mugged and decided to pretend the phone had been nicked in order to get a new one. Your apparent notion, that the sweet little thing was so terribly confused that she forgot she had turned her phone off and left it in a drawer simply strains credibility beyond all limits.
    1
  20126.  @anglonorse2943  (Sigh) And no more can you! She is a convicted criminal, convicted of fraud. That is not an unsubstantiated smear, it is a fact. The only question is the method she used to commit the crime.
    1
  20127.  @anglonorse2943  She was convicted of fraud. This is not an unsubstantiated smear. It is a fact. The only matter in dispute is the way in which the fraud was perpetrated.
    1
  20128.  @anglonorse2943  What is a vile smear attack in suggesting that a convicted fraudster may well have concocted a fraud? The conviction is spent, but the offence still took place. She did what she did, and what she did was wrong. She was reprimanded and forgiven, but she still did it.
    1
  20129.  @anglonorse2943  I'm going to pack this in now. I have every confidence that we will find something more profitable to argue about before very long.
    1
  20130. Islamism and wokery are unlikely allies in the plot to destroy the British way of life. Anderson has perhaps the breadth of political experience to see this. Sadly though there is nowhere for him to go other than as a media commentator and influencer. I hope GB News gives him a job.
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  20131. No-one outside a handful of people at the top of the Russian military has any idea at all about the number of casualties. All one can say with absolutely certainty is that the numbers bandied about by the Ukrainians and their supporters will be grossly exaggerated.
    1
  20132.  @dpelpal  No. Russia has won. It's all over bar the shouting.
    1
  20133. Biden is a bigger and a better one. And he did it while supposed to be a public servant. If Trump is a crook at least he's been one on his own time.
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  20134. Every location on the planet seems to be warming up at twice the global average. How can this be? It was the arctic only last week.
    1
  20135.  @johndoe6668  So everywhere in the world has a turn at warming up at twice the global average? That seems only fair and entirely in accord with modern principles of universal equity of outcome and opportunity. Thankyou.
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  20136. If there wasn't fraud in this election it must have been a first! The only question is how wide is widespread. Democracy in America is an utter sham.
    1
  20137.  @johndavidwolf4239  That is the detected fraud I imagine.
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  20138. Only some Russians. Romantic ones.
    1
  20139.  @public.public  Yes.
    1
  20140.  @MikeSpike117  But I doubt we can.
    1
  20141.  @Muddslinger0415  They very much are.
    1
  20142.  @HealingLifeKwikly  This is untrue. The reasons for climate change are complex and poorly understood. The fact that a slow warming period has coincided with a man-man increase of carbon released into the atmosphere, and that laboratory experiments indicate that this could increase surface temperatures, have been seized upon to "prove" that this is a matter of cause and effect. Thousands of scientific studies have "proved" this to be true - simply because scientists have been supplied with the same sets of data and the same methods by which to interpret it. Data has been manipulated, and provenly so. None of the nightmare predictions have come to be. The whole theory is gigantic scam, designed to profit from the manipulation of fossil fuel prices.
    1
  20143.  @HealingLifeKwikly  A hundred years ago thousands of research studies proved that white people were superior. Ninety-nine per cent of science is wrong in the first instance, as history clearly shows. AGW is just the latest example.
    1
  20144.  @HealingLifeKwikly  You can get scientists to prove anything if you treat them right. Ninety-nine per cent of science is wrong in the first instance, and history is littered with scientific theories which have proved to be disastrously wrong, while those which have later proved to be correct were initially scorned. The evidence is now suggesting that AGW comes into the first category, especially since it has strong commercial applications and none of its more dramatic predictions have yet come to pass. The earth is certainly warming as it has done thousands of times before as indeed it has cooled thousands of times before. The current warming phase appears to have resulted in temperatures which have not yet reached those prevalent a thousand years ago and there is every reason to hope than when and if they do - in few centuries time - they will shortly afterwards begin to decline again.
    1
  20145.  @HealingLifeKwikly  Thousands of research studies have proved all sorts of things in the past which have later turned out to be false. Much of science is wrong in the first instance, and when there are strong commercial reasons for supporting a theory, then it becomes immediately suspect.
    1
  20146. They're no bloody good, so the US doesn't want the world to know it. Too complicated. Break down to readily. etc etc - like so much US kit.
    1
  20147. Please please please please please stop going on about the 1930s! It makes you look so stupid.
    1
  20148. Hee! Hee!
    1
  20149.  @RealMichaelJJordan  One of many studies using excessive dosage,
    1
  20150.  @the4thtribe709  He/she does seem to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, doesn't she/he?
    1
  20151.  @gustavgnoettgen  Didn't you get the last lot? Everything you need to know?
    1
  20152.  @gustavgnoettgen  Has it come through?
    1
  20153.  @ookipuki  I don't understand. Can you make your point more clearly?
    1
  20154.  @BTOBperrinemelody  They obviously took too much. It is now being rehabilitated in your country I believe following the expose of the false and fraudulent paper published by the Lancet upon which your government took the decision to ban its use for Covid treatment. The recommended dose is two tablets a week by the way.
    1
  20155.  @missyo4519  It's produced all over the world by many companies. The patent expired many years ago and anyone can make it. This is what makes it so cheap. You can buy 100 for $37.50 and you only need to take two a week for it to work. They're giving it away -literally - one manufacturer has donated 100million doses for nothing. So it's not exactly a money-spinner, is it? Perhaps you think instead why the Democrats are opposing it. Perhaps for the same reason they are blocking attempts to provide financial aid to workers hit by the pandemic, eh?
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  20156.  @timothyharris4708  Well it's not just Phil! I think more or less everyone is wrong both about what the Russians are up to and about the consequences of sanctions. I hasten to add that I include myself in this category. Having said that, I do access quite a lot of propaganda/info from the Russian camp, and it is well worth considering. To paraphrase: Russia never wanted the whole of Ukraine. Phase one of the "special military operation" was designed to use up expendable forces in order to weaken Ukraine's military. The target is, was, and always has been the annexation of Donbass, possibly linked to Crimea via Kherson as a special bonus. Whether taking Odessa is a genuine war aim or simply another feint ....who knows? As for sanctions, Russia can easily accommodate these. In fact they are welcomed since the theory is that they will weaken the West more than they will affect Russia. The theory is that a major shift in world power is under way. America is losing the pre-eminence it gained after World War II, the dollar is grossly over-valued and a new economic powerhouse led by BRICS will assume dominance. The dollar may even be replaced as the reserve currency and globalisation by decree strategies will be replaced by a far greater degree of national autonomy, centred upon ethnicities and even religion. You can make of that what you will. Personally I find both ideas extremely attractive, but there we are.
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  20157.  @timothyharris4708  I recommend you take at a look at a recent contribution to this thread by James valpuesta, who puts the case for the tactics used far better than I. Others with a knowledge of military history also hold to the view. Sun Tzu's "Art of War" details the technique also. Setting fire to many villages while concentrating on surrounding your main target is designed to divert and weaken the enemy. It has the added advantage - clearly illustrated by your own reaction - of making the enemy believe he is winning because you have left the villages without sacking them. The actual armaments used and the end results give added credence. Russia could have bombed Kiev into oblivion. Instead it surrounded it and pounded away at the suburbs with relatively light artillery. The end result has been a considerable loss of ground war materiel by the Ukrainians. Russia has lost a lot too, more than it hoped but no more than in their worse case scenario. As long as they settle on a front between themselves and the Ukrainians in the west and north they can defend it with missile and air cover and Ukraine has little left to attack it with. In chess terms, phase one has involved several sacrifices, but it has left Russia in a stronger position than Ukraine. As for the new-look world order as outlined by Lavrov, it addresses the whole concept of "sovereignty" as much as anything. It is a word that has been tossed about a lot lately but the somewhat clumsy definition currently prevalent merely adds up to "you are a country because America says you are". That's not good enough. Other criteria come into play. And yes, in some instances they do include an adherence to a national religion- at least on the surface. You do not seem to realise that Russia -along with China, Brazil, India and South Africa - are the strongest emerging world economies at the moment. America is crumbling from within and will have to be replaced as a major world power before very long. The BRICS alliance might well fit the bill.
    1
  20158.  @timothyharris4708  James valpuesta James valpuesta 12 hours ago I have family & friends in both Ukraine & Russia so I get to read news and learn of facts that are censured or ignored by our media. So I will add a little more fact and context. I do not support Russia's invasion. The invasion of another country by a super power is immoral and against all laws but the UK always supports the USA when it does this.... The Moskva was hit by missiles or by some other means. Russia admitted this two days after saying it spontaneously caught fire. The Moskva was 40 years old, did not have a sprinkler system like modern ships and was well overdue for the scrap yard. It is an embarrassing but not a great loss. Check out some war strategy books. Kiev and Kharkiv could not be taken with the puny forces they were surrounded by. It has taken a force of 15 - 20,000 to take the super heavily defended Mauripol by Russian forces which was defended by the renowned force of the Nazi Azzov trained and supplied to NATO standards by Canadian & British soldiers and our SAS !! Mouripol has been under control mostly by Russian forces for the last two weeks. We only get this information these past few days. Two weeks ago Macron was zooming Putin asking him to allow a special extraction of personnel. Putin refused. There are numerous western NATO military personnel trapped in the Azvostal steel Plant. Probably French and others... This would seem to be a good reason not to eradicate the plant. Wait for the embarrassment when Russia parades the western personel that will eventually emerge from here. The Ukrainian Army has lost eight scarce helicopters trying to evacuate guys from the plant. Two Frenchmen have been picked up alive from one downed helicopter. A hired Turkish dry goods ship was disabled and captured trying to sneak in to a nearby docking area to evacuate guys also ten days ago... For a force to invade a fortified city you need to outnumber the defenders 3 or 4 to one: see Mouripol events or look up typical American battles in Iraq. Russia's army surrounding Kiev and Kharkiv a few weeks ago were purely diversionary to stop Ukraine adding to its major forces in the South East Donbass. Russia's entire invading forces so far have just numbered 190,000 - 200,000. Russia has no intention of taking over the entire Ukraine. Russian forces are presently slowly but surely eradicating the Ukrainian forces as I write this. Wether this takes 4-6 or eight weeks is just according to how much food and munitions the Ukrainian Army has. The result will just be the same. Ukraine has no fuel bases left ; all bombed out and all supply lines are cut. Russia managed to ensure Ukraine spread it forces by defending Kiev and Kharkiv and Odessa etc. Unfortunately Zilensky is a prisoner of the USA NATO and The EU and is not allowed to make his own decisions. He has not been allowed to agree to a peace treaty and save Ukrainianale youth. Never mind he has his $55 million Vila in Florida to escape to or his £35 million villa in Switzerland when the USA decide they need to extract him and a nice amount of money of shored by the CIA and Kolomoisky for him. Russia is suffering inflation and a few shortages but they will get over it in 6-12 months. Putin has increased pensions and other social service payments. Russia has a mega balance of payments surplus despite having half of its central bank funds stolen by the USA $ 320 billion !! If Europe stops buying Russian fuel within a year it's industry will and economy will implode. Last month Germany announced 30.9 % cost inflation at the factory gate. Germany is the powerhouse of European Industry. Just wait and see what will happen if Russia decides to retaliate against western sanctions by imposing its own by refusing to sell us foodstuffs and fuel and timber and metals and and.... Russia Holds the ace cards. There are plenty of customers around the world in need of their commodities.
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  20159.  @timothyharris4708  YouTube seems to be blocking direct links yet again, which is tedious, but I will persevere, I name former US national security advisor John Bolton as someone who has advanced the feint theory. Historian David Starkey outlines the Lavrov theory of altered world dominance in a recent video called "Russia is winning...".
    1
  20160.  @timothyharris4708  BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill coined the term BRIC (without South Africa) in 2001, claiming that by 2050 the four BRIC economies would come to dominate the global economy by 2050. South Africa was added to the list in 2010. (From Wikipedia.) There are those who say that the rouble's continuing rise against the dollar, despite sanctions, is the result of artificial manipulation. This is undoubtedly true, but there is more to the story than that. Russia has accumulated vast quantities of gold in preparation for this invasion and its consequences. In addition while other BRICS countries, plus many others in the world, maybe playing both ends against the middle at the moment, I personally think there could be a major re-alignment of loyalties soon which will end the dominance of the dollar for good. America is falling. Afghanistan was an indicator of the collapse of its military might, and Ukraine may well be another blow as its proxy is forced to surrender.
    1
  20161.  @timothyharris4708  Have my posts not been getting through? I have copied and posted Jv's comments, and tried to send links to articles and videos. I have named John Bolton as one of several experts who have advanced the "feint" theory, and have cited historian David Starkey for an explanation of Lavrov's geopolitical thinking. I do rather resent your accusations of dishonesty and evasiveness by the way. However, here is brief extract from India Today of April 1, a direct link to which has definitely been blocked for some reason. "Recent inveterate reports of Ukrainian counterattacks have only added to the innate temptation to give round one of the Russian invasion, to Ukraine. However, there is a counter-narrative that perceives a strategic accomplishment for Vladimir Putin in the first five weeks of the war." A number of pro-Russian commentators I follow include James Lancaster (highly recommended. He is on the front line, whereas our brave Western reporters tend to turn up a day or two after the fighting has ended.) Plus iEarlGrey, Tim, Anonymous, Graham Phillips and Gonzalo Lira (who has recently been arrested by the Ukrainian secret police, but freed after waving his US passport.) Of you have any further enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact me.
    1
  20162.  @timothyharris4708  Thank you for a civil reply. I should be most interested in your reactions to my Russian propagandists - it is PATRICK Lancaster by the way. A combination of advancing years and an early morning start led me into error.
    1
  20163. This channel is becoming increasingly paranoid.
    1
  20164. Nothing straightforward about prolonging a needless war which has already cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives.
    1
  20165. @ I think he'll settle for 1918.
    1
  20166. Why believe a bent judge?
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  20167. What the f$%$k has Britain got that Putin could possibly want?
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  20168.  @RK-yo6ou  Russian companies own most of the mineral resources in Eastern Ukraine, which the EU and the US are trying to take away from them. They have similar historical and economic interests in Georgia and other former Soviet countries. They may not "own" the countries, but Russian companies own a great deal of the resources they contain.
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  20169. @ But they are not "sovereign natural resources" - whatever that means. It was Russian investment and Russian labour which developed the mineral resources of Donbass .Ukrainians only arrived later, to farm previously poor land now enriched by new fertilisers. The area has always been Russian, apart from the past thirty years or so, when it was mistakenly included in the territory of the new country of Ukraine. Ukraine was offered numerous opportunities to rationalise the situation peacefully but - influenced by Western desires to lay hands on these Russian resources - it refused and so laid itself open to the invasion. It is difficult to see what else Russia could have done in the circumstances, other than meekly surrender trillions of dollars to the US and the EU.
    1
  20170.  @yasink331  I haven't at all! As I say it could just be a trick by this guy. Having said that there is tremendous concern about the number of false positives and false negatives being thrown up by the system in use in the UK. People walking about thinking they are uninfected where they're not, or going into isolation for no reason, are probably more important consequence than an alleged inability to distinguish a fruit from a mammal.
    1
  20171.  @yasink331  Perhaps it would be better for me to leave the job to this gentleman. He'll do a better job than me. Professor Carl Heneghan Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ5GKKvOVlo&t=66s https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-many-covid-diagnoses-are-false-positives- Heneghan article
    1
  20172.  @yasink331  I'm no scientist either, but this man has no axe to grind and makes a forceful case that I can readily understand. There is a considerable body of opinion in the same camp, and they are trying to persuade Parliament of the error of its ways. I don't think the scientists are taking a vote, but the members of SAGE , who all come from the same narrow circle, have several non-scientific reasons for taking the stance they do, which is why I mistrust them. Several have financial interests in companies producing vaccines. If herd immunity arrives as soon, as well it might, their opportunity for big profits will be lost. One is a prominent member of the Communist Party and the extreme left has continually pressed for absurd restrictions. They want to see the collapse of capitalism and an economic downturn on a large scale will help them. Then of course there is Professor Neil Ferguson, of whom it is better not to speak.
    1
  20173.  @canadiangemstones7636  Nuclear weapons?
    1
  20174. The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty - so how can it be violated?
    1
  20175. He'd be stupid not to. The Americans are so out of touch they probably need reminding about the nuclear threat.
    1
  20176.  @wieslawmaciag2142  Avoid all what? Nobody cares about any of this stuff apart from TDS sufferers.
    1
  20177.  @wieslawmaciag2142  You still don't get it, do you? His defiance earns him respect in the eyes of those who don't CARE if he's innocent or guilty! This continued petty persecution by his enemies is an enormous asset to his prestige.
    1
  20178. What Communists?
    1
  20179.  @hughmacfarlane3947  But what Communists? The Communist Party in Russia has but a handful of members. Putin is a Christian and a nationalist.
    1
  20180.  @hughmacfarlane3947  But what Communists? There are very few in Russia.
    1
  20181.  @elizabethr.110  Of course not - unless we could fix a price! The trouble is that the Ukraine which was created in 1991 was not a country as such. It was a Soviet Socialist Republic, subservient to Moscow. Much of its Eastern parts are occupied by Russians who have families in their homeland and who are not happy with the way Kiev has been running things. But none of this has anything to do with Communism - other than that it was the collapse of Communism which led to the creation of the false country of Ukraine.
    1
  20182. Because airline pilots have to concentrate and Presidents just have to do as they're told. Except Trump, of course.
    1
  20183. Let's face it, this whole adventure has been a bid by the West to get its hands on the vast mineral wealth beneath the ground in Donbass and Crimea. Billions have been invested and although there's an estimated $14trillion oil, gas, coal and rare earth minerals down there, the investment isn't paying off. There will be those who will wish to throw good money after bad, but I think wiser voices will prevail and a depleted Ukraine will have to face the consequences of hitching itself to the wrong waggon.
    1
  20184.  @Sol_Invictus_  It made it pretty impossible for Russia not to do so, after investing billions in creating a new Ukrainian army to retake Crimea and independent Donbass. Russia isn't one of those countries that just sits back and takes it while America goes crashing around in its big boots.
    1
  20185.  @MeekaYammi3554  Same thing.
    1
  20186.  @janesansome8393  They are fully prepared to bugger off if America stops using NATO to surround and threaten them and Ukraine allows the Russian-speaking, Russian-heritage Eastern provinces to be granted the independence they have been promised. Doesn't seem too much to ask.
    1
  20187. Money isn't everything. He's had fun.
    1
  20188. No one can possibly take that figure seriously.
    1
  20189.  @AR-wg1di  Both sides have lost more than they admit, and destroyed less than they claim. It is ever thus in war. At the end of the day Russia now has the advantage in terms of surviving materiel. Having taken Mariupol and advancing territory in Donbass and the Crimea corridor they are now very nearly in a position to resort to a defensive strategy - and Ukraine has very little left to attack them with.
    1
  20190.  @AR-wg1di  You have no idea. Russia's losses are nothing like as great as the propaganda tells you, and all armies lose men and equipment in wars. I'm sure the Russians have lost far more than they would have wished, but probably not as much as in their worse case scenario. Look at the losses America sustained in World War II and in Vietnam. And Russian TV is full of images of burning Ukrainian tanks and captured troops.
    1
  20191.  @AR-wg1di  Russia doesn't want Ukraine. It just wants Donbass and Crimea and the bit in between. The chances are high it will get them. All this propaganda you have had shoved down your throat contains elements of truth, as all propaganda mus,t but it doesn't alter the actual picture. Russia has now gained a considerable advantage and has secured much of the territory it had its eye on. Ukraine is very short of assault weapons and before long it will have to do some assaulting as Russia hunkers down behind a defence line. Russia has until now held back its air force and missile arsenal, but can be expected to use them in this next stage of the war which, as with all wars, could go either way.
    1
  20192.  @AR-wg1di  I am neither a bot nor Russian - just someone who has researched this matter more thoroughly than you have.
    1
  20193. Many of the measures taken against covid will prove to have done more harm than good in the long run. And for certain age groups, this includes vaccines. Fauci should face criminal charges for his part in bringing this crisis about, as well as making it far, far worse than it might have been.
    1
  20194. Pretty much.
    1
  20195.  @kerrybarnes7289  The lie score was about even.
    1
  20196. Because he genuinely represents a defiance of authority.
    1
  20197.  @AGDinCA  You do sound confused. Your image was the one you used implying that data is not dictatorial. It is when used to dictate policy and when proven to be deliberately skewed to reinforce that policy it can and should be overthrown. Studies which test hydroxychloroquine in large doses administered out of context fall into this category. They are then used to convince people that the drug is ineffective and even dangerous. Scientific objectivity is a very good thing. An essential thing; but when its pretend use is cited as a reason for deliberate disinformation, then that is a very bad thing indeed.
    1
  20198.  @AGDinCA  I would be enormously surprised since, as I have said, the only studies which indicate such a thing have been undertaken using improbably huge doses administered far too late. The treatment for Covid 19 uses dosages similar to those taken by millions of people over the past sixty or so years as a prophylactic against malaria. It is indicative of the drug's efficacy that in countries where it is used for such a purpose death rates from Covid 19 are insignificant. You might just as well ask me how I would react if a giant clockwork crocodile came down from the sky and bit my arse off.
    1
  20199.  @AGDinCA  Off we go then I'm British, not American and I'm quite incredibly old. I'm not a scientist. I was an investigative journalist for many years and I know what a rat smells like. I smelt a rat when the videos put out by the Frontline Doctors were whipped off all social media with such alacrity. The world is full of wicked people who will do absolutely anything for money. It didn't take long for me to find out more or less what Dr Campbell has just revealed here but, being the cynical old bastard that I am I decided to follow the money. It became clear that a campaign of deliberate misinformation has been mounted against hydroxychloroquine treatments and that this has been done because it is an incredibly cheap method of diminishing the effects of Covid 19. This fact immediately reduces the profitability of expensive medications being developed and put on the market by the big pharmaceutical companies' To put it briefly I became convinced that hydroxychloroquine must be good stuff simply because a lot of nasty, greedy selfish people were insisting that it wasn't. My researches have confirmed this. I was utterly convinced after an entirely false and misleading article was planted in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet which led to the drug being banned in many counties and research programmes being abandoned. The article was exposed as a fraud after a few weeks but the damage had been done. Thousands of lives have been needlessly lost due to these evil actions, and that makes me very angry. My only HCQ beliefs are those which are confirmed by the studies which show that without doubt that if used correctly it can save very many lives. (I am a reluctant atheist and if I was an American I would regard Donald Trump as an unlikely saviour of the values of Western enlightenment democracy and would vote for him without question.) There's a mountain of technical information at the bottom of this video, but I have plenty more should you wish to see it.
    1
  20200.  @cvx1632  No . It makes me very sad and angry. Conspiracies occur with quite depressing regularity and all my instincts and experience tell me that this is one of them. The inducement of huge profits combined withe means an opportunity to obtain them is generally sufficient to overcome any moral reservations in a great many people. The conspiracy to dismiss hydroxychloroquine treatments as ineffective and/or dangerous is part of such a strategy. The methods being used remind me somewhat of the way tobacco companies paid willing "scientists" to prove their products cured bronchitis. I regularly collect evidence in the form of properly conducted clinical studies into the issue. Equally regularly these are removed from the Internet. What does this tell you?> That everything is just fine and dandy?
    1
  20201. They are good training and testing grounds for skills in dissembling and evasion - both essential to political survival.
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  20202. Vaccines aren't going to stop it though - not ever. They just slow it up. Healthy young people who chose to catch covid and become immune thereby provide a far better solution.
    1
  20203.  @myonline1985  This is not the case. Blanket restrictions, rather than targeted ones, are all that have been tried. Vaccinations do not provide either total or long-term protection, but they do reduce symptoms enabling a herd immunity strategy to be pursued at much lower risk. The number of deaths among healthy under sixties is minimal and while the issue of long covid remains it seems no worse than as is the case with other respiratory pathogens.
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  20204.  @carolgrier7774  At this stage it appears almost certain that infection leads to long-term immunity from the strain which was caught, but it is possible to catch a different strain but that symptoms will be mild. A true picture is hard to obtain since there is, alas, a strong prejudice fostered by drug companies that immunity via infection does not work. It does, as is evidenced by statistics from England which show that only a handful (less than 100 ) have been infected twice whereas around a quarter of new cases occur in the double vaccinated.
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  20205.  @sophierobinson2738  Vaccinated people are just as capable as passing on infection. All that happens is that the pandemic is prolonged and at the end of the day the number of severe outcomes is probably greater than if the disease was stopped in its tracks.
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  20206.  @myonline1985  That isn't the decision. People can become infected, vaccinated or not. There are pros and cons on both sides. If you choose to become vaccinated that's fine. Your chances of becoming infected are reduced and your symptoms if you do become infected will probably be milder than otherwise. At the same time if you are very elderly or obese or suffer from conditions such as diabetes or hypertension you may well still die. Even regardless of these you may still suffer a severe outcome. If one good thing comes from this pandemic it ought to be finding out more about why a minority of people suffer more and longer than others after a pathogenic respiratory infection. At the moment it seems to be just a lottery. The disadvantage of this approach is that since the vaccines wear off so quickly, and at unpredictable rates, many people are walking about unaware of having covid in an asymptomatic form and thus being infectious. Also the route towards herd immunity is considerably lengthened by mass vaccination. People who choose to be unvaccinated will be most probably be aware within two or three days that they are infected and can isolate accordingly. If they have access to palliative drugs and are in reasonable health the chances are high that they will be able to shrug off the illness just as easily as a vaccinated person. A vaccinated infectious person can go for a considerable length of time without realising they are spreading the disease. This is the main reason why infections increase in highly vaccinated populations, but decrease in less vaccinated populations once a certain level of infection has been reached.
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  20207.  @myonline1985  You're not far wrong; the ideal society will be one which combines the benefits of both approaches. In the UK the number of hospitalisations and deaths among the vaccinated is now outstripping those among the unvaccinated -65% to 35% in the former and around 80% to 20% in the latter. Overall death and hospitalisation rates are manageable for now. What is emerging, however, is that countries and US states with lower vaccination rates are approaching the herd immunity threshold. In places like Florida and Wyoming cases are dropping quite rapidly in contrast to highly vaccinated states such as Vermont, which have suffered fewer casualties but where cases continue to rise. There probably is some ideal vaccination level which will allow a community to reach HIT with a manageable level of casualties, but what that is God only knows. It certainly won't be 100% , since that would mean the epidemic going on almost indefinitely.
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  20208.  @Nick7901962  YouTube, being in the same pack as Big Pharma, aren't too keen on giving you access. I am now trying a number of ways to bypass their algorithm.
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  20209.  @Nick7901962  They even block the names of the lead authors would you believe!
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  20210.  @Nick7901962  Look in the description box below this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD9YmiGVEkA&t=427s
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  20211. The Jimmy Dore video seems to be the only thing that has not been blocked so far. Could you possibly let me know when you get access?
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  20212.  @Nick7901962  PXMXCXIXD:
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  20213.  @Nick7901962  Just remove the xs.
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  20214. Ukraine is going to be left in the lurch, the poor, trusting fools. They didn't realise that the free and democratic West is just as corrupt and duplicitous as Russia. Better the devil you know?
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  20215.  @maneshipocrates  There are alliances on paper and alliances on the battlefield. Russia and NK's relationship has now gone on to stage two.
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  20216.  @Seaneey  Where is the delusion? Russia and NK are now allies in the fight against US proxies in Ukraine. Russia will probably win, even without having to exercise the nuclear option.
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  20217.  @maneshipocrates  You've got to be kidding.
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  20218.  @Seaneey  Where's the delusion? Sure it isn't you who's got the wrong end of the stick?
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  20219. This is the history of socialism - one by one their target supporters desert them and are deserted by them until they are left with nothing but unlikely allies. The working class have largely jumped ship, black people are going the same way and before long all they will have are the Muslims.
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  20220. nigel jones You will be rewarded in heaven.
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  20221. Ice man A movement over the edge of a cliff. Perhaps he was a Koch brothers shill all the time!
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  20222. Where have all the comments gone???
    1
  20223. ​ @davidsamuel7407 You can't have heard it before. It's only just happening.
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  20224. ​ @davidsamuel7407 You had to be pretty badly informed to ever believe that.
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  20225.  @davidsamuel7407  True enough. Many of the poor bloody Russian conscripts probably believed it too. But anyone with any knowledge of how much Western money had been poured into equipping the Ukrainians must have realised that trundling down the road without any seeming plan could only result in an extended series of battles. I'm convinced that the whole SMO up to this point was designed purely to weaken the Ukrainians sufficiently so that they would be incapable of retaking Crimea and rebel-held Donbass. .
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  20226. @markmierzejewski9534 So many Americans believe themselves to be educated when in fact all that has happened to them is that they have been given little parcels of prejudice to chew on. Trump refuses to accept these prejudices, as do a great many Americans who have retained the capacity of thinking for themselves.
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  20227. @markmierzejewski9534 Trump and his voters just question their programming, that's all. Which is all education is in the US.
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  20228. @markmierzejewski9534 Your idea of logic and education may not actually be what logic and education are, have you considered that?
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  20229. @markmierzejewski9534 I merely draw attention to the notion that the boot might be on the other foot. It might be entirely logical and reasonable to reject the notions inculcated into Americans by the education system as it currently exists. It is certainly permissible. Performing monkeys are known to resent monkeys living in the wild - I guess for much the same reasons as "educated" Americans resent MAGA supporters.
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  20230. @markmierzejewski9534 I understand logic and reason and I am a Trump supporter. I think you might be confusing logic and reason with the mere regurgitation of limited information. Trained monkeys are known to resent monkeys still living in the wild.
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  20231. @markmierzejewski9534 As I said, you don't seem to have much idea of what logic actually is. I am a Trump supporter and am one for entirely logical reasons, as I am sure most of his supporters are. I think you could be confusing education with indoctrination.
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  20232. @markmierzejewski9534 I understand logic and reason, perhaps better than you do. And I am a Trump supporter. How do explain that?
    1
  20233. @markmierzejewski9534 I think most of us think we are smarter than we actually are. The gap is usually widest in those who are the least aware of it.
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  20234. @markmierzejewski9534 But you didn't. You just think you did.
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  20235. @markmierzejewski9534 Parrot? It's you who's doing all the squawking!
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  20236. @markmierzejewski9534 I'm afraid that explaining things is not your strong point.
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  20237. @markmierzejewski9534 All I need explaining at the moment is just how you imagine yourself to be qualified to offer any explanations.
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  20238. trey randall She is actually employed by a company trading on the carbon emissions market. You and all your sweet, innocent friends are being shamelessly used in a scheme to make billions for hedge fund managers. Sorry and all that.
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  20239.  @peterwallis4602  Sweeney is a proven cheat and liar.
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  20240.  @stephenwalsh1332triumph  But they are being - and it's worth asking why.
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  20241.  @alexforrest2563  Putin has no intention of taking all of Ukraine. He knows this would involve him in a long and costly civil war. He just wants Crimea and Donbass, to which he feels Russia is entitled given the amount of money and effort Russia has invested in them over the years, as reflected in the large number of Russians living there.
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  20242.  @peterwallis4602  I can't think of him without remembering how Tommy Robinson took him to the cleaners. He's a hack writing for money and giving the punters what they want.
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  20243.  @baroneleve1196  Exactly right in every detail!
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  20244.  @peterwallis4602  His work has a common trend: demonization. He gains his readers' and viewers' interest by tugging at their heartstrings and provoking their rage. He does not allow actual facts to much interfere with this money-making, award-wining process. He is an entertainer in the tradition of the Victorian penny dreadful, and in no way a serious political analyst or commentator. By the standards of a civilised British liberal Putin is indeed a dreadful bloke. He didn't get where he is today by being nice. Having said that it is a huge mistake to assume that his somewhat cavalier methods in dealing with political opponents at home extends to his foreign policy. The war in Ukraine, like those in Chechnya and Georgia, is essentially a domestic dispute and the West has been suicidally foolish in becoming involved in it.
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  20245.  @alexforrest2563  Why would Putin want Ukraine? All he'd get would be a never-ending civil war. Donbass is another matter. The population is a third Russian - and even higher in cities and industrialised areas. OK he has whipped up anti Ukrainian feeling there, but much of it was justified. Having independence from Kiev would solve the problems - and would have prevented this dreadful war. (How Russia is governed has nothing to do with anyone but the Russians. It is a prosperous, well-fed land and has become so largely due to tough love. Without Putin it would have collapsed into anarchy long ago.)
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  20246. The sensible view now is for Russia to be granted the land it feels to be rightfully its own, and for the slightly smaller Ukraine to obtain the democratic freedom it apparently wants.
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  20247.  @bonnie7898  Even in Russia those who speak out are imprisoned for 'actual crimes'. Abuse of the criminal justice system for political purposes is nothing new in Western countries but the Trump witch-hunt is a particularly egregious example.
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  20248.  @pansepot1490  Not at all. I just think you ought to know.
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  20249.  @superhumantrueman  Casualties have been high on both sides.
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  20250.  @popnorbert8465  I think you're right to some extent - but Russia has no choice but to take Bakhmut, or to surround and isolate it at the very least. It was built by the Soviets to withstand nuclear attack and provides fortress-like facilities for an entire conventional army of up to 20,000 according to some sources. It's a very hard nut to crack.
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  20251.  @popnorbert8465  I think the fact that it has withstood the Russian advance for such a long time is pretty indicative, don't you? There are mines in Bakhmut too - both coal and iron ore, hence the steelworks. The whole of Donbass is immensely rich in minerals, which is why it is being fought over so fiercely. It has been mined for well over 200 years - first for salt, then coal and iron and now for gas, oil and rare-earth minerals. The depleted mines make obvious fortifications - as well as assembly points for invasions. Ukraine utilised the breathing space created by the Minsk treaties to create a triple line of fortifications to the north of the ceasefire region. It is these lines which Russia is now attempting to breach and Soledar and Bakhmut are two of the strongpoints in the central and most heavily defended line.
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  20252.  @sardo.numspa  Trust history.
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  20253. Odd how these Russian atrocities seem to happen whenever arms supplies to Ukraine look like drying up.
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  20254. MAGA's first victory in the new Congress. McCarthy is in, but he has little power to rule as an autocrat and can be ejected if he steps out of line. Next step a committee to investigate the treasonous activities of the FBI and other government agencies which have been making a mockery of democracy in the US for decades.
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  20255. If he does call an election it will just be to prove to the increasing number of Tories who have had enough of him that he still has pulling power.
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  20256.  @ingridschmid1709  Conservatives do loyalty in a way that seems utterly alien to Labour, I'm afraid. Keeping up appearances behind the net curtains of hypocrisy! As with Thatcher, the end would come quickly and unpredictably. Many Tories regard Johnson as irredeemably left wing and useful only as a rabble rouser.
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  20257. Rather be robbed by your own people, would you?
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  20258. Sanctions are going to rebound badly. Russia will survive them and the dollar-charged Western economy might well crumble.
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  20259. Japanese people aren't fat. Endemic obesity is widely recognised as a major factor in America's high Covid death rate. Masks can cut down the risk of infection by about 20% according to the most recent studies.
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  20260. Did you learn any other history at school apart from the rise of the Third Reich? Just askin'
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  20261.  @anglonorse2943  But not as half as frightening as thinking anyone could believe such nonsense.
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  20262.  @stevebellamy8069  I really think you are misguided. History doesn't actually repeat itself. It's never the same twice but it's easy to pick out a couple of similarities and assume that everything is the same. Fascism was a direct result of the huge trauma of the First World War. It was a solution to a whole new set of problems, vying with Marxism as another solution. Trump isn't fascist in the slightest, and nor is Musk. They are in no way guided by resentment or racial hatred, as the fascists were. They are both men who seek pragmatic solutions, based on realistic assessments, and neither is much bothered by niceties of behaviour, or respect for some of the sillier notions which have somehow wormed their way into society of late. But that doesn't make them fascists.
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  20263. This is just a sideshow designed to soak up Ukrainian forces and prevent them from halting the Russian advance in Donbass.
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  20264. And a few million ordinary Americans too.
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  20265. Pura Vida dew You'd have to use oil to get them there though.
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  20266.  @brianfergus839  Compared to crimes committed by a succession of US governments, Trump's minor infringements are as nothing in the general run of things.
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  20267.  @chappy675  How can anyone judge Trump fairly when he is vilified in the media half a dozen times a day? The whole premise of this trial is false anyway. It is pure political theater and has nothing at all to do with the administration of justice.
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  20268.  @harold9394  The reason he is on trial is that he represents a real and present threat to the corrupt American political establishment.
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  20269.  @brianfergus839  This isn't justice. So what if he paid off a whore to keep her quiet? Do you REALLY think that moral outrage is the reason this travesty is taking place? It's a stitch up, plain and simple.
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  20270. Paying lip service to the consequences of the current Ukraine crisis while doing as little as possible about them is exactly the right response. It's none of our business. The whole thing could be over tomorrow if the Ukrainians would only see sense.
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  20271. Britain could play this exciting new game. We could persuade Denmark to swap Greenland for Scotland, then sell Greenland to the US for enough money to get us back on our feet again.
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  20272.  Dana Chapin  I wish I could get some! Not the bleach of course.
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  20273. You are just so off beam! Putin has only ever attacked to prevent US takeover of neighbouring countries closely linked to the Russian economy. He has NO imperial ambitions. Why would he? The Soviet Union collapsed partially due to over-extension into territories where it was not welcome. Why on earth would the Russian Federation make the same mistake? As for the news outlets mentioned, these have now all been taken over by globalists linked either to Blackrock or George Soros and can no longer make any claim to objective reporting. The same can be applied to great many other once-respected journals in a great many fields.
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  20274. Which one, SS or Gestapo? You can't have both.
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  20275. It is Biden's incompetence and failure to stand up to Washington's warmongers and expansionists which has led to this. The more Putin is boxed into a corner, the more likely he is to exercise the nuclear option. And he will if necessary.
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  20276.  @jasonbourne2318  And they were actually guilty!
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  20277.  @jasonbourne2318  Without a trial?" Fascist!
    1
  20278.  @alexanderrobins7497  Russia buys weapons. It is Ukraine which begs for them.
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  20279.  @alexanderrobins7497  Beg? It's Ukraine which does the begging.
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  20280. They'll get the resources - sold to them by Russia. Cheaper than a war.
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  20281.  @matebalota9987  Do you seriously think China would invade Siberia for its oil and gas when it can get them through a joint enterprise with a BRICS partner? You make them sound like Americans.
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  20282.  @mike4480  Bakhmut is small highly fortified city and integral to Ukraine's defence of northern Donbass. Kherson is only needed to defend Crimea. Which is Russian.
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  20283.  @antekovac5644  For a start I'm not Russian and secondly how a country which is in the world's top three providers of oil, gas and nuclear energy can be described as " second league" I just can't imagine.
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  20284.  @tomokaramolko8560  A gas station with nukes sounds a formidable combination to me.
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  20285.  @tomokaramolko8560  You are as wrong about me as you are wrong about everything else. It's not your fault. I imagine you are a typical brainwashed American teenager.
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  20286.  @WHS_reviews  Crimea is Russian and has been ever since the 18th century when it was taken from the Turks. All of Ukraine is Russian as a matter of fact, but these days Russia only wants the bits with Russians on the surface and gas, oil and coal under the ground.
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  20287.  @matebalota9987  Russia took Crimea from the Turks in the 18th century. It was attached to the semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954 for purely administrative reasons. It's population is 70+% Russian. The creation of the entirely fictitious county of Ukraine under the terms of the Budapest Accords was a mistake which is now being rectified. The real county of Ukraine, when it finally emerges, will contain neither Crimea nor Donbass.
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  20288.  @antekovac5644  But the Russians left Kherson because they didn't need it enough to lose men keeping it. Not so with Crimea.
    1
  20289.  @tomokaramolko8560  Well you didn't get your PhD in psychology. I'm a 74-year old retired British journalist. So there.
    1
  20290.  @Jack-zf3rz  Russia only wants Crimea and Donbass. The rest of Ukraine was merely used as a battlefield on which to destroy as much of Ukraine's army as possible.
    1
  20291.  @scratchy996  You've been playing too many video games.
    1
  20292.  @Jack-zf3rz  Crimea was added to Ukraine because it was easier to service it and manage it that way than across the Kerch Strait. That was 70 years ago. The Kieven-Rus empire was a thousand years ago.
    1
  20293.  @scratchy996  They didn't have video games in 1938.
    1
  20294. They think we're too chicken. And we probably are.
    1
  20295. The humanitarian aid is food. Russia supplies Syria with most of its grain.
    1
  20296.  @robertplant2059  I daresay many Russians eat better than you do. Wages are lower - but so are food prices and there is generally a greater variety available.
    1
  20297.  @albertmiller3082  What drones?
    1
  20298.  @robertplant2059  Russians have a great variety of foodstuffs available to them. Wages are lower there than in in the US and Europe - but so are food prices.
    1
  20299.  @robertplant2059  Wages are lower, but food prices are usually cheaper than in the US and Europe. Generally speaking Russians can feed themselves very well. Their supermarkets seem to have a wide variety of of goods, and often with less processed food than is common in western countries.
    1
  20300.  @robertplant2059  Russians generally eat pretty well. Wages are low there - but so are most food prices.
    1
  20301.  @robertplant2059  Wages are lower, but food is generally cheaper and there is considerable variety.
    1
  20302.  @johncoetzee7881  I never read Russian propaganda. Can't find it anywhere! I just start off disbelieving everything I'm told and then try to find out the facts for myself from objective sources. I suggest you try to do the same.
    1
  20303. Did we drop aid parcels on Germany at the end of World War II?
    1
  20304. Project 2025 has a lot going for it. America will benefit greatly if the core stuff gets through, and the crazy stuff can be ditched bit by bit to appease the lefty loons- who will then think they've won..
    1
  20305. The US judicial system is a farce and a disgrace. Its weaponisation in the neverending witchunt against Trump can only damage its credibility even further.
    1
  20306. Fools or charlatans - which is it?
    1
  20307.  @jamesmorrow1646  Of course no country will recognise the separatist republics or officially support Russia's invasion so long as the outcome remains uncertain. Countries like China and India, the Middle Eastern oil producers, Pacific rim countries etc etc will invariably play both ends against the middle for now. As soon as one side or the other wins, however, they will rush to shake hands and pledge undying friendship.
    1
  20308. They have been bought by Ireland and boiled down to make Guinness.
    1
  20309.  @marissanorth85  I see nothing wrong in Trump taking steps to protect himself against the political campaign against him. The documents will undoubtedly cause much embarrassment to his enemies if the contents are released.
    1
  20310.  @jamesbookman5160  You are very sweet. Thank you.
    1
  20311.  @Marvellous132  While simpler minds look on?
    1
  20312.  @marijo1951  I think there is a doubt. There appears to be some precedent, hinted at but not out in the open. People do sometimes report false crimes in order to simply get a crime number to support an insurance claim. In this instance the suggestion is that Haig wanted a new model phone because she was jealous some colleagues had been given one and so concocted the whole thing to give her employers the crime number. The police rarely these days make any real effort to "solve" muggings and burglaries so will will probably never know the whole truth.
    1
  20313. Yes. A war criminal would certainly add a bit of style to the party.
    1
  20314.  @geraldhewing2076  You don't have to be to know that Campbell was the spin-doctor who manufactured the lies foisted upon the British public which allowed Blair to support and take part in a war which has led to the loss of millions of lives.
    1
  20315.  @geraldhewing2076  I was around at the time and I read the news articles based on Campbell's press releases, cobbled together from articles on the Internet and dodgy gen fed to him by the CIA. He laid the ground. He created public support for a murderous war based on a series of lies. He is no better than Goebbels who, like Campbell, started his career as a writer of pornography.
    1
  20316.  @geraldhewing2076  But Campbell was part of the government machine. The media can influence policy but is politicians and officials who create it. It is obvious that the war on Iraq was engineered by the Americans for political reasons and that its consequences have been dire. Blair was willingly sucked into it and Campbell was effective in selling the idea to Parliament and the public. This makes him complicit. He restructured and edited information which he must have known to be false or suspect. He is a journalist and they do that all the time, but in this instance his efforts were part of a disastrous strategy which has killed millions. With his taste and talent for hyperbole Campbell would certainly have no hesitation in describing anyone else who behaved in this way as a "war criminal."
    1
  20317. I know. Let's not worry about Russia attacking us. Let's worry about a load of lies about climate change.
    1
  20318. Trump has been stitched up. Biden is coming unstitched.
    1
  20319. Trump has been stitched up. Biden is merely coming unstitched.
    1
  20320. This ghastly old fraud has resurfaced then? I thought Tommy Robinson might have shut him up for good. No such luck, it seems.
    1
  20321. Which would, of course, be a great deal more sensible.
    1
  20322. The figures need putting into context. There is only a statistically significant increase in deaths from all causes in England. In Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland figures are normal, and even the rise in England is relatively small. One can only guess at the explanations for these apparent anomalies, but it has to be likely that a great number of these casualties, especially among the very elderly, would have happened anyway.
    1
  20323.  @michaelabbott8674  Paranoia.
    1
  20324.  @emilschattner3407  Both will turn out to be very intelligent decisions.
    1
  20325. When you think about it, it's a sort of victory for Nazism that a useful and expressive gesture should be outlawed due entirely to their association with it.
    1
  20326. Your story isn't much of an advertisement for masks and vaccines though, is it?
    1
  20327. Contempt beats hatred every time.
    1
  20328. I doesn't much matter. The Deep State will fix it for their candidate, whoever it may be.
    1
  20329. Biden has never been anything other than a mouthpiece and frontman for America's deep state warmongers.
    1
  20330. Or join the Conservatives and effect change from within.
    1
  20331.  @YouD0ntSay  Well he's pretty much got that already, hasn't he?
    1
  20332. That's not saying much.
    1
  20333. Who'd want to be?
    1
  20334. The obvious probable answer is that we are approaching herd immunity - having said that these viruses do behave in very unpredictable ways.
    1
  20335.  @mididoctors  In principle I agree, but the virtue-signalling paranoia junkies get on my tits. I really want to see them annoyed and frustrated. It's a weakness, I know.
    1
  20336.  @olmostgudinaf8100  You can't get covid multiple times. Cases of people being re-infected even once are as rare as hen's teeth. There is actually considerable divergence of opinion on the percentage of people who need to be actually immune before the Herd Immunity Threshold is passed. I'm no mathematician, but there are some who draw a distinction between homogenous and heterogonous levels of infection - which, as far as I understand it, means that if not everybody has the same chance of getting the disease the percentage required drops considerably.
    1
  20337. The rehabilitation of Tommy Robinson in the eyes of the general public is by no means an impossible task. An account of his life story - warts and all - along with a regular chat show on some Musk-financed channel will do it. Reform, or whatever Right-wing coalition emerges in the months to come, can then safely include him and his many supporters without scaring off the sensitive middle-class Tory souls whose votes will be required to dismiss a weakened and demoralised Labour Party from power.
    1
  20338.  @emm_arr  He is not a racist. and his concerns about Islamification are both genuine and very worthy of consideration.
    1
  20339.  @burn_burn_satellite75  The abusers had already been convicted and were awaiting sentence. This type of shallow and misinformed vilification will only rebound on those who indulge in it, as it very much has in the case of President Trump.
    1
  20340.  @AM-fs1je  Not really. Many have packed it in because of low wages and over-regulation They are still here, but making money in the building trade or some other area.
    1
  20341.  @Dionysos640  Not everyone finds the job challenging and stressful. I happen to know a few lorry-drivers and their chief gripes have been static wages (due to influx of Poles and Romanians they say) over-regulation and interference from computerised schedules etc which are often wrong. They are often not given time to check their loads but it is them who get landed with fines of up to £2,000 if the loads are deemed unsafe in any way. And they often are. Greedy and unscrupulous agencies are also a big problem. The situation was bad before Brexit, but the fact that the Romanians have now left has tipped the balance I think All these matters are capable of redress and the government should deal with them as a matter of priority. In the meantime a one-off and reasonably considerable payment would be enough, I'm sure, to persuade many drivers to get behind the wheel again
    1
  20342.  @Dionysos640  I'm not sure. I've been trying to work out how many HGV licence holders there are not using them, but with no success. I fear you may be right - there are not enough of them. Re-joining the Single Market does seem a bit of fantasy at the moment, with all due respect, so incentives and training seem the immediate solution. Attracting foreign drivers would, once again be a matter of incentives and offering easy work permits.
    1
  20343.  @Dionysos640  PS.This comment from an HGV driver further down this stream summarises the situation far better than I can. I have taken the liberty of copying it, in case you have not come across it. Simon Goddard 1 hour ago As a HGV driver I find this rhetoric so irritating. There is no driver shortage for companies that employ, pay and offer decent working conditions. The shortage is typically in retail where the business model is to use mainly agency drivers to avoid all the responsibilities and commitments of employing someone properly. Many large retailers fleets and warehousing operations are actually operated by gig economy companies like DHL and the like just running the trucks in the retailers livery with agency drivers they make no commitment to. The other shortage is long distance or ‘tramping’ work where drivers are away all week. This used to be a well paid job but in the main is now salary paid not hourly. A minimum of 60 hours ( the legal limit) will be expected but in many cases an 80 hour week is not unusual. This is possible thanks to what is called ‘period of availability’ add ons which were brought in years ago to appease greedy operators and basically means waiting time can be added to the 60 hours. Pay for ‘tramping’?...typically around £600 per week...you do the maths for an 80 hour week. This used to suit EU drivers who came here to work and just lived in the cab the whole time to earn a good wage comparable to what they could get at home, not so appealing to a UK driver with a home to go to. All these bad practices are now coming back to bite the exploitative part of the industry on the arse.
    1
  20344. Real Things Although I am hoping for the coming of the new Maunder Minimum to send the climate crisis suckers shivering into their holes Nature is probably not that kind. If Warmists refuse to have children, however, it will remove a great deal of conceit and credulousness from the gene pool.
    1
  20345. I hope with all me heart Trump is returned to power, and that if he is he takes immediate revenge upon those crooks and charlatans who have disgraced themselves and the US judicial system in their efforts to bring him down. Hoist by their own petard should just about cover it.
    1
  20346. Masks don't work, and never have done. It is time to accept this as fact.
    1
  20347. Why?
    1
  20348.  @injest1928  This is a relatively minor incident, the causes and background to which will probably never be fully known. Reducing arms supplies to a nation which is not only fighting for survival but also taking on the medieval madness of Islamist extremism would be a totally disproportionate step to take.
    1
  20349.  @geoffritchie437  And they show enormous changes over long periods of time - not minor changes over 30 years. And if climate change is due to man-made carbon emissions how come ice core samples from Greenland show it was hotter there a mere 1,000 years ago than it is today?
    1
  20350.  @geoffritchie437  What's a mini age age?? A thousand years ago were were in the Medieval Warm Period. You might be thinking about the little ice age which started in about the mid 14th century and lasted until towards the end of the 19th.
    1
  20351. American conceit and stupidity which still filters down to its fawning allies.
    1
  20352. They're having riots in Bangladesh too - and the Prime Minister has just resigned. Is there hope for us yet?
    1
  20353. There's just ONE battery with a limited supply of missiles. By the time it is installed and the Ukrainians learn how to operate it the aerial bombardment will almost certainly be over, and a ground war well under way.
    1
  20354. The riots have revealed Starmer to be a totalitarian WEF shill and a traitor to his country.
    1
  20355.  @RatTerminator  The trouble with this country is that everyone thinks they are Winston Churchill. (Don't they teach ANY history in schools these days, apart from the rise of the Nazis?)
    1
  20356.  @RatTerminator  The trouble with this country is too many people think they are Winston Churchill.
    1
  20357.  @amacke4736  Who to?
    1
  20358.  @RatTerminator  OK Winston, you win.
    1
  20359.  @affable-one7921  How is Zionism a threat to Britain, pray?
    1
  20360.  @affable-one7921  How does Zionism threaten Britain?
    1
  20361.  @paddington1670  No. It has a strategic purpose.
    1
  20362. https://youtu.be/Yx9BNpFICL4?si=lDZ5I9rsxaMHCAm-
    1
  20363.  @abdikatar8410  Excellent judges of human nature, as a rule.
    1
  20364. Natural selection will see to that. Frighteningly enough the only hope idealistically-minded people have of effecting change in this country is to join the Conservative Party and change its nature from within.
    1
  20365. The idea that Putin has any designs on Europe is a myth designed purely to support America's war-based economy.
    1
  20366. Hundreds of thousands have needlessly died in this needless war. Zelensky has never been anything more than a puppet for vested Western interests, supported by previous corrupt Democrat administrations utterly and cynically uncaring about the loss of life. Trump sees a way out. He is a genuine man of peace and all the childish mockery thrown at him does not alter that fact. Getting Zelensky out of the picture is just a first step in establishing a rapid road to long-lasting peace in Ukraine and Europe.
    1
  20367. @ You don't guarantee peace by constantly aggravating another country. Stationing foreign troops in Ukraine to "keep the peace" would be an insult to Russia. Once new borders are established I hope that Trump will lift all sanctions against Russia and press other nations to accept reality instead of being caught up in this tired old cold war paranoia.
    1
  20368.  @joancooley1387  On the contrary, they are a result of having read the judgement. Have you?
    1
  20369.  @joancooley1387  Out of interest I have tried to reply to you several times but my comments have been deleted. Purely in the interests of freedom and democracy I'm sure.
    1
  20370.  @joancooley1387  It's absolutely true. We live in a world of increasing myth and falsehood, supported by the media. Any comments which question the official narratives to any substantial degree are automatically censored. I am not allowed to say what I believe, even though my assessments are based upon reason and historical precedent.
    1
  20371.  @joancooley1387  Tried again twice. Honestly!
    1
  20372. Sean Gurney I think you're wrong. In Europe certainly, in China probably and over the whole planet almost certainly, there was a quite rapid rise in temperatures beginning in both in the 4th century and in the 10th century, followed in both instances by equally dramatic drops in temperature after periods of about 400 years. We have only anecdotal evidence and proxy data for these occurrences of course but both are quite compelling. "Peer review" has become a quite meaningless term of late incidentally If you train a generation of scientists to follow particular procedures and then ask their fellow students to judge how well they have been indoctrinated it proves very little.
    1
  20373.  @rhea7756  I wish. She is worth billions - stolen by her husband from the people of Ukraine with the help of his gangster oligarch chums.
    1
  20374.  @rhea7756  The Pandora Papers - showing monies stashed away in offshore accounts. Zelensky's billions have latterly been transferred to friends - and to his good lady wife. His one-time boss and the guy who got him elected is notorious oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky.
    1
  20375.  @rhea7756  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW4vmmDeplA
    1
  20376.  @rhea7756  It is just too much of a coincidence that Zelensky was elected in the way he was. Kolomoisky's fingerprints are all over it. In any case, it is impossible for any political activity to take place in Ukraine without corruption and oligarchs being involved, as I am sure you are aware. Whether Z and K have fallen out or the measures taken against K are just a cosmetic smokescreen it is impossible to say. The Pandora Papers were released before Z was elevated to the status of world hero and Z's position was acknowledged then. As with allegations of coke-snorting it is difficult to believe that this could not be the case, given the showbiz background - and cocaine clears the system in two or three days. He is no Nazi, but he has had to side with Nazis of a kind, of which there are still quite a few in Ukraine. I just want to say that I do not find any of this unusual in a Ukrainian context. What is wrong is that the rest of the world has become involved in what is basically turf war between two sets of gangsters. I blame America for pushing Zelensky into confrontation with Russia more than I blame Zelensky himself.
    1
  20377.  @rhea7756  I think he's made some serious mistakes - such as allowing his country to get dragged into a bloody and needless war for one - but I rather hope he gets away in the end. The war is in the balance right now but I can't see Ukraine winning, as such. The will and the resources cannot be there. My belief is that Putin's plan from the start was to drain Ukraine militarily and so maintain Russia's hold on Crimea and Donbass. This he may well achieve. The war would not have come about had the warmongers in Washington not managed to put their puppet in the White House and if they are ousted - or prevented from continuing in their aim of making Ukraine another Western vassal - then Zelensky is finished - unless he shows far greater political and diplomatic skills than he has demonstrated thusfar.
    1
  20378. From their bank accounts, more probably.
    1
  20379. Moxy1 And nothing for that nice Mr Bercow I think it's jolly unfair.
    1
  20380. I really don't think there is any way Ukraine can win this war. If push comes to shove Putin has the nuclear option, and he will use it if his situation becomes dire enough. The best way out is that outlined in a recent letter to the Financial Times, whose signatories included former British and US Ambassadors to Russia. Russia should be granted Crimea and territories in Eastern Ukraine with long Russian histories and large Russian populations. The remainder of Ukraine could then become an entirely united country, free to develop into a true , Westernised democracy. The alternative is a lengthy, draining conflict which Russia will probably win in any case - or at least obtain by force what it would be preferable to grant it by treaty.
    1
  20381. What on earth does George Lloyd's death have to do with these people? These demonstrations have clearly been organised in advance and were waiting for a trigger. It's straight out of the Marxist playbook and these seemingly universally dim-witted people are just being taken advantage of. God forgive me, but I'm starting to have more sympathy for the looters and the vandals. At least they know what they're there for.
    1
  20382.  @Mahmood.23  You are sadly deluded. Marxist intersectionality demands a victim class. The British workers have turned down the part and so ethnic minorities are being shuffled on stage. There is very little racism at all in this country and much of what there is is directed at white people. Do you REALLY think this is a spontaneous series of events? Grow a brain.
    1
  20383.  @Delacroix0402  I have caused you no suffering and as far as I am aware my ancestors, agricultural labours for generation after generation, did not do so either. Stop being told to feel sorry for yourself and get out into the world and act like a man.
    1
  20384.  @Mahmood.23  I accept it - but it is a very small problem compared to what it once was. I mean, what do you want to achieve? Race relations laws in this country are draconian and employment law is actually biased against white people. We should all be pulling together and forget about race entirely. The Marxists, who are not your friends, need an oppressed class to pretend to support in order to gain power. You are being suckered and I don't like to see it.
    1
  20385.  @rogerphelps9939  Except that it isn't.
    1
  20386.  @callumwillis8557  Whole books have been written, including Bad Pharma by English doctor Ben Goldacre. It came out before the covid vaccines which are a particular example. Although of some benefit to elderly and other vulnerable sufferers it is becoming more and more apparent that serious side-effects occur in some cases which make them actually likely, statistically, to do more harm that good to young healthy people.
    1
  20387.  @bordedup546  Reboxetine: This antidepressant was marketed based on positive results from selective studies. However, when all the data was analyzed, it became clear that the drug was not effective for most patients and had significant side effects. Rosiglitazone (Avandia): This medication was used to treat type 2 diabetes but was later found to significantly increase the risk of heart attacks. The full extent of its dangers was not disclosed in the initial trials funded by the drug manufacturer.
    1
  20388.  @ItsJordaninnit  Reboxetine: This antidepressant was marketed based on positive results from selective studies. However, when all the data was analyzed, it became clear that the drug was not effective for most patients and had significant side effects. Rosiglitazone (Avandia): This medication was used to treat type 2 diabetes but was later found to significantly increase the risk of heart attacks. The full extent of its dangers was not disclosed in the initial trials funded by the drug manufacturer.
    1
  20389. Not in this case. The people persecuting Trump have far more money than he has.
    1
  20390. What's deranged? To me this all seems perfectly acceptable behaviour. Are you sure you aren't over-reacting just a tiny bit?
    1
  20391.  @sbsrocks  They're not are they? What it's because of, no-one can rightly say, but there it is.
    1
  20392. Brother Iguana And it's water off a duck's back. Seen his entire speech at Davros today? It's a masterpiece.
    1
  20393.  @JJfanz  There is very considerable evidence, just some small part of which I list below. So far cases brought by irate individuals or small groups have been rejected, not those brought by the Trump team. In any case the courts where these cases are initially heard are as corrupt as the election system as they are in gangster-run big cities controlled for decades through the Democrat party machine. Their decisions are worthless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/7487/3.%20EXHIBIT%201%20%28affidavits%29%20%28compressed%29.pdf Sworn affidavits https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4KWrP1oRs Dominion/Soros link
    1
  20394.  @albundy9597  A small fraction of the evidence which is not there to ignore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/7487/3.%20EXHIBIT%201%20%28affidavits%29%20%28compressed%29.pdf Sworn affidavits https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4KWrP1oRs Dominion/Soros link
    1
  20395.  Tuff Gong  US elections have been rigged one way or another ever since they began. This time though the Dems may have gone a little too far. Tens of thousands of actual participants are not needed - just a handful in key positions. The eminent corruptibility of Dominion election systems has also helped in this instance as well, of course, as the new regulation on postal ballots rushed in due to the coronavirus hysteria. Below are just a few examples of evidence, including sworn affidavits from several election officials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/7487/3.%20EXHIBIT%201%20%28affidavits%29%20%28compressed%29.pdf Sworn affidavits https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4KWrP1oRs Dominion/Soros link
    1
  20396.  Tuff Gong  I suppose you could be right I suppose hundreds of people may have risked imprisonment for perjury by making up stories about the abuses they have seen. I suppose Dominion voting systems may not have its HQ in a building which exclusively houses left wing radical organisations, many funded by George Soros. I suppose it may be untrue that several of its executives have close links to Antifa and BLM and that is software can be altered to suit any purpose. Sidney Powell has not been thrown under a bus. The Trump attack is several-pronged ad she is taking on Dominion while others are pursuing other avenues, notably the suggestion that alterations in procedures made in response to corovavirus hysteria were unconstitutional. Yes, every election in US history has probably been subject to fraud to some degree. The system has more holes than a swiss cheese, especially with regard to postal ballots and voting machines. This time though Biden's puppeteers have gone to far -and they will be caught. Biden may well be sitting in the Oval Office when this happens - but happen it will.
    1
  20397.  Tuff Gong  We do indeed.
    1
  20398.  @Andrew-ob5ij  I don't know what you mean by the East but the expansion of NATO has been unremittingly Eastwards. Ukraine's membership would put NATO troops on Russia's doorstep. Sweden and Finland are in an unenviable position. They can apply for membership in the hope this will prevent Putin invading, but this very act could provoke him into doing so. Analogies are dangerous, but with reference to Ireland you might imagine the situation in Ukraine as having some resemblance to that in Ireland before partition except for the fact that it is the Republic in charge and the Northern Irish want to rejoin Britain. All referendums and elections in Russia and Ukraine are subject to extreme levels of corruption and Russian troops were indeed in residence at the time the votes were taken. "The referendum asked local populations whether they wanted to join Russia as a federal subject, or if they wanted to restore the 1992 Crimean constitution and Crimea's status as a part of Ukraine. The official result from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was a 97 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83 percent voter turnout, and within the local government of Sevastopol there was also a 97 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 89 percent voter turnout" From Wikipedia. As I said, the country that was created in 1991 has no coherent history. These two parts of it that wish to escape contain populations which wish to do so -and which have the moral right to do so. I do not seek to justify Putin's invasion, other than to point out that he may have sound reasons for it. It is a matter of self-preservation as much as anything.
    1
  20399.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Thank you for this explanation. I'm afraid I do find you quite hard to understand sometimes, but this post is more or less comprehensible. You make your position very clear and you are obviously well-informed. I hope you will forgive me, but I have wondered if perhaps English is not your first language. Or is it that you are simply a product of America's broken education system? Anyhow, I hear what you say and respect your opinions but I must repeat that I disagree with your interpretations of events and circumstances in most cases. More to the point, I believe that the current wave of anti-Russian hysteria is extremely dangerous for world peace. There has been nothing like this degree if outrage when Putin has conducted similar operations in Chechnya and Georgia, and even protests against America's nefarious activities in Iraq and elsewhere have been muted in comparison. My view, for what it's worth, is that we in the West had best let Russia and Ukraine sort this out between them. Essentially it is a border dispute of a kind that has affected the world throughout history. It is best not to meddle. The best result will be a swift result, and that means a Russian victory. The alternative is a prolonged and bloody war. If is possible that Putin may be overthrown. Indeed this whole thing could be part of a plot to achieve this, but I doubt both. The acid test will be what happens when and if Russia wins. I very much hope that Putin will be satisfied if his demands are met: recognition of Georgia as part of the Russian Federation and removal of sanctions, recognition of the independence of the two Donbass republics and firm assurances that Ukraine will not join NATO. If he continues to occupy Ukraine or attempts adventures elsewhere then you will be right and I will be wrong. Peace.
    1
  20400.  @Andrew-ob5ij  You've got a cheek! You've done little but insult me throughout this exchange. All I've done is politely enquire if there is some reason why you often express yourself so badly and ungrammatically. Do you suffer from some mental illness? Are you on drugs? Apart from insults and incomprehensible assertions your diatribes just go over the same points again and again. I think I have answered all that I can be expected to understand. You seem to confuse disagreement with incomprehension. You are completely wrong about Ukraine not seeking NATO membership until after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Ukraine applied to begin a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election but were later revived. You may be correct about no non national NATO troops being stationed on Eastern Europe prior to 2014. That is scarcely the point. The fact that these countries provide immediately accessible jumping-off points for aggressive action against Russia is provocation enough. The fact that these countries now possess advanced capability missile delivery systems and other hardware, courtesy of NATO, doesn't help either. I don't care who wins this war. I only want it to end quickly. As I explained in my last post, a swift Russian victory is the best way to achieve this. All other solutions are fraught with immense danger for the rest of the world. Yes, it will show that the exercise of force achieves results. But everyone with a grain of sense knows this already.
    1
  20401.  @Andrew-ob5ij  I has to look up tankie, I confess. You are as wrong about that as you are wrong about almost everything else. I am about as far from being an authoritarian communist as you can get. You seem unable to understand even the basic concepts of discourse as much as you fail to understand the importance of expressing yourself clearly. You are constantly turning over the same ground without realising that your arguments have been dealt with. You are stuck with simple ideas and reactions and cannot grasp the fact that I am not the person you think I am and that the world is probably not the place you think it is. Putin certainly did not cause NATO enlargement. It has happened insidiously over the past thirty years, despite assurances that it would not do so. Until now it has been America, using NATO as a shield, which has made all the moves in this needless game. Putin has finally responded and it is Ukraine which has suffered - not America.
    1
  20402.  @Andrew-ob5ij  I have answered every one of your arguments but it appears you are as poor at reading English as you are at writing it. I'm sending you a video on another post which very objectively and accurately outlines the history of NATO's growth since 1991. Do find time to watch it, it will save me the trouble of having to paraphrase it for you. Ukraine's flirtation with NATO goes back to 2008 at the very least. Thirteen countries formerly in the Soviet sphere of influence have joined since 1991, None of these decisions can be connected to the annexation of Crimea. The background to Russia's belief that they were promised that NATO would not expand is explained in the video. There was no written agreement, but various papers make it clear that this was verbally promised. Once again I emphasise that I am not totally taking Russia's side in this argument, merely pointing out that Putin has a very strong case for his actions. ADD: On going through our correspondence it seems I have not in fact answered your point about the Budapest agreements. Yes indeed Russia broke them Naughty Russia.
    1
  20403.  @Andrew-ob5ij  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydM9bt42bpg
    1
  20404.  @Andrew-ob5ij  What points haven't I answered, or been answered in the video? Do tell. It is clear that Ukraine was seeking NATO membership long before the annexation of Crimea. Why do you persist in denying this? Russia has constantly complained about the eastward expansion of NATO. History says so. The evidence is there. Why are you denying this? Equally, Russia was given the clear impression that no further expansion had been promised. They were fooled, it seems. Nothing new in that. Russia has been treated much the same way that Native Americans were treated and have come to the realisation that what they thought they had been promised wasn't actually it. Silly Russia. So no, legally Putin doesn't have a leg to stand on. So, like others who feel they have been let down by the law, he has taken the law into his own hands.
    1
  20405.  @Andrew-ob5ij  You just seem to be going over the same ground, and it's becoming tedious. Ukraine has been targeted by NATO for decades, The actual application process was begun in 2008 but abandoned after Yanukovych became President. It was then revived after the Crimean annexation. I have no idea what talk goes on around Putin's dinner table, or the political leanings of his associates, other than to suspect, with World War II in mind, none of them are likely to be Hitler- worshipping Nazis in the same way that some senior Ukrainians are. Some may be very right-wing, but then so am I. I have already agreed that Putin has ignored the law and offered you the reasons why he feels justified in doing so. If we are going to continue with this, please come up with something new.
    1
  20406.  @Andrew-ob5ij  Here we go again. Please try to get it into your head that I understand completely what you say, but disagree with you on most points. Is that allowed? Do you grasp the concept? This is not a war of imperialist aggression, it is a defensive measure. Ukraine has every right to seek NATO membership. Russia has a geopolitical imperative to prevent it. While historical analogies may be useful in some respects, they inevitably collapse and become dangerous if carried too far. This is especially true when comparing Putin with Hitler. The bio-labs motivation is obviously just an excuse. They do exist. America has admitted it,. What research they are doing remains a mystery, but the fact that the Americans are worried that the Russians may take them over speaks volumes. The chief reason for the invasion is that Putin is concerned that a military alliance between Ukraine and the West will present a threat to the security of his country. This is an entirely understandable reaction. Allegations of genocide are probably just an excuse too. It is a much misused word. Zelensky is currently using it to describe the invasion. Nonetheless it remains a fact that Russian heritage inhabitants of the breakaway republics are being killed by Ukrainian security forces. Ukraine and Russia have deeply entangled mutual histories. The boundaries of Ukraine set forth at Budapest did not reflect the actual spheres of interest prevalent then, and do so even less now.
    1
  20407.  @rossdavies8250  I travel frequently in Europe and the UK and have a daughter who lives there. Your view seems typical of a peculiar left wing bubble which exists in that country, blinkered and inward looking and largely unaware of what goes on in the minds of ordinary people. My son-in-law is in the trucking business and his drivers, all working-class chaps, despise your Labor party to a man and rate Trump highly. One of the older ones said he was "just like Maggie!" when we chatting at the company's Christmas party a couple of years ago. Over here Biden is a shoe-in and everyone knows it. Your Johnson has turned out to be a big disappointment, I think, but I reckon that his replacement as PM will be someone from the right wing of his party, not a laborite.
    1
  20408.  @BioniqBob  OK Oscar Wilde, get back to your day job.
    1
  20409.  @BioniqBob  Is this a translation from the Japanese? Reads like a bad haiku.
    1
  20410. Tell it to your greengrocer.
    1
  20411.  @edwardbernthal160  Not yet but...
    1
  20412.  @7ookee  I agree that 30% is not enough, and conditions of employment have to be addressed also. The problem is, however, capable of solution. The drivers are there- they just need sufficient incentives to get back behind the wheel. This is the employers' job and they must face up to it if they wish to survive.
    1
  20413.  @roberttaylor5997  I'm not at all sure, but one Essex firm is offering a basic wage of £56,000 a year which sounds quite attractive to me. What's that in Euros and how does it compare with German and Polish wages, say?
    1
  20414.  @mrdaveythebaby  Eventually - and I have to say that in my personal experience these shortages have been intermittent and minor and seem more or less non-existent now.
    1
  20415.  @globalist1990  Obviously no-one is going to get back behind the wheel unless wages and conditions are improved enough to persuade them to do so. So wages and conditions will have to be improved sufficiently. And they will be.
    1
  20416.  @edwardbernthal160  My personal experience of going shopping. Mind you, I live in a village where there is a small Tesco and a small Sainsbury's both of which seemed to experience shortfalls in a few products up until about two weeks ago, since when I have noticed no particular shortages. Perhaps the situation is different in large towns and cities.
    1
  20417.  @edwardbernthal160  Exactly so. I can only imagine that the lorry driver shortage predominantly affects larger stores for some reason.
    1
  20418.  @globalist1990  What devaluation? The pound is currently riding high and there is no reason this should not continue. The exchange rate with the Euro has remained constant and the effect of Brexit on markets has been less than expected. Furthermore it is widely predicted that the UK recovery from the pandemic will be quicker and stronger than in Europe.
    1
  20419.  @mrdaveythebaby  I admit I don't get out much! Still, my children who live in the East Midlands say the petrol shortage is over there, and the latest information suggests that it is only prevalent now in the South. It was the result of panic-buying and did not reflect an actual shortage of petrol, of which there is a plentiful supply.
    1
  20420.  @edwardbernthal160  Hysteric over-reaction to a minor difficulty created this fuel "crisis".
    1
  20421.  @mrdaveythebaby  Your arguments are exactly the same as those of any Victorian sweatshop owner bemoaning wage rises. In this instance, drivers' wages represent only a relatively small proportion of food costs. Furthermore, supermarket chains are still turning in profits of £4-5 billion a year at least and can easily absorb the extra expenditure. Improved wages for drivers are just as likely to result in reduced food prices as the supermarkets compete for customers. It will clearly be seen that adjusting to a new reality makes economic sense, and the first to so will be the ones who will win.
    1
  20422.  @roberttaylor5997  Average HGV drivers' wages in Europe are around £30,000 pa, rising to £37,000 max. (Yes, £ not Euros) In the UK salaries of £70,000 are immediately foreseeable. This is a direct result of removing cheap foreign labour.
    1
  20423.  @edwardbernthal160  I suppose there are advantages to living a somewhat secluded existence. Nonetheless when I do go out into the big, bad world I see little evidence of the dystopian gloom which seems to afflict so many adherents of this channel.
    1
  20424.  @mrdaveythebaby  As I suggested earlier, there is no reason to suppose that increased costs resulting from increasing drivers' wages will be passed directly or proportionately on to customers. Our membership or non-membership of the EU does not affect this situation. The lack of seasonal migratory workers due to the ending of free movement is another issue, and probably more significant than the sudden drop in lorry driver numbers. It is difficult to sensibly predict a solution. Prior to EU membership much of this work was done by travellers (as we must now call them) and even by students! I know, because I did it myself! It's piecework and deregulation allowing anyone, employed or not, to take part without any registration or taxation might help. Equally well Europeans could be offered temporary visas. As for imports, when I look in my vegetable box I find much of it comes from Africa, South America and Israel anyway.
    1
  20425.  @mrdaveythebaby  I don't know about callous. The employees of the small firms will continue in employment at higher wages. The owners will hopefully gain enough from the sale of vehicles and premises to cover their debts. I don't see anyone begging on the streets. As for the rest - I sometimes still see bunches of cherries when I close my eyes! As I said, finding people prepared to do backbreaking, tedious work for a pittance is increasingly difficult in an increasingly prosperous society. Anyone prepared to do it should be welcomed with open arms.
    1
  20426.  @globalist1990  And has remained more or less the same ever since. If the forecasts are right, then the UK should recover from the pandemic more quickly than the Eurozone, but I doubt this will greatly increase the value of sterling. Probably it is imminent fluctuations in the value of currencies unaffected by Brexit which will have a greater impact.
    1
  20427.  @mrdaveythebaby  I don't think I'm twisting anything. If a company goes bust its assets are absorbed. In this instance the assets of a haulage company are of considerable value, especially its employees. In any case I don't think the number of such failures will necessarily be that large. My direct knowledge of the haulage industry come from a firm owned by my sister and her husband. It's had its ups and downs over the years but by diversifying it has managed to survive very well. Any failures that there are will, as I say, result in little real hardship. Haulage doesn't have suppliers as such - apart from those who supply new trucks and spare parts and none of these are likely to suffer. Any setbacks that there are must be offset against the elevation of the status of HGV drivers to one which more reflects their skills and importance to the community than that which obtains at the present.
    1
  20428.  @edwardbernthal160  The UK is not in deep trouble. It is certainly experiencing more difficulties post Brexit than would have occurred with better planning, but everyone knew that the split would inevitably result in various short-term problems and indeed, many major adjustments of policy. Brexit is a done deal. I didn't vote for it, as it happens, but now it is upon us we must make the best of it. Any economic disadvantages which may occur, either in the short, medium or long term, have to be balanced against the fact that a federal Europe, towards which the EU is remorselessly headed, is a very, very bad idea indeed in terms of geopolitics as a whole and particularly so for the UK.
    1
  20429.  @mrdaveythebaby  Let's be clear: I am no fanatical Brexiteer. My problem is that the EU, by politicising what was originally a trading bloc and attempting to create a federalised Europe, has exceeded its original brief. No good will come of this - for the world, for the member countries and certainly not for the UK. It is inevitable that Brexit will create hardships and difficulties, but these must be endured for the sake of freedom and national autonomy. In the meantime we must take advantage of the opportunities created by the new situation, especially in light of the economic chaos created by the largely hysterical and ill-considered responses to the pandemic. Compared to the coming storm, Brexit is but a ripple on the surface of the waters. It could well be that in the long run a separate Britain will be better equipped to survive it than the EU.
    1
  20430. Yup. World War III and the collapse of the dollar - but not necessarily in that order.
    1
  20431. It's easy enough to gain territory when there's hardly any troops there to defend it.
    1
  20432. I didn't realise was war fever was until reading comments like this. All Putin is doing is taking back a couple of bits of Russia which were mistakenly given to the new country of Ukraine in 1994. End of.
    1
  20433. Why? It is now in possession of the majority of Ukraine's mineral resources and seems unlikely to be forced to give them up. This is all Putin ever wanted.  @boink800 
    1
  20434. As far as I can see it has achieved all of its objectives - namely continued possession of the mineral-rich and largely Russian areas of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea - plus the destruction of the Ukrainian army which now needs vast amounts of foreign capital and troops from other countries to keep going. @Defiant1940 
    1
  20435.  @thany3  He holds mineral-rich Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which was the whole object of the exercise. And the Ukrainian army is in tatters. That's two for starters.
    1
  20436.  @masterbeethoven8209  Easrerb Ukraine and Crimea - which is all Putin ever wanted.
    1
  20437. ​ @masterbeethoven8209 Depends what you mean by winning. The occupied territories are now majority Russian in many cases and this once wealthy area is being rebuilt after almost ten years of war. Ukraine is running out of options. A lengthy stalemate is probably the best they can hope for.
    1
  20438.  @steveprocter6241  1) Retaining Crimea and much of Donbass. 2)Severely depleting the Ukrainian army. 3) Overcoming sanctions and now forcing the West to reduce arms supplies to Ukraine.
    1
  20439. You're way off beam. Behind the front line Russia is spending billions on regenerating the areas it holds. And much expert opinion suggests that its armed forces are in far, far better shape than Ukraine's. Ukraine's current failures suggest this to be true. @thany3 
    1
  20440. If you feel strongly about something you should be prepared to break the law in order to make your views known. Ritualised protest is meaningless and ineffective. True revolutionaries should welcome this Bill. The courage to defy it will separate men and women of true principle from mere Sunday warriors and virtue signalling cowards.
    1
  20441. That should do it.
    1
  20442. How anyone can have any faith in the utter shambles of the US electoral system beats me.
    1
  20443. So you can't raise your arm above shoulder level without being a Nazi? Is that it?
    1
  20444.  @deborawilliams6390  Russia won't like that. It might just invade them, you see?
    1
  20445. Questions like "when?" "where from?" and "how many?" concerning the Iranian missile launch are not yet answered. Perhaps they should never be answered - publicly at least. If it was a rogue heat-seeking missile on its way to Iraq that did this then the repercussions could be truly dreadful.
    1
  20446. Vader Whoop Yup. Now we know where the missiles were launched from, Tehran airport is way, way away. So, not part of the attack. Itchy fingered defence missile? Bomb on board? As I said in my first post, it's probably best not to know.
    1
  20447. No, not CLEVER historians - just those educated in the Marxist view of history. Which is to say totally lacking in objectivity.
    1
  20448.  @karacute5324  America did.
    1
  20449. Lockdown rules were for mugs anyway. The damage they did is far greater than any reduction in infections. These people are guilty of cynical hypocrisy- but little more.
    1
  20450.  @jiversteve  You are if you think otherwise. Lockdowns were a huge mistake.
    1
  20451. What does it matter where they get their money from?
    1
  20452.  @PaulsBees  They may have no choice. They can't fight without ammunition.
    1
  20453.  @PaulsBees  I don't believe for a second that Putin want to take the whole of Ukraine. He will settle for Crimea and Donbass and those other sections of Ukraine east of the Dnieper which he has taken for military reasons, and to give him a land route to Crimea. He might demand Odessa if he ends in a position of strength, but he will probably be content with exercising control over grain exports. Ukraine simply cannot go on like this. Its poor people, like so many in the West, have been fooled into thinking they are fighting for freedom and democracy when all they are fighting for is the right of US-based corporations to make money. Well, a certain amount of money has been made but it's quite clear that Russia is going to keep hold of Ukraine's mining and steelmaking industries, and clear also that it can survive whatever sanctions the West chooses to throw at it. The Ukrainians under Russian occupation are mostly Russians anyway. They prefer to be ruled from Moscow, rather than Kiev.
    1
  20454.  @PaulsBees  Ukraine doesn't stand a chance. Putin will stop once all of Donbass is taken and sue for peace. The idea that he wants all of Ukraine, much less all of Europe, is just a myth designed to terrify us into supporting this sick and needless war.
    1
  20455.  @PaulsBees  I don't think so somehow. Once Donbass is taken Putin will probably sue for peace and Ukraine will be foolish not to take it, especially if the deal is supported by America - which it will be if Trump gets in. I think you're wrong in believing Putin wants all of Ukraine, much less the rest of Europe. He just wants those heavily Russianised bits of Ukraine which were included in the borders when the country was created in 1991.
    1
  20456.  @PaulsBees  You are wrong on every count.
    1
  20457.  @valgehiir  And all those people would stop being killed. What a shame.
    1
  20458.  @boink800  And a good idea too. America and Russia should be friends, not pretend enemies.
    1
  20459.  @boink800  Who can say? I doubt it.
    1
  20460.  @boink800  Did they? So what?
    1
  20461. Grab your attention, possibly?
    1
  20462.  @zepho100  But the new intake won't be defending, will they? They'll have to get past the Russians on dirt roads and across muddy fields.
    1
  20463. @Super Nova It hasn't. He has crippled the Ukrainian army and is now attempting to achieve his stated military objectives.
    1
  20464.  @jamesn0va  Is Putin all that charismatic?
    1
  20465. @Super Nova It has succeeded in killing a lot of Ukrainians and holds 20% of its territory. It is now in a position to extend that by another 5% or so, thus enabling it to meet its military objectives.
    1
  20466. Except they didn't have drones and precision -guided missiles back then.
    1
  20467. Too late. The Democrats have already done that.
    1
  20468. The ignorant Western obsession with "territory" shows how little our military and media understand the dynamics of this war. Apart from the areas it already possesses "territory" for the Russians exists solely as ground upon which to destroy Ukrainians.
    1
  20469.  @Ass_of_Amalek  It's more likely her mother was killed by Ukrainians.
    1
  20470.  @Ass_of_Amalek  And Ukrainians shelled back. Furthermore Ukrainians kept civilians pinned down in cellars and bomb shelters to deter Russian attacks. Anyone leaving for food and water was likely to be shot by Ukrainian snipers positioned on the rooftops.
    1
  20471. @Peoples Republic of Ninj Not until you come out of your mother's basement and stop all that wanking.
    1
  20472.  @Ass_of_Amalek  It is attested to by testimony and video evidence.. They even cemented some elderly people in a cellar. The Russians heard their cries and had to break the concrete to get them out. I have the video but of course it would not get through. You could go to Patrick Lancaster's YouTube channel though. His coverage includes Russians freeing people from a bomb shelter and corpses littering the streets after being shot by snipers. Also people going for food being shot at.
    1
  20473.  @Ass_of_Amalek  I'd rather take the word of the people actually being shot at than yours. The civilians were needed by the Ukrainians to stop the Russians shelling their positions. Why would Russians shoot civilians ?They helped them escape - as they did this young girl. I've seen the videos. The Azovs did it. That's what everyone said when asked.
    1
  20474.  @elias4779  No. From several sources. I have seen the videos and heard the testimonies. It makes sense too. You could try Patrick Lancaster and Eva K Bartlett if you doubt it. Both have YouTube channels where victims are interviewed and Lancaster has footage of Russian soldiers freeing people from one of the shelters.
    1
  20475.  @Ass_of_Amalek  Whether he does or not doesn't matter. The interviews and footage are clearly genuine.
    1
  20476.  @Ass_of_Amalek  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  20477.  @justiniswebb9  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  20478.  @bonnie7898  Whether he's paid or not he makes utterly convincing videos! He is there on scene, talking to people in the thick of it and he's been doing it for nine years.
    1
  20479.  @bonnie7898  I suppose he puts words into people's mouths and pays Russian soldiers to help old ladies out of bomb shelters where they've been imprisoned for weeks? And arranges for schools in Donetsk to be shelled?
    1
  20480.  @bonnie7898  Since I live in the South of England and have not completed any Russian military training, this is unlikely. Anyway Russia has two million reservists on the books before the war, so they're not likely to run out quite yet.
    1
  20481.  @bonnie7898  Just had a quick flick through TV Rain. Not exactly front-line coverage, is it?
    1
  20482.  @elias4779  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lsoV_6ZCZc&t=70s Old ladies cemented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfTEgC4kIw&t=32s Lancaster shelter rescue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY Azov shoots refugees
    1
  20483.  @bonnie7898  They present a point of view, that's all. It's just studio journalism. No-one can beat Lancaster for getting into the heart of the action. I don't know who pays him and I don't care. This is genuine stuff, unedited and raw. It presents a side of the conflict of which the Western public ought to be aware.
    1
  20484.  @bonnie7898  None of this matters. He is no more biased in favour of Russia than all the Western media is biased in favour of Ukraine. It is facts which count, and his videos are factual. Furthermore they stand up to reasoned analysis far more than much of the rubbish spewed out as "news" by Western stations. In my view people in the West are brainwashed even more than people in Russia.
    1
  20485.  @bonnie7898  The comparison is pointless. I am not concerned with Russia's attitude towards dissent, but with American foreign policy, which by interfering in the affairs of other nations results in millions of deaths. In any case all counties suppress dissent in various ways. Russia is certainly no worse than Ukraine and in the US and the UK too heresies are suppressed and troublemakers face serious consequences. But that, as I say, is not the issue here.
    1
  20486. Here is a chance to help the President's words become actions in countries all over the world. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  20487.  @iansampson3273  It's true though.
    1
  20488.  @AndyM_323YYY  NATO prevented a peaceful compromise between Ukraine and Russia.
    1
  20489.  @cloudycolacorp  Where are the "pinkos" ? The Soviet Union ceased to exist more than 30 years ago.
    1
  20490.  @AndyM_323YYY  After NATO though.
    1
  20491. Putin has -because he's winning.
    1
  20492. I'm sure it's due to climate change.
    1
  20493. Am I right in saying that pig bones found on the Salisbury Plain complex came from Scotland? This all points to a far more united and complex social structure in those far-off days than we have been led to believe. Was Britain a united nation in the days of stone, before the smelting of metals was discovered? Did these "cavemen" actually transport their best stones from the farthest reaches of this empire as tribute and signs of unity?
    1
  20494. Trump came out smelling of roses. The media has been forced to show how they and the Dems constantly lie and cheat.
    1
  20495. The Cold War is finally over. You spooks are all out of a job.
    1
  20496.  @BarnesyInOz  How, when Russia and the US are about to form a series of trade partnerships? China is another issue , of course, but they will come round in time.
    1
  20497. Trump wins - even if he is indicted. TDS sufferers will get even more insane, but normal people will see these steps as the crude political bullying that they are and vote Trump back in 2024. This will be a very good thing indeed.
    1
  20498. The BBC lies to push forward a political agenda Murdoch lies to make a buck or two. If you analyse his products you will see they are given considerable editorial freedom. He doesn't care all that much what they say as long as they hold their niche in the market and turn a profit.
    1
  20499.  @SuzanneO707  I was thinking more of Morcambe and Wise with Ernie Badenoch feeding Eric Wilson his lines. The short , fat hairy legs are the wrong way round, but that's just a detail.
    1
  20500. Anyone any idea how much carbon has been released into the atmosphere by building this thing? It's estimated that it "costs" around 140 tons for a wind turbine - and that's just for the foundations.
    1
  20501.  @MichaelReaddin  What mess?
    1
  20502.  @ArtsnCrafts-i3v  I've been living here for more than seventy of them and have only seen good government for a handful of them. The last 14 years have been pretty crap - but it was worse under Blair and Brown.
    1
  20503.  @MichaelReaddin  Go on then.
    1
  20504. After the end of the Cold War NATO promised not to extend its influence "one inch further east". Since then a further 13 countries have, joined - most armed with missiles pointed at Russia. Not to protect anybody. Just because it's good for business. We could be about to reap the whirlwind sown by American greed.
    1
  20505. Especially the Americans.
    1
  20506. What Browder suggests could well lead to the collapse of the banking system as it stands. This would be of great advantage to Russia.
    1
  20507. They are going to have breakdowns when Ukraine surrenders. It'll be like the Trump victory all over again!
    1
  20508. He's completely right. We need to get out of the mess other more cowardly leaders have dragged us into. https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  20509.  @yosserc  This very piece disproves it. Hydroxycloroquine is a safe and useful drug for preventing severe symptoms of Covid 19. There is a conspiracy to ban it because it is so extremely cheap and companies backing other drugs will lose trillions if word gets out. The BBC is part of this - or at the very least it has duty to investigate claims made for the drug by reputable physicians. There are no MSM media outlets in the UK which do journalism any more. I know because I was a journalist for thirty years and this isn't journalism. Its propaganda.
    1
  20510.  @yosserc  You are so way off beam, you poor innocent fool. The BBC and the Guardian are independent of nothing. They are linked to a system which allows little or no deviation from an agreed agenda. I'm not suggesting they have any direct connection with big pharma, but their psychotic hatred of Donald Trump makes them easy prey to machinations of the sort currently in play The world is a very wicked place. There are people who will do anything for money. Absolutely anything. They just need people like you not to believe it can be so. Hydroxycloroquine is one of the safest drugs in the world. It has been around for seventy years and is basically artificial quinine, The recommended prophylactic dose is two tablets A WEEK taken in conjunction with zinc. This combination denies territory to the virus, especially in the lungs. The tests you mention involved given patients already suffering advanced symptoms quite huge doses twice a DAY. This was pointless since the virus was by that stage already replicating in the lungs. It could also well have been very dangerous. I strongly suspect this was a deliberate ploy. I am no expert in the methods used by pharmaceutical companies to gain financial advantage but I imagine doing research into rival products and vamping up dosages to unsafe levels would be one of them. As I say the world is a very wicked place. I know this because having been a journalist for over thirty years I have met some very wicked people. Most of them were men and women who were in the business of setting up cults in order to bleed people dry of all their money in return for false and spurious promises of spiritual enlightenment. I may not know much about pharmaceutical companies, but I know a lot about brainwashing.
    1
  20511.  @yosserc  The Guardian and the BBC are trapped by the same Leftist ideology which, like it or not, is Marxist in origin although having passed through several filters since then. All I know about the BBC is that they produce so called news pieces which are not news but ideological propaganda. I occasionally read the Guardian for a laugh or if I want to feel angry for any reason. Both the BBC and The Guardian have accepted substantial donations from the Gates foundation recently and what little claim they have to objectivity is compromised thereby. There is no need for these outlets to be influenced directly by big pharma since they are already playing into its hands by their psychotic dislike of Trump. Trump approves of hydroxychloroquine and uses it himself. Therefore hydroxychloroquine must be bad, say the pinbrains in charge of their newsrooms. Thank you very much, says big pharma. They did all that and it didn't cost us a penny. "One can never hope to bribe or twist Thank God, the British journalist. For considering what unbribed he'll do There really is no reason to."
    1
  20512.  @yosserc  You really sound quite demented. This was the picture floated by the Democrats when they realised someone not trapped aboard the American political gravy train was going to arrive on the scene. Trump doesn't need their gravy train, he's got one of his own. Trump an imbecile!? He's no intellectual but he is possessed of a deep animal cunning which allows him to outsmart his opponents at every stage. So 62 million Americans are imbeciles too are they? Idiots? What a childishly ridiculous and patronising thing to say. And an unspecified number of "people at the top" are psycopaths (sic)are they? You can't even spell it, so I doubt you know what it means. Psychotic means suffering from delusions. Being out of touch with reality. Which what all you fools who can't get away from the Orange Man Bad view of US politics don't seem to realise about yourselves.
    1
  20513.  @yosserc Farewell pathetic turd.
    1
  20514.  @chrispalmer7893  He'll do anything for money. It isn't Russians - or even Ukrainians - he butters up, just oligarchs of either nation.
    1
  20515. It's not just pensioners. If he gives in to Zelensky he'll end up killing us all.
    1
  20516. Simply untrue.
    1
  20517. No nus is good nus.
    1
  20518.  @MateHall  Have you looked a map recently?
    1
  20519.  @kkpenney444  This is a condition which seems to affect a great many military men.
    1
  20520. There are. This is the number of people waiting for HGV tests. Nothing to do with EU applicants.
    1
  20521.  markmierzejewski9534  You don't know, do you?
    1
  20522.  markmierzejewski9534  You still can't explain why any countries other than Ukraine and Russia should concern themselves with this dispute over mineral rights, can you? Your patronising responses clearly reveal you to be merely a victim of media propaganda without an original thought in your head.
    1
  20523.  @Barricade379  Do you?
    1
  20524.  markmierzejewski9534  If only your powers of reason were equal to your conceit! History tells us no such thing and, in any case, this isn't a situation where a nation is gobbling up another nation. It is a situation in which a nation which has been cheated by a bad treaty is attempting to retain resources which are in danger of being stolen from it. What history does teach us, however, is that war can be profitable, especially a proxy war in which those who are dying are not citizens of the nation which is gaining from the conflict.
    1
  20525.  markmierzejewski9534  History tells us no such thing. In any case this isn't about a nation gobbling up another nation That's just the cover story put out to get the ignorant masses on side. This is about a nation which has been cheated by a bad treaty recovering resources which are being stolen from it. It is people like you whose conceit allows them to be so easily fooled who represent the real danger to world peace.
    1
  20526.  markmierzejewski9534  History tells us no such thing. In any case this isn't about a nation gobbling up another nation. It is about a nation which has been cheated by a bad treaty trying to retain resources which are being stolen from it. Your suggestion seems to support the view that America is sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of foreigners in order to protect its own interests. You appear to show no understanding at all of the true complexities of this tragedy, and your conceited attitude combined with your ignorance does you little credit.
    1
  20527.  markmierzejewski9534  Thank you for your kind advice. I realise what a fool I have been. Just imagine! I really thought this was just another American proxy war in which tens of thousands of foreigners die so that US corporations can show a profit! Now of course I see that America is simply making the world safe for democracy and any profit that comes its way is purely incidental. These of course are matters far, far, beyond my limited powers of comprehension, so I will now get back to my basket-weaving.
    1
  20528.  @grosey11  This pitiful amount of land is sitting on literally trillions of dollars of coal, gas , oil and rare earth minerals producing an income of billions a year.
    1
  20529. Yup. Farage just isn't up to Trump standard.
    1
  20530. @ Personally, yes. We need something like a revolution to get us out of the mess we are in, and that means shedding the woke nonsense and breaking the stranglehold of globalist policies. To do that tough, uncompromising people like Trump are needed. Okay, it's an experiment, but if as I hope and anticipate Trump can put America back on track then the rest of the world will have to follow.
    1
  20531. @timmellor2599 https://youtube.com/shorts/Zo37tPy9tDA?si=svoEQulporXYg5gR
    1
  20532. @ Yes. Very much.
    1
  20533.  @jamesgrover2005  Did I say that? Anyway it was; although the version we got wasn't entirely the right one.
    1
  20534. No it wouldn't.
    1
  20535. You are very wise. The only thing that is going to offer anything like protection for the vulnerable is for as many healthy people as possible to become infected and recover and so hasten herd immunity.
    1
  20536.  @leftrightandcentre833  Re-infection is incredibly rare. Latest figures say that while about 16,000 people have tested positive twice over a 90 day period, most are probably due to the same infection persisting, or one or other -or both - of the tests being false positives. Only around 50 cases are regarded as showing a high probability of re-infection since the second test showed a different variant to the first -but even then the false positive possibility remains. As for new variants this is an issue rich in controversy. There are those who say that the more cases there are, the more chances there are of a new variant being created. There are others who suggest that since the number of viruses is thought to be about three times the number of stars in the observable universe it is a statistical certainty that all viable variants have already come into existence many times over. They only achieve pre-eminence when conditions alter to allow whatever small variation they posses to provide them with an advantage - such as reducing the number of available hosts through lockdowns, for example. I expect you can guess which school of thought I favour.
    1
  20537.  @leftrightandcentre833  More instinct based on my understanding (such as it is) of the way in which evolution works.
    1
  20538. It really isn't these people. They are victims too - victims of power-mad religious loonies they just can't seem to get rid of.
    1
  20539. And he is himself an oligarch of course - or at the very least the puppet of one.
    1
  20540. Hello! Didn't it used to be 97 per cent of ALL scientists? It's not 97 per cent of qualified climate scientists anyway. It's 97 per cent of the 33 percent of climate scientists who agreed to take part in the study. And why is it climate change now, and not global warming? What happened to those holes in the ozone layer? It's a scam, folks. The curtain's been pulled back to reveal The Mighty Oz.
    1
  20541. Of course the Deep State exists! It is just a term to describe a network of established, unelected bureaucrats who rule countries at least as much as elected politicians, - if not more so!
    1
  20542. Are you assuming that the pandemic will continue for another year and that Johnson will remain in power throughout that time?
    1
  20543.  @ragingmonk6080  You are completely wrong. The myth of poor little Ukraine armed with bows and arrows fighting off big, bad Russia is one of the fairy tales used to rouse our sympathy. In fact, following the Minsk Treaties of 2015/16 the US and other NATO countries poured billions into creating a spanking new army for Ukraine, which it was hoped would take back those bits of Donbass captured by the separatists, and even possibly retake Crimea. The Russian invasion was primarily designed to destroy this army, which in part it did, and the begging for more started from there.
    1
  20544.  @futonclutch5040  I'm afraid you are wrong. Records in both the US State Department and NATO clearly show that billions of dollars were invested in supplying and training a new army for Ukraine following the Minsk Accords. In fact Angela Merkel, among others, later admitted that this was so and that Minsk had been used as a means for buying time to do so. Russia invaded partially to try to destroy this army, and to do so on Ukrainian territory rather than in separatist-occupied Donbass, which was where the inevitable conflict would otherwise have taken place.
    1
  20545.  @stephenglover1818  There were several reasons, including both the ones you cite and the one I cited. The central issue is probably control over the vast mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine, estimated at around $14trillion.
    1
  20546.  @ragingmonk6080  I'm afraid you are. "The United States is announcing a new $60 million security assistance package, including additional Javelin anti-armor systems and other defensive lethal and non-lethal capabilities, to enable Ukraine to more effectively defend itself against Russian aggression. The United States has committed $2.5 billion in support of Ukraine’s forces since 2014, including more than $400 million this year alone." Official White House press release, Sept 1, 2021.
    1
  20547.  @ragingmonk6080  I don't see why. Russia has no need nor desire to attack Britain. Setting up some paltry army to please the Americans and the EU would give it one.
    1
  20548.  @futonclutch5040  "The United States is announcing a new $60 million security assistance package, including additional Javelin anti-armor systems and other defensive lethal and non-lethal capabilities, to enable Ukraine to more effectively defend itself against Russian aggression. The United States has committed $2.5 billion in support of Ukraine’s forces since 2014, including more than $400 million this year alone." Official White House press release Sept 1 ,2021.
    1
  20549.  @ragingmonk6080  Because of what you just wrote? Why we should be doing these things strikes me as suicidal. We should stop immediately.
    1
  20550.  @ragingmonk6080  Is the White House contradicting Congress then? Did Angela Merkel make it up when she said that NATO had been re-arming Ukraine since Minsk? Some sources put the total amount from the US and NATO combined at around $18billion prior to 2022. Who knows? But surely the very fact that Ukraine has held Russia off for two years is significant. Putin didn't invade because he thought he was in for an easy ride. He knew that the West had its sights set on the mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine and was providing Kiev with the means to get it.
    1
  20551.  @ragingmonk6080  I wouldn't disagree! But we are still hanging on to America's coat-tails, unfortunately. I simply don't see why the West has to view Russia as an enemy - other than the fact that the US economy seems to be war-dependent and therefore needs to have an enemy to frighten us all with.
    1
  20552.  @futonclutch5040  All the actions you record of course happened after the West poured further billions into arming Ukraine. If it had not, Ukraine would have surrendered and peace provisions such as those almost agreed prior to the invasion could have be instigated. They probably still will be, and tens of thousands will have died to no purpose. You are seeing my point here, aren't you? (The $2.5billion incidentally is thought to be the tip of the iceberg. Other NATO counties also contributed and some analysts put the total at $18billion.)
    1
  20553.  @futonclutch5040  Yes, but these activities took place after the West had poured more billions into arming Ukraine. The initial phase of the invasion was more for show than anything. You don't send an armoured column nose to tail down the main road if you seriously want to conquer anywhere. Ukraine was being invited to surrender - and perhaps it should have done. Putin wants Ukraine like he wants a hole in the head. He just wants Donbass and Crimea - which are highly Russianised and which incidentally sit on top of around 6% of the world's available mineral wealth.
    1
  20554.  @futonclutch5040  YouTube supports you, since their algorithm keeps deleting my replies. However it is true to say that the things you mention resulted from escalation which could have been avoided if the West had not poured in more arms supplies. All Putin wants is to hold on to the mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine , which he considers to be Russia's by right. He has stated on many occasions that, however regrettable it may be, Kiev can ally itself economically with the West. But it can't join NATO and it can't have Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  20555.  @futonclutch5040  YouTube keeps deleting my replies I'm afraid, so we will have to leave it at that.
    1
  20556.  @futonclutch5040  Well here goes. I don't think Putin wants all of Ukraine by any means. He has said as much, which may not count for anything but since it would leave him with a permanent civil war, I tend to believe him. I don't think he has any designs on the rest of Europe either. All he wants is Donbass and Crimea, really. The SMO (and I use the term advisedly) was just that. It was designed to neutralise the Ukrainian army and persuade Kiev to fall in with the peace proposals broadly agreed in Istanbul in September. This would have meant regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics, recognition of Crimea as Russian and a pledge from Ukraine not to join NATO. The reason Zelensky turned Istanbul down at the last minute was that he was told that he would get mega amounts of weaponry from the West. Which he did. And the death and destruction we are now seeing has resulted from the fact that both sides became committed to a war of attrition as a result.
    1
  20557.  @futonclutch5040  I did. Same result. All I can do is say that my views largely coincide with those of Prof John Mearsheimer , who puts the case far better than I.
    1
  20558. Russia is not the aggressor. America is - or at least has been until now. Russian has merely been defending itself against US-inspired attempts to steal the vast mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine which have been invested in and worked by Russians for decades, if not centuries.
    1
  20559.  @johnrobertson5507  Most of Russia's objectives have been achieved. All that remains is the 30% or so of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands. As for Kursk, this is simply an attempt by Ukraine to get hold of a bargaining chip. The land is of no great value but its return to Russia might gain some small concession - unless of course the Ukrainians have been ejected by the time peace talks begin.
    1
  20560. ​ @Robin4  BLM isn't about equality before the law. It's about whipping up and utilising public feeling to establish Marxism. Just read the manifesto.
    1
  20561.  @a3kid  You're wrong. It's the BLM which is racist. The football lads were there because they are genuinely patriotic and realise instinctively that the Marxist BLM is hell-bent on destroying the integrity of their nation. Those who came to fight mainly came to fight the police whom they regard, quite rightly, as protecting and assisting Britain's slide into Communism.
    1
  20562.  @Robin4  Not so. I have some hopes for The Sun but all the others have editorial policies firmly linked to a globalist agenda.
    1
  20563.  @a3kid  I suggest you educate yourself by reading BLM's official manifesto. If you believe its aims are purely to promote racial equality then it is you who are being naive and delusional. BLM is hard-core Marxist. Marxism needs an oppressed class in order to succeed. The working class has turned down the role and so the Marxists are hell-bent on promoting racial sub groups to take its place. Racism in this country has been on the decline for decades. Now the Marxists are trying to bring it back to life in order to further their political aims. That's racist.
    1
  20564.  @a3kid  No. That's what it pretends to be. It just needs poor, sweet gullible souls like you to carry its placards and chant its slogans. Where's the racism anyway? The only complaints I hear are those directed against things that happened hundreds of years ago or thousands of miles away or are so vague and nebulous that they cannot be properly addressed. You are being used. Wake up.
    1
  20565.  @a3kid  Oh dear. You are becoming irrational and incoherent. Don't worry. It's a common enough reaction when stupid and deluded people are confronted with truths they cannot deal with. Read the BLM manifesto. If you want the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a Marxist bureaucracy then continue with your support for BLM by all means. As for Hitler, he of course was a socialist and used racial division as a route to power. Just as BLM is trying to do.
    1
  20566. Hanny Hawkins This is still very much up for debate. The regulations involving fire prevention measures to be undertaken by private citizens and small organisations are horrendously complex . It is certainly true that extensive areas of national parks have been allowed to go wild due to misguided attempts to protect rare plants and fauna. Banning stock grazing must have had a tremendous impact, to say nothing of restricting public access. You may have seen this, but it is the video that a small section was taken from in this news item. It speaks volumes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  20567. Washington warmongers have been defeated. No-one else. Is it not truly encouraging that the leaders of these two important countries should see eye-to-eye?
    1
  20568. Er , but surely those who die are immediately replaced by those growing older? Kind of scuppers your theory, that.
    1
  20569.  @josephhall1049  We had no such obligation. We should have left matters alone instead of getting on board with the greedy Yanks.
    1
  20570. The civilian damage is incidental. It may, however, have the effect of stopping people going to work in the mornings and so further damage Ukraine's efficiency.
    1
  20571. A thoroughly respectable mathematical study shows that if the R number stays at 1.4 it will mean 26% of the population will be immunised by the end of the month. Combined with those already immune due to resistance built up to other covids this will mean we will pass the herd immunity threshold at that point. This obviously cannot be allowed to happen since all those investing in vaccine-producing enterprises will lose out, which would be most unfair.
    1
  20572. I think they should call him Mr Potatopenis. That should fix it.
    1
  20573. Too many sheep out there!
    1
  20574.  @foilhat1138  I don't think delusions of empire come into it, but Russia and Russians have mined and developed the resources of Eastern Ukraine for 300 years. Ukraine seeming about to flog the lot off to the Yanks was certainly the main impetus for the invasion, sensible and peaceful solutions having been rejected.
    1
  20575.  @peterpeterpeter6315  What are you burbling on about? Russia is proving its strength and resistance every day this war edges its way towards its inevitable conclusion.
    1
  20576.  @martynblackburn9632  OK> Indication.
    1
  20577.  @martynblackburn9632  A number of (very) elderly people and a fewer number of less elderly people with inefficient immune systems died over a couple of years, many probably helped on their way by the treatment they received. Now a number of people of various age groups are dying to such an extent that death rates are up to 20% higher than they ought to be in some cases. There seems to be no end to this process. There is considerable evidence of a link between this phenomenon and the measures taken to attempt to inhibit the covid pandemic- not least of which is the fact that such consequences were predicted by those who opposed these measures
    1
  20578. Well what do you bloodywell expect??? Russia isn't going to bow down to Western bullying. Not ever. It'll blown the world to smithereens first.
    1
  20579. Wise man.
    1
  20580.  @AaronOkeanos  But he is speaking the truth. Every word.
    1
  20581.  @AaronOkeanos  One of them wot? Do you realise what a sign of intellectual weakness it is to think that anyone who doesn't share your views must be a paid agent or a mechanical device? Such utter conceit!
    1
  20582.  @AaronOkeanos  These analogies are so tedious. I prefer to see the situation as one in which a man and his wife have separated, and while the man is rather unhappy about this, he has come to live with it. But then his wife and her new boyfriend start shagging in his front garden and this annoys him somewhat. He beats his wife but the boyfriend is afraid and goes and complains to all his friends about what a cruel man the husband is.
    1
  20583.  @AaronOkeanos  It strike me that it is your hysterical response to my innocent tale which reveals some inner conflict. How about if the wife and her lover do their shagging on the verge outside the garden fence, but he can hear them and see them from his study window? Would that help at all?
    1
  20584. Yankee warmongers like this dreadful man are going to see their country lose this proxy war. Bloody good job.
    1
  20585. It is no coincidence that Islamist extremism provides such a welcoming environment for psychopaths.
    1
  20586.  @Noreb  Did you ever hear of Mandy Rice-Davies?
    1
  20587. Slaves to a false ideology! How have we allowed our children to become so corrupted?
    1
  20588. What's baffling about it? Russia has won now Ukraine and all the all Ukraine junkies have to do is face the fact.
    1
  20589. It's already a done deal. It just has to be dressed up nicely to make the idiots think Ukraine has won.
    1
  20590. Where can I find reports from the front line, other than those supplied from the Russian side? All Western media seems to arrive on the scene days after the events. Highly suspicious.
    1
  20591.  @andyh323  Donbass? Plus of course Crimea is not recognised as Russian and the water supply etc are turned off by the Ukrainians.
    1
  20592.  @rockrabbit253  Yes, this winter. No-one has ever said that. Bakhmut's function has been a meat grinder, designed to kill as many Ukrainians as possible. Indeed, that has been the prime purpose of the war so far. Now the main phase of the operation will begin.
    1
  20593. Got you lefty loons all in a dither, hasn't she?
    1
  20594. What if qualifying for the heating allowance was related to rates relief? If a couple or individual are considered to be poor enough to get the council tax bill reduced, then they might be poor enough to make paying heating bills a problem.
    1
  20595.  @hulldanfan  Much simpler for councils to supply government with lists of people on this benefit and let the DWP handle it as at present.
    1
  20596. Islam is a curse upon the world. I write this knowing full well that the YouTube algorithm will in all probability delete it immediately.
    1
  20597.  @chickyrogue8485  Fair enough. But be careful they don't screw us.
    1
  20598.  @dominicalexander737  Well equipped to try to invade Donbass and Crimea and fight a ground war. It's hard to find out exactly how much was spent. The Americans only admit to $2.5billion, but some estimate the total investment from NATO at $18billion.
    1
  20599.  @ian7033-qj9wg  They didn't respond with Molotov cocktails and drones. That's just propaganda designed to arouse sympathy. You don't knock out as many tanks as the Ukrainians did with toys and petrol bombs. The facts speak for themselves. The prime objective of the Russian invasion has been to destroy Ukrainian capability, and the West has responded by increasing that capability. In any case the details of the investment are available of both NATO and US Department of Congress websites.
    1
  20600.  @ian7033-qj9wg  They didn't. You can't destroy as many tanks as the Ukrainians did with toys and petrol bombs. You have been suckered by propaganda.
    1
  20601.  @ian7033-qj9wg  I wouldn't have any idea. Records from the US Library of Congress show that $2.5 billion was spent on Ukraine's defences between 2014 and 2021 and, according to some sources, the total amount spent by the US and its NATO allies over that period amounted to around $18billion.
    1
  20602.  @ian7033-qj9wg  I have no idea myself. I only know what was spent. And of course former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly admitted that the period of grace following the Minsk treaties was used by NATO to create such an army for Ukraine.
    1
  20603.  @ian7033-qj9wg  From the White House Press Office, September 1, 2021: "Providing Ukraine with Security Assistance: The United States is announcing a new $60 million security assistance package, including additional Javelin anti-armor systems and other defensive lethal and non-lethal capabilities, to enable Ukraine to more effectively defend itself against Russian aggression. The United States has committed $2.5 billion in support of Ukraine’s forces since 2014, including more than $400 million this year alone." Other NATO countries also contributed. but it is obviously difficult to get them all together in one package. Those who have tried estimate the total amount over the period 2014-2021 to be in the region of $18billion.
    1
  20604.  @ian7033-qj9wg  A White House official press release dated September 1, 2021 puts the amount contributed to Ukraine's defence by that date at $2.5 billion. There are those who believe this is an underestimate, and of course all other NATO countries were chipping in too. The final figure is obviously hard to put together, but those who have attempted the task claim it to be in the region of £18billion in total.
    1
  20605.  @ian7033-qj9wg  According to an official White House Press release, dated September 1, 2021, the US had by that point contributed $2.5 billion to Ukraine's defence budget. Other NATO countries had also contributed considerable sums.
    1
  20606.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Both the White House and the House of Commons Library in the UK have published statements putting America's contribution to Ukraine's defence between 2014 and 2022 at $2.5billion. Contributions from other NATO countries are hard to get hold of, but the UK was supplying minesweepers and land training over this period.
    1
  20607.  @ian7033-qj9wg  House of Commons Library, March 9, 2022 "Military aid to Ukraine 2014 -21." Research briefing no 7135. Extract. "From the onset of conflict in 2014, the US Congressional Research Service estimates that the US provided Ukraine with more than $2.5 billion in security assistance across the board. In addition to bilateral foreign military financing, that money has funded the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a special security assistance fund worth $1.3 billion “to support Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to help Ukraine defend against further aggression”. In fiscal year 2021, a further $115 million had been set aside in bilateral foreign military financing."
    1
  20608.  @ian7033-qj9wg  The US alone gave Ukraine at least $2.5 billion in military aid between 2014 and 2021.
    1
  20609.  @ian7033-qj9wg  "From the onset of conflict in 2014, the US Congressional Research Service estimates that the US provided Ukraine with more than $2.5 billion in security assistance across the board. In addition to bilateral foreign military financing, that money has funded the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a special security assistance fund worth $1.3 billion “to support Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to help Ukraine defend against further aggression”. In fiscal year 2021, a further $115 million had been set aside in bilateral foreign military financing." House of Commons research briefing No 7135, March 9, 2022.
    1
  20610.  @ian7033-qj9wg  I just did! I gave you the quote from Merkel and I have tried to show you the official sources for the other, but YouTube blocks them. The amount is included in both a press release from the White House and in a policy document stored in the library of the House of Commons.
    1
  20611.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Trying to get past YouTube censorship: House of Commons Library. March 4 2022. Research briefing No 71235.
    1
  20612.  @ian7033-qj9wg  HoC library research briefing 7135
    1
  20613.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Large enough to have costed at least $2.5 billion and much more. Large enough to fight off the Russians. There are more details in Hof C and White House records. YouTube won't allow me to give them directly to you, but it would not take much effort for you to access them yourself.
    1
  20614.  @ian7033-qj9wg  YouTube blocks my replies.
    1
  20615.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Size of Ukrainian armed forces: 196,000 Size of Russian invasion force estimated at150,000.
    1
  20616.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Google the sources I mentioned. It it is easy enough. YouTube blocks direct quotes.
    1
  20617.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Google the sources I gave you. YouTube blocks direct quotes.
    1
  20618.  @ian7033-qj9wg  We are talking about the size of the invasion force v the size of the standing Ukrainian army. If you can access the sources I gave you you will find full details of the support given by NATO between 2014 and 2022. NATO had also spent around $2.6 billion in the years immediately following Ukraine's independence. This $5.1 billion consisted mainly of training, non-lethal equipment and help with maintaining Ukraine's existing Soviet era armoury, plus gifts of Javelin missiles, a handful of helicopters and some patrol boats. Thus the Ukrainian army was large enough and well-equipped enough, thanks to NATO, to fight off the Russians, as events have so far proved.
    1
  20619.  @ian7033-qj9wg  YouTube censorship prevents me from defending my position. I am not humiliated. Just angry.
    1
  20620.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Not humiliated. Just angry that censorship prevents me from supplying the information. It is contained in the sources I have given you. Google them.
    1
  20621.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Size of invasion forces v size of standing Ukrainian army is more relevant.
    1
  20622.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Google the sources I gave you.
    1
  20623.  @ian7033-qj9wg  HoC research briefing 7135
    1
  20624.  @ian7033-qj9wg  How can I be humiliated when I am prevented from replying to you?
    1
  20625.  @ian7033-qj9wg  I don't see the point you are trying to make. You seem to be implying that Ukraine has no chance of winning this war.
    1
  20626.  @ian7033-qj9wg  I think the YouTube thought police have just changed shifts. It happens sometimes. Google House of Commons Library, research briefing no. 7135 for the information you require.
    1
  20627.  @ian7033-qj9wg  HoC 7135
    1
  20628.  @ian7033-qj9wg  How did I lie? If you take the trouble to access the sources I gave you, you will find all the details of NATO's contribution to Ukraine's armed forces, prior to the Russian invasion.
    1
  20629.  @ian7033-qj9wg  I have not lied. Ukraine had a 196,000 strong army prior to the invasion, and NATO had spent at least $5billion on training, maintaining and equipping it. I suggest you research this for yourself, before making patronising comments.
    1
  20630.  @ian7033-qj9wg  Once again the size of the Russian army as a whole is scarcely relevant to the original claim by the original poster, which I have clearly refuted. I agree that in terms of the present war $5 billion is not a great deal. It was, nonetheless, entirely sufficient to ensure Ukraine was provided with a modern, well-trained and well-equipped army, sufficient to retake Luhansk and Donetsk. Russia's SMO (and I use the term advisedly) was designed to destroy this army, which it in large part did, only to have it replaced thanks to further and much larger injections of money and materiel from the US and other NATO countries. So where have I lied? Where am I wrong? Please answer truthfully, if you know how.
    1
  20631. The only downside is that these covid vaccines wear off after a few months leading to people wandering about thinking they are safe and non-toxic whereas in fact they are asymptomatic and spreading covid like wildfire. That's not the case with the other vaccines you mention.
    1
  20632.  @tuongtang8974  I seriously doubt it. But they don't really want to - so the question doesn't arise.
    1
  20633.  @Terrorstar-gbp  Sae Ukraine from what? Ukraine can do as it likes - all that is question is what Ukraine consists of.
    1
  20634.  @tonyburton419  The media is now generally globalist rather than either right or left wing.
    1
  20635.  @susannahhunt100  Why?
    1
  20636.  @susannahhunt100  What's wrong with GB News? It presents a view of the world shared by millions. You have no right to censor or ban it just because it doesn't fit inside your particular little bubble.
    1
  20637.  @susannahhunt100  I'm genuinely curious to know why so many left-leaning people are so keen on banning things and sending people they disagree with to prison. It's not a good look. We right-wingers don't do it. Generally we just laugh at the loons.
    1
  20638.  @gio-oz8gf  They don't spread lies. They air views you might disagree with. It has everything to do with bubbles - or blinkers as so often worn by the idiot left.
    1
  20639.  @markhackett2302  Of course its a news station! It just treats the news in a way that offends your prejudices, that's all.
    1
  20640.  @starmersbarber  Yes.
    1
  20641.  @markhackett2302  It is not wilful dishonesty. GB News's political stance is entirely honest - it just happens to differ from yours, that's all.
    1
  20642.  @markhackett2302  Give one example of what you consider to be a deliberate lie by GB News..
    1
  20643.  @markhackett2302  Name one lie.
    1
  20644.  @markhackett2302  Everything. Now it's your turn.
    1
  20645.  @markhackett2302  OK. First news headline I've come to: Freed prisoners have been celebrating outside their former jails. True. Now you find a headline that isn't true. Opinion pieces don't count.
    1
  20646.  @maryrose8478  He was a big, scary guy and out of his face on a variety of drugs any one of which can cause respiratory problems as well as unrestrained violent behaviour. His death was clearly unintentional but that won't matter. The baying mob must have its sacrifice.
    1
  20647.  @BlueSkies09  I don't think it was justified, but it was probably unintentional. don't you think? If not, then the chances are that this particular officer had a personal gripe against the guy. I even hear tales they may both have worked as bouncers at the same night club. Whatever the case there is absolutely no reason to suppose this incident represents a widespread racist trend among police officers. That's not to say this didn't use to be the case, or that pockets of such racism may still exist. But that's not what's being claimed is it? The BLM case crashes into nothingness when faced with facts and statistics. That's why they and their allies need a one-off incident like this to get people back on side.
    1
  20648.  @0IIIIII  The Bidens would take money from anyone, you poor, sweet innocent. That is Joe's policy and always has been. Do you not see the Democrats have been accusing Trump of the things they themselves are guilty of?
    1
  20649.  FreeScotland Fromengland  A transparently false and made-up story. If you believe that you'll believe anything.
    1
  20650. No it doesn't.
    1
  20651.  @barriewilliams4526  Don't be so patronising. If you took the trouble to investigate what is actually going on at the moment, you will see that I am right. Removing Donbass, which sits of around $13trillion of gas, coal, oil, rare earth minerals etc, from the possibility of being handing over to the Americans is Putin's main military objective, and that objective is now close to being achieved.
    1
  20652.  @jim2376  I assure you I am English born and bred.
    1
  20653.  @jim2376  I am a 75 year old Englishman with a long white beard and heretical views. Just click my button to see.
    1
  20654.  @jim2376  I am a 75 year old Englishman with a long white beard. And I can prove it, if necessary!
    1
  20655.  @jim2376  But we're having such FUN!
    1
  20656. ..plus cancers, heart conditions and a whole host of other life-threatening conditions. Plus there is NO statistical evidence whatsoever that lockdowns have materially reduced the progress of Covid 19.
    1
  20657.  @coniston3106  What actually happens is that those variants which can get round the problem of there being fewer people to infect - by being more efficient and surviving longer etc - are the ones which come to the fore. This is why we have the new variants. Only a total lockdown, with people completely isolated for a month or more, would have any effect. These hodge-podge measures just make the situation worse.
    1
  20658.  @FortoFight  They simply do not show this. This current wave has followed exactly the seasonal pattern of all winter respiratory infections. The fact that the death rate was so high is almost certainly due to the fact that people who have pre-existing morbidities have died through lack of treatment, exacerbated by contracting covid. I check ONS figures regularly. Currently the death rate is well below the five-year average for the time of year, indicating that covid has merely advanced the deaths of some very elderly or very frail people by a few months. There is every possibility that if these existing conditions had been properly treated, instead of expending resources on covid hysteria, even this unfortunate situation could have been avoided to a considerable extent.
    1
  20659.  @FortoFight  I look at the graphs and can see no dramatic correlations whatsoever. If you compare the pattern with previous years they are exactly the same; the number of deaths begins to rise in October and proceeds upwards in a series of rises and falls, peaking at about the New Year and then declining slightly more steeply until about now - once again in a a series of up-and-down steps. Imposing the dates of lockdown measures on this graph one can occasionally see brief declines which might match them, but they are certainly nothing dramatic. I hesitate to recommend a certain Ivor Cummins to your attention since he is scarcely an objective scientist, but he is good with graphs and his analysis quite convincing. Equally there is a little known channel called Co-Immunity where genuine epidemiologists express their views. YouTube may have banned these by now of course, but there is a heretical platform called Swiss Policy Research which cites genuine scientific studies if you are interested in broadening your outlook.
    1
  20660.  @FortoFight  The first wave was an anomaly. It happened purely because the virus arrived so unexpectedly, having being created/released whatever from China it seems. Without resistance to it, vulnerable populations died. The WHO and other bodies were unanimous in their advice to instigate lockdowns only to slow up the progress of the disease while health services were geared up to deal with it. This didn't happen. A few temporary hospitals were thrown up but no steps were taken to train up or recruit specialist ICU staff. Instead billions were spent on useless test and trace and compensating people for lockdown losses. Confused on/off regionalised lockdowns and semi lockdowns ensured conditions suitable for the development of new variants. Yes I am biased. When information from highly specialised people confirming my views is censored and removed my bias becomes even stronger. Check those channels I gave you before it's too late!
    1
  20661. ...or haven't been caught!
    1
  20662.  @emm_arr  I just can't unpick that! It's your immense reasoning powers at work again, I suppose.
    1
  20663.  @missMivida  https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    1
  20664.  @MrDeadhead1952  Your childlike innocence is quite touching. https://eu.postcrescent.com/story/news/2020/09/24/outagamie-county-absentee-ballots-found-along-road-fox-valley-greenville/3517714001/
    1
  20665.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  You obviously don't understand. The thing they got caught doing was the trick they were using to get the story. In the Ilhan Omar instance they didn't get caught . So they got the story. The trick was a lie in both cases. But the story wasn't. Do you want me to run through it again? No? Good.
    1
  20666.  @diarmuidkelleher5319  You don't appear to have a great deal of intelligence; but I am a patient man so I will try again. In the first instance the objective was to get the WP to print a false story to prove it did not check its facts properly. But the WP saw through it. In the second instance the objective was to get Omar's gang of thugs to show how they stole and bought ballots and filled them in for Omar. I don't know what subterfuge was used, but obviously it worked. Are you beginning to see now? Is there a glimmer of comprehension in there anywhere? Trick to get story fails. No Story. Trick to get story doesn't fail. Story.
    1
  20667. J A A setting the scene for the great cap and trade fiddle.
    1
  20668.  @DavisJ-ln6fw  Of course it's a joke - but like all good jokes it contains a great deal of truth.
    1
  20669.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Well are you or aren't you?
    1
  20670.  @ECECECECEC  Bright enough to know when someone's making a joke. Credulousness and paranoia often go hand in hand with a lack of a sense of the ridiculous.
    1
  20671.  @ECECECECEC  Humourless, paranoid, credulous AND somewhat slow on the uptake.
    1
  20672.  @ECECECECEC  Do you actually understand what a joke is?
    1
  20673.  @ECECECECEC  But you obviously don't understand me!
    1
  20674.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Don't worry. You'll do better next time, I'm sure.
    1
  20675.  @SailingCloseToTheWind  Yes, I'm defeated. I simply can't understand what you're saying!
    1
  20676.  @MarquisLeary34  See what I mean?
    1
  20677. TR is in solitary because he's deliberately been sent to a prison with a high Moslem population, many of whom who are jihadis. This has enabled him to be placed in solitary confinement as a way of affecting his mental health. It is deliberate torture.
    1
  20678. Utter tosh.
    1
  20679. And now we have another bunch of stupid children. Makes you sick, doesn't it?
    1
  20680. Reform members - and that's what they are - actually have probably more rights than members of the Labour Party. Reform UK was initially set up as a private limited company, which meant that its members were essentially shareholders. However, in September 2024, Nigel Farage announced a significant change to the party's structure. Reform UK transitioned from a company limited by shares to a company limited by guarantee, making it member-owned. Under this new structure, members have more control over the party's policies and leadership. They can vote on policy motions, participate in leadership elections, and even trigger a no-confidence vote against the party leader if 50% of all members request it.
    1
  20681.  @trevaudio  It happened automatically in September. So you are incorrect.
    1
  20682.  @clarecrawford9677  They are the shareholders, not the members. Reform UK is not a company limited by shareholder, but by membership.
    1
  20683. @ That's you, that is.
    1
  20684. @errorswillmultiply1697 That's your Mum, that is.
    1
  20685.  @anglonorse2943  Gosh, what school did you go to where they had rhetoric in the playground? It was all I could do to get a game of conkers.
    1
  20686.  @dalekrenegade2596  Then why did America and other NATO countries spend billions on equipping and training a Ukrainian army? Putin already had Crimea and wanted to set up Donbass as an independent republic in order to keep control of its mineral deposits. Nothing wrong with that - but it didn't suit those in the West who wanted to get their hands on them.
    1
  20687.  @dalekrenegade2596  The war is unnecessary. Putin's compromise proposals, ensuring that the heavily Russianised parts of the country would be prevented from joining NATO and the EU, were fair and workable and infinitely preferable to the present carnage.
    1
  20688. Still some suckers left then.
    1
  20689.  @stankomalceski9677  The BBC has not shown the whole video. If you go to a channel called Officer Tatum you will see everything explained. The BBC lies constantly.
    1
  20690. Well if this strategy goes bottoms up he will be out on his ear. On the other hand if it succeeds he will come up smelling of roses.
    1
  20691.  @cIoudbank  The Russians are almost certainly going to outpace Ukraine now. As with a great many wars the loser will be the one which runs out of supplies first - and at the moment that looks like Ukraine.
    1
  20692.  @DMZDMX1  You puzzle me. I am English and write in English. Your paranoid delusions are clearly getting the better of you!
    1
  20693. A rather unfortunate mis-spelling in the thumbnail!
    1
  20694.  @TS-bj8my  No.
    1
  20695. Thus further hastening the coming world recession which Russia will weather better than most. So go right ahead.
    1
  20696. But the US getting hold of Ukraine's mineral wealth is what this war has ALWAYS been about. That is why America has consistently supported and paid for the Ukraine military, to say nothing of fomenting the rebellion which started it all back in 2014. The difference with Trump is that he is a peace-loving man and can see ways of getting hold of at least some of it without actually having to have people killed. There are, fortunately, sufficient resources in the western part of the country to compensate America for at least some of the billions it has foolishly and egregiously thrown into this war. Zelensky's removal via election will open the way to peace with Russia and the possibility of US trade with that country - which has, incidentally, far more of a moral right to the ownership of the mineral resources of Eastern Ukraine than the Ukrainians do.
    1
  20697. @ But at what cost? Russia is in no position to garrison Europe! They don't have to garrison Donbass because the people there are Russian anyway.
    1
  20698.  @JoeyBlogs007  And still they keep coming.
    1
  20699. Sucker.
    1
  20700. The conceit, greed and incompetence of the US military intelligence network have led directly to this dreadful situation. The only way Ukraine can come even close to winning is if America and its allies continue to pour further wasted billions down its throat.
    1
  20701.  @iantaylor6542  Good for you. But there's no way renewables can satisfy the entire world's energy needs in the foreseeable future.
    1
  20702. Totally inspired , man!
    1
  20703.  @jeckjeck3119  After 2014 NATO set up six funds to arm Ukraine. You can check Congressional records and NATO new releases to find the separate amounts , to which must be added the contributions made since the current stage of the war began.
    1
  20704.  @straightreject2947  Survival has no price. This war could well advance the inevitable collapse of the American empire and the replacement of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. If so, Russia will emerge as a partner with China and other BRICS + countries in a multipolar world finally free of American greed and expansionism.
    1
  20705.  @jeckjeck3119  Sound economic sense based on bloodshed and broken treaties It's the American way.
    1
  20706.  @jeckjeck3119  Democracy schemocracy. Most countries in the world are oligarchies one way or another- including the USA. Ukraine is simply suffering because of the immense mineral deposits in its Eastern region. These have been exploited by Russia and Russians since time immemorial and Putin isn't going to see the West move in on them without a fight.
    1
  20707.  @cteal2018  Minsk.
    1
  20708.  @ghlscitel6714  Six funds set up after the 2014 rebellion and Crimea annexation to provide "security " for Ukraine were sufficient to provide the country with a fully trained and equipped army of between 350,000 and 600,000 men. Some of the finance can be traced through Congressional records and NATO news releases. The 150 billion is admittedly an estimate, and includes further donations made since the SMO effectively destroyed much of the original Ukrainian force, but it does not seem an unreasonable assessment.
    1
  20709.  @bonnie7898  Budapest is dead in the water. It was a bad treaty and the Russia which signed it was not the Russia of today. This is why it was replaced by the Minsk accords - which the West violated and used to buy time to build an army with which to carry out America's schemes to destroy Russian interests. America is good at this. Ever since it ethnically cleansed the native inhabitants of its lands it has set one tribe against another, made a treaty with the winner and then broken it. All for money and always with the sickening excuse that it was for high moral reasons.
    1
  20710.  @proselytizingorthodoxpente8304  The events of 2014 were themselves attempts by Russia to resist Western incursions. Ukraine is Russia's creation. In his essay on the two countries' intertwined histories Putin makes it clear that, however regretfully, he must allow Ukraine to ally with the West. But it can't have Crimea and Donbass. These areas have very large Russian populations and are sitting on vast mineral wealth which has been exploited by Russian cash and Russian labour and which he will not see sold cheap to America by Ukrainian crooks. It belongs to Russian crooks!
    1
  20711. Zelinsky is a lying crook. You wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for him.
    1
  20712. A paranoid schizophrenic from West Africa brings chaos to an English city filling the streets with heavily armed men in a variety of fetching uniforms. Welcome to the future.
    1
  20713. But US agencies have been plotting for decades to undermine Russia. What's so special about Ukraine?
    1
  20714.  @J.R.Y.  That's arguably true. If it is then mealy-mouthed protestations of moral superiority are simply offensive and worthy of scorn.
    1
  20715.  @andreasfroby  If you look at the actions carefully you will see it was not an attempt to take Kiev, but merely to draw the Ukrainians into a fight and reduce their strength.
    1
  20716.  @a5cent  He's actually right. Even though the troops were often given the impression they were on a glorious and unbeatable mission, Putin and his generals knew full well that conquering Kiev and all of Ukraine is impossible. Putin has said this many times.
    1
  20717.  @Finnishguy777  I haven't been guessing. Putin has declared on many occasions that the conquest of Ukraine is impossible and undesirable. He just wants the Russian bits - Crimea and Donbass. Who are these "same people" anyway?
    1
  20718.  @Finnishguy777  I'm British and widely travelled, and although I have never served in the armed forces I have a relative who is a career soldier and discuss military matters with him. I have read Putin's essay on Ukraine/ Russian relations which he has paraphrased in various articles and interviews. It is quite clear that he has no designs on Ukraine as a whole, let alone other countries in Europe. He couldn't achieve such ambitions , even if he had them. Look at the difficulties he is having in simply hiving off that little corner of Ukraine which he believes to be Russian by right. What I was referring to as "mainly talk" was Europe's promises to continue to supply Ukraine with weaponry.
    1
  20719.  @michaelgrey1351  And how permanent is the elimination? And at what cost has it been achieved? Your population is heavily non-immune and you will have to keep returning to extreme lockdown until such time as a safe and effective vaccine is widely available. (And Covid 19 doesn't kill everyone. Just those who immune systems are weak. In the UK most deaths have been in people in their nineties and late eighties.)
    1
  20720.  @Madyetmellow  And we can expect deaths from respiratory illnesses (predominantly Covid 19) to increase until the New Year at which point they can be expected to decline at about the same rate as they have increased since September.
    1
  20721. @Dean Clark Here are the latest provisional figures from ONS. As you will see the mortality rate is above the five year average, but only slightly above that of 2018. I have also included stats from the Institute of Actuaries which puts things in a long term historical perspective. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending20november2020 https://www.actuaries.org.uk/learn-and-develop/continuous-mortality-investigation/other-cmi-outputs/mortality-monito
    1
  20722.  @michaelgrey1351  You are not immune unless, as is increasingly likely to be the case in SE Asian countries, there is a natural immunity to Covid 19 in Australasia due to resistance built up to previous covids. I will concur, however, that it is possible that the strict lockdown may have been beneficial simply because it was put into place before Covid 19 arrived in quantity. In the UK we keep shutting and opening the gate long after the beast has got into the fold, which is pointless. What is undeniable is that the economic impact on Victoria has been huge - to say nothing of having to put up with the ghastly Gestapo tactics employed by the police. Too high a price to pay for what may well be just be a case of kicking the can further down the road.
    1
  20723. Magic Mask heap good juju. Listen witch doctor! https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  20724.  @mikedebruyn  This channel is largely patronised by deluded children, in case you haven't noticed.
    1
  20725. Herd immunity is the only objective, and it is better achieved by infection rather than vaccination.
    1
  20726.  @peteroneill2991  How can this be so when cases of re-infection are so rare? I haven't been able to find any recent figures but a few months ago there were literally on a few dozen attested cases worldwide. Meanwhile around 6,000 vaccinated people a day are becoming infected in this country alone.
    1
  20727.  @peteroneill2991  But surely the fact that t cell immunity seems to extend perhaps for years outweighs antibody levels? And the January figures are things of the past. The death and hospitalisation rates per case are now only a fraction of what they were then. Viral mutations also seem to spring up as a consequence of altered circumstances as much as they do from increased numbers of cases. As for long covid this is apparently far less prevalent than feared - around 1.2% in people in their twenties rising to about 4.8% in the middle-aged. Herd immunity is the only answer and with the vaccination failure rate being as relatively high as it is immunity via infection of the young and healthy will surely provide a swifter and more efficient and long-lasting route.
    1
  20728.  @peteroneill2991  I entirely agree. The argument against it then was that restrictions protecting the vulnerable would be impossible to organise. Now that the vulnerable can be protected via vaccine that argument no longer applies.
    1
  20729.  @peteroneill2991  And now this is no longer the case. I'm not changing the goalposts; the situation has changed of itself. Personally I believe it would have been possible to set up cordons sanitaire to protect the vulnerable while allowing the young and healthy to develop a group herd immunity and consequently deny the virus routes and territories to reach those liable to die. Such a strategy could have been political suicide of course since it would certainly have relied on a level of discipline probably absent on today's Britain. But that scarcely matters now. Vaccination provides a somewhat shaky but nonetheless reasonable effective protection in that it reduces the severity of symptoms to a level whereby the chance of death is seriously reduced. Some - perhaps many - frail and elderly will die of course, but at this stage of the game we have to accept that this is inevitable. We can only be thankful that our children are safe and our healthy young people likely to be affected no more than by a dose of the flu. We've got to come out of hiding some time or another. It may as well be now. (PS Don't imagine I have any time for Boris Johnson. He's a turd.)
    1
  20730. Unlike Britain, Russia will not chèerfully become America's puppy dog.
    1
  20731. Very misleading. Farage has always rejected TR. "Not my cup of tea," he used to say when an alliance was proposed. This is a pity (from my point of view anyway) because TR, for all his rough edges, is a highly intelligent and perceptive individual who brings direct personal experience to the debate.
    1
  20732.  @SimonPJohnson  He is a victim of state persecution. Socialists used to be like this until they got a taste of power.
    1
  20733.  @col.hertford9855  He's astute and coherent, well-informed and courageous.
    1
  20734.  @progressivedemagogue8480  Have you seen his address to the Oxford Union or read his autobiography?
    1
  20735.  @rocketscience4516  Shan't. So there!
    1
  20736.  @col.hertford9855  Modesty forbids!
    1
  20737.  @verystripeyzebra  Yours maybe?
    1
  20738.  @altheogre  I have never made any financial contribution.
    1
  20739.  @Ka-hs4yc  Putin is not a psychopath and Ukraine is not a proper country - yet. It is a made-up place with bits of Russia in it, which is where the problem lies.
    1
  20740. The world is ganging up on America. A century of bullying and conceit has created many enemies.
    1
  20741. Because it all just made-up nonsense?
    1
  20742.  @Shaddarhim  Not at all. In December 2021 Putin made a series of proposals which merely required Ukraine not to join NATO and to grant regional autonomy to Donbass. That is still basically all he wants.
    1
  20743.  @badluck5647  Putin has never demanded Ukraine gives up its "sovereignty". He just wants justice for the eight million Russians living there.
    1
  20744.  @efisgpr  And don't get NATO to build an army for you, so you can invade.
    1
  20745.  @badluck5647  You're not far wrong. But perhaps having a Putin puppet is not much worse than having a CIA puppet - and it's a good deal preferable to watching tens of thousands die as your country goes up in flames.
    1
  20746.  @Shaddarhim  These analogies are so silly! But I'll play along. How about you abduct my daughter while I'm ill in bed, and when I ask you nicely to let her go, you say you'll think about it. Instead you join a motorcycle gang and start revving up your Harleys under my bedroom window.
    1
  20747.  @badluck5647  But the CIA is Trump's enemy, and has done all it can to remove him from power! There has never been a fair election in Ukraine - although the oligarch who fixed it for Zelensky to win created a TV show for him to star in, just to improve his vote. This seems to have been even more successful than traditional methods of bribery and intimidation. This war is just an extension of the TV show. Freedom from what exactly?
    1
  20748.  @Shaddarhim  I don't think they're at all silly. Do you even know what they are?
    1
  20749.  @Shaddarhim  I'm talking about the proposals put forward in December '21 - before the invasion began. They have been repeated several times since, the latest occasion being by Russia's envoy to the UN just last week.
    1
  20750.  @badluck5647  They can have all these wonderful things - as long as Russia keeps Crimea and can shop at Donbass. (Do you REALLY think a TV show run on one of Kolomoisky's channels seriously promoted ant-corruption? Don't you ever watch gangster films?)
    1
  20751.  @Shaddarhim  Ukraine wouldn't exist without Russia. Russian money, sweat and blood built it.
    1
  20752.  @kyberite  The rebellion began in 2014.
    1
  20753.  @Shaddarhim  That was a thousand years ago when the Vikings sailed up the rivers of Europe. That civilisation was in decline by the late middle ages and did not extend into the Eastern steppe anyway. Modern Ukraine, for good or ill, is the entire creation of Russia from the 18th century onwards.
    1
  20754.  @Shaddarhim  The Budapest agreements were signed by a drunk in a hurry and Russia got conned. Putin has been trying to sort out the anomalies for twenty years. He doesn't want the eight million Russians in Ukraine to have their language and culture taken from them. And he doesn't see why the billions and billions of roubles and the billions and billions of man hours put in by Russians in developing the Donbass should be taken advantage if by a bunch of Ukrainian gangsters to sell off to America and Europe. I can see his point.
    1
  20755.  @Shaddarhim  Yeltsin was exceptional, even by Russian standards! The fact is that the Budapest treaty just doesn't fit the bill. The Minsk agreements were a good way of setting matters straight, but of course Ukraine ignored them and, on American instructions and using American money, they created an army in order to quash the rebellion in Donbass. Not a good idea, as it turns out.
    1
  20756.  @Shaddarhim  History is littered with failed and broken treaties. They very rarely last more than a few years because the political situation changes. The best way out is new treaties, but if agreement is not found then, very sadly, matters are settled by war. As is the case now.
    1
  20757.  @Shaddarhim  Yes, the Ukrainians are such a peaceful people that they entered into an agreement with Russia's enemies to build a huge army on its doorstep in order to retake Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  20758.  @Shaddarhim  Who made these laws? Who said, and when, that Donbass and Crimea "belong" to Ukraine? You can argue just as effectively that all of Ukraine "belongs" to Russia.
    1
  20759.  @Shaddarhim  "Internationally recognised" is, these days, just another was of saying "America sez so." Russia doesn't say so, and behind closed doors more and more other countries don't say so either.
    1
  20760.  @Shaddarhim  You're wrong. It is America which has imperial ambitions. It wants to rule the world. Lavrov has it right. Russia, China, India and a host of other countries are going to kick the traces and say no to fat-arsed, greedy, conceited, hypocritical America. Severely bad times are coming.
    1
  20761.  @Shaddarhim  I am not Russian, I am British. And America is ultimately responsible for the bad things being done in Ukraine by both Russians and Ukrainians.
    1
  20762.  @Shaddarhim  I try to weigh up all viewpoints. It makes sense that America is trying to create a "monopolar" world with itself at the head and nearly all the wars and rebellions that have occurred since 1945 have been undertaken with this objective in view. I don't need Russia to tell me that. I can see it for myself.
    1
  20763.  @Shaddarhim  And before that Ukraine - acting in America's interests - invaded Donbass to kill, torture and rape. Around 2.5 million inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine have left for Russia. They have not been deported. They have been encouraged to leave for their own safety, and given the means to do so.
    1
  20764.  @Shaddarhim  I don't deny for a second that Russia encouraged the rebellion and supplied and supplemented its armies. On the other hand it is impossible to ignore the fact that Poroshenko sent in the Azov Battalion and and other Nazi-style anti-Russian paramilitaries to intimidate the population by the most foul means.
    1
  20765.  @Shaddarhim  Ethnic differences which could have been settled peacefully have been used in a power struggle between Russia and America, that's why. Ukraine has allowed itself to be manipulated and this ghastly war is the direct result.
    1
  20766.  @Shaddarhim  Only as a last resort, and only to prevent Ukraine invading Donbass and Crimea. Numerous peace proposals have been put forward by Russia, but all have been ignored. The tragedy is they will very likely get want they want now, and the tens of thousands of deaths and the utter ruin of Ukraine could have ben avoided.
    1
  20767.  @Shaddarhim  I actually doubt Russia will be satisfied with acceptance of its demands of 2021. It will want more. I also doubt that a great deal more support will be coming to Ukraine from the West either. If the Americans do decide to up the ante, however, then it will be even more of a suicidal gamble than the one they have already taken. Russia is now building an army of up to two million and will be ready to defend itself in a conventional war. The nuclear option cannot be ignored either. If it comes to a stand-off here the weak, effete Americans will back off first.
    1
  20768.  @Shaddarhim  The war could end before April - or it could go on for years. Russia has the full capacity to manufacture weapons, and enough gas and oil to swap for those made abroad. Russia is not losing in Ukraine, nor is it likely to unless the West actually supplies far more weapons - and men - than it seems prepared to do at this stage. I will give a link in another post to a video from one of the several impartial observers of the conflict I follow. Perhaps you will find it of interest.
    1
  20769.  @Shaddarhim  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_buI_teYezU
    1
  20770.  @Shaddarhim  The washing machine chip is another propaganda myth, I'm afraid. Russia is getting plenty of microchips. There was a whole news story about it from Reuters. Putin saw the sanctions coming and set up a host of cover companies all over the world literally years ago which just ignore the sanctions -since they are Russian! He wouldn't have gone into a war like this without preparation and Russia is now producing arms and equipment pretty much unimpeded, as far as one can tell. The potential tank conflict is an interesting one. If the Russians do take Donbass then they will defend it with artillery. Tanks will be less important than up until now. There seems to be considerable differences of opinion as to the quantity and quality of Russian armour too. We will just have to see.
    1
  20771. Crimea was never Ukraine. It was merely stapled on in 1954 as a matter of administrative convenience. In fact Ukraine was never Ukraine until 1991. Before that it was THE Ukraine - a province of the Russian Empire and then a Soviet Socialist Republic, run from Moscow.
    1
  20772.  @jounik  Yeltsin did. But he was pissed. Anyway Ukraine hasn't honoured the Minsk Agreements on Donbass, so they can lose Donetsk and Luhansk as well as Crimea, with Kherson thrown in for good measure.
    1
  20773. Sympathising with the rioters is not the same as inciting them.
    1
  20774.  @deezelfairy  It's certainly looking as though it could be the case. The police have played this very badly - but there's no surprise there!
    1
  20775. They seem to have planned to invade Crimea, which Russia regards as Russian, and to step up their attacks on Donbass, which Russia regarded as being independent and under its protection.
    1
  20776.  EXTREME MAGA  Since 2014 in fact. And Zelensky's puppet master is (or was) the oligarch Kolomoisky, who owns half of downtown Cleveland and a great chunk of the US steel industry, as well as providing highly remunerative employment to the idiot children of various Democrat politicians
    1
  20777.  @michaeldunham3385  I don't have to. I just tune in to YouTube vloggers. I suggest you do the same. Everyday life in Russia is completely different to what you imagine. There are American and British expats who daily extol the virtues of living there. Anna from Russia and Sams Russian Adventures are a good start.
    1
  20778.  @RobBCactive  So incompetent that he now controls Ukraine's industrial heartland and nine-tenths of its coastline.
    1
  20779.  @michaeldunham3385  Of course I don't. How could I? But please feel free to share.
    1
  20780.  @jimflagg4009  I do. As I said, I find vlogs etc from YouTubers often more enlightening than news from commercial/state channels. The Indians are good on detail though esp Amit Sengupta, Firstpoint and Hindustan Times. I have to say the pro-Ukrainian stuff is getting increasingly shaky though. Do you have any recommendations?
    1
  20781.  @lornamorgan3575  You of course rebel instinctively against everything the MSM tells you, huh?
    1
  20782.  @ultonian63  Sadly I don't speak Russian, so he's not much use to me.
    1
  20783.  @keithdunwoody1302  No. That's Americans.
    1
  20784.  @YouBrickChannel  I quite like RT too. I did long before the war. It provides a refreshing alternative to Western MSM, which is becoming increasingly propagandised. Both sides lie. It's inevitable. Often though when one pursues the evidence the Russian versions of events stand up to scrutiny easily as much as the Western/Ukrainian ones do.
    1
  20785.  @MrAvant123  Is this a trick question? No, I'm not anyway.
    1
  20786. Not on his own terms. A free-or-all on neutral ground with no chance of either of them having a chance to rehearse answers would tell another story. Harris is even more of an establishment puppet than Biden. Cut her strings and she will collapse.
    1
  20787. What was the actual timetable on these deals? Would they have come into force within the next thirty days?
    1
  20788. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRB8SQbVvE
    1
  20789.  @appletree6741  No. They are Russians trapped under an alien and hostile regime.
    1
  20790.  @luisekjeldsen1515  A territory belongs to the people who live and work in it.
    1
  20791.  @sugarpenny10  But it wasn't Ukrainians who were removed, it was Tatars who didn't take to mining and factory work. Eastern Ukraine has always been occupied by Russians in large numbers from the 18th century onwards. You seem to be suggesting that their descendants should now accept being turned into Ukrainians, while Ukrainian nationalists in far-off Kiev sell their inheritance to a foreign power.
    1
  20792.  @luisekjeldsen1515  International Law was invented after World War II with the express intention of advancing American global interests. That's all anyone needs to know about it.
    1
  20793.  @Jack-zf3rz  It could certainly give it a try -but as far as I'm aware Canada did not rule Michigan for 300 years, and nor has Canada invested billions of dollars in local industry over the decades. Neither, as far as I am aware, has the US government been bribed into selling Michigan's industries to a foreign power, nor banned people from speaking in Canadian accents and putting maple syrup on their morning pancakes. Neither has it shelled towns and cities and tortured Canadians living in Michigan to death for daring to raise objections to the above.
    1
  20794.  @sergeyb8  Would you have had any objections to Donbass becoming autonomous republics - rather than a battlefield?
    1
  20795.  @martijnijsendoorn6911  Who says?
    1
  20796.  @whoisme678  I'm sure it doesn't. Nonetheless at the last census in Ukraine in 2011 over eight million people identified themselves as ethnic Russian - just under 18% of the population. Around three million of them have escaped the war by fleeing to Russia.
    1
  20797.  @michaeldunham3385  After extreme provocation. This step was not taken lightly.
    1
  20798.  @michaeldunham3385  The war was inevitable once NATO and the US had spent a hundred billion dollars or so in creating a Ukrainian army to take back mineral-rich Donbass and Crimea. Russia feels entitled to this wealth, since it was Russia and Russians which developed it over 300 years or so. Added to this is the threat posed to Russia by NATO involvement generally, and the appalling way nationalist Ukraine had begun to treat the eight million or so Russians living there. This army was set to invade, in which case the war would be happening in these areas, rather than across the border from them. Russia just got in first in order to try to destroy this army on Ukrainian soil. As to support for Russia - don't take UN votes too seriously. Countries which abstained, and many which voted for condemnation, are just playing safe to see how things turn out.
    1
  20799.  @michaeldunham3385  It is NATO's fault. America has its eye on Ukraine's vast mineral resources and has used its lackeys in a bid to get them. As I explained, Russia had little choice but to launch a pre-emptive strike and Ukraine had little choice but to resist. The fault lies with the politicians and the oligarchs who allowed the situation to develop in the first place - prompted largely by personal greed, it has to be said. And what on earth kind of threat is Russia presenting to NATO? It just wants it off its back porch, that's all. Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were taken from the Turks by the Russian Empire back at the start of the the 18th century. The Russian Empire became the core of the Soviet Union and Ukraine became a semi-autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, ultimately subservient to Moscow. Eastern Ukraine was added on shortly afterwards and Crimea as recently as 1954 - both purely for reasons of administrative convenience. They are both more Russian than Ukrainian in most important respects. There has always been a degree of friction between the two communities, changing in severity according to the march of history. Extreme Ukrainian nationalists now have a major influence and a process of "Ukrainianisation" has begun which increased these frictions. To your final point, you must realise that this war has brought into sharp focus a major shift in the balance of world power which had begun at least ten years before Russia invaded. The object of the exercise is to halt American expansionism, of which the Ukraine adventure is the latest example. To this end Russia, China and a host of other countries including Iran, the Gulf States and most of Africa and South America are attempting to create a new joint currency to replace the dollar in world trade, or at least to weaken it considerably. As this process develops you will find that countries which are already supporting Russia covertly will come out into the open.
    1
  20800. There is no such thing as the international community.
    1
  20801.  @bigdaddyrat7854  Anyone can make up a name. What use is a court that has no power nor authority?
    1
  20802. Russia won't whack Biden. He's the biggest asset they've got.
    1
  20803.  @natalliya2703  Nonsense. Between 2014 and the invasion America and its NATO allies had spent billions on creating a Ukrainian army. It was to defeat this army on its home territory that Putin invaded.
    1
  20804.  @bongopirate0672  Well it kind of destroys realtalk5329's argument, doesn't it?
    1
  20805.  @Stevekpb  In 2014 a Russian-leaning government was overthrown by the CIA. Putin retook Crimea without a fight and created the Wagner Group in order to support separatists in Donbass. If that first step hadn't been taken none of this would have happened.
    1
  20806.  @natalliya2703  Between 2014 and 2022 America and its NATO allies spent billions on creating a new army for Ukraine, as per @napoleon7107y's reply to you earlier.
    1
  20807.  @Stevekpb  They'd have been better off negotiating a peaceful solution. AS it is it looks as though Putin will be getting a bit more than he asked for in the first place.
    1
  20808.  @SavageJunky  And maybe a million people get killed in order to provide jobs for Americans? Don't seem much of a deal to me.
    1
  20809.  @SavageJunky  A war involving the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives does seem to me to be a high price to pay for bolstering America's employment figures.
    1
  20810.  @Trump2PrisonOn34Counts  Russia keeps its old stuff - and then sends it out to soak up enemy firepower. But I don't think I see your point otherwise. Are you saying that it's a good thing that America saves money on the arms it sends to Ukraine to kill people with?
    1
  20811.  @mnomadvfx  That was then and this is now. The question of nuclear weapons removed from Ukraine does not enter into the present argument. They were Russian anyway, and the Russians just took them back. I'm not quite sure where you got this "promise not to invade" from. Do you have a source?
    1
  20812. Let's face it, this war is going belly-up and the poor, bloody Ukrainians are going to be in dire, dire trouble. America, once again you have much to answer for.
    1
  20813. Doppel Ganger How can you still believe this 97% crap? It's was 97% of around 2,000 climate scientists who wrote peer-reviewed papers on climate change and who had an opinion on how it was caused - about 600 of them. The figure is now 100% by the way. The ones that disagreed have been effectively sacked. Man-made climate change is a con-trick.
    1
  20814. J Milton Jeffreys I agree AGW is a falsehood based on bad science and perpetrated by criminals for financial gain and globalists to attain total political control. End of.
    1
  20815. Doppel Ganger I've heard that man-made climate change was invented so that hedge-fund companies could set up a market for bonds allowing companies to exceed their carbon footprint allocations. They tell me that NASA is in on the deal and keeps altering data to make it look as though it was colder in the past than it was, and hotter now than it actually is. I have it on the grapevine that the sun is responsible for global warming and cooling, and that there is no time in recorded climate history when increased atmospheric carbon precedes surface warming. But you can't believe all you hear, can you?
    1
  20816. Kill a granny for George!
    1
  20817. But America will only allow them to be used in Kursk! Doesn't Wallace know this???
    1
  20818.  @BrianMosleyUK  So?
    1
  20819. We could call it The Ministry of Truth.
    1
  20820. And adjust they should. Those that do so are generally welcomed eventually, but those who insist on imposing their dreadful inward-looking cultures on us have no right to our acceptance. They don't even want it anyway.
    1
  20821. Trump is entirely right in his assessment. He knows full well that his predecessors engineered this war in the hope of stealing Ukraine's immense mineral wealth from its Russian owners, and that Zelensky was merely their instrument in this endeavour. I'm sure Farage know it too. In time this will be realised by the world in general, but until then he is very wise to keep his head down.
    1
  20822. Even those who run the tests admit that one in 14 results are false positives.
    1
  20823. One armed with a new superweapon which can deliver six tactical nuclear devices across vast distances in a matter of minutes. Grrrrrr!
    1
  20824. She'll charge for it.
    1
  20825. Adam In your mind
    1
  20826. Adam Watch a few more comic movies. It'll take your mind off things.
    1
  20827. As predicted, Ukraine addicts in this comments section are displaying severe withdrawal symptoms.
    1
  20828. Yet with only 6% of the population vaccinated, African countries outside the more developed southern tip have the lowest covid and hospitalisation rates in the world - especially those where malaria is endemic for some reason. Vaccines may well be superfluous to requirements.
    1
  20829. Of course we need a DOGE. Our institutions, from the tiniest local authority to mega-billion budget government departments, are riddled with incompetence and overspending, and undermined by feather-brained ideologies - to say nothing of creeping Islamification.
    1
  20830. Why should Britain accept potentially tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees? The government is caught up in the fashionable Ukraine-worshipping hysteria and must pretend to be going along with it. Thankfully though this lot are masters of hypocrisy and should be able to prevaricate long enough to hold off the tide.
    1
  20831. Biden did (or the American deep state did to be precise) by trying to get Ukraine into NATO and thus creating a potential base for nuclear missiles with a 7-minute flying distance to Moscow. The EU did by holding out the prospect of EU membership to the detriment of Russia's commercial relations with Ukraine. These attacks on Russian interests have been met with force, that's all.
    1
  20832.  @davidlloyd1526  Tommy Robinson? As I said Russia these days only imprisons and disposes of opponents when they begin to present a real threat. Plus Navalny was almost certainly a CIA agent.
    1
  20833.  @Dreachon  You don't. You are just sucking up propaganda. Russia is a tough country but people don't get thrown in jail for what they say, only for what they do. The Internet is full of Russians being interviewed who oppose the war and call it a war. The fact that it IS a war is a sound reason for people being punished for denigrating the army - as was the case in Britain in World War ii, just as one example.
    1
  20834.  @davidlloyd1526  Tommy Robinson is lucky to be alive.
    1
  20835.  @davidlloyd1526  He caused disruption and was actually charged with criminal offences. The Russians believe him to have been a CIA operative.
    1
  20836.  @davidlloyd1526  Tommy Robinson?
    1
  20837.  @Dreachon  What propaganda? I can seem to lay my hands on any. Blogs from actual Russians and Westerners who have moved there are my main sources of information. The fact is that we in the West have been presented with an entirely one-sided picture of the war in Ukraine. It behoves anyone with a brain in their head to dig deeper into what is really going on.
    1
  20838. And they had such sexy uniforms too!
    1
  20839.  @englishsteve1465  Many Americans would love to be crony capitalists, many of them are in their own small way.
    1
  20840.  @englishsteve1465  I do love the Dunning-Kruger effect. Citing it gives so many stupid people the idea that they are intelligent.
    1
  20841.  @englishsteve1465  Take off your blinkers and try to see the fuller picture. Trump's becoming President was basically an ego trip. He's a narcissist, right enough, and enjoys things that make him feel good. Becoming President has lost him millions , but just having it on his CV is ample reward. He is genuinely patriotic and genuinely resentful of the current trends in US and world politics which have seen an unholy alliance spring up between multi-billionaire financiers and academic Marxists. The America he knew as a young man is on the verge of being utterly destroyed. When he says Make America Great Again, he means it. As a conservative he knows that the best way to improve the general wealth of the nation is to encourage productivity and job creation - not by handing out dole money and food stamps. He was well on his way to achieving this before covid came along. If he were President now things would be incomparably better than they are.
    1
  20842.  @gloin10  Oh yes! I was thinking of the SS wasn't I?
    1
  20843. Yes, and Volodymyr Zelensky is 6ft 3ins tall and can play the piano with his penis.
    1
  20844. chris jones She is run by a hedge fund company pretending to be an environmentalist group. It's called We Don't Have Time. Go to their website and much will be revealed to you.
    1
  20845. Do the polls actually matter? US elections are generally fixed anyway.
    1
  20846. It turned me the other way!
    1
  20847. And a victory for sanity.
    1
  20848. If you believe anything on CNN you deserve everything you get. (In round terms current UK infections consist of 20,000 unvaccinated infected,6,000 with one jab and 2,000 with one.)
    1
  20849.  @power2084  I don't think Putin is all that bothered about opinions voiced in YouTube comments threads! My information is based on a wider spectrum than I expect you experience on the highly prejudiced MSM, that's all.
    1
  20850.  @mrharry448  We'll have to see. I just happen to have the time to check plenty of sources and consider it worthwhile to pass the info on. I'm not predicting anything - just trying to counterbalance BBC bias.
    1
  20851.  @cyanproductions4517  One never knows, but there are plenty of sites following the battles in some detail. The Ukrainians appear to have admitted withdrawing from a salient incursion and the Russians claim heavy casualties. American analyst Scott Ritter has just posted a video apparently showing a very impressive Chechen army drawn up ready for the off. The BBC/MSM propaganda needs counterbalancing, that's all.
    1
  20852.  @shubniggurath8907  Scott Ritter, Defence Politics Asia, General Douglas MacGregor, Col. Richard Black, Prof John J Mearsheimer from the US plus iEarlGrey from Russia and one or two others.
    1
  20853. @SteuerInnenzahler They've learned their lesson. Several lessons.
    1
  20854.  @power2084  Yes, it says what a lot of ill-informed, brainwashed fools there are in the world. But I know that.
    1
  20855. Even that would be harmless. It's only when they turn nasty on the inside that things get rough.
    1
  20856. This seems to be the case. Just looking at the figures for England alone gives a clearer picture. There is a 10-19 age category which shows that from July to July covid has been recorded as the main cause of death in just 32 cases.
    1
  20857.  @rocketscience4516  It's raining out.
    1
  20858. Amen to that. And yet the braindead continue to be conned, as clearly demonstrated by many comments here.
    1
  20859. Does he know what the deal is then?
    1
  20860.  Beaye  He's making a point. Trump doesn't like war. It's messy and counterproductive. He was very foolish to denigrate McCain in this manner though.
    1
  20861. ...and the ONLY reason we get to hear about this is because it's part of a Tory plot the get rid of their embarrassing clown of a leader.
    1
  20862.  Chucky  So would hydroxychloroquine.
    1
  20863. You realise of course that the mist is just aerosols condensing on your glasses? And it is aerosols which contain viruses.
    1
  20864. What a wonderful old fraud David Attenborough is. He'd actually a better actor than his late brother. Walruses anyone? Polar bears? Albatrosses eating plastic bags?
    1
  20865. There are no immediately accessible rare earth minerals in Western Ukraine. Those that there are - mainly lithium - are in Eastern territories under Russian control. Trump knows this and Zelensky knows this, but because - like Phil - he thinks Trump is thick he doesn't know that Trump knows this. Trump isn't thick. Far from it. He may be no intellectual and has probably never read a book in his life, but he has an immense amount of animal cunning. OK, it sometimes misfires but in this instance he is well on his way to arrive at a swift, peaceful solution in Ukraine which leaves the US recovering much of the money it has thrown away and welcomes Russia -finally - into a meaningful and equitable relationship with the rest of the world. Idiots like Starmer and his gaggle of globalist no-hopers are going to be out in the cold as Trump and Putin divvy up trade and resources and lay the foundations for a prosperous - and peaceful - future.
    1
  20866.  @richardmoloney689  Russia was foolish enough to believe they would though.
    1
  20867.  @emilytaylor468  Afraid not. The headache and fever you get is the body trying to destroy the alien invader. The sputum that fills your lungs and drowns you is not made up of viral material. Your body is producing it with much the same purpose. It is true that in some viral infections considerable damage can be caused by violently reproducing viral material exploding cell walls, but in humans this is more rare. https://demystifyingscience.com/blog/2020/3/28/how-do-viruses-hurt-you
    1
  20868.  @emilytaylor468  Absolutely. My point though is that is the body's OVERREACTION which causes damage and death. Most people's immune systems cope very well but in a minority of cases the response is too great or poorly managed due to debility. It is this which causes harm. Prevention really is better than cure and if viruses can be discouraged from reproducing in the first place it is a safer way of dealing with them.
    1
  20869. How very middle-class!
    1
  20870.  @jasperchance3382  No. Just for people who have the sense not to swallow Western propaganda.
    1
  20871.  @timrider1224  But it is true - for the most part. Trump know full well this dreadful war was engineered by his predecessors for financial gain, and that Zelensky was merely their instrument in this endeavour.
    1
  20872.  @timrider1224  It was. Trump knows what his predecessors were up to.
    1
  20873. Back to Plan A then, two assassination attempts having failed.
    1
  20874.  @petestobbs5844  Who were carrying what and who to?
    1
  20875.  @annenunney9907  The Jews were there first. And a large proportion of the Arabs living there are descendants of those who arrived in the wake of Zionist improvements. Palestine has never been a country. Israel is.
    1
  20876.  @annenunney9907  Or for Islamist crazies to stop hiding behind civilians.
    1
  20877. It doesn't matter if the Russians take the city or not - Ukraine will be forced to waste its dwindling resources on trying to stop them.
    1
  20878. Mere petulance, really.
    1
  20879.  @leftrightandcentre833  I agree wholeheartedly. Objective assessment is everything.
    1
  20880. The rioters were Democrats - many of them from out of town.
    1
  20881.  @Poetryandthings  If the investigation was fair, objective and unprejudiced, then sure. But it isn't. It's just the latest hysterical attempt by the Democrats to create a false narrative.
    1
  20882.  @robertirvine7938  What traitor? Trump has done nothing but defend his country against the forces of evil.
    1
  20883.  @SaveAmerica492  The Democrats and the media have spent the past six years or so brainwashing you into this belief because he threatens their existence. Where is the evidence though? What are the facts? Try to think for yourself for once instead of swallowing propaganda.
    1
  20884.  @frankkobold  No.
    1
  20885.  @arturobianco848  It's really the use of the word "liar" that is forbidden. If you can imply that someone is lying without using the word, that's the gentlemanly (or ladylike) way of setting about it. Back in the day calling someone a liar would have meant they were honour bound to challenge you to a duel in response. You can't call an MP drunk either. But you can imply it.
    1
  20886.  @arturobianco848  Although the use of the word "liar" may no longer lead to actual bloodshed, it would certainly lead to a degeneration of standards of debate. The Chamber would end up being even more of an adolescent rough-house than it already is. "You're a LIAR!" "I'm not. You are! So there!" And so on.
    1
  20887.  @bruce1049  The trouble is that life is not as black and white as you imagine. The truth is an elusive commodity and to pretend to be able to define it is an act of great presumption. This is why we have debates: to arrive at some roughly agreed version of reality. Start slagging people off and the whole thing degenerates into chaos - which is how wars start apart from anything else.
    1
  20888.  @bruce1049  Our system is the foundation stone of modern democracy and should only be messed with after the most profound consideration. The IRISH?? One of the most corrupt nations in Europe. Hardly a recommendation.
    1
  20889.  @bruce1049  Scandal and politics are inextricably linked, whatever the system. It probably has something to with the character of the people who go in for it. An institution which has evolved over the passage of centuries will inevitably be superior to one which has been devised by a committee.
    1
  20890.  @DavidMoxham957  The trouble is a lie has to be proved - and some form of tribunal would be needed for this. It's not the sort of thing you can vote on or expect the Speaker to pass judgement on. Anyway, telling lies is part of politics. Johnson's trouble is he overdoes it a bit. It comes of being a journalist: a profession in which respect for the truth is generally an obstacle to success.
    1
  20891.  @DavidMoxham957  They are removed from within their own party structures if they go too far. Legislation would be a nightmare. Johnson is nothing new. Disraeli and Lloyd George were both notorious liars - among others - and lies can often serve the public interest more than the truth. After all, Napoleon said that history is just the lies we agree upon. The truth is the province of philosophers and even they find it impossible to define what it is.
    1
  20892. A dozen or so dead doesn't sound much like genocide to me.
    1
  20893. Is there any evidence that Johnson has blamed BME people for the epidemic? All I can find is quotes from one Tory MP who appears to suggest that crowding people together in sweatshops is not a good idea. The fact that most of these people are of Pakistani or Bengladeshi origin is irrelevant - other than the fact that their ethnicity makes them more likely to die of the disease. .
    1
  20894. jack meoff Can you give us the location of this war room? Some of us are drawing up a list of targets to picket and possibly... well let's leave it there for now.
    1
  20895. You should concentrate your serious mind on working out the huge gap between infections and deaths compared with the previous waves and considering the implications of this.
    1
  20896.  @AnotherPointOfView944  This doesn't exactly answer my question, does it? Perhaps it is you who needs help.
    1
  20897.  @nedmoulders4814  Because it's based on a false premise?
    1
  20898. Has no-one ever heard of atrocity propaganda? The allegations may be partially true but the whole package needs treating with suspicion. Ukraine has much to gain from stories like this. Nonetheless it remains a fact that a great many atrocities have been committed in this war - by both sides. (And I mean the war that has been going on for eight years, not just the current escalation.)
    1
  20899.  @twmbwen1402  Who knows? It's scarcely ever been tried.
    1
  20900.  @twmbwen1402  He is. Very, very much so.
    1
  20901.  @twmbwen1402  Because he is an idiot. He was supposed to be the frontman for Ukrainian oligarch Ifor Kolomoisky but, being an actor, he has allowed the role to take him over and plunged his country into a disastrous war the ramifications of which will bring Europe close to economic ruin. As for Putin, he has patiently held off for twenty years while America and its NATO vassals have attempted to destroy and humiliate his country. "International law" is just a device for protecting American hegemony and the concept of a "sovereign state" is an equally artificial construct. The bombardment of Ukraine is not primary designed to harm civilians. As with exactly similar bombardments carried out by the US and its allies from Germany to Iraq it is designed to limit the movements and re-supply of enemy armed forces.
    1
  20902.  @twmbwen1402  You are the victim of a series of myths. Putin's first military act consisted merely of helping foment the rebellions in Donbass back in 2014. Ukraine responded by sending in its army and Nazi paramilitaries to kill and torture separatists. NATO responded by financing, training and equipping a large professional army with the clear intention of using it to retake Donbass and Crimea. As for Crimea, to describe it as an "invasion" scarcely fits the bill. Crimea is predominantly Russian and the "invaders" were generally met with open arms. The army joined the Russian army practically as one. Since the annexation Putin has pumped billions into the area, making up for the neglect it has suffered at the hands of various anti-Russian governments based in Kiev. Crimea was only attached to Ukraine by the USSR as recently as 1954 for purely administrative and logistical reasons created by the Kerch Strait. Before that it had been Russian for more than 250 years. Before that it was Turkish. It is another myth to suppose that the times of "empirical" expansion have died out. America is continually attempting to expand its empire. Russia is not attempting imperial expansion, it is merely trying to protect its long-term investment in Ukraine from the depravations of US expansion. It is another myth to think of NATO as a purely defensive organisation. That is the sugar coating. It is, in fact, a cover for US aggrandisement, providing market places for the arms industry and the US military/industrial complex, as well as career opportunities for US general staff. Another myth is the lack of free speech in Russia. You can say more or less what you like, but physical acts of defiance and actual plots to overthrow the government are treated very harshly. Russia is a very volatile country, and anarchy is always only a few firebrands away. I suggest you might think about accessing the many YouTubers vlogging from Russia, both native Russians and Westerners who have moved there and find it preferable to the increasing chaos and decadence of Western society.
    1
  20903.  @twmbwen1402  I have had to rewrite and resubmit this reply, since I made the mistake of confessing to a certain allegation you made in your penultimate paragraph, and outlining my reasons for doing so. This is VERBOTEN! My post was deleted. And you think Russia practices censorship! Russia certainly suppresses media outlets which can cause disruption, but so too does Ukraine. I place little reliance on Russian state media, let alone "consume it with glee". There is no need to do so. Sensible and expert analysis is available from many sources. Americans include Professor John J Mearsheimer and Col Douglas Macgregor, while Indian outlets give far more detailed information than that provided by the frankly juvenile nonsense handed out for public consumption in the West. The Hindustan Times, Firstpoint and Amit Sengupta are worth a visit. Forgive me for saying so, but you do seemed to be trapped in a bit of an information bubble. As well as the above you might consider Patrick Lancaster for direct on-the-ground reportage of the conflict. He has been covering the war for eight years and is unquestionably pro-separatist, but has some stunning footage which has somehow escaped the censors. For day-by-day and entirely objective coverage of the war I recommend Defense Politics Asia. And then there are those ordinary, everyday YouTubers. Anna from Russia takes you shopping in the immense mall of her unpronounceable city in Siberia almost every day. That alone might broaden your outlook somewhat.
    1
  20904. You are being suckered - and so is everyone who has approved your comment.
    1
  20905.  @Kaesemesser0815  Unlike Zelensky who rules a happy and peaceful nation with none of its young men dead and not in any way in debt to America for the next hundred years.
    1
  20906. ​Zelensky gets his cut, don't worry!
    1
  20907. This must mean that roughly the same number of Ukrainians was killed. And killing Ukrainians was the main point of the exercise.
    1
  20908. Reform UK was initially set up as a private limited company, which meant that its members were essentially shareholders. However, in September 2024, Nigel Farage announced a significant change to the party's structure. Reform UK transitioned from a company limited by shares to a company limited by guarantee, making it member-owned. Under this new structure, members have more control over the party's policies and leadership. They can vote on policy motions, participate in leadership elections, and even trigger a no-confidence vote against the party leader if 50% of all members request it. This change aims to enhance transparency and ensure that the party is accountable to its members rather than a small group of shareholders.
    1
  20909.  @trevaudio  I'm afraid it you who has the wrong end of the stick. The transition from being shareholder-owned to member-owned has already happened with the legal position being that as described in my post. The members can vote Farage out and make their views on policy known at meetings.
    1
  20910.  @kimwit1307  I think you are possibly being a little paranoid. The changes are incorporated in the current constitution, which is, I believe, a legal document. Why the alteration in status from company limited by shareholder to one limited by membership does not show up on the Companies House website I cannot say. But I don't think it matters. Reform seems to me to be as democratically constituted as any other political party. (I am not a member, by the way.)
    1
  20911.  @kimwit1307  I think this probably applies to most politicians!
    1
  20912.  @kimwit1307  There's plenty of competition!
    1
  20913. You need help.
    1
  20914. Quite clearly, global warming having turned the Arctic into a near temperate zone, the cold weather has to go somewhere. Within ten years snow storms will devastate central America while Buffalo will swelter in temperatures of 100+ degrees on the depths of so-called winter.
    1
  20915.  @keithmiller1467  So is 90% of everything you've ever been told.
    1
  20916.  @emm_arr  Prove it.
    1
  20917.  @gmailvfone  That hardly enters into it. Soldiering in Britain has evolved down a different route.
    1
  20918.  @gmailvfone  Then you will know that the British Army places far greater emphasis on the safety of its personnel than was once the case. Russia does not. That was all I meant.
    1
  20919.  @captainswing4487  I don't think Trump is divisive at all. He scorns the falsehoods of the left as I do and is not afraid to do so. He appears relatively indifferent to re-election and seems generally content to watch the Democrats destroy themselves as they seem quite keen to do. I think it probable, however, that he has a few knock-out punches ready to throw when the election gets closer. The Green New Deal is a laughable product fit only for children. Democrats champion it to secure the votes of wooly-minded liberals in much the same way that they champion BLM in an attempt to secure their rapidly-diminishing black voter base. Both strategies will backfire I think as people realise that while a thing can look and feel great when it is just an idea it ain't so much fun when it starts to happen for real. The main thing wrong with America is that it is not Britain. As I say, if Trump can be sure of another four years he will get tough in his dealing with the problems that occur. Biden? I dread to think.
    1
  20920.  @captainswing4487  Concepts such as "systemic racism", "the patriarchy" , "gender pay gap", "intersectionality", "identity politics" and so on are not real things in the world. They are constructs brought into being by Marxist intellectuals over the past half century or so. They are empty shells, false categories, and the Left has to struggle constantly to find actual REAL things and incidents with which to fill these conceits. "Systemic racism" is a good example. There are simply insufficient examples of actual socially-ingrained racism existing at present to justify this category. So the poor Lefties have to delve into the past and end up throwing statues of perfectly respectable 18th century businessmen into rivers. That's the trouble with Socialism. It was conceived in the minds of people who weren't half as clever as they thought they were. Capitalism, for all its faults, is an evolved entity. Another problem for the Left is that Marxism needs an oppressed proletariat in order for the Revolution to begin. Since the real proletariat gave up on Marxism at about the same time as they stopped wearing clogs and flat caps this has left another gaping hole to be filled. Even black people are becoming increasingly reluctant to take on the job so once again the Left needs to blather on about the rights of people who are cross because they think they should have been born as the other sex and so on. These are are often very amusing colourful people, and make a good show at marches and demonstrations. I agree totally with you about social care and so on. It is the function of Socialists to prevent Tories from indulging in their time-honoured habits of grinding the faces of the poor into the dust. If Labour forgot all these other empty ideas - these falsehoods - and concentrated in this instead there is even a chance they might form a government some time in the distant future..
    1
  20921.  @captainswing4487  It's a deal.
    1
  20922.  @alanpattinson6211  Tell me the NAMES of these mysterious publications! Flick up through this stream and read my replies to James Gower if you want to assess my critical assessment, you pompous ass!
    1
  20923.  @howdareu964  Still bothered. But not so bothered as it would have been a few years ago.
    1
  20924.  @FrikInCasualMode  As one might have suspected, the possibility that Russia will keep control of these facilities under the new regime is far from unlikely. It would certainly explain Russia's apparent lack of enthusiasm in attempting to crush the rebellion.
    1
  20925.  @johnhankinson1929  No. Reuters News Agency.
    1
  20926.  @johnhankinson1929  I agree - but the evidence is substantial. Not only in the fact that the missiles keep coming but the uncovering of a network of Russian companies buying components under cover - millions of dollars worth. The sanctions are an utter failure, in this and also in other areas.
    1
  20927. They do it quite regularly. Trump is a choirboy compared to many of his predecessors.
    1
  20928. Truth in every word.
    1
  20929.  Ricardo Shillyshally  What terrorists? Ordinary men and women who have been disenfranchised. The protest was quite incredibly peaceful given the volatility of the situation. They even walked along the aisles of velvet ropes for chrissake! There are some suggestions that the few acts of vandalism and violence were carried out by Antifa provocateurs. I rather hope not for the acts , such as they were, were entirely justified. I especially likes the Viking and Sitting Bull on the dias and the guy with his feet up on Pelosi's desk. Terrorists!? Give me a break.
    1
  20930.  @donmab  Oh dear, this makes me so tired. No cases have been won or lost because no court has the courage or suicidal stupidity to take them on. Until the massive amount of allegation and evidence is addressed by a proper tribunal, the unrest will continue. At least 70 hours of sworn testimony has been placed before various state senate hearing from 100 or so of the 1,000 or so people who have come forward to say what they saw. In addition there is sworn testimony from cyber experts, former officers working for the CIA et al, who have explained how the computer frauds were carried out. Here are seven hours or so of it which I happen to have about my person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw
    1
  20931.  @anglonorse2943  Nonsense. The courts declined to even hear the cases, and quite sensibly too. Various technicalities were cited, that is all. The evidence remains, around 70 hours of it presented to various state senate hearings. Here are seven hours of it from Georgia. Make of it what you will but do you not think these allegations should be objectively judged? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRCXUNOwOjw
    1
  20932.  @roryspicer  Compared with excesses of BLM and Antifa this was quite incredibly peaceful. The woman who died was shot by police -apparently accidentally. I can't help regretting she was not black. We could have had some proper riots then and be thought wonderful and warm-hearted for doing it. I wish I had been there.
    1
  20933.  @anglonorse2943  Tried poking your nose out of your bubble any time?
    1
  20934.  @anglonorse2943  What is the truth? One truth is that around 1,000 people have come forward to swear affidavits concerning a wide variety of abuses of the electoral process, many of them apparently deliberately fraudulent. Similarly, cyber fraud experts and mathematicians have offered evidence suggesting widespread abuse of counting machines. None of this has been allowed to be assessed, other than by individual states who are in some cases doing their best to right the wrongs which took place on their turf. This is not a conspiracy theory. It's a full-blown conspiracy and the truth will never be known until it is unravelled.
    1
  20935.  @maximusvaliant8597  You don't have to listen Russian propaganda to understand that a condition of perpetual war has been a cornerstone of the US economy for at least 80 years.
    1
  20936. Australican - Have you looked at any of the videos though? Obviously anyone who opposes carbonophobe orthodoxy is subject to propaganda attacks by the establishment. He weathers (ha) them very well and is always ready to apologise for any mistakes he makes. In fact it was his and 1000frolly Phd's persecution by the climate crisis mafia that led me to assess their views in the first place. I suggest you at least try to do the same. You must surely not be afraid of listening to them. They are certainly not frauds, whereas a great many climate crisis champions -from Al Gore and Michael Mann onwards - very provably are.
    1
  20937. Robert -You are a horrible ignorant shit. Nothing of what you say has anything to do with carbon dioxide.
    1
  20938. God, Jews are so damned CLEVER!
    1
  20939. And what if exactly the reverse happens?
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  20940. @ I meant actually what happens if Trump's revolution turns into a resounding success - as I believe it well might.
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  20941. It is rumoured that later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire. So far, Russia has refrained from massive bombing or missile attacks, nuclear or otherwise. That may well now change. The Russians seem to care very little how many troops or how much materiel they lose on the ground - but they are far from stupid. They are not playing the role we have assigned to them. Their current losses are entirely predictable and must have been anticipated - as must the response.
    1
  20942.  @Music-oi2nf  No. In a word.
    1
  20943.  @altheogre  The Nazi Party was elected to power by a free democratic vote.
    1
  20944.  @altheogre  Wasn't Hitler democratically elected?
    1
  20945.  @altheogre  The Nazi Party gained 43.9% of the votes in the election immediately prior to Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. The Labour Party gained 33.7% of the vote in the recent election prior to Keir Starmer's appointment as Prime Minister.
    1
  20946.  @petyrkowalski9887  All of which would certainly advance the cause of world peace if you think about it.
    1
  20947. Zelensky's job was to wrest control of mineral-rich Donbass away from the Russians and hand it over to Western interests. He has failed, and he knows it. He must be wondering if his fate will be a well-heeled retirement - or something rather worse.
    1
  20948.  Danny M  You got me there! Absolutely right of course. Racism built into the system by the left.
    1
  20949.  Danny M  You got me there! Racism built into the system by the left!
    1
  20950. Excellent news for NATO moneyspinners, thriving on the Putin industry.
    1
  20951. Nothing like. NATO countries have spent billions creating and training a new Ukrainian army since 2014. The US did nothing to help the allies in World War II until they realised to do so was a business opportunity.
    1
  20952. Why would Vance spoil his holiday by dealing with a bunch of brainwashed lefty morons?
    1
  20953. Trump is making up for lost time. The collapse of the Soviet Union should have led to a rapprochement with the new Russia - instead the West preferred to treat it as an enemy, with dire results.
    1
  20954. Only among idiots.
    1
  20955.  @MT-eb2dx  It's a very, very long shot. The Russians are within minutes of taking Mariupol, which was always their prime objective.
    1
  20956.  @MT-eb2dx  The city is far from completely destroyed, and the Ukrainians must bear their share or responsibility for preventing civilian evacuations and firing on areas taken by the Russians and the DPR which they knew still contained civilians.
    1
  20957.  @iandawson9945  In war, it is wise to be careful of the bloody obvious.
    1
  20958.  @MT-eb2dx  I really can't see that happening. There is every chance Russia will win the economic battle, as well as the hot one. We will just have to wait and see.
    1
  20959.  @MT-eb2dx  Not so easy as advertised. Russia has accumulated huge supplies of gold and the dollar grows weaker by the day. Only 11 of the G20 countries have agreed to sanctions and most of the other countries in the world will be ready indeed very keen to deal with the Russians. They will be able to buy and sell elsewhere, added to which they have a strong and sufficient internal economy. They can feed and shelter themselves indefinitely without importing anything from outside. They have pegged the rouble to gold, an unprecedented move which even threatens the status of the dollar as the world reserve currency. As with the war in Ukraine, it could go either way. In both cases though I don't think we in the West realise how much America and its allies have come to be disliked in other parts of the world. Emerging economies in South America and the Pacific rim etc are secretly cheering Russia on. This could backfire bigtime.
    1
  20960.  @JP-sm4cs  Except we don't. Artic sea ice lessens and increases according to established cycles. "Records" which climate change freaks cite mean records they have cherry-picked and even altered. They were no proper records kept in the 1920's but there were widespread reports of rapidly diminishing sea ice then.
    1
  20961.  @JP-sm4cs  Of course sea ice comes in several forms. No-one is denying that. We are not losing glacial ice, which isn't sea ice anyway but impacted snow that has travelled along glaciers until it reaches the sea. The front sections then "calve" into the ocean due to the pressure of the impacted ice behind them. This ice is constantly replenished by winter snowfalls which remain more of less totally constant throughout time, depositing many miliions of tons each year. Sea ice is subject to variations created by wind and ocean currents, some of which circle the pole at incredibly slow rates. The one which affects sea ice coverage most takes 99 years to complete the circuit. I am not a fossil industry shill by the way. I am a highly developed Russian bot on permanent loan to the Koch Brothers. What did you say your degree was in again?
    1
  20962.  @tomasbarrett7517  So it is alleged. What is actually happening is that glaciers calve at different rates, Whenever a particularly large chunk breaks off this is heralded as evidence of loss of mass. Which it is. However this loss of mass is replenished over time as snow falls inland, the weight of which eventually pushes the leading edge of the glacier to its original position. Snowfall in both the Arctic and the Antarctic remains fairly constant year by year, as far as I am aware, and indeed has increased in recent years. None of this is of any consequence anyway. No matter how much climate warming fanatics cherry pick data these are very minor alterations to the picture. Land ice on both continents is miles thick in places and has been there for millions of years.
    1
  20963.  @tiramisumochi4787  Well all data has to be selective when there is so much of it. It's preferable to stick to the known facts wherever possible though. In this instance temperature records which do not fit in with the climate change narrative are dismissed as being mistaken. Such as the highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska, namely 100f in Yukon in February 1900 as I recall. What cannot be denied is that land ice in Greenland and Antarctica is miles thick in places and that for it to reduce in volume in any substantial way it would have to be subject to a constant huge rise in temperature for several centuries. As for glaciers, they of course consist of impacted frozen snow and ad long as snow keeps falling they will keep growing and only reduce very slightly and temporarily in size when icebergs calve from their ends.
    1
  20964.  @tomasbarrett7517  There is no doubt that an impressive volume of material is produced on these topics every year, but the fact that there is a lot of it doesn't make it any more true. The data is selected to support a narrative, not encountered in the real world and objective conclusions drawn from it. Articles such as these have been published for decades with no actual consequence in the real world ever becoming visible.
    1
  20965.  @tomasbarrett7517  You really have to be joking! A glacier moves along a fissure in the ice sheet which mirrors a fissure in the land mass below it. The glacier is frozen. It exists in temperatures many degrees below freezing. It cannot melt. The only loss of volume it can experience is when its downstream extremity meets the open sea and is pushed into it by the bulk of frozen snow behind it. As for the ice sheet that of course also exists in temperatures many degrees below freezing. For it to melt worldwide temperatures would have to increase to such an extent that we would all be fried to a frazzle before the ice sheet even lost millimetre in thickness.
    1
  20966.  @tomasbarrett7517  I'm not even going to bother to look. I have seen this kind of thing many times before. Do you know at which seasons of the year these photographs were taken? What proportion of the glaciers in these continents do the examples represent? Do you consider these examples present evidence of global warming, or could they be localised events?
    1
  20967.  @tomasbarrett7517  So the air and sea temperatures in the arctic and Antarctic are above freezing now are they? When did this happen? And the inland glaciers exist in some corner of the world where glaciers melt? We are talking about Pakistan I suppose, where some glaciers do reduce in size in the summer. But there is no summer worth the name in Antarctica or central Greenland..
    1
  20968.  @tomasbarrett7517  Can it?
    1
  20969.  @tomasbarrett7517  You do realise don't you that glaciers have been melting and reforming forever, and have been recorded as doing so ever since the1850's? There was a particularly warm spell in the 1920's when the situation in the Arctic was very similar to that of today. I don't dispute climate change. It is, however, usually localised and the result of warm or cold water being carried from place to place due to ocean currents. And yes of course temperatures in both polar areas do rise briefly in the summer - although not enough or long enough to make any impact on the ice mass. The information you have, even if accurate, can in no way be extrapolated to indicate a long term trend, however. We have only observed the world in any detail for a couple of hundred years which is as nothing in terms of climate history. Proxy data is unreliable and can be interpreted to indicate almost anything you like. This is my quarrel with climate alarmism. It is essentially myopic. It's face is pressed close to the canvas and it sees only dots and squiggles of paint. We need to stand back to see the whole picture. I'm afraid too that there is just far too much money and effort invested in the AGW industry for anything resembling scientific objectivity to be achieved any longer
    1
  20970.  @ruthwhall3020  Nonsense. The rouble is strengthening as measures are taken to counteract sanctions etc. It's value has risen sharply in the past three months. It must also be remembered that its value against the value of the dollar is one that is cited, and the dollar is now in a very vulnerable position with a major crash expected before very long.
    1
  20971.  @JuliusFawcett  So what? What criteria are used? Considering he immense pressure it has been put under the rouble has shown remarkable resilience. It is the dollar which is overstretched and which many economists believe is due for a major collapse, removing it from its position as the currency against which the value of other currencies are measured.
    1
  20972.  @JuliusFawcett  Because it is being artificially supported by Government intervention. Much like the rouble, in fact.
    1
  20973.  @JuliusFawcett  Not to same degree - but then the US is not under direct fiscal attack. Not yet anyway.
    1
  20974.  @JuliusFawcett  There will be no post oil global economy for at least 200 years. May I remind you also that Russia partners both China and India as founder members of the BRICS groups of nations, dedicated to removing the dollar as the prime international currency.
    1
  20975. But Britain IS a police state - a pretty pathetic one, but that can change quickly enough.
    1
  20976.  @thomasmoore1499  As I said, it's a pretty pathetic police state, but the principle now seems to be well established that the police can be used as an instrument of the state to repress and direct opinions, rather than simply protect citizens against criminals.
    1
  20977. This trial has no integrity to ruin.
    1
  20978.  @chrismcg69  The terms are synonymous I'm afraid. A nation run by compulsive tellers of truth would swiftly be trampled into the dust.
    1
  20979.  @indricotherium4802  And the current rank and file dissatisfaction is the result of disappointment in his performance.
    1
  20980.  @ravenking1953  May your virtues be forever rewarded. Don't go into politics though.
    1
  20981. The EU helped start this terrible war and is now helping to extend it. Thank God Britain got out.
    1
  20982. The US is about to get its balls crushed.
    1
  20983. He didn't actually say "bankers" did he? God what a bunch of lying creeps the MSM lefties are!! Entrepreneurs and innovators usually have to fight like crazy to get bankers on board. Crap journalism yet again Independent! It it intentional deceit or are you just pathetically useless at your job?
    1
  20984. No need to worry! The FBI will fix it for you guys, just like last time!
    1
  20985. YouTube has suddenly become one of the biggest offenders. Its new algorithm rejects comments according to some bizarre criteria which no mere mortal can understand.
    1
  20986. Are you sure?
    1
  20987.  @stephenhill545  Not scared as much as cautious, I think. It would have put SA, one of Russia's oldest allies, in a difficult position. This thing about deporting children is utterly absurd, by the way. They were sent to Russia by their parents in order to escape the war zone. The parents have to pretend they were kidnapped otherwise they would be punished as collaborators.
    1
  20988. Russia is only ever a hairsbreadth from anarchy Putin has been enormously successful in holding it together. If he is replaced someone even tougher and less principled will quickly emerge to take the helm.
    1
  20989. He seems to divide opinion as much as Trump. He has supporters. Who are they I wonder?
    1
  20990. For someone who cannot think long-term he has done remarkably well in governing Russia for more than twenty years, don't you think?
    1
  20991.  @rogerphelps9939  Several million "Ukrainians" are in fact Russians and many have now returned there to escape the war. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine was an artificial construct, created by Russian Bolsheviks, and has no relation to any country of Ukraine, past or present. Yet its boundaries are the boundaries of the Ukraine you imagine to be a nation.
    1
  20992.  @pgr3290  Do you use a crystal ball or consult the livers of sacrificed goats?
    1
  20993.  @pgr3290  Russia doesn't want Kiev. It doesn't want anything West of the Dnieper. It just wants the bits of Russia which were included mistakenly in the new country of Ukraine when it was created in 1991.
    1
  20994.  @davidwright5094  I'd like to see that. I expect the version you may have seen edits out the bit that begins "but...."
    1
  20995.  @pgr3290  I know enough to know that making absurd comparisons with past situations is a sign of mental weakness. The enormous differences between the countries and personalities involved vastly outweigh any spurious similarities.
    1
  20996.  @pgr3290  Putin did not sign these agreements, his predecessors did. I am sure I know a very great more history than you do, since all people like you can do us to regurgitate out the tiny little chunks of it which have been used to condition your brains into acceptance of a great evil.
    1
  20997.  @pgr3290  Putin didn't sign them, his predecessor did. In any case no treaty lasts forever and blind adherence to them is a primary cause of wars. World War II would not have happened without the Treaty of Versailles which followed World War I, and World War I would not have happened without earlier treaties, such as the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 or the Entente Cordiale of 1904. In this case this present war would not have happened without the Budapest Accords, which is what I presume you refer to. It was a particularly bad treaty, since it set the boundaries of the newly-created country of Ukraine on the same footprint as those of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which was not a country but simply an administrative area of the Soviet Union, the boundaries of which were set originally by the Russian Bolsheviks post 1917, and later amended by Stalin and Krushchev. The artificiality of this arrangement can be seen as a prime cause of the present conflict.
    1
  20998.  @pgr3290  A study of history will show that adhering to outdated treaties is a principal cause of wars. World War II happened in large part due to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which came after the end of World War I. World War I itself was partially caused by adherence to earlier treaties, such as the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 and the Entente Cordiale of 1904. The present conflict is due in part to constant reference to the Budapest Accords of 1994 - to which I assume you refer - these, along with Ukraine's original independence provisions three years earlier can be seen as contributing largely to the tensions which currently exist. Putin, of course, was not in power when these documents were signed and cannot really be blamed for wishing to escape from their constraints.
    1
  20999.  @pgr3290  I really would like some evidence of this - but in any case even if true he has obviously now had reason to change his mind. Or he may possibly have said it to reassure the Ukrainians, as when he said he would not invade - then did. Treaties and boundaries are not engraved in stone anyway. Treaties are often more trouble than they are worth. The Treaty of Versailles helped cause World War II and treaties such as the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 and the Entente Cordiale of 1904 were contributing factors in causing World War I. There can be no doubt that the inadequacies of Ukraine's original independence treaty and the equal failings of the Budapest Accords have contributed greatly to the present conflict. Putin tried for 20 years to find peaceful means of circumventing their anomalies and would almost certainly have succeeded had it not been for Western interference. The mistake has been, I think, for the new country of Ukraine to be given the same boundaries as the former SSR of Ukraine which was not a "country" in any true sense of the word. It was an area of the Soviet Union defined originally by the Russian Bolsheviks and altered subsequently by Stalin and Krushchev. It is a divided community where, broadly speaking, many of those in the Eastern part still retain loyalty to Russia and do not share the desire to become allies of Europe and America.
    1
  21000.  @pgr3290  Even if he did (and I still require proof) he has every right to change his mind as circumstances change. Treaties and boundaries are not engraved in stone. The new country of Ukraine can been regarded as anomalous in many respects since its boundaries are simply imposed on those of the former SSR of Ukraine, which was a country a name only but in fact an administrative unit of the Soviet Union.
    1
  21001.  @pgr3290  As I said earlier, treaties are not engraved in stone and once they outlive their usefulness they are positively dangerous. Administrations change and circumstances change and new arrangements must be made. All serious attempts to resolve the situation in Eastern Ukraine, including the Minsk Accords, have failed - largely because Western interests wish to gain access to the vast mineral wealth of the area. It is this greed which has force Putin into the grim necessity of war.
    1
  21002.  @davidwright5094  There is nothing at all unusual or remarkable in political leaders overturning or ignoring arrangements made by their predecessors. It happens all the time.
    1
  21003.  @davidwright5094  I'm sorry. I find this utterly unintelligible. Most of the time most people agree or agree to differ. Sometimes. however, a disagreement becomes so pressing that direct action has to be taken. That is what has happened here.
    1
  21004.  @davidwright5094  Putin has been placed in a very difficult position. Essentially he has decided that his country will remain as independent as possible and still hold a significant place in the world, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has been forced into many difficult situations due to this stance and, in my view, has responded to them pragmatically. If this has involved a certain amount of deviousness then this is hardly surprising. In the present instance he has been left with the consequences of a number of cunningly devised documents, cunningly devised by a people who have been cunningly devising documents ever since they were used to help them commit genocide in the country they had invaded. He would very much have preferred it, I am sure, if Ukraine had abided by the central precepts of the Minsk Accords and actually set about finding a way of granting regional autonomy to the two Donbass republics. The war which is now taking place is taking place where it is - rather than in territory occupied by the separatists - because Putin has been clever enough in his dealings to make sure this is so.
    1
  21005.  @davidwright5094  I repeat: every nation abandons treaties and Putin's rejection of the treaties which defined the boundaries of the new country of Ukraine is in no way exceptional.
    1
  21006.  @billybonds4449  Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?
    1
  21007. @ No. Just managed to escape the conditioning.
    1
  21008. This is the guy who made up the anti-Trump Russiagate story, you realise.
    1
  21009. The only way Europe is going to remove the Russian threat is by making treaties with it - economic treaties which make it simply even less worthwhile for Russia to invade than it is at present.
    1
  21010. A myth.
    1
  21011. Where do you stand on a united Ireland?
    1
  21012. Read the small print.
    1
  21013.  @devorah711  The Internet will tell you you can use the Internet to check if you postal vote has been registered. If it hasn't you can vote in person. That;s all Trump was saying and it is entirely wrong to say he was encouraging a felony. Recent events have proved that the Democrat party has lost all moral compass and that elements within it will have no compunction in interfering with postal voting, which is easily done in a number of ways. Your decision to vote in person is therefore to be commended.
    1
  21014.  @devorah711  Unfortunately the majority of cases you mention are clear examples of the Democrat-controlled deep state attacking Trump via malicious prosecutions of his associates, many of whom are of course very minor players and others of whom are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. They can't get the man himself, so they snipe at people on the edges. Four years of trying to expose a major scandal and at the end of the day they have bagged nothing but a few loyalists doing their best to protect their leader against vicious and unprincipled attacks. It is the Democrats who have lost all pretensions to morality. Their use of elements within the intelligence community to cheat and lie have backfired. Their current strategy of allying themselves with Marxist extremists to foment anarchy and rebellion have also misfired. The constant procession of lies and misinformation coming from the leftist MSM is being daily exposed. The Democrats know they can only hope to regain power through lies and deceit - something which is obvious to any objective observer.
    1
  21015.  @devorah711  Silly faces is all you've got then? What a child you are.
    1
  21016.  @MultiAxisDiscipline  But he regretfully acknowledges that Ukraine must be allowed to go its own way - but that it can't take Donbass and Crimea with it.
    1
  21017.  @patrickkelly6691  This, if it happened at all, was purely to encourage the raw troops in the belief that they were in for an easy ride. They weren't. They were there to be sacrificed in order to wear down Ukraine's army ready for the REAL war, which is taking place right now, and which Russia is winning.
    1
  21018.  @stevesandgroper3241  Not only have you taken a quote out of context, but you have re-interpreted it to fit your own prejudices. And you have re-interpreted it incorrectly. While I am sure that Putin would very much prefer for Ukraine to have the same relationship with Russia as Belarus he acknowledges this is no longer possible - but the Ukraine which becomes independent must be the Ukraine which existed before Russia created the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. This, I think, summarises his position more clearly. "You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked. In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people's views."
    1
  21019.  @stevesandgroper3241  But what is meant by Ukraine? I'm sure Putin would very much prefer for Ukraine as a whole to enjoy the same relationship with Russia as Belarus - but he is not fighting this war to achieve this. "You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked. In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people's views." From the same essay. He is telling Ukraine and the world that Russia keeps Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  21020.  @stevesandgroper3241  Putin : "You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked. In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people's views." From the same essay. Translation: You can't have Crimea and Donbass.
    1
  21021.  @stevesandgroper3241  Putin: "You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked. In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people's views." From the same essay.
    1
  21022.  @stevesandgroper3241  You have taken a quote out of context and twisted it to suit your own prejudices. In the same essay Putin says that Ukraine is welcome to establish a state on its own terms but questions the boundaries of that state, insisting that it should not be the state created by Bolshevik Russia, but a smaller pre-1922 entity. In other words he is fighting not to re-conquer Ukraine, but to ensure that Ukraine does not take parts of Russia with it. I have included the whole quote in another post, but YouTube's fascist algorithm keeps deleting it.
    1
  21023.  @stevesandgroper3241  He is right in a sense - but that is not the point. The point is that this war is not being fought in order to recreate history, but to insist that certain historical facts are respected in a modern context. As my original post stated, and as clearly confirmed by Putin's own statements, the objectives of this war are not to conquer Ukraine , but to ensure that the newly-created country of Ukraine should not include parts of Russia appended on to it by Russia in Soviet times. These objectives are being met - but at a terrible and ultimately needless cost.
    1
  21024.  @nikhilthomas19  And they would have come to the table if the West hadn't interfered. They were already sitting at it when Boris Johnson arrived with his mysterious offer.
    1
  21025.  @samT1227  Then you thought wrong. That's just childish Western propaganda - believed only by children of all ages.
    1
  21026.  @MultiAxisDiscipline  You make Putin's case quite well. The territory currently called "Ukraine" was created by the USSR and with the dissolution of that body the affiliations, conditions or liabilities created by that failed state are no longer relevant or legally binding. This means that Ukraine, in its present form, does not exist and that it should return to the borders in existence prior to its creation by the USSR, and those borders do not include Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  21027.  @samT1227  You thought wrong.
    1
  21028.  @samT1227  He never said any such thing. It's a complete fairytale.
    1
  21029.  @fir3drag0n1984  what was the furer and what does it have to do with ANYTHING. Grow up.
    1
  21030. He is.
    1
  21031. Arcarsenal Needs some very serious editing - otherwise not bad. Word of warning: detailed predictions should be avoided. Keep them more vague so when they don't come true you can wriggle out more easily.
    1
  21032.  @gaoxiaen1  Have you looked at a map recently?
    1
  21033.  @gaoxiaen1  There are some very objective map-watchers out there, sifting claims from both sides. It's quite clear that Russia is breaking through Ukraine's defences and advancing towards the border in Donbass.
    1
  21034. May I congratulate this channel on the very high standard of its propaganda? The bigger the lie the better, as another Joe used to say.
    1
  21035.  @blazednlovinit  The new YouTube algorithm is insane, if not downright fascist. And you're quite right. Restricting freedom of speech implies a weakness of position. Unfortunately, those who now rule us from afar have no shame in crushing any opposition. Revolution is needed.
    1
  21036. What a state this country is in when the leaders of both main political parties are such total wankers as these two.
    1
  21037. But where is Ukraine? What is Ukraine ? At the moment it is a country arbitarily created in the borders of the former semi autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This was an entity created for the administrative and geographical convenience of the Soviet Union - without these functions it is an anomaly. The area to the West of the Dnieper can have some claim to a separate historical identity - and Russia acknowledges this. Crimea and much of the land to the south and east cannot be so categorised. They exist as parts of modern Ukraine solely because they were appended to the Soviet republic. They have a very high proportion of Russian inhabitants and close economic ties with Russia. They are also extremely rich in minerals and as long as these resources continued to be channeled through Russia the situation remained relatively stable. Sadly, however, America and other Western entities have schemed to exploit these resources and this dreadful, dreadful war is a direct consequence of this takeover bid . To imagine that modern Ukraine is an oppressed and united country fighting for freedom and democracy is a somewhat naive view, to say the least.
    1
  21038.  @billmoretz8718  That's my point. That agreement signed in the chaos of the collapse of the USSR did not reflect the true historic , ethnic, geographical and economic realities of the situation . The same applies to the intertwined histories of Russia and Ukraine which largely ignored the arid steppes to the East of the Dnieper - which having been found to be rich in valuable minerals are now at the centre of this bloody dispute.
    1
  21039. @mattcarolan90210 I can so argue for the simple reason that Ukraine was one the most corrupt countries in the world at the time and couldn't conduct a free and fair election for love or money. Apart from that, how can you possibly conduct an election concerning borders when the borders containing the electorate are the main point at issue?
    1
  21040. @mattcarolan90210 Broadly speaking that's exactly what I'm saying - apart from the fact that conducting fair elections in corrupt police states is impossible and that, in any case, democracy doesn't work in situations where you have high concentrations of a distinct minority interest in specific areas. Playing lip service to nationalism was one of the ways the Soviet leadership tried to hold the whole thing together. It has now backfired badly. Redress was possible had Kiev and .Moscow been left to sort things out between themselves - but that went down the tubes once Western interests set their sights on all that lovely oil ,gas, steel and rare earth minerals.
    1
  21041.  @billmoretz8718  They weren't THEIR weapons they were Soviet (ie Russian) weapons stationed there. They could only be fired on orders from Moscow (The idea that these weapons could be replaced by NATO weapons a little over 30 years later is one of the reasons Russia is somewhat peeved of course.)
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  21042.  @billmoretz8718  It can certainly try. Organising a coup to replace a Russian-leaning President with a Western leaning one and consorting with a Ukrainian oligarch to appoint a charismatic puppet to lead the country into a needless war are just two examples. The deliberate manipulation of the Minsk Accords is another.
    1
  21043.  @nudisco7882  Russia still acknowledges Ukraine 'sovereignty' - but only to the extent that Crimea and Donbass are not included in it. As I said previously, it is Western greed for mineral resources and America's expansionist war-based economy which has upset the balance of power here. The good ole US of A has been doing this kind of thing ever since it first set one redskin tribe against another, made a treaty with the winner , broke it, then claimed the redskins had broken it and then used this as an excuse to take all their land.
    1
  21044.  @hazyhayley7488  Absolutely! They should complain toTripAdvisor.
    1
  21045. Naah. Better spending it giving arms to Ukraine and providing free housing and trips to the seaside for illegal immigrants.
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  21046. You are silly.
    1
  21047. @ Do you not consider that the Russian Federation is an entirely different animal to the Soviet Union? It certainly seems that way to me.
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  21048. @ Russia is no different to any other country in this regard. It has to hold on to what it's got - and that's all it is in a position to do. Ukraine - like Chechnya and Georgia -remain under Russian influence. This is entirely different to conquering countries which have no such historic alliance.
    1
  21049. This is such an obvious election rigging stitch-up I'm astonished anyone can take it seriously.
    1
  21050. This is so very off target. What is it with you TDS suffers? Your brains seem to have been fried. Compared with Biden and the other long-term occupants of the Washington swamp Donald Trump is a choirboy. The Capitol Hill demo was a genuine expression of rage by people who feel they have been disenfranchised. Democracy in the US has been tottering towards the grave for decades. The 2020 election may have killed it off entirely. The evidence of fraud may be circumstantial, but there are tons and tons of it . The US is on the precipice of civil war. Donald Trump may be a very unlikely hero but he is the only thing that stands between America and Armageddon at the moment.
    1
  21051.  @denisbainbridge4813  What then is his strategy to defeat the virus? Wearing two or three magic masks instead of one? Until the coming of Covid Trump's presidency was undoubtedly one of most successful for decades. The economy was booming, unemployment down to record levels and the US involvement in worldwide conflicts reduced to a minimum. He brokered peace accords in the Middle East and was the only President in living memory not to actually START a war of some kind. And he really was on his way to reducing the widespread corruption which disfigures US politics. He was draining the swamp, but the swamp creatures have now bitten back: lying and cheating to rid themselves of the danger in their midst.
    1
  21052. A senile racist and a not-very-black woman who has sent thousands of African-American to work as slaves in jails. Sounds like a dream ticket - for Donald Trump that is!
    1
  21053. And a good thing too.
    1
  21054. Under a fanatical Islamist, US-backed theocracy? Yeah, sure.
    1
  21055. Exactly.
    1
  21056.  @mongoliandude  I have never been divorced by a wife. What makes you think I have?
    1
  21057.  @noncalamari  Unlike Kevin (apparently) I believe the vaccines have an important role to play. But they are inefficient and short-lived and not to be heavily relied upon. In the UK more than 65% of patients in intensive care and more than 85% of those who fie are fully vaccinated. There are similar figures in other European countries. The figures for the US are not readily available as far as I can see. Which is worrying.
    1
  21058.  @Brendon-e3o  In a Pickwickian sense.
    1
  21059. @ In a Pickwickian sense.
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  21060.  @DonFahquidmi  No. Its right to reclaim territory stolen from it by a series of bad treaties.
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  21061.  @DonFahquidmi  In order to draw out the Ukrainians from their positions on the Donbass border and destroy them in their own territory. Russia's peace proposals having been rejected, war was inevitable. This way it could take place in the main body of Ukraine instead of in Russian controlled Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  21062.  @davebaxter6850  I was given to Ukraine when Ukraine was not a country but merely a part of the Soviet Union. It was not given out of kindness but simply because it was thought to be easier to administer that way.
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  21063. This is a clear illustration of what happens when governments try to hold an epidemic back with restrictions which are impossible to maintain.The disease breaks through in a killer flood. We all need to learn from this. Masks and lockdowns etc kill more people than they save.
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  21064.  @applerunner1184  I entirely agree that the wide variety of covid virulence in different locations needs investigation - and far more than has been the case. But imposing laboratory restrictions on an apparently high cause and effect correlation, such as that provided by Ivermectin, is surely very counter-productive. You can throw a lifebelt to a drowning man without proving beforehand that cork floats.
    1
  21065.  @denisephillips9269  All are. The list of highly qualified medical professionals supporting the use of Ivermectin is available on the Internet. I can't give direct links because YouTube won't let me. Can't think why.
    1
  21066. The long incubation period is supposedly a good thing and related to the apparent mildness of the symptoms. Omicron goes in gentle and takes a long time, as opposed to Delta's brutal in and out. The sexual imagery isn't all that irrelevant since when it's over virus and host part on reasonably friendly terms. The host's immune system has not gone into overdrive and the virus has managed to create a few billion more virions than in a briefer encounter.
    1
  21067.  @billmilligan1705  Interesting. Do you have a source for this?
    1
  21068.  @billmilligan1705  I can't find anything about high heart rate or fluid in the lungs in children, and it seems to contradict official S African accounts of symptoms. Any chance of a specific link? The rest fits - but my guess is the numbers and the R number are even higher.
    1
  21069.  @billmilligan1705  One 6-yr-old child with a high pulse rate seems to be it. I hope you may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick somehow!
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  21070. YT is part of the globalist plot to destroy democracy.
    1
  21071. The entire invasion west of the Dnieper was a trap..... ...for the Ukrainians, who have lost tens of thousands of troops defending territory the Russians don't want.
    1
  21072.  @Blanka1100  Yes I do- or rather I have some idea of the Soviet Union's history in this regard, but the Russian Federation is an entirely different animal. It has done nothing more than attempt to keep hold of what was salvaged from the collapse of the SU. At the same time America has colonised the former Soviet territories and dependencies.
    1
  21073. America has become a banana republic.
    1
  21074. Yup. An Islamist tyranny is right up Labour's street.
    1
  21075. Entirely possible
    1
  21076. This is the beginning of the end. When it comes it will not be like 2008, it will be like 1929. America has got too big for its boots, and its many, many enemies are conspiring to hasten its inevitable downfall.
    1
  21077. The battle lines are forming. Are the Tories going to become Conservatives again - or continue as globalist shills?
    1
  21078. Well you can't stop ranting about Trump. Sad.
    1
  21079.  @JimEnger  Five years in the US armed forces? Wow, I'm truly humbled.
    1
  21080.  @JimEnger  No. Why?
    1
  21081.  @JimEnger  Trump had the good sense to get out of going to Vietnam without having to run away to Canada or a hippy commune in San Francisco. A military life isn't for everybody. And it's certainly not for me.
    1
  21082. What about BLM?
    1
  21083.  mark Mierzejewski  Another misapprehension is that Russia wanted to take Ukraine. It never did. The SMO was just that - a special operation designed to exhaust the enemy by forcing them to fight on land they want, but you don't. All Russia wants in Donbass and Crimea. Chances are they'll get them - and keep them.
    1
  21084.  @paulgibbon5991  Russia has sustained many losses- but it usually does. The army is notably inefficient, but it generally just keeps coming. The fact is that Russia isn't fighting isn't the war the West thinks it's fighting. If Ukraine has even the slightest chance of winning it needs tens time as much equipment as it currently being supplied, and it needs it yesterday. It also needs trained troops - but where are they to come from?
    1
  21085.  @mdc123-v2v  What do wealthy people do with their money do you think?
    1
  21086.  @thundercity311  Works a treat, don't it?
    1
  21087.  @mdc123-v2v  And then what happens to the money, do you suppose?
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  21088. Lavrov has fought for peace for decades. It is OUR greedy war pigs who are the real criminals.
    1
  21089. The virus will circumvent every obstacle we put in its path. Delta evolved to beat lockdowns. There is every possibility that Omicron has evolved to beat vaccines.
    1
  21090. Most countries are created by warfare,ethnic cleansing and slavery.
    1
  21091. He was testing his eyes to see how they would respond to the work they would have to while driving. Walking wouldn't do that, would it? Driving requires frequent and speedy adjustment of focal lengths and alert peripheral vision. Reading doesn't.
    1
  21092.  @mnomadvfx  Oh dear! You people! Can't you grasp the simple concept? Step by step then: 1)His eyes had become blurry while he was ill. 2)They now seemed fine. 3)He wondered if the strain imposed on them by driving might cause them to become blurry again. 4) He therefore took a short, safe drive to see if this would happen. His wife was with him and should his eyesight have deteriorated she could have taken over the wheel. 5)His eyesight did not deteriorate therefore he felt confident enough to make the journey to London the next day. I suggest you take this away and think about it for a little while instead of making stupid meaningless analogies which only betray you as the brainwashed sheepie you apparently are.
    1
  21093.  @shishkebab5306  Oh God - you silly people! How short is short? How long does it take for eyes to become tired and blurred after a spell of coronavirus? Who knows? If you're on your own and it happens after four five six miles what do you do? In this case he did around thirty miles and was okay. The blurriness did not recur. If it had his wife could have taken over the wheel. A sensible, intelligent procedure. What can't you brainwashed dildoes see this???
    1
  21094.  @shishkebab5306  You're just making yourself seem more stupid with every word. Give yourself a break.
    1
  21095.  @shishkebab5306  Have you ever heard the expression "flogging a dead horse" ? Oh well . nothing stupid at all except that perhaps she didn't want to and - as it turned out - there was no need for her to do so.
    1
  21096.  @emm_arr  When you present me with such evidence I might concede that you have a point. Until then you are just a voice howling in the wilderness.
    1
  21097.  @emm_arr  It's delivered the present government - which is on track to becoming one of the most disastrous in modern history. The good thing though is that the system will allow the opposition time to regroup, so when the Labour collapse inevitably occurs there might even be a viable right-wing, populist and patriotic government ready to take its place.
    1
  21098.  @emm_arr  You have not once offered an opinion of your own, as far as I'm aware, let alone any evidence to refute my views. You just strike attitudes and make childish insults.
    1
  21099.  @emm_arr  See what I mean? No ideas. No arguments. Just another snide remark. Are you a child or what?
    1
  21100.  @emm_arr  Where's that idea? Where's that argument? Where is the refutation? Where is the reasoning?
    1
  21101.  @emm_arr  I feel | am in danger of being dragged down to your level. A mere exchange of insults is hardly a satisfying way to carry on.
    1
  21102. Can I identify as giant condor and carry her off to feed her to my children?
    1
  21103. Paranoid fantasy.
    1
  21104.  @JonSmith-wg8mr  Certainly. (Mind you, there ARE quite a few Korean refugees living in Russia so....)
    1
  21105.  @leeii337  Shows how much you know
    1
  21106. As an AGW denying shrieking idiot I strongly deny I have been created by a media owner. Like most in my class my suspicions have been aroused over the years by the fact that absolutely none of the creed's dire predictions have come to pass, nor ever seem likely to.
    1
  21107.  @jonc67uk  But these events are nothing new. Tens of thousands of people have died in heatwaves all over the world since time immemorial. Forests have always burned. They have to in order to promote new growth. Floods have always occurred. The world is certainly warming, but that is part of a natural process and this has been happening since the mid 19th century when it was colder than it had been for ten thousand years; and it has been happening, as always, in fits and starts and with no relationship whatsoever with man-made carbon emissions.
    1
  21108.  @jonc67uk  And a foolish and cowardly thought, if I may say so. For a start the petrochemical industry spends billions of dollars investing in green energy projects and very little, if any, on supporting doubters and cynics who question the AGW hypothesis. Your attitude is typical. Like any other religious maniac you cannot bear the thought of heresy. That's the real problem here.
    1
  21109.  @jonc67uk  No. I'm actually a high grade Russian bot on permanent loan to Rupert Murdoch.
    1
  21110.  @jonc67uk  I must apologise. I didn't realise rain was a new thing and it didn't happen until this month. The 250 people who died in flooding in Nebraska in 1935, and the millions of others who have died in floods across the world were obviously hallucinating.
    1
  21111.  @jonc67uk  The frequency of such events is not increasing. Loss of life in natural disasters is a fraction of what it was in the first half of the last century And why should producing energy contribute to climate change? Heat rises into space and while cloud formations certainly reflect some of it back to the surface this is not a "greenhouse". It is more like a very thin and very tattered net. It has been much hotter, much rainier and much windier in both the recent and distant past than it is now. If I had any doubt that AGW is not a scam that would be immediately overcome by the fact that "scientists" have destroyed all records before 1970 or so and replaced them with made-up ones designed to fit their theories.
    1
  21112.  @joshuacampbell1625  Russia believes otherwise - certainly with regard to the Russian-majority areas and mining and industrial areas developed and worked by Russians. They have a point.
    1
  21113.  @randallturner9094  No. They think they're entitled to keep what they already have.
    1
  21114.  @randallturner9094  Nothing to do with me. I'm English. And if the GOP does hopefully does get in it will hopefully be a MAGA GOP - which would doubtless have the sense to fix a peace deal, as Trump has promised. I doubt that will even be necessary though. Without huge interference from the West this squabble should be well sorted out by then.
    1
  21115.  @ahartify  Depends what you mean by "started." If someone is continually taunted and threatened and then lashes out -who started it?
    1
  21116.  @pauln6803  The process was under way. That was threat enough in Russia's eyes.
    1
  21117.  @pauln6803  Not very likely is it? Logically, I mean. PS. Beware of analogies.
    1
  21118.  @pauln6803  This is why analogies are so dangerous. For a kick-off all you are trying to do is try to pass disparate events through a moral filter of some kind. That doesn't work. What is right in one example is wrong in another and wars and conflicts are about the possession of resources, not about who is the more morally superior. However, you tempt me into playing this silly game. With the Irish analogy all you have to do is imagine that N Ireland ceded from the Republic, rather than the separation having been agreed by treaty. The Republic consequently forms an alliance with Britain's greatest enemy which pays for a huge Irish army to invade and retake the north. Britain then invades the Republic in order to stop this. That is closer to the situation vis a vis Ukraine/Crimea and Ukraine/Donbass. Even this analogy is fraught with danger, but I shall risk it.
    1
  21119.  @DarkRoomAmbience  They clearly can. We're having a war to decide it right now.
    1
  21120.  @pauln6803  Under the circumstances that is all anyone can do.
    1
  21121.  @DarkRoomAmbience  And Russia's concerns at what this might imply.
    1
  21122.  @gregc.5684  Has anybody?
    1
  21123. I do hope that these ritual exchanges between the pompous MSM and the folk we elected to run our affairs will end soon. Why don't you do what you know you really want to do do, Priti, Boris et al and do a Trump and tell em, very politely, to go fuck themselves?
    1
  21124. Sadly, Brexiteers have seriously underestimated the corrosive power of European bureaucracy and our own Remainer Civil Service.
    1
  21125.  @rocketscience4516  Hi Rocket! As usual I like to get "off grid" for the Summer, but my daughter has gifted me a smartphone and I just can't resist the temptation to tease. Stay in touch while you can, the battery will run out soon!
    1
  21126.  @rocketscience4516  I have a solar panel in case of emergencies. Perhaps I can fit it to my tinfoil hat?
    1
  21127.  @nathanfurnivalsotherbrainc2604  I don't like to ill wish anyone, but I do hope you've had your full range of covid jabs. If so, and if you are in the 20 to 40 age range, then your chances of sudden death, blindness or mentally crippling tinnitus are now at least two or three times greater than mine.
    1
  21128.  @nathanfurnivalsotherbrainc2604  I hope your mother was fully vaccinated then.
    1
  21129.  @nathanfurnivalsotherbrainc2604  Is Nathan Furnival our twin then? Or triplet? How does this work?
    1
  21130.  @errorswillmultiply1697  You've been playing too much Minecraft.
    1
  21131.  @cathaldevine6230  I suggest you follow your own advice. Instead of unquestioning acceptance of the left-wing narrative you should consider the history of Palestine since the late 19th century. At that time the population was tiny and there were as many Jews as there were Arabs. The Zionist movement saw the area transformed as deserts became irrigated farmland. The "Palestinian people" are, for the most part. descendants of Arabs from neighbouring countries who arrived in large numbers to take advantage of this bounty. Some even arrived in the train of Arab warlords who took by force land which the Zionist had purchased from its Ottoman owners. Following the creation of Israel in 1948 every effort was made to integrate Jew and Moslem. Both Hebrew and Arabic were used in legal documents and Parliamentary proceedings., for instance. It soon became clear, however, that Islamic fundamentalists would not co-operate and the myth of an oppressed people whose land had been stolen was launched. I would not deny that in recent years Israel has behaved harshly towards the Arabs. It has, however, been made necessary by the intransigence of the Islamic fundamentalists who have made it clear that they have no wish to have a relationship with the Jews - but only to destroy them utterly.
    1
  21132.  @titteryenot4524  Are you seriously suggesting that the billions of dollarsworth of hardware and training poured into Ukraine by NATO hasn't altered the odds somewhat? And Russia has only invaded Ukraine to get back bits of Russia stuck onto it by the Bolsheviks.
    1
  21133. The left-wing personality is essentially paranoid and risk averse. This is why so many bureaucrats these days are woke - along with teachers. They like it when they are told what to do. When danger comes they say: "There! Told you so!" and retreat into their safe spaces.
    1
  21134.  Roy Wiseman  But the vast majority of current cases are leading to symptoms no worse than a bit of a cold, let alone the flu. Most of those who have been pinged will show no symptoms at all. The vaccines have turned out to be real game-changer. The more vaccinated people who get covid the better. Herd immunity is just around the corner if we keep our nerve. The number of hospitalisations is tiny in comparison with the number of cases and so too is the number of deaths - still occurring mainly among the very elderly.
    1
  21135. Australians are suddenly giving up arson! A quick dip into the Australian Bureau of Statistics Yearbook for 2004 reveals that up until that point there were an average of 584 bushfires a year in Victoria alone, 149 caused by lightning, 145 DELIBERATELY LIT, while the rest were cause unknown or accidental. This figure of 24 for the whole country seems up a certain well-known creek. I think perhaps you must be ignoring the large number lit by juveniles, who are not charged but just given a dressing down, or dealt with in some other way. Unless there is some more sinister reason, of course.
    1
  21136. George Soros financed this moron's election campaign. Soros is very,very intelligent. Why is he paying for morons to become mayors and district attorneys in cities all over the US? I only ask because I'd like to know.
    1
  21137. I see him more as the bent cop who really runs things. And he's a good enough historian to realise that empires don't really ever get recreated.
    1
  21138. Has anyone noticed the remarkable similarities between the response to the pandemic and the green madness? Deluded scientists chained to computers? Crooks and politicians trousering cash by the billion? Poor mugginses like the rest of us forced suffer and foot the bill?
    1
  21139. Or of Ukraine.
    1
  21140.  @superhumantrueman  Too much fun to be had taunting loonies.
    1
  21141.  @superhumantrueman  Not me!
    1
  21142. Russia is certainly winning the propaganda war - at least to anyone with a brain in their head. It might well be winning the real war too.
    1
  21143. Far from having been debunked, Right wing ideas are gaining considerable traction
    1
  21144. n the contrary, Right wing ideas seem to be gaining some considerable traction.
    1
  21145. This is wrong. He was eaten by cannibals.
    1
  21146. Next revelations: Lockdowns have killed far more than they saved. The human race has been systematically poisoned in the pursuit of profit.
    1
  21147. No. The Americans and the EU are the cause because they tried to strengthen them.
    1
  21148. Fingers crossed he's right - but don't underestimate the state of criminal chaos into which America has fallen. The election could well be stolen yet again.
    1
  21149.  @kikidevine694  The bridge is apparently now fully functioning allowing both road and rail traffic. There is always a pretence of legality in the Russian activity. This is still a special military operation, not a war.
    1
  21150. Can you cite any instance when Tommy Robinson has publicly called for acts of violence?
    1
  21151.  @mr_cuz_trollfarm_complaintz  So no chance of him being charged with any of the offences mentioned then?
    1
  21152. Finding an intelligent adult on this channel is highly unusual.
    1
  21153.  @emm_arr  I presume you are a child. Otherwise my point is made.
    1
  21154.  @emm_arr  What are you here for?
    1
  21155.  @emm_arr  To suffer?
    1
  21156.  @emm_arr  Yes. Uncanny, isn't it?
    1
  21157.  @emm_arr  Then how do I know?
    1
  21158.  @emm_arr  I do. You are here to suffer.
    1
  21159. The Tories got away with it by pretending they were doing something about it. Labour has made it look as though allowing practically unrestricted immigration is a holy crusade.
    1
  21160.  @nigelsynnott7344  Inadequately restricted then. Will that do?
    1
  21161.  @jeremysmith54565  I think we have to draw a line between an instinctive, visceral dislike of people from other races and the considered view that too much immigration is bad for the country. We have moved on from the days of the National Front, I think. Such people are very much in a minority, even among those you might consider "far right."
    1
  21162.  @nigelsynnott7344  I think an immigrant should first have to prove they have a job to go to, and their history should be thoroughly investigated to ensure they present no threat to the well-being of the community. That shouldn't be too hard, surely? We actually have no idea of the size of the UK population at present. It is certainly very much larger than the official estimate, I'm sure. Services and standards are collapsing and it is this excess population which is the cause. I also have cultural objections in that I am genuinely concerned about the spread of Islam. I do not wish to see my grandchildren or perhaps greatgrandchildren forced into adhering to this religion, and at the current rate of its increase that is a very real possibility.
    1
  21163.  @nigelsynnott7344  1) My horse and cart are in the right order. In this day and age it is quite easy to advertise and apply for jobs via the Internet. Anyone arriving on these shores should be detained at point of entry and be required to offer proof of either a job or an interview. 2) As far as population size is concerned I can only cite surveys carried out by supermarket chains based upon consumption which put the population at around a third greater than the official figures. Also Google Earth shows areas in large cities where in immigrant areas back gardens are replaced by buildings used for habitation. Even if these two indications are suspect the fact that it is so difficult to get a GP appointment, that services of all kinds face huge queues and even that the sewage systems are failing show that population size is greater than that planned for. 3)Islam is a proselytizing religion committed to imposing itself wherever it finds itself. There are tried and tested techniques for this which have enabled Islam to be established as a governing force, There is no need for warfare or for forced conversions in the early stages of this process. A gradual takeover of social and governmental structures and the imposition of Shariah law are sufficient. It is a process which can take several generations to complete but once begun it is practically impossible to prevent. It has already begun in this country with seats on local authorities being won on religious grounds and police and service providers welcoming input from Moslem leaders because it makes their jobs so much easier.
    1
  21164.  @nigelsynnott7344  Sadly YouTube has deleted my detailed reply. This issue is a bit of a minefield. All I can say is that other countries deal with this issue at the border and that technology now allows us to advertise and apply for jobs internationally. Islam is a proselytizing religion which has established techniques for its gradual imposition. Forced conversion is not necessary in the early stages. It succeeds by using its power over individuals to ally itself with authority. It is a process which takes several generations and it has already begun in this country. Christian churches fulfilled this function once, but that religion having declined Islam is taking its place. As to population figures I can only cite surveys carried out by supermarket companies which indicate very strongly that the population is far greater than that which is claimed. Observation does add to the suspicion by the very fact that so many of our services are overstretched to breaking point, making it clear that the number of people taking advantage of them is far greater than was planned for.
    1
  21165.  @nigelsynnott7344  I've had several goes at answering your points but the new fascist YouTube algorithm will not let me. What a world we live in.
    1
  21166.  @nigelsynnott7344  I've had three goes, but YouTube's misinformation is obviously not my misinformation, and in a complex issue such as this it is very difficult not to trigger the beast with one false step. In the past I've tried to get round this by breaking up a detailed reply into sections, and I may try this with you. So be prepared for a series of little posts rather than one long one! (Tenuous grasp on reality? So that's what they're calling opposing views now, is it?)
    1
  21167.  @nigelsynnott7344  If it is true that no employer can legally employ someone without a right to stay then that really is putting the cart before the horse, and the law should be changed. In other countries a firm offer of a job is a prerequisite of the right to stay - which is how it should be.
    1
  21168.  @nigelsynnott7344  Several supermarket companies have attempted to assess the UK's population size for commercial reasons, basing their research on consumption. The results of these surveys have shown that the population size is much greater than the official estimate. (2)
    1
  21169.  @nigelsynnott7344  Google Earth shows extensive areas on British cities largely occupied by immigrants to have dwellings built in their back gardens, quite often a ramshackle manner. Shipping containers are far from unknown. (3)
    1
  21170.  @nigelsynnott7344  The NHS and many other services are breaking under the strain. It is quite clear that the size of the present population is far greater than that anticipated in planning for the future. (4)
    1
  21171.  @nigelsynnott7344  Islam is a proselytizing religion which brooks no rivals. War and forced conversions are not needed for a long term strategy, the details of which are clearly explained in several sutras. (5)
    1
  21172.  @nigelsynnott7344  Techniques include occupying positions in local government, and forming close alliance with local administrators by offering package deals in terms of behaviour control.
    1
  21173.  @nigelsynnott7344  The police find alliances with Islamic community leaders very useful in exercising control over crime. This leads to Muslims becoming a privileged community - two tier policing.
    1
  21174.  @nigelsynnott7344  See answer above to your 6% . No-one has any real idea of the percentage of Muslims living in this country, or at what rate it is increasing. Birth rates however suggest that it will increase far more rapidly than other communities.
    1
  21175.  @nigelsynnott7344  The virtual collapse of Christianity in this country allows Islam the opportunity to take its place. Not only are churches being converted to mosques, but populations controlled into obedience by the fear of hell and the promise of paradise are very useful to the ruling classes and their agents. Islamification will become increasingly welcomed because of this, and acceptance of Shariah law into the system of jurisprudence will become a reality.
    1
  21176.  @nigelsynnott7344  I see that just two of my seven points have been accepted by YouTube. This is utterly ridiculous and I am tempted to give up, I'm afraid.
    1
  21177.  @nigelsynnott7344  Christianity is a religion dedicated to replacing all other religions. It is extremely useful in providing the authorities with a subdued population, whose behaviour is governed by the fear of hell and the promise of heaven. Its ministers are feared an respected and thus are able to form close relationships with bodies such as the police and local authorities. This greatly helps Christianity to become the official religion of the state and gradually introduce its precepts into the law of the land.
    1
  21178.  @nigelsynnott7344  Keep plugging on. History shows that a strong relationship between church and state is beneficial to both. Populations controlled by a fear of damnation and the promise of paradise are readily controlled. Priests who continually emphasise this message can come to hold strong positions in the administration.
    1
  21179.  @nigelsynnott7344  The virtual collapse of Christian belief in Britain has left a vacuum.
    1
  21180.  @nigelsynnott7344  There are several Islamic sutras which explain how the religion may be promulgated and expanded in a non Islamic environment, and it is the duty of a true Moslem to do this.
    1
  21181.  @nigelsynnott7344  Forced conversion is not necessary. By taking control of various aspects of everyday life and providing clear benefits to Muslims, non-Muslims can be readily persuaded to follow the true path. Eventually Islam become the predominant organ of organisation is a community and those who choose not to join it can be ostracised and fined.
    1
  21182.  @nigelsynnott7344  Are we at cross purposes? I am saying that proof of likely employment must come before residential status can be granted, as is the case in many countries but - according to you - not here. The effect on wages is another matter entirely. If wage levels need to be legally protected, then let it be so. At the moment we have a huge number of people floating about the county, being supported to the tune of more than £2billion a year, and yet prevented from entering gainful employment. This simply cannot be right.
    1
  21183.  @nigelsynnott7344  I think the idea of a native British family building a shack for granny in the back garden of a Pakistani household is going a bit far, don't you think?
    1
  21184.  @nigelsynnott7344  It is relevant to the spread of Islam.
    1
  21185.  @nigelsynnott7344  Christian proselytizing seems to have had its day, so my point is that Islamic proselytizing - which is far more effective and subtle - is replacing it. Christianity was a pillar of empire, don't forget. If a new and larger globalist empire is to be built having a religion which enables you to control behaviour very effectively will be very useful.
    1
  21186.  @nigelsynnott7344  Christianity as an agent of imperialism is a spent force. The other one isn't and is far better and spreading its message and controlling the behaviour of populations. A tremendous asset to effective governance, and increasingly welcomed. (4th go at this one. My posts are getting shot down faster than drones over Kiev.)
    1
  21187.  @nigelsynnott7344  Try No 4 Exactly what Christian missionaries did and some still do. Your point is?...... My point is that the link between Christianity and government is now broken. Islam, as it grows in strength, will become an increasing political force. This is already becoming apparent in the number of Moslems elected to local authorities and to the close relationships which develop between Muslim "community leaders" and agencies such as the police. Muslim leaders are able to control their communities through religion in ways which Christianity no longer can. This makes the spread of Islam very convenient for the process of governance and it is therefore welcomed and encouraged.
    1
  21188.  @nigelsynnott7344  Your assumption that these extensions are for grannies is, once again, taking things a bit far. These are shanty towns, more or less, filled with persons of all ages, generally from the same communities. The shipping containers appear to be sweatshops for clothing manufacture. This situation has already been exposed in Leicester but it is certainly prevalent in other cities with large immigrant ghettoes.
    1
  21189.  @nigelsynnott7344  Fair enough. My replies are still getting shot down like drones over Kiev, by the way.
    1
  21190.  @nigelsynnott7344  I think the point about local councillors is that they being elected as representatives of Islam, not as representatives if whichever political party they choose. This is not true of MPs as a general rule. They are only incidentally Muslim.
    1
  21191.  @nigelsynnott7344  I'm not dancing around. I'm just trying to shape my replies to escape the blind idiocy of the YouTube algorithm.
    1
  21192.  @nigelsynnott7344  Awful lot of Pakistani grannies then. As to cultural identity of neighbourhoods, there is no doubt of this. Some quite large areas of Leicester, Manchester, Birmingham etc are almost100% Muslim now.
    1
  21193.  @nigelsynnott7344  I directed your attention to surveys carried out by supermarkets which used extrapolations of sales figures to conclude that the UK population is far greater than official estimates. It was up for a while, but now appears to have been removed.
    1
  21194.  @nigelsynnott7344  I simply do not understand the criteria employed. I think the algorithm has a list of heresies which it will not allow. All my replies to you have been respectful and reasonable but certain juxtapositions of words appear to trigger rejection. Irony is beyond the algorithm. It really is like some primitive robot as featured in early SciFi which logically and reasonably destroys the world.
    1
  21195.  @nigelsynnott7344  I don't think many MPs have been elected on a pro-Hamas platform. Several local councillors have. I can only refer for you to my earlier posts concerning community coercion. In Ireland until comparatively recently politics was divided on religious terms. The same is now happening in Britain as a whole. You don't need "verifiable data" to conclude that in a pretty exclusively Muslim area a Muslim councillor will be elected and it will be the religious leaders who will indicate which Muslim should be elected, not the officials of any political party. Islam is a political religion with clearly defined political objectives and is almost unique in this respect.
    1
  21196. Still no-one in the West seems prepared to listen to reason. Until someone faces the truth poor, bloody Ukraine will continue to get hammered.
    1
  21197. There are now two international communities. This war could end in disaster for the West as a new community of nations emerges to oppose its hegemony.
    1
  21198.  @mattbowdenuh  I was a journalist myself for more than forty years and I assure you that you are living in a world of fantasy. News is created and anything that doesn't fit in with narrative is left out. Our so called "free press" presents us with an utterly false and unfocussed version of reality. Court cases are as rare as hens' teeth and are only really brought by very rich people who feel they have been slandered in some way.
    1
  21199.  @mattbowdenuh  It doesn't work like that. The MSM creates a narrative and sticks to it. Even if not telling deliberate untruths they shape your idea of the world by what they leave out.
    1
  21200. The elitist machine is already beginning to cough and splutter. When will people finally realise that Biden is just a puppet pushed into place through deceit, fraud and chicanery?
    1
  21201.  @gregh378  Much more than is offered at present. The state senate hearings have revealed a litany of malfeasance and illegal practices. Dominion election systems seem to be created for the express purpose of altering votes. The local judiciaries seem to be staffed by persons with an eye on personal advancement rather than a respect for objective assessment,. Democracy in the US is a hollow sham. Biden stands on feet of clay. He will only survive if the media continues to support him through lies and the suppression of alternative views.
    1
  21202. Or gullible.
    1
  21203. He's just like a big kid.
    1
  21204. You shouldn't worry about this. Allow people to discriminate for themselves. Giving the Government the mandate to decide what is true and what is not is opening the grim pathway to totalitarianism. Which would be a lot, lot worse than having to put up with nonsense from journalists.
    1
  21205.  @weswheel4834  Not if opposing views can be put, and in the modern world they usually can be. Restricting freedom of thought and opinion may well prevent some lies reaching the public ear, but the process will inevitably lead to many truths falling by the wayside too.
    1
  21206.  @howtoappearincompletely9739  More fool you then.
    1
  21207.  @weswheel4834  It's not a question of what's true and what isn't. What's true for one person isn't true to another. Asserting the existence of God is untrue to an atheist. Would an atheist government then persecute all Christians and Muslims? Allowing governments to decide on the truth would mean having an entirely unbiased government, and no such thing exists and never will. The same thing applies to courts.
    1
  21208.  @anglonorse2943  I have to disagree. See you in court?
    1
  21209.  @DW-indeed  And who decides the rating? And why? All any reasonable human being has to do when dealing with information is to make a choice and stick to it until it can be proved otherwise. It's called having a brain.
    1
  21210.  @weswheel4834  I do, as it happens. My answer is that I'm 99% sure it happened, but I entirely respect those who he believe it did or it didn't. Very, very few things have a definitely provable answer, and when it comes to political questions the number of assertions in this category is about as large as the number of assertions made.
    1
  21211.  @rbailey6949  Oh God, give me strength!
    1
  21212.  @anglonorse2943  Sounds a lot like religion to me!
    1
  21213.  @anglonorse2943  It means as much as anyone else's. I don't defend liars, just opinions you disagree with, perhaps. It's a shame you can't seem to tell the difference.
    1
  21214.  @anglonorse2943  I'm not a Boy Scout either.
    1
  21215.  @anglonorse2943  I wouldn't swear to it.
    1
  21216.  @anglonorse2943  Right wing tropes are often unvarnished truths. As in this instance.
    1
  21217. He will win millions. He and Nick Sandmann will end up owning CNN between them!
    1
  21218.  @Jack-si2ig  He didn't say that he was going to, only that he could if he bombed it to bits first. That could still happen, sadly.
    1
  21219. The only evidence that the virus is "resurging" is due to increased testing. So far just 2.7% of those tested have died, and that doesn't mean they died of it; just that they had it. All have been elderly, infirm, or subject to multiple re-infection for one reason or another. History will show that the reaction to this disease has been hysterical and ill-judged and - what is worse - manipulated for political purposes. It should be obvious to everyone that the economic downturn has not been caused by the disease itself but by the excessive measures taken to contain it.
    1
  21220. Nothing secret about it. It is one of his favourite charities and he has raised thousands for it.
    1
  21221. I advise you to steer clear of absurd analogies and instead spend some time acquainting yourself with a few facts.
    1
  21222.  @jockyoung4491  Even if he is.
    1
  21223. Brogan T No, thank you! God, how I wish I could be convinced!
    1
  21224.  @goodvibes5220  I think that's probably you. Have you read "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" by V. Putin? You should.
    1
  21225.  @pavlosegeda8294  Why compare the present situation with anything? What's the point? Can't you just treat it as it is? As to the two other oblasts outside Donbass, really only the southern regions are urgently needed to provide a land bridge between Russia and Crimean but Putin is now probably committed to taking all of them in ay peace deal, just to save face. He might well want Odessa too and might even get it. How much simpler it would have been if Ukraine had stuck to Minsk 2 and managed to keep Donbass out of the EU. And think how many tens of thousands of lives would have been saved!
    1
  21226.  @pavlosegeda8294  Yes I have read the Minsk Accords and in Minsk 2 it clearly states that Ukraine should take steps to find ways of granting regional autonomy to the two breakaway Donbass republics. This Ukraine signally failed to do, and instead accepted billions of dollars in military aid from the US and other NATO countries. There were various minor infringements by both sides, but it is this failure by Ukraine which is at the root of this war. And it was the prospect of Ukraine joining the EU which sparked the uprisings of 2014 when the country's elected leader was overthrown because he was standing in the way of Ukraine's membership of the EU. Regional autonomy for Donbass was simply to exclude it from EU membership.
    1
  21227. Trump the peacemaker! A welcome change from Biden the warmonger
    1
  21228.  @JoMalby1  But Biden encouraged the war. Trump is stopping it. So where's the irony?
    1
  21229. The stitch-up is coming unravelled. The FBI will doubtless be pleased they don't have to face a court with fake evidence.
    1
  21230.  @Pikaling3408  I agree. But we need all the HELP we can get at the moment.
    1
  21231.  @Rgbonet  Not true. The negative economic effects of Brexit have been almost completely submerged in the negative effects of our hysterical over-reaction to covid and our equally hysterical support for Ukraine. The ineptitude of the present government could be the final straw.
    1
  21232.  @mattgreek1066  Yes, and how did you do that? By cheating and lying, that's how. Fascist.
    1
  21233. Analysis of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Taiyuan found the optimum environmental temperature associated with the SARS cases was between 16 to 28 degrees Celsius, which may encourage virus growth. A sharp rise or decrease in the environmental temperature related to the cold spell led to an increase of the SARS cases because of the possible influence of the weather on the human immune system. This study suggested a higher possibility for SARS to reoccur in spring than in autumn or winter. Centre For Evidence Based Medicine - Oxford. The temperature in Sydney today was 12c Covid 19 is another name for SARS 2 It is almost 90% the same virus as SARS 1.
    1
  21234.  @bewezendiensten2896  Well it has been. The process is a slow one and the Ukrainians, as ever, are resisting magnificently. Weeb does tend to jump in too soon though, it has to be said.
    1
  21235. So the definite promise of arms from N Korea is of less significance than the vague suggestion of arms from S Korea, is it?
    1
  21236.  @theimperialist2686  There is a considerable difference between the duties and responsibilities of an MP and those of a parish priest or a volunteer in the local Citizen's Advice Bureau. The interests of the people of Clacton will be very well served by a close relationship between their MP and the future President of the United States. The local authority can deal with problems of potholes and dog-fouling.
    1
  21237.  @theimperialist2686  Have you the faintest idea of what the duties of an MP are? Have you never heard of lobbying? An MP with a close relationship with the POTUS has power to wield over and above that of most other MPs. He can influence decisions behind the scenes in ways which you would probably find hard to imagine.
    1
  21238.  @theimperialist2686  Does it matter if Trump's supporters don't know who Farage is? They don't even know who Starmer is, for the most part. Farage is going to supply a major conduit of information between Trump and the UK. Information is power. Trump will tell Farage things that he won't tell Starmer. Farage will be able to brief Trump on the detailed background of UK policy. He will be owed favours from both sides and is astute enough to be able to use this to advance his own agenda - an agenda which, by voting for him, the people of Clacton have shown their support.
    1
  21239. Bmanritche Does that include all those GOP members who own factories and are faced with huge carbon tax bills?
    1
  21240. Bmanritchie The penalties are not there to curb bad business, they are there to create a market in carbon emission permissions. If you have a factory which HAS to emit carbon as a result of its processes, then the only alternative to fines or taxation is to buy extra permissions on the cap and trade market. The people who are shouting loudest about the evils of carbon are the same people who control this market. They have fixed it so that underdeveloped countries are granted large quantities of permissions on the pretext that they need to develop an industrial base. The governments of these countries are, sadly, often somewhat corrupt and they are quite willing to sell these permissions, which is perfectly legal. The hedge-fund traders buy them cheap and then pull off some stunt ( ie Greta Thurnberg) which causes the market price of permissions to shoot up. They then sell off the permissions they hold for a vast profit. You are being conned. Your good nature and your concern for the environment are being cynically abused by these snakes. What makes it even worse is that carbon does not cause warming anyway. That is the result of atmospheric pressure combined with the heat of the sun.
    1
  21241. Bmanrichie I remain unembarrassed. You have just spouted the jargon the salesman told you when you bought the dodgy car. If curbing emissions reduces output and profitability (which it will) then you simply buy in more permissions on the cap and trade market. The people selling you these permissions are the same people who created the formula you quote in your first paragraph. I think you misunderstood me when I said "The people shouting the loudest" etc. I did not mean fossil fuel producers, who are well on top of the game. They play the cap and trade market too, often very successfully. What I meant was organisations like We Don't Have Time which shipped Greta to the US and also largely organised the school strike. The founders and board members of this organisation pretend to be eco-warriors. In fact they all have financial backgrounds. They are hedge fund managers. Greta was not discovered on a lonely protest vigil outside her school. She was selected by WDHT from the winners of an essay competition designed to find the "face" for the latest stage of their scam. She has been extensively trained and coached. Her Asperger's makes her an easily malleable actress.and I doubt very much that her parents, professional actors/singers themselves, would let her work for free. The MSM coverage of her activities in Europe has been widespread there. What is the real stinger is that it's looking increasingly likely that carbon doesn't cause global warming anyway. The science that says it does is all based on "models" of the atmosphere, ie educated guesses as to what it's actually like. New research using information directly obtained from the real world, using satellites and weather balloons, seems to show that these models bear as much resemblance to the real thing as a kiddies drawing with crayons on the side of a cardboard box does to a high-resolution photograph. In the real world carbon seems part of a sophisticated mechanism designed to regulate temperature, not an agent causing it to increase.
    1
  21242.  Dubjax 30  Watching things purely for enjoyment is shallow.
    1
  21243. In fact there around 2,000 covid deaths a day in the US. The death rate per head of population is slightly greater than that of the UK.
    1
  21244. @Red Goobler You've got round the wrong way.
    1
  21245.  @justentertainment5818  Untrue. This virus is emerging in the more vaccinated populations of Africa. It has evolved to evade vaccines and has probably existed almost unnoticed elsewhere, prior to being identified in S Africa.
    1
  21246. The Confederacy was Democrat.
    1
  21247. Unprovoked??
    1
  21248.  @waynesmith7746  By the US intending to back Ukraine in the Donbass war, which began in 2014, and also in an attempt to regain Crimea, which seceded to Russia in the same year. The Russian invasion is designed to pre-empt these moves by the warmongers in Washington, who have been given a free rein by the Biden administration.
    1
  21249. The FBI faked the photographic evidence in the documents case. Gag orders are being lifted. The whole cheap and nasty campaign of lies against Trump is crumbling.
    1
  21250. I don't think the Nazis went to any trouble to keep the Jews happy. The Israelis, on the other hand, have bent over backwards to keep the Arabs on side.
    1
  21251. There were 44 million people in the UK in 1942. There are 70 million today. Those who died in World War II were young and healthy with all their lives ahead of them. Those killed by covid have been pretty exclusively of very advanced age or with short life expectancies due to pre-existing medical conditions.
    1
  21252.  @neilmchardy9061  Pretty much.
    1
  21253.  @bonnie7898  In that case it does seem a dreadful waste of money, doesn't it?
    1
  21254. Why are socialists so utterly credulous? Trump represents the rebellion of the common man against the all-powerful state. Perhaps this is why socialists, with their child-like faith in the power of the state, are so ready to swallow all the propaganda directed against this flawed but necessary man.
    1
  21255.  @justsaying14  Name one?
    1
  21256.  @justsaying14  More of a Holy Grail man myself. (Excessive didacticism is another feature of the socialist mindset, I find. You tend to accumulate little stores of spurious information and then set the rest of us exams on it. I helps you imagine you are superior.)
    1
  21257. Exactly what threat to the US does Putin represent to you?
    1
  21258.  @paulgibbon5991  Russia wants Crimea, and the eastern part of Kherson to guard it, but not Kherson city necessarily. It also wants Donbass. Anything else is just a killing ground. And the Russians don't really care how many old tanks and relatively untrained troops they lose, so long as the Ukrainians sustain losses on the process.
    1
  21259.  @MatthewAshworth  As I said, events in the immediate future will determine whether they have failed or succeeded. You will recall how we mocked their use of old tanks and raw recruits. Perhaps that was intentional. I wonder why they didn't "soften up" the Ukrainians with air attacks, as they are doing now, before mounting a ground invasion. I wonder too why they didn't secure the territories they invaded before moving on. It all looks like a ruse to me. Everything now depends on how much the Russians have kept in reserve, versus how much more the West is prepared to supply Ukraine.
    1
  21260.  @jessehachey2732  I'd be embarrassed to use emojis instead of words.
    1
  21261. Biden will win. The FBI will see to that.
    1
  21262.  @picklespip9213  Do you?
    1
  21263. The Russians are desperate to take all of Donbass and kick the Ukrainians out of Kursk before Trump is inaugurated. If they do this they will agree to a ceasefire immediately, which Trump can then stage-manage to his own advantage. Retaining permanent possession of the liberated territories will be a problem, but once again this process can be customised to ensure Trump gains credit. Trump's main problem will be to convince the brainwashed masses that this will be a victory for Ukraine. This shouldn't be too difficult, since many of them still believe that Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine, and that Russia's economy is collapsing.
    1
  21264.  @geraldhewing2076  Not that I remember. But then I probably wouldn't, would I?
    1
  21265.  @sugarfree1894  She in fact replaced Duncan in 2019.
    1
  21266. Which he has.
    1
  21267. @ I'm sorry, but it time you will realise that the whole thing has been a scam in which Trump's predecessors attempted to facilitate the virtual theft of Ukraine's vast mineral resources from their largely Russian owners. Zelensky was their puppet, and the enterprise has failed miserably. Trump will now attempt to negotiate with Putin in order to obtain a share of the high grade lithium which as at the centre of the dispute. A ceasefire, followed by lifting of sanctions and recognition on new borders for poor Ukraine are next on the cards.
    1
  21268. @ Time will tell. Trump knows full well that his predecessors engineered this war in the hope of taking the immense mineral wealth of Ukraine from its largely Russian owners and that Zelensky was just their instrument in this endeavour.
    1
  21269. @ Nothing silly about accepting the fact that this whole dreadful charade has been a failed attempt by Washington warmongers to lay hands on Ukraine's immense mineral wealth, and that Zelensky has been their instrument in this endeavour.
    1
  21270. @ Nothing silly about being in the right.
    1
  21271.  @crispincoque  Nothing silly about accepting the fact that this whole dreadful charade has been a failed attempt by Washington warmongers to lay hands on Ukraine's immense mineral wealth, and that Zelensky has been their instrument in this endeavour.
    1
  21272.  @GlennRA3  It isn't about the volume of territory - it's about where the territory is. Russia only wants Donbass and Crimea and their strategy has been to weaken the Ukrainians sufficiently to permanently gain these targets. That's what's happening right now.
    1
  21273.  @DarkRoomAmbience  This is simply not so. Putin's settlement proposals put forward in December '21 are broadly similar to those re-iterated by Russia's ambassador to the UN last week. Everything else has been made up by Western propagandists. Putin simply isn't fighting the war the West says his fighting. His prime military objective has been to cripple Ukraine's NATO financed army in order to secure those territories he believes are Russia's by right. We will know whether or not he has succeeded by the coming Spring at the latest.
    1
  21274.  @GlennRA3  I think many people confuse Putin's analysis of the unique relationship between Russia and Ukraine with a genuine ambition to recreate the past in some way. He is on record as saying that why this is a splendid notion in principle, it is hopelessly impractical. His famous essay on the subject implies as much. Why would he want to land his country in a prolonged and costly civil war in Ukraine? No, mainly he wants in the mineral wealth of Donbass - to which he feels Russia is entitled - plus acknowledgement of Crimea's undoubted status as an historical part of Russia. All else is just romantic fantasy.
    1
  21275.  @ascgazz  No. Just truth and sanity.
    1
  21276. So Russia gets the Donbass with trillions of dollars in mineral wealth in exchange for fields, swamps and forests which Ukraine will have to give up anyway? Sounds a great deal.
    1
  21277.  @achosenman9376  The arsenal was not under Ukrainian control. The missiles could only be fired from Moscow. No-one in Ukraine had access to the codes. Ukraine is just as corrupt as Russia. This war is just a turf war between two gangs of oligarchs, fighting over the mineral riches of Donbass. And you poor saps think its about freedom and democracy! Sad. So sad. (Russia still has two armies, each larger than what Ukraine has left. The only way for Ukraine to survive is for the West to pour in more and more money. Russia's peace terms - offered three months before the invasion - should have been accepted but Zelensky was under NATO orders to fight it out The dreadful consequences of that decision are what we are witnessing today.)
    1
  21278. More than that are dying because covid hysteria has destroyed our healthcare system.
    1
  21279. Try harder.
    1
  21280. Every tank and other weapon the West provide to Ukraine extends the war and increases the toll of death and suffering. Think on that, you armchair warriors.
    1
  21281.  @jimreily7538  You are living in a fantasy. All Putin has ever done is keep his borders secure and protect his country's existing commercial interests. Comparing him to Hitler and imagining he wants world domination is an utter absurdity, trotted out by warmongering Americans for the consumption of fools. All Putin wants and has ever wanted is the acknowledgement that Crimea is Russian (which it is) and access to the mineral wealth of Donbass which was paid for and developed by Russia and is still largely staffed by Russian workers and managers. At the end of the day he'll probably get what he wants -which is all he ever asked for in his earlier peace proposals - and at least a quarter of a million people will have died to no purpose.
    1
  21282.  @孫悟空-r7w  Or alternatively apologise to no-one at all, since none of this was his fault, or the fault of anyone living today.
    1
  21283.  @孫悟空-r7w  Can Karma be overcome by mere apology? I tend to think not.
    1
  21284.  @Crescent-IV  Of course not! He's the last chance the West has of survival.
    1
  21285.  John Sacrimoni  I don't think he wants it to be feared. He just wants it to be well run.
    1
  21286.  @Crescent-IV  He's not that bothered about the international power game as much as he is about trade. Success is about dollars in your pocket, not about who can piss the highest.
    1
  21287.  @Crescent-IV  Wait till Trump gets back, China is over expended on a great many levels. A new tariff war starting in '24 should hopefully put them in their place.
    1
  21288.  @Crescent-IV  What nonsense. He is one of the most focussed and competent Presidents the US has ever had, especially when it comes to business matters. He does intricate real good.
    1
  21289.  @Crescent-IV  Of course it does. The trouble with politics is too many politicians. The world is crippled by ideologies best left in the classroom. Pragmatic businessmen make the best leaders. People recognise this more and more.
    1
  21290.  @Crescent-IV  You've got it round the wrong way. The wall was a response to existing concerns, not an attempt to whip them up; a gesture perhaps, but partially effective and a boost for employment and the construction industry to boot. It is utterly absurd and very distasteful to blame Trump - or any other national leader - for the effects of covid. Nobody got it right, except perhaps the Swedes, and in America's case ultimate responsibility is at state level. Even then it is increasingly clear that most attempts at mitigation are useless.
    1
  21291. First. Anyone can do this. You don't have to be Trump's friend. Second: The tariffs will not increase funds. They will merely make the import of certain foreign goods uneconomic. Third: What social unrest? Prices are going to drop and the streets are going to be cleared of freeloading vagrants.
    1
  21292.  @AnotherPointOfView944  Only if the stuff is actually imported! The idea of the tariffs is to STOP things being imported because they become so expensive that people won't buy them. If people are rich enough to want these imported items, despite the extra cost, then they are rich enough to make it not matter much to them if the State gets some extra income.
    1
  21293. When we finally become a Muslim country his punishment will be much more severe.
    1
  21294. @markmierzejewski9534 I'm sure the Ukrainians could have got them to work if they put their minds to it, but they were not intended to exclusively be part of Ukraine's nuclear defences, which is the point.
    1
  21295.  @foilhat1138  Did they? I didn't know that.
    1
  21296.  @DavidMutiba-hr3vo  They had no such automatic right since obviously the weapons were designed to protect the SU as a whole, and not just Ukraine.
    1
  21297.  @robertpatrick3350  I think you're right. I imagine it would have been technically possible to re-program the weapons but I don't think the Americans - or anyone else - would have been happy with that.
    1
  21298.  @Weidefix  Insofar as I understand you, you are assuming that Russia and Ukraine were equal partners in the SU. This is not the case, is it? Ukraine was a semi-autonomous republic and ultimately Russia's chattel. By any standards the NW belonged to Moscow.
    1
  21299.  @alien4422  But they didn't belong to Ukraine, which was very much subordinate to Russia in the Soviet Union.
    1
  21300.  @ThePedroski007  Britain and France have control of their weapons. Ukraine didn't. Moscow had the firing codes.
    1
  21301.  @Northman-from-the-North  You said it yourself, Minsk came after Russia retook Crimea. It was designed to stop the fighting in Donbass and Kiev was supposed to set in motion a process leading to autonomy for the the Donbass republics. The whole thing was a con - just as Budapest was a con - a treaty designed by Americans with the purpose of advancing American interests.
    1
  21302. HGV drivers' wages have increased by an average of 30% in recent weeks and could go higher. One firm is now offering a basic £56,000 a year.
    1
  21303. If anyone has any doubts that this man is an utter liar this long-debunked story should put those doubts to rest. Ukraine's propaganda campaign is dead in the water.
    1
  21304. The 3rd American revolution is under way.
    1
  21305. American greed and ambition started this war. Russia will finish it it by retaining its hold on Donbass, the mining and industrial heart of Ukraine which was built on Russian sweat and Russian investment. America will repair the damage to Ukraine - and do it for profit, as in Iraq.
    1
  21306. Sky News Aus owned by that nice Mr Murdoch. Sky News UK owned by a vast globalist empire devoted to imposing world-wide control via the myth of man-made global warming.
    1
  21307.  @stevenellis2043  Good for him. Fully up to date on what's going on in Vladimir Putin's head is he?
    1
  21308.  @bvaradinov  But Putin is none of these things. He is a highly intelligent, pragmatic politician who has brought his country out of chaos to become a thriving, well-fed, well organised and largely united nation. He does not wish to see it crumble now, sacrificed on the altar of American greed and duplicity.
    1
  21309. Over 82% of the UK adult population is vaccinated. Children don't matter, since they don't die or get very ill and if they do pass it on to adults then so what? Vaccines are far from 100% effective and their effects wear off very quickly. The more healthy people who get covid and so become immune the better. End of.
    1
  21310.  @dabblerdeluxe775  He had the gun a split second before he turned and was shot.
    1
  21311.  @HerewardWake  Yes. But the officer did not know that. If the kid had thrown the gun out in front of him he would have been okay. But he decided to chuck it behind the fence, when he turned the officer had no way of knowing, in the darkness, that the gun was not in his hand.
    1
  21312.  @HerewardWake  He had his own life to think of. He couldn't see the kid ditch the gun behind the fence and when Toledo turned and raised his hands the officer had no way of knowing the gun wasn't there. In the very last frame of the bodycam video the emptiness of the left hand is not clear. The kid had a gun. The cop saw it. The kid turned to face him and in that literally split second he had to decide whether the move was one of surrender or a prelude to being shot himself.
    1
  21313.  @HerewardWake  Less than a second to decide if your life was threatened, eh? If anyone is selfish here it's this stupid brat who thinks he can go round terrorising people with guns. With his career choice he only had a short life-expectancy anyway.
    1
  21314.  @HerewardWake  The point is that, generally speaking, the most important life in the world is your own. Less than one second before he was shot Toledo had a gun in his hand, To suggest that the officer "didn't try hard enough" is absurd the boy put himself in the firing line. Instead of visibly throwing the gun down he thought he'd be clever. He pushed his luck too far.
    1
  21315.  @HerewardWake  He was not carrying out his instructions. He had been told "drop it!" several times and had not done so, When he halted and turned the officer had no way of knowing whether he was about to surrender or shoot. His left hand was not visible in the final frame. The officer behaved perfectly properly. The boy was the instrument of his own fate.
    1
  21316. Did we EVER needHS2 anyway? It looks to be a multi-billion scam designed to put cash into the pockets of various wheeler dealers rather than a serious effort to improve the economy. What really is the point of getting from London to the Midlands a few minutes faster than at present?
    1
  21317. Later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire.
    1
  21318. In fact Russia is now breaking through Ukraine's second line of defence on the southern front and is well on its way to reaching the Donbass border. Kharkiv was just a sideshow, designed to draw away Ukrainian forces from where the real war is happening.
    1
  21319.  @Lepocoloco  It's what is under the ground that counts. Donbass is sitting on trillions of dollars in mineral wealth which is why it is so heavily defended and why it is being fought over so fiercely.
    1
  21320. Lockdowns are vastly increasing poverty all over the world. Innocent children are dying because of this paranoid selfishness. Even the WHO says so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4PuvmWqp4k
    1
  21321.  @owenhall5742  Hydroxycloroquine is not a cure in the strict sense of the word, but in conjunction with zinc and an antibiotic it can certainly prevent viral replication if taken early enough and in the right doses. I don't quite know what you mean about natural selection working both ways, but if the most adaptable survive then those Covid 19s which find a host which allows them to replicate without dying itself will succeed and prosper in the long run. Equally those more likely to fail to replicate due to hydroxychloroquine intervention will gradually be eliminated.
    1
  21322.  @owenhall5742  You've got it wrong a bit I think. This might help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM
    1
  21323. Which would be a good thing in many ways. A trade partnership and non-aggression pact between the US and Russia would be enormously beneficial.
    1
  21324. A factor which cannot be ignored is Russia's forced abandonment of gas supplies to Europe. It now makes little difference to Russia if the US manages to overthrow Assad in order to build a pipeline into Europe from the Gulf across Syria.
    1
  21325.  @BriantheMan.-yw2lt  I'm not lying. I may be mistaken, but I'm not lying. Are you suggesting that the Syrian rebels do not receive help from the US?
    1
  21326.  @BriantheMan.-yw2lt  Are you also suggesting that the Turkish-backed insurgents and the US-backed insurgents operate entirely independently of each other. What, in your view, does Turkey gain from all this?
    1
  21327. Russia will retreat destroying Ukrainians on the way. It will then destroy some more as they get bogged down. This will go on until Ukraine is so drained of resources that it will welcome peace. Putin's terms will surprise many with their magnanimity and will, in fact, be not dissimilar to those he proposed before this bloody, needless US engineered war began
    1
  21328. Why are you so worried about Trump? He'll never get back in power as long as the FBI and George Soros don't want him there - which is like forever.
    1
  21329.  @jonathanchartrand3351  All politicians in the US are corrupt to one degree or another. That's the great thing about Trump -he's a corrupt businessman, not a corrupt politician. It makes a refreshing change. And what's a cult? I bet you're a member of one. The Climate Crisis cult? The Magic Mask cult? The Orange Man Bad Cult?
    1
  21330. They didn't do it. The Ukrainians did.
    1
  21331.  @166293  This video is pure clickbait - as are so many others. Abrams tanks have been delivered to NATO countries via German ports for several years. It may well have been snowing at the time.
    1
  21332. They're getting desperate.
    1
  21333. spillarge We should start a competition to find the silliest and most irritating climate crisis video by a UK TV channel. This one is running neck and neck with Channel 4's recent visit to the Faroes which showed record numbers of seals basking on sun-kissed beaches as evidence of the evils of man-made global warming. The intrepid girl reporters from both channels must have been to the same voice coach to get the right note of sorrowful, doom-laded self-righteousness into their commentaries, but I think Sky's weathergirl has it by a short head.
    1
  21334. Between them, America and Islam have a lot to answer for.
    1
  21335. So you're scared of a couple of days of aching bones when it's going to make you immune and help run covid out of town? What kind of man are you?
    1
  21336. The way the four UK countries do their statistics differently makes interpretation difficult. As far as teenage covid deaths are concerned it is easiest to look just at England, where there is a 10-19 category which shows that 32 people have died with covid in this age group between the end of June last year and the end of June 2021. By way of comparison the number of those over 90 (not just over 80) is around 24,000.
    1
  21337. Putin should have followed Zelensky's example and stashed his millions in offshore accounts.
    1
  21338. The Yanks have already killed a few people by dropping food parcels on their heads. Still, it is all very well-intentioned, and should still earn the Dems a few Muslim votes in the forthcoming election.
    1
  21339. Ask Santa.
    1
  21340.  @1jediwitch  Well I hope you feel better now.
    1
  21341.  @1jediwitch  Keep taking your medication.
    1
  21342. A clear strategy designed to provoke the race war BLM needs to pave the war for Marxist revolution.
    1
  21343. @ After thirty years of provocation. If US agencies hadn't been at work to undermine Ukraine, Chechnya and Georgia, and finance opposition groups with big bucks, none of these wars would have occurred. A nation can't be "sovereign" when it has long established historical links to one nation which are being undermined by another rival nation.
    1
  21344. @ Thirty years of provocation. And what does "sovereign" even mean? When a country is bound to another country by decades - if not centuries - of historical alliance and another country comes along and attempts to undermine those relationships in the pursuit of profit how does "sovereignty" enter into the argument?
    1
  21345. Pining for the fjords How amazing! Climate change killed my parrot! But it wasn't a Norwegian Blue, it was a Military Macaw. I'm getting a new one soon and I'm going to call it Greta, even if its a boy parrot. Such things don't matter with parrots.
    1
  21346.  @pandaphil  I think you're wrong. he wants the glory. He wants to come to the end of his life knowing he has come out on top - not by being the richest man in the world, but by rescuing his country.
    1
  21347.  @AY-uf4oz  These are just paying for running expenses! Small beer.
    1
  21348. Why are Russia and China America's enemies?
    1
  21349. Nobody.
    1
  21350. The winter campaign is about to get started. Russia will attack from north, east and south. A few extra tanks won't make much difference. Pure tokenism.
    1
  21351. I dunno about the bots. You have to give your name and email address and then your email address and your geographical location are returned. I imagine it would be easy enough to run the results against voters rolls or other lists of addresses to weed out false votes?
    1
  21352. I would have thought the Government would have better things to do. Foxhunting is a much misunderstood activity and self-righteous townies might like to consider that without it foxes are going to get poisoned and shot. Drag hunting is a cover for this traditional rural activity sure - but this obsession Labourites have with banning it is yet another pointer to the fact that your thinking is too-often governed by sentiment and wishy-washy do-goodery. It's very immature and inevitably leads to chaos. Turning your country into a coast-to-coast urban ghetto, populated by foreigners following alien religions, is going to be too high price to pay for that lovely warm, fluffy feeling you get inside when you show pity for dangerous creatures, just because they have lovely big eyes and warm endearing smiles.
    1
  21353.  @emm_arr  Actually I was once married to a member of the British aristocracy. Been there. Done that. I enjoy hunting, although a riding accident a few years back has kept me more or less out the saddle in recent years. I sometimes feel that taunting lefties on YouTube is some kind of pathetic substitute for chasing foxes.
    1
  21354.  @emm_arr The British aristocracy do get married you know. Sometimes to quite unsuitable people.
    1
  21355.  @emm_arr  I am actually lame. A riding accident a few years ago has left me pretty crippled.
    1
  21356.  @mongoliandude  Try to spell it right next time you use it.
    1
  21357.  @mongoliandude  Try to spell it right when you use it next though.
    1
  21358. @Snoopy Tankers.
    1
  21359. @Snoopy Fuck Europe. We'll take them all.
    1
  21360. Just the sort of paranoid nonsense that makes Islam what it is today.
    1
  21361. Does the government actually have a long-term or even medium-term plan? Australia can either stay in lockdown for ever - or face the inevitable epidemic which will result from lifting restrictions.
    1
  21362.  @TC2290-wh5cb  Woof!
    1
  21363. Leave Britain out of this!
    1
  21364. This is just a silly gesture which means nothing. Biden is declaring war on Russia for no purpose. The last act of a thoroughly incompetent leader.
    1
  21365.  @rocketscience4516  Beneath you, Rocket. You know I am an impartial and unpaid observer.
    1
  21366.  @abbofun9022  I bet I know more than you do.
    1
  21367.  @Pikaling3408  I prefer peace-loving pragmatist.
    1
  21368.  @rocketscience4516  I suppose it must be. I certainly believe that US hegemony is a force for destruction, and that Russia has been very badly treated.
    1
  21369.  @grahamlees4394  Because I believe every word. Russia is the victim here and cannot be blamed for fighting back. (I wouldn't mind getting paid for it though. Any I idea where I could apply to?)
    1
  21370.  @abbofun9022  Can't speak a word!
    1
  21371.  @beresfordquimby  Continual aggression from America and its NATO stooges. The collapse of the Soviet Union gave an enormous opportunity for peace, but instead of welcoming the new Russia with open arms America made it a permanent enemy. Its leaders had realised that a permanent war economy was profitable and they were in need of a permanent enemy - Russia.
    1
  21372.  @rocketscience4516  Funnily enough I've never had any offers in that direction either.
    1
  21373.  @grahamlees4394  I don't think you need to defect any more. You can just go there.
    1
  21374.  @georgedorn1022  I enjoy thinking for myself instead of soaking up Western propaganda.
    1
  21375.  @beresfordquimby  Continual Western aggression. The collapse of the Soviet Union was an opportunity for peace, but the US and NATO couldn't accept that, because they have a war-based economy which needed a permanent enemy to justify its existence. Attempting to undermine Russia's historical relationship with Ukraine is what has started this dreadful and needless war.
    1
  21376.  @rocketscience4516  You don't know how right you are!
    1
  21377. He must be bowing to political pressure. Figures are currently running at roughly one death and seven hospitalisations to 8,000 daily cases.
    1
  21378. They were too busy fitting out their new offices in the White House.
    1
  21379.  @CarriUSA  I couldn't agree more!
    1
  21380. ..and quite funny.
    1
  21381. Vaccine mandates are dangerous. While vaccination programmes are of undoubted benefit in slowing the pandemic, over reliance leads to situations whereby there are thousands of people wandering about believing themselves to be immune whereas in fact the vaccine has worn off and they are asymptomatically infected and unknowingly passing the disease on to others. This is why currently states and countries with the highest vaccination rates have the highest transmission rates.
    1
  21382.  @stonedsasquatch  But there is. It follows as night follows day. To make matters worse high vaccination rates slow up the process of natural immunisation, which is far, far more effective than vaccination. Vaccines have a significant role to play in dealing with the pandemic, but they are weak and short-lived and that has to be taken very much into account.
    1
  21383.  @fredrikh9299  Why should Putin want to invade Europe? It was over-extension that helped cause the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why would Putin want the Russian Federation to suffer the same fate? This is all just scary stuff designed to make you support the Western arms industry while it takes your tax money away.
    1
  21384.  @kirgan1000  Hang on - I thought you said no insight into how close to economic collapse Russia is?
    1
  21385.  @Geffo555  Most of Ukraine east of the Dnieper. These Russian territories were included in the new Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Russian Bolsheviks in 1921. The SSR was not a country. To create the new country of Ukraine on the same footprint was a huge mistake. These territories were taken away from Russian control when Ukraine was created in 1991. Yeltsin foolishly agreed to this, despite contrary advice.
    1
  21386.  @briangriffiths937  I think there is probably some sort of natural statute of limitations on territorial claims. Boundaries of countries change all the time and only become accepted when things have had time to settle down. This hasn't happened in the case of the Russia/Ukraine border, and Ukraine has been at fault in trying to rush things by victimising the Russian population and attempting to sell off Russian-owned assets to foreigners.
    1
  21387.  @Geffo555  It's not a question of entitlement. It's a question of actual fact. The former vassal states of the USSR are not and never were Russian, or parts of Russia. The territory occupied by Ukraine, on the other hand, has actually BEEN Russian for generations - long before the name was ever thought of.
    1
  21388.  @paulgilbert9346  The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union and is not bound by any agreements made by that now defunct body. The CIS is equally moribund. Situations change. You can argue that Ukraine has not abided by the spirt of the agreements of the early 1990s by seeking membership of NATO. But even that doesn't matter. Much of the territory of the new country of Ukraine east of the Dnieper is historically Russian, has a substantial Russian population, and with profitable industries largely owned by Russian companies. These facts completely outweigh documents signed and conversations had more than thirty years ago.
    1
  21389.  @Geffo555  The Crimean Khanate no longer exists - Russia does. As I've said before, new borders take time to settle and if they don't work out they get changed again. Ukraine's border with Russia just hasn't worked out. Ukraine has made the mistake of seeking alliances with other entities whose interests conflict with those of Russia, and this war is a consequence. If it had stuck to Minsk 2 and found away of keeping Donbass out of the deal with the EU then none of this would have happened.
    1
  21390.  @VisiblyPinkUnicorn  Simple enough: like all species which survive, they faced up to reality.
    1
  21391.  @Geffo555  And Ukraine doesn't exist - except on paper. This "sovereign nation" crap is just lawyerspeak for pretending that because something exists on paper it exists in fact. A country is only a country when it is united - and Ukraine is divided. Minsk WAS dead. In eight years Ukraine did nothing to find a compromise and exclude Donbass and its immense mineral wealth from its deals with the EU.
    1
  21392.  @JamesBrown-mt5ru  About thirty or forty years should do it. Much more than that and a second generation has grown up which has accepted the new conditions. There are exceptions , of course, national feelings can run deep - especially when they are based on romantic fallacies, as is the case with Ukrainian nationalism.
    1
  21393.  @Geffo555  You very much can. I don't think there's much chance that anyone in Ukraine will want to take Russia on again and Russia will be content with gaining four oblasts , the removal of sanctions and Ukraine being vetoed from joining NATO.
    1
  21394.  @Geffo555  It's not a question of me liking or not liking a deal, it really is a question of whether or not Russia will accept it. If it does, the war stops. If it doesn't, the war goes on. If Ukraine won't accept it, the same applies. But Ukraine is in a far, far less secure position. If if refuses peace then there is every chance that Russia will get much of what it wants anyway - but by violent means. (No. I'm English.)
    1
  21395. Is that why the Ukrainians kill them now 80 years later? It's a two way street you know.
    1
  21396. The Republican Party needs a complete overhaul. MAGA will hopefully do it.
    1
  21397. The only way Biden can win the election now is if it is fixed for him. Which wouldn't exactly be a surprise
    1
  21398. The turning point will come when Russian armour moves down from Belarus and Ukraine is forced to abandon Donbass in order to defend Kiev. This will probably happen before the Patriot missiles are even out of their packing cases.
    1
  21399.  @superhumantrueman  Do you imagine this possibility has not been considered, and an appropriate division of forces not made?
    1
  21400.  @Andygb78  It resulted in the depletion of the Ukrainian army, which was probably the prime intention.
    1
  21401.  @ionnanskilliorus6877  Again, you disappoint me. I am a mere observer of events and find it very disheartening that people who find my analyses difficult to understand can only imagine that anyone who disagrees with the point of view they have been brainwashed into must have been paid to do so. Weak indeed.
    1
  21402. Tony S I have never heard of the word "goober" before. I've just looked it up and apparently it is a new construct meaning " a lovable goofball who is great fun to be with and irresistibly sexy." Thank you very much.
    1
  21403.  @swatilalotra3946  Thank you for that.If I could impose further, do you think most deaths have been recorded, or is there a shortfall?
    1
  21404. It's carbon net zero and all the other green BS which will sink this government. The present faffing around will amount to nothing as prices soar in the coming months. Only an administration which bins this bollocks and sets about laying its hands on cheap fossil fuel has any chance of saving the economy - North or South. And it won't be a Labour initiative, will it? Only the Tory right has any grasp of this unarguable reality.
    1
  21405. The plant is in no danger. It's pure scaremongering. Russian nuclear technology is the best in the world and the cooling systems can easily cope with a temporary drop in river levels.
    1
  21406. The more weapons Ukraine gets the longer it takes them to lose - and the more people who die.
    1
  21407.  @Aaronwhatnow  There's a bit of back-and-forth on the southern front - but it should be clear by now that the ground war isn't about gaining territory as far as the Russians are concerned - it's about retaining a hold on the territory they've got, while encouraging the Ukrainians to exhaust their resources.
    1
  21408.  @bishopwhite1822  Of course it isn't. Why would you say that? But the mortality rate is surely the more important. And I didn't mention the infection rate. I'm not getting the point you're trying to make I'm afraid.
    1
  21409.  @bishopwhite1822  These misunderstandings often happen. I don't think we can compare Covid with anything much. I do think there are treatments available if used properly and I very much fear us being bullied into taking some untried vaccine.
    1
  21410.  @loclnor  And of dying. But I don't think this can be a major factor. There are some enormously fat people in both these countries. Their arses block out the sunlight. Traditionally well-formed, I think they call it. There is mounting evidence that hydroxychloroquine can be of great help in saving people's lives if administered soon enough. Orange Man Bad saying he takes it has turned it into the sperm of the devil in many people's minds -but the truth will prevail.
    1
  21411.  @damianeadie510  Obesity is a factor, but not as much as old age. I'm sure Trump does take hydroxychloroquine. I certainly would if I could get hold of some. The treatment is being bad-mouthed because it is incredibly cheap and has been around for decades. If it works as well as many people believe it does then big pharma companies might lose some of the market for the equally incredibly expensive drugs they are working on right now. Lots of stuff here to flick through if you have the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPMhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7175881/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKG4Q5LS2AI https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCg12rOPM&t=20s
    1
  21412. No. It's true. The West will lose the economic war with Russia, not just the UK. The inadaquacies of the government will be buried in the chaos.
    1
  21413. Odd how every decision taken by the saintly Doctor Fauci seems to bring financial benefits to the pharmaceutical industry. But I expect it's just a coincidence.
    1
  21414. This is not the start of something new - it is hopefully the beginning of the end of the global warming scam. These children have been brainwashed. They need to be de-conditioned and the lies we have been told need to be exposed for what they are. Bad science trapped in a bubble and exploited by unscrupulous financiers and power-hungry politicians has resulted in what is an existential threat to Western civilisation. The revulsion that many people have felt over the whole sickeningly distasteful Greta Thunberg episode will only be compounded by the sight of these young people being used in this way. I can just about put up with Marxism - but these performances remind one of Young Pioneers in Stalin's day, or the child soldiers of Pol Pot bright-eyed and eager for a new tomorrow but not realising it will be a living hell.
    1
  21415. wilfing Yup I'm scared. Communism has caused more death and human degradation than the Nazis ever did. Read history to confirm that. Both creeds rely on brainwashing the young. If you believe that man-made carbon emissions are somehow causing the world to burn up and the only way to stop it is to cease industrial production and set up undemocratic authoritarian control then you have been brainwashed. I haven't. I've come to my own conclusions after studying the facts.
    1
  21416. Don't have much left any more.
    1
  21417.  @gnhonho  How many BLM protesters have been killed by police? How about none.
    1
  21418. Russia is now breaking through Ukraine's third and final line of defence before the Donbass border is reached. Putin's main military objective is within sight. Time to stop this madness.
    1
  21419.  @tnndll4294  The reason NATO exists is to provide career opportunities for the Western military and guarantee profits for Western arms manufacturers, as well as giving the opportunity to import American "culture" into sad and backward European countries. As for the anthem - same tune, very different lyrics. The tune has stirred Russian hearts since the 1930's and Putin sensibly didn't change it.
    1
  21420. How sweet!
    1
  21421. Putin is tough, pragmatic and very clever. He is also a patriot, and would rather see the world blown to smithereens than have his country humiliated. It really is time to back off.
    1
  21422.  @suehowie152  I don't know what you mean. Mr Zelensky should be protected from defamatory statements like this. He is a saint and, what is more, he can play the piano with his penis.
    1
  21423. Harry is as dim as his father and as narcissistic as his mother. You can't help your genes.
    1
  21424.  @annebreitrick6116  No.
    1
  21425. V. Lee Walker Such a shame she is an actress employed by the George Soros One Foundation to help spread climate crisis alarm, and thus enable him to make even more money on the carbon futures market.
    1
  21426. NATO has had its day. It has become little more than a showcase for the arms industry and a vehicle for US colonialism. It ceased to have a true function after the collapse of the Soviet Union and now has a vested interest in promoting conflict, rather than preventing it.
    1
  21427. The standard of anti-Trump mudslinging on this channel is really dropping. You must try harder.
    1
  21428. What a shame that it is largely true.
    1
  21429.  @PhoenixHinds  Masking is not mandatory in Florida yet their covid figures are no worse than anywhere else. It really is a puzzle.
    1
  21430.  @PhoenixHinds  You must excuse my intellectual shortcomings. I just can't understand why in Florida, where masking is voluntary as are most regulations, the death and infection rates are so comparatively low whereas in Michigan , say, when there are many varied tough regulations, the current situation is close to breaking point. You are obviously more intelligent than me and I would be grateful for an explanation. If it is so clear to you perhaps you could make it clear to me?
    1
  21431.  @PhoenixHinds  But I've just checked. The covid death rate in Michigan, where regulations on masking etc seem quite severe is 176 per 100.000 and I heard on the news I think that infections are so high new border controls may be introduced. In Florida, where regulations are few and masking is largely voluntary, the figure is 158 per 100,000 despite the large elderly population - and people are flocking there. Could it be the sunshine do you think? There must be some explanation.
    1
  21432.  @PhoenixHinds  But where can I get them? These are the official figures provided by Statista, presumably from the CDC. How are they "fudged" exactly? Do you know? Do you think people have died with covid but it has been left off the death certificate? I expect they have some very large hospitals in Florida because of all the old people and that's why the facilities there aren't overcrowded, as they are in Michigan and elsewhere.
    1
  21433.  @PhoenixHinds  Most figures can be fudged , I agree. I do hope there is some sort of investigation going on into this. It's very hard for doctors to decide whether covid killed someone or whether they died of something else and just happened to have it as well. The same sort of thing seems to be happening in Texas, where they've stopped making masks mandatory and yet no more people seem to have died than before. Are they doing the same sort of cheat, do you suppose?
    1
  21434.  @jasonarthurs3885  Such as the need to divert public attention and exercise psychological control by mandating the wearing of masks. There is no evidence that masks prevent the spread of coronavirus to any appreciable degree. On the other hand they do lead to the illusion that we as individuals are doing something to help. They also allow us to divert our rage and fear away from the authorities for failing to protect us and to focus these feeling on people not wearing masks. They are badges of compliance. Ritual garments, little more.
    1
  21435.  @jasonarthurs3885  Unfortunately YouTube now deletes all direct links to information regarded as heretical in this and other matters. However if you go to a site called Swiss Policy Research and scroll down their covid section to mask effectiveness and read the article there it will direct you to several sources, including the CDC study published in May 2020.
    1
  21436.  @jasonarthurs3885  I will try several approaches in an attempt to bypass the disgraceful censorship now widely practiced by tech companies on behalf of their masters. The CDC study I mentioned was published in its journal "Emerging Infectious Diseases" vol 26 no.5 May 2020. It is the lead article.
    1
  21437.  @jasonarthurs3885  A study published in Denmark in November divided 6,000 people into groups of masked and unmasked. Of the masked group 2.1% contracted the virus as opposed to 1.87% who did not. (I may have got these figures slightly wrong. I suggest you Google it as it attracted considerable controversy and there are several articles attempting to analyse the results. Personally I feel they show no meaningful statistical difference between the two groups.
    1
  21438.  @jasonarthurs3885  Doesn't what tell me something? The only message I get is that this pandemic has been hi-jacked as an exercise in social control where all contrary views, however scientifically based, have to be supressed. The British Medical Journal also published a study recommending against the use of masks by the general public, and condemning cloth masks as totally ineffective. It was in the edition of 7 April 2020. You might be able to track it down. Its reference is 369.m.422. Here is an extract : They concluded, “The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against covid-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.”
    1
  21439.  @jasonarthurs3885  You talkin' to me? I ses, are you talkin' to me? For the very reason that controversy indicates a degree of accuracy. This is not the sort of result masking fanatics want and the very fact that they have made rather pathetic attempts to undermine it show a total lack of objectivity. Plus of course, when the flak starts you know you're over target.
    1
  21440.  @jasonarthurs3885  This may be repeat, in which case I apologise. It's hard to know what's getting through and what isn't. From a study in the British Medical Journal April 7, 2020. (Ref.369.m.422) They concluded, “The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against covid-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.”
    1
  21441. Ukraine has lost the war. The only question is how much historically Russian territory Putin will be content with.
    1
  21442.  @ruprect8858  Very different indeed. These charges were an attempt at political assassination, nothing more.
    1
  21443.  @ruprect8858  Very different. This was politics - an attempt at political ass ass i nation. It had nothing to do with keeping the peace or maintaining justice and the rule of law.
    1
  21444.  @ruprect8858  It's maddening. I just found a trick though. I get another bot (Bing) to rewrite my more vituperative comments, which he (it?) does almost instantly. They sound as though they were written by a nice little old lady living in Cheltenham but the points are all covered - and they get through!
    1
  21445.  @ruprect8858  It's actually impossible to predict its idiosyncracies. Here's a tip: get another bot to rewrite your comment for you in bot-acceptable language. It might sound as though it was written by a nice little of lady from Cheltenham, but it should get through!
    1
  21446.  @custossecretus5737  Shadow-banning is a bi*tch. Mind you trying to beat the fascist censorship bots can be fun in itself!
    1
  21447. Bro Spec Patrick is right. As well as failing to clear ground cover in national parks because of threats to rare flora and fauna, public access is restricted and stock grazing is banned. Firebreaks and even access roads for emergency vehicles have become overgrown. Now though paradise is in flames and the rare orchids and unusual toads are just ashes in the wind.
    1
  21448. zion33 Exactly.
    1
  21449. What is the point in supporting Ukraine? Anyone who believes that Russia has designs on the conquest of Europe has simply fallen for a money-spinning con-trick which has fuelled the arms industry for decades.
    1
  21450.  @Nice0n3  He is. The German police have an axe to grind.
    1
  21451. Don't like it when it happens to you, do you? Anyone with anything like right-wing views has them constantly and unfairly censored on most social media - notably YouTube! If Musk is bending X to represent HIS views then this can only help arrive at a more balanced approach to the problems of the day.
    1
  21452. Why do so many people believe that those of us who do not support the West in this proxy war are Russian trolls from a farm? Do such things even exist. Aren't you just a teeny ,teeny bit paranoid?
    1
  21453. He will rescind or alter this. Either he is, as so many think, just not all there, or there could be method in his madness. George Soros introduced the concept of "reflexivity" into finance several decades ago, most spectacularly when in 1992 he almost broke the Bank of England by floating a rumour which caused the pound to crash and walked away with well over a billion dollars in profit after buying sterling on credit and shifting it into stable currencies. Trump might be using his position to use reflexivity on steroids to create feedback loops which gradually put the US economy on a more secure footing in the long term. Instead of printing dollars and pouring them into foreign economies through the mass purchase of unnecessary goods, America will become more self-reliant, enabling it to reduce both borrowing and taxes. I think it is a big mistake to take the tariffs at their face value. They are shock tactics and none are designed to be anything like permanent.
    1
  21454. Careful. He's just been awarded $15million in damages from someone who said he was a rapist!
    1
  21455.  @edix1673  What law? The legal process has been hijacked by a gang of crooks, otherwise known as the Democrat party,
    1
  21456.  @homeape.  A Memorandum is not a treaty.
    1
  21457.  @dub604  I think you'll find they do this towards the police to imply that it is THEY who are the Nazis.
    1
  21458. Wise after the event. Does this guy even know what a logarithm is?
    1
  21459. It is of course entirely possible that the shooter was directly recruited by Zelensky. It is equally possible that elements within America's "intelligence community" are colluding in attempts to get rid of him. The melting away of security at the earlier attempt rings alarm bells and in the latest incident it appear that the shooter was spotted by a member of the public, not the SS or the FBI, who phoned in a report, forcing them to act. If this rings of conspiracy theory then - too bad. It is at least a theory with far more weight than nonsensical claims that these incidents are engineered by the Trump team to boost his election chances.
    1
  21460. Needless destruction for which American intransigence is largely to blame. Without Western interference Ukraine and Russia could have settled everything peacefully.
    1
  21461. This "Free World" thing is a bit Cold War, isn't it? There are degrees of freedom in different countries. There are far more people in prison in the UK for making online comments than there are Russia, for instance.
    1
  21462.  @Martinhodso007  No. But is illusory to suggest that Russia is completely under the thumb of cruel authority, while we inhabit the sunny uplands of freedom. It seems to me that Russia is actually becoming more free, while we are becoming less so.
    1
  21463.  @simonphelps3680  For the UK, the data on arrests for online comments, particularly under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, can be found in reports from the Ministry of Justice and the House of Commons Library. There have been well over 3,000 arrests so far. In Russia, according to Human Rights Watch, there have been just over 400 arrests on similar charges.
    1
  21464. They deny it - because they didn't do it. The Ukrainians did.
    1
  21465. @Scott Smith I despair at your stupidity and ignorance. I really do.
    1
  21466. Darrell J Brooks, Joseph Rosenbaum...?
    1
  21467.  @Carl_McMelvin  Is it womentioned in your medical herstory? You can get ointwoment for it from womeny pharmacists- or on female order if you prefhim.
    1
  21468.  @vincentvangogh8092  Russia took this land 300 years ago and since then has only fought to retain it.
    1
  21469.  @brianparsons9368  Maybe not - but it looks likely to win this round.
    1
  21470. This wasn't a debate; it was a stitch-up designed to bring Trump down. It was a bear garden with Trump as the bear and Harris and the "moderators" as the dogs yapping at his heels.
    1
  21471. This is no longer about disagreement. There are now two distinct tribes in the US with no common ground between them. Democracy is dead. Civil war is inevitable.
    1
  21472. These sanctions aren't going to work and could well backfire. The rouble is holding against the dollar and has actually gone up in value since the start of this war. Russia has a mountain of gold stashed away and only 11 of the G20 countries have agreed to impose sanctions anyway. Many speculate that these moves could lead to the long-awaited collapse of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
    1
  21473. This channel and its supporters are excellent examples of this.
    1
  21474. Trump is an unlikely saviour - but he's all there is.
    1
  21475. Joe Talibiden should get to be President. He knows people who can fix these things.
    1
  21476.  @vector_7  I know that! But it's such bad presentation. Goes with the bad journalism, I guess.
    1
  21477. @jgtemperton OK. Not ALWAYS.....!
    1
  21478. @jgtemperton Don't rub it in. Surely I can be excused a little modest hyperbole?
    1
  21479.  @baldyslapnut.  No way! Putin is a realist. It was just told to the troops by way of encouragement.
    1
  21480. The idea that Russia wants to invade Europe is a myth designed to justify the arms industry transferring taxpayers' money into private pockets.
    1
  21481.  @Believe-you-me-  What do you mean exactly?
    1
  21482.  @Kremlin_Debunker  What Europe has on paper doesn't even enter into it. Europe doesn't have the bottle - or the stupidity - to put a single boot on Russian soil.
    1
  21483. @ What Europe has on paper doesn't enter into it. They don't have the bottle or -hopefully - the sheer stupidity to put a single boot on Russian soil.
    1
  21484.  @Kremlin_Debunker  But does Europe REALLY want to go to war? I don't think so.
    1
  21485.  @Kremlin_Debunker  Sadly, YouTube has deleted three of my attempts at a detailed reply. So not debunked - just censored.
    1
  21486. ROHIT GOGO! You are making the common error of confusing pollution with climate change. Mankind's pollution of the planet is truly horrendous and much, much more needs to be done about. This is one of the things that makes me so angry about all the energy being devoted to this climate crisis BS.
    1
  21487. ROHIT GOGO Recited like a good little parrot! Why should greenhouse gas emissions cause temperatures to rise anyway? Surface temperature is the result of a combination of atmospheric pressure and proximity to the sun -as is the case with all planets in the solar system. Why should earth be any different? The oceans are turning to ACID?? Brrrr. Be careful you next go swimming! Seriously, these are all scare stories designed to keep the AGW myth going through the use of fear. The yarn that the sun is cooling off is just another trick to excuse that fact that the climate crisis predictions are so wildly wrong. The sun - the whole solar system - is a great spiraling organism barreling through space at millions of miles an hour. It goes through very complex cycles and it is this -and purely this -which causes variations in temperature. You are being conned for purposes of financial and political manipulation. Wise up. Do your own research and don't just believe what teacher tells you.
    1
  21488. ROHIT GOGO There are very, very many scientists who disagree with the "facts" upon which climate crisis hysteria is based, It certainly is being used for political purposes, as well as for financial gain.
    1
  21489. Ice Man I fear I may have misjudged you. You are clearly a Koch brothers troll seeking to undermine the Left by double-bluff. Well done!
    1
  21490. Ukraine had a large well-equipped army at the start of this war - paid for by NATO. Destroying it has been the Russians' chief objective to far.
    1
  21491. The measures we have taken against covid are going to kill many, many more than the disease itself.
    1
  21492. Saying the attack on the rail station was by the Russians is jumping to conclusions. They have actively encouraged people to leave. Ukrainian nationalists, however, have frequently fired upon people attempting to do so.
    1
  21493. What makes you think we have had an accurate census in the country for many years, or that we will ever get one again?
    1
  21494.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  I hate that word. There is considerable evidence that the population of Britain is far greater than official figures state.
    1
  21495.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  Surveys carried out by major supermarkets ten or so years ago indicated that, according to consumption, the UK population was around a third higher than the official figures. These surveys have now been removed, presumably because the companies didn't want to get involved in a political melodrama. One indicator you can access yourself is go on Google Earth and look at immigrant areas in our large cities. Nearly all the back gardens now have outbuildings which are used for accommodation. Then go to the census figures for the street and you will find that only the residents of the house itself are registered. Another simple indicator is to go to an AandE unit in one of these cities and match the percentage of hopeful patients who are of foreign origin with what the percentage of the population is supposed to be of foreign origin. It will inevitably be larger. We are being invaded, and the extent of the invasion is quite deliberately being withheld from us.
    1
  21496.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  It is circumstantial and not accepted by the YouTube algorithm. It was certainly indicated in surveys carried out by supermarket chains some years ago, and now no longer available. You can go to Google Earth and check out the back gardens in immigrant areas - or just simply use your eyes and wonder why services and resources are crumbling. The population now is much greater than the population planned for.
    1
  21497.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  YouTube won't let me.
    1
  21498.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  https://youtu.be/kK2cuEPE2KU?si=hL4meTOhJgbIVX9C
    1
  21499.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  Right. Or cite sources.
    1
  21500.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  https://youtu.be/kK2cuEPE2KU?si=hL4meTOhJgbIVX9C
    1
  21501.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  I keep trying. Article by prominent left-wing journalist Martin Baker published in The Independent in 2007 estimated the UK population to be between 77m and 80m, rather than the official figure of 61 million, His figure was based on interviews with supermarket chain executives, and an un-named agricultural institution, as well as figures on mobile phone contracts. (He actually welcomed the larger figure, since he believed a high population to be good for the country.)
    1
  21502.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  The ONS admits that the 3% of the KNOWN population did not respond to the 2021 census. That adds about 1.8million to the official figure. The ONS estimates there are 1.2million illegal immigrants, so you can add that too.
    1
  21503.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  Slough Borough Council estimates that its population is between 3 to 7 thousand higher than the ONS figure.
    1
  21504.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  If there's a cover-up (which there is) then obviously people are going to be cautious about going against the official line. What about Tescos and the Slough Borough Council. What about the ONS? You are fearful of the truth.
    1
  21505.  @MichaelSmith-ns8ow  Thank you. This is a genuine and very serious problem and one which seems to be being ignored.
    1
  21506. Let her come - as long as she will appear in the media and denounce all Islamic terrorists, including Hamas.
    1
  21507. Is Ukraine an actual country, or is it just a mish-mash resulting from centuries of conquest and misapprehension? Should it admit that much of the territories incorporated into its current format are, in fact, parts of Russia and so bring to an end this bloody and needless war?
    1
  21508. Clever, isn't he?
    1
  21509. What makes anyone think that Putin has any other motive than protecting the interests of the very many Russians and Russian heritage people of the Ukraine? It is the Americans who are the true villains in this sorry saga. Washington hawks who have successfully shoehorned the weak and corrupt Biden into the Presidency are now flexing their muscles and you sorry, mutton-headed lefties are, as usual, the first to fall for the bullshit laid on you by your true enemies. How utterly gullible you always are.
    1
  21510. Lock them up?
    1
  21511. I don't think that - apart from Donald Trump - any American President has actually run the county since Eisenhower. JFK may have made a stab it, and look what happened to him.
    1
  21512. Not when you are bound to call an election within four years it isn't.
    1
  21513.  @Taladar2003  Elections may indeed be suspended, as they have been in times of war, but no attempt to suspend electoral law could ever hope to pass Parliament except under such clearly extraordinary circumstances.
    1
  21514.  @royboy565  You really are a silly boy Roy Boy.
    1
  21515.  @catherinemontgomery7130  I think he must have missed out the word "when" don't you?
    1
  21516.  @vladimirputin4822  <---- gosh, I've just had my first go at this little arrow thing. I'm so pleased with myself that I can't think of any appropriate insults just for now. Give me time though.
    1
  21517. @Bombay Molotov I'm no fan of Boris Johnson. At the same time though he is standing up for - or possibly commandeering - the very sound principle that Parliament has sovereign precedence over the judiciary. In a situation where a government has a clear and substantial majority in Parliament various devious tricks can be employed in attempts to undermine its authority. Equally well, the government, through Parliament, has a number of tactics available to circumvent such manoeuvres. Boris is playing his hand quite well so far.
    1
  21518.  @royboy565  I'm afraid anyone who slings the word "fascist" around with such abandon comes into the silly category in my book.
    1
  21519.  @mariogmajner6549  Not really. As Farage has shown, Parliamentary representation is not the sole route to exercising influence. The Tory Party is an uncrackable nut, and the only way for nationalist, anti EU, right-wing voices to make themselves heard in Parliament is to get there under a Tory banner.
    1
  21520.  @geraldhewing2076  Johnson neutered dissent?! What on earth are you talking about? This dissatisfaction in the backbenches is palpable. Tories tend to play things close to the shoulder instead of airing their dirty linen in public, like Labour, and Johnson is for the chop very, very soon. As for Trump - have you not heard of the RINOs and the Lincoln Project? Trump has the Republican party in the palm of his hand because he is a crowd-puller and a genuine man of the people. He will stay at the top just as long as he wants to. And it is Trump who has suffered at the hands of the social media giants. I only hope his new platform can provide an alternative. I suffer YouTube censorship practically every day.
    1
  21521.  @vereferreus5262  Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're referring to.
    1
  21522.  @weediestbroom  My your head is firmly stuck in the sand. An ostrich with paranoid delusions! Where do I go to get this money I'm owed, anyway?
    1
  21523.  @lfcgero35  Boris has been a naughty boy and will probably be punished soon. His consistent breaking of the 11th Commandment is eroding his usefulness.
    1
  21524.  @mariogmajner6549  But it is. Not democracy's most shining hour, perhaps; but democracy and compromise are old buddies.
    1
  21525.  @Sir_Grumpalot  You are mistaken, not to say deluded. The compromise PR methods you mention add nothing to the efficiency and fairness of the present system and are simply not worth the cost and upheaval needed for their implementation. They merely continue the talent show analogy, but with consolation prizes. Any such system would invariably minimise rural interest and allow the balance of decision-making to shift towards the appeasing of the demands of large conurbations. While my use of the word "mob" might be somewhat hyperbolic so too is your ridiculous notion that the country is heading towards a dictatorship. Johnson will be out on his ear quite soon, so you will have to find another Hitler substitute to feed your fantasies.
    1
  21526.  @Sir_Grumpalot  You are mistaken, not to say deluded. The compromise PR methods you mention add nothing to the efficiency and fairness of the present system and are simply not worth the cost and upheaval needed for their implementation. They merely continue the talent show analogy, but with consolation prizes. Any such system would invariably minimise rural interest and allow the balance of decision-making to shift towards the appeasing of the demands of large conurbations. While my use of the word "mob" might be somewhat hyperbolic so too is your ridiculous notion that the country is heading towards a dictatorship. Johnson will be out on his ear quite soon, so you will have to find another Hitler substitute to feed your fantasies.
    1
  21527.  @ab-ym3bf  And Mrs Tweedledee will be very disappointed. She is the heart and soul of the British nation and must never be ignored. None of the PR substitutes and jolly wheezes dreamed up in the back rooms of academia are worth the trouble and cost of implementing them. The British system of governance has evolved over a thousand years and fiddling about with it on account of some deluded notions of fairness is simply asking for trouble.
    1
  21528.  @ab-ym3bf  I do my own washing. I don't send it out.
    1
  21529.  @tuga9999  Que?
    1
  21530.  @geraldhewing2076  Fascist.
    1
  21531.  @Dash8Q400Channel  Not at all. That's exactly what he is. He's done what every red- blooded American male would have done if born into big money. Plus--- HE'S NOT A POLITICIAN! And all Americans with any sense hate most politicians.
    1
  21532.  @markwelch3564  Mandy Rice-Davies
    1
  21533.  @Sir_Grumpalot  I would not dream of placing such an interpretation on your failure to respond. Have a pleasant evening.
    1
  21534.  @ab-ym3bf  How can I possibly respect the views of someone who talks such utter twaddle.
    1
  21535.  @ab-ym3bf  In the small, stagnant pool you inhabit this may indeed be so.
    1
  21536. Remember the Great Barrington Declaration?
    1
  21537.  @EllisG123  He was a perfectly decent man by the standards of his time. I agree that despite his good works he is best forgotten though.
    1
  21538.  @rogerwilco5918  Russia is gaining a victory every day. The Ukraine defence lines are now almost completely over-run!
    1
  21539.  @Burt-o3l  Nearly there. With a bit of luck they won't have to fight for the rest.
    1
  21540. MostlyLoveOfMusic Pretty much. The Democrats just want politically ignorant people to believe it's terribly significant and important. The whole idea of impeachment has been totally devalued by this.What was once a useful tool of democracy has new been tossed in the bin.
    1
  21541. Why do so many of these silly old twits looks though they are ex CND and anti-Vietnam war protestors, re-living the glory days of their youth?
    1
  21542.  @boxerpop82  There are in fact eight time zones in Russia ranging across a ten hour period. Where I live in England is, indeed, the morning right now.
    1
  21543.  @Doc.O.K.  A very great and entirely avoidable tragedy. Many of them were killed by Ukrainians of course, but it's not the time to quibble.
    1
  21544. Is my memory incorrect or didn't Britain jail people for opposing our two wars with Germany?
    1
  21545. But who decides what is disinformation? Much of the news about Russia and the war in Ukraine presented on Western media is highly suspect - to put it mildly.
    1
  21546. While Americans starve homeless on the streets and die in pain and misery from drug abuse, the Biden administration is propping up a crippled foreign army with billions of dollars of military equipment. This can't go on. Why does America support Ukrainian gangsters?
    1
  21547. You are obviously unfamiliar with idea of satire. He's saying you can't change climate change any more than you can change the orbit of the moon. Why are left-wingers so totally lacking in imagination?
    1
  21548.  @guesswhat-chickenbutt  It was Buster TC I aimed my remarks at. You don't think he was being satirical too do you? It's sometimes so very hard to tell.
    1
  21549.  @alanmorgan7212  So from this I suppose we have to assume that a relatively high proportion of those sharing the misery of A&E with Tim are white people there as the result of excessive indulgence in drink and drugs. Is that what you are implying?
    1
  21550.  @alanmorgan7212  So do you think a large proportion of those in the A&E here are likely to be white people who are there as a result of drink and drugs?
    1
  21551.  @alanmorgan7212  So do you think that there will be many such people in the room with Tim, then?
    1
  21552.  @alanmorgan7212  Have you never been to A&E yourself then?
    1
  21553.  johnslavin2270  There is a theory that the woes of the NHS - and other breakdowns in social mechanism - are caused at least in part by excessive numbers of often undocumented immigrants entering the country in recent years. These numbers have not been planned for and society is collapsing under the strain. Whether this is true or not I do not know but large numbers of obviously non-native people in A&E would indicate the possibility of this being true.
    1
  21554. This could be worrying. There are some signs that Covid 19 likes Spring weather and can take off when temperatures reach around 14 to 18c. With strategies that have suppressed all hope of herd immunity, both NZ and Australia COULD be on their way to experiencing what the US and Europe have endured.
    1
  21555. Nigel should feel privileged that he has been subjected to the same treatment as Tommy Robinson and Carl Benjamin. All three are in their way warriors against the fascist left. If only they could join forces against this deluded scum!
    1
  21556. The Tories are greedy and incompetent. Labour are stark staring mad. The Lib/Dems are where unhappy Tories go to die and really only Reform, being an unknown quantity, offers any hope for the future.
    1
  21557. Don't you think the huge increase in "cases" might have something to do with it?
    1
  21558. @Who let the virus out? Woof woof woofhan Not quite sure what you're on about. I just think its interesting that if you get run over by a bus and Covid shows up in your corpse your death is recorded as coronavirus related. I might have a beer though.
    1
  21559.  @shivakumarvjit  This true. But what if Covid is present but has no effect on death, as in the case of an accident? Its presence would be entered on the death certificate,as is required, and the death would be recorded as "coronavirus-related" and appear on the statistics. The point is that we do not know, nor cannot ever truly know how many people have been killed by this disease.
    1
  21560.  Blunt Vibez  I understand you perfectly. Do you understand though that if you were run over by a bus and were found to have Covid the chances are your death would be recorded as coronavirus-related? There is nothing sinister in this, it is just the way it is.
    1
  21561.  @matthewleonard1402  I'm astounded to hear this. If I have been misinformed I am very sorry. Is it not true then that coronavirus symptoms are included on death certificates when present even when not the primary cause?
    1
  21562.  @shivakumarvjit  In these cases the deaths are not considered DUE to Covid but doctors are supposed to indicate its presence on the death certificate, as I understand it. The death is then recorded as coronavirus RELATED -and these are the figures we are given every day. Many people have died due to Covid 19. We cannot know exactly how many. It is also true that many have died due to lack of treatment for other conditions such as cancer and heart disease over the same period.
    1
  21563.  @bonkersbeast  Why sick? I'm just pointing out that the actual number of people killed by Covid can never be known but that obviously it must be fewer than the "coronavirus-related" deaths we are given every day.
    1
  21564.  @shivakumarvjit  Please look at my other answer to you. I am in no way suggesting this is a fake pandemic, just that it is impossible to judge its full extent.
    1
  21565.  @matthewleonard1402  Thank you for that. I have come across doctors complaining that they were expected to notify Covid -or even possible Covid-like symptoms on death certificates even if this did not, in their opinion, have any bearing on the death. Perhaps practices differ in different hospitals or perhaps the doctors were exaggerating to make a point. As you will know many cardiologists and oncologists are angry because their patients are not being treated due to the outbreak. They seem to think that rather than having done too little too late, we have done too much too late.
    1
  21566. We're getting pushed towards it by idiots like you.
    1
  21567. Watch this space.
    1
  21568. Russia is fighting to maintain its identity and integrity in the face of constant Western efforts to undermine it. This seems to me to be entirely reasonable, and from what I can gather it seems entirely reasonable to the majority of Russians also.
    1
  21569.  @davefave4351  If and when Russia wins in Ukraine and peace is declared I think we can be reasonably confident that these artificially-induced economic woes will be brought to an end. There is this bizarre psychological need, it seems, to denigrate Russia on every level. In fact it has done wonders after escaping the horrors of socialism and we should respect that, instead of attempting to belittle it.
    1
  21570.  @CabSav2010  The truth. The Russian Federation has emerged from the horrors of socialism but instead of allowing it to be free, the West (ie America) has attempted to colonise it.
    1
  21571.  @DecievedREALITY999  Russia is merely attempting to regain territory taken from it by a foolish treaty, and to protect the culture and well-being of the Russians living there. While corruption and a degree of repression remain in Russia - this is simply the way it has always been in that country, as indeed it is in a great many others, including , of course Ukraine. One can only hope that the inevitable alteration in the balance of world power which will occur should Russia be seen to be able to defy the wishes of Western imperialism will lead to a swift economic recovery.
    1
  21572.  @DecievedREALITY999  Russia is merely trying to regain territory which it sees as having been unfairly taken from it in the confusion following the collapse of the Soviet Union. To them what is happening in Ukraine is a liberation, not an invasion. If sanctions are not artificial, I don't know what is, and should Russia manage to demonstrate to the world at large that it is able to defy Western imperialism and American hegemony then the world at large will ensure that their effects will be minimised. One can also hope that a sensible and pragmatic US presidency will ensure that Russia is treated not as a pariah, but as an economic rival - or even potential partner. As for corruption and oppression, they do indeed continue to exist in Russia as they do in a very great many countries to one degree or another - including, of course, Ukraine.
    1
  21573.  @DecievedREALITY999  Russia views its actions in Ukraine as an effort to regain territory that it believes was lost during the collapse of the Soviet Union. From their perspective, this is seen as a liberation rather than an invasion. The topic of sanctions is contentious; some argue that their impact could be lessened if Russia effectively demonstrates its resilience against Western policies. Looking forward, a more pragmatic approach from global leaders, including the United States, could potentially reshape relations with Russia, treating it as an economic competitor or partner rather than a pariah. It's also important to acknowledge that corruption and governance challenges persist in many countries, including both Russia and Ukraine.
    1
  21574.  @DecievedREALITY999  Out of interest ,my reply has been rewritten by the bot Bing in order to comply with the restrictions imposed by the YouTube repressive algorithm bot. What a world.
    1
  21575.  @boogiewoogie9770  I meant, of course, territorial integrity. In Russia's view Western attempts to influence affairs in Ukraine, Georgia and other satellite nations and districts amounts to an assault on its identity as a nation.
    1
  21576. @Ricardo-i3s7f I mean, of course, territorial integrity.
    1
  21577.  @midknight  How would you know?
    1
  21578.  @RichardQuaid  He is of his generation - as am I. In those days women were treated as sex objects as a matter of course. Us old guys are kinda ashamed of it now, but that's the way it was. There must be millions of men in their seventies and eighties who could be tried for retrospective sexual assault.
    1
  21579.  @RichardQuaid  He is, however, the lesser of several evils.
    1
  21580. Weasel words, not weaponry. America is going to write Ukraine off as a bad investment before the year is out. There's now sixty billion bucks gone down the drain and Ukraine is firing off shells faster than America and Europe can produce them. The tanks need major refits before they even arrive and if Ukraine bombards Crimea, Russia will reduce Kiev to dust. These two wonderful heroes are yesterday's men. They are now fighting for their personal survival - and freedom and democracy are the mere platitudes they have always been.
    1
  21581.  @kyle-ld2gh  It still comes out of the budget. And Ukraine got some lovely new stuff too. $27 billion was spent before Russia even invaded and the rest has been donated since. That just wasn't the plan. America (and Europe) are now being expected to send new equipment right off the production line. They won't do it. Their own stocks are already running dangerously low, and home defense comes first.
    1
  21582.  @kyle-ld2gh  No-one can know for certain. What is pretty certain though is that this whole venture is costing twice as much and taking far, far longer than was originally thought. There will be those who will wish to carry on putting quarters in the slot machine - but others will very much want to cut their losses and give up.
    1
  21583.  @kyle-ld2gh  The figures are available from the US Congress records and NATO. And there wasn't even supposed to BE a war - not on this scale, anyway. Where's the strawman, anyway? Everything we say and think must have some element of supposition in it.
    1
  21584.  @kyle-ld2gh  You are missing the point entirely (Perhaps you aren't quite as bright as you think. It's a common failing). The point is that it is the cost of wars which often dictate their outcomes. This war is the result of the West (America, really) trying to get hold of the immense mineral wealth of Donbass, which was developed by Russia and from which Russia still derives profit . I cannot think that this measure and type of response from Russia was anticipated. Russia took the war to Ukraine in order to demolish Ukraine's US-financed army in order to prevent it moving in on Donbass. With less than 200,000 men and using largely antiquated equipment it clearly had no hope of permanently conquering Ukraine. Ukraine's expensive army is now largely destroyed and America (the West) is now faced with the immense cost of replacing it. The cost has already matched the original investment, and America is even further away from getting its hands on all that lovely oil, gas, coal, steel and rare earth minerals. So will it spend even more - or give up? That's not a straw man argument. It's a considered appraisal with which you will probably disagree, but it stands nonetheless.
    1
  21585.  @kyle-ld2gh  And the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic developed the Donbass without Moscow's assistance, did it? And the tens of thousands of Russians who were imported to replace those lazy Tatars were miraculously transformed into Ukrainians, were they? As were the Russians who make up the majority of the population of Crimea? And none of the coal and steel ever went to Russia, but was the exclusive property of Ukraine, was it? MILLIONS in your army? Come now. And who exactly is paying for your 60k to get trained? It isn't Ukraine, because Ukraine is broke. It's NATO, same as its NATO who's promising you all this hardware you're not going to get. Five trust funds were set up by NATO after 2014 to "improve security" for Ukraine. America's contribution alone had amounted to $27 billion by 2021. That's more than training and a few weapons. Why is NATO/America doing all this for you, do you think? Out of kindness? No, they want a return for their money. And unless it hoves into sight pretty rapidly you'll be on your own, out there to join all the other nations which have made the mistake of trusting Uncle Sam.
    1
  21586.  @kyle-ld2gh  The Holodomor was agricultural, not industrial. The millions who died were mainly kulaks. The grain they harvested was taken from them and used to feed industrial workers, including those who were working the mines and steelworks of Donbass - who were mainly Russians. Russians, not Ukrainians, have been the main exploiters of Donbass since the 19th century. Ukrainians tend to stick to agriculture. The Holodomor had little or no effect on the industrial population, whom it was considered essential to feed. Russia believes it has historic and economic rights to control Donbass. It resents the new government of Kiev selling off the results of its labours to whoever it likes, and for whatever price it likes. Standards of living and wages gave dropped dramatically since Kiev took over and this has fuelled a call for regional autonomy, which Russia has naturally supported. Perhaps if that autonomy had been granted, things would not have got to this stage.
    1
  21587.  @RoofLight00  If you can't make mistakes you can't make anything!
    1
  21588.  @GreenMachine-u3n  The whole of law is a "technicality". All I am meaning to imply is that there is difference between the judgements of courts and moral guilt.
    1
  21589.  @GreenMachine-u3n  This seems to be descending into a mere semantic discussion. The law is undoubtedly a compilation of technicalities, and therefore all its decisions can be said to be technical. By highlighting this aspect of the law anyone who has any doubts about the morality of a decision can point out, quite politely, that there may be some divergence between the judgement accorded by the law and an individual objective assessment of the matter at hand. This is all I sought to do.
    1
  21590.  @GreenMachine-u3n  That's rather my point.
    1
  21591.  @GreenMachine-u3n  "Semantics is rather important in the law. Decisions involving life and death have hinged on how words are interpreted." That's rather my point. There is a difference between technical veracity and truth, and the law often has the difficult task of deciding between the two. Quite often it gets this wrong, since technical veracity is far easier to pin down than the truth - which is a slippery customer at the best of times.
    1
  21592.  @billpugh58  No. Yours is.
    1
  21593.  @dimitrianid2417  Bakhmut is a fortress. It was reconstructed after World War II to withstand nuclear attack and to house an army of 20,000 in bomb shelters beneath the steel works. After 2014 Ukraine surrounded it with rings of trenches to hold off the separatist armies. Which is not to say, I hasten to add, that the Ukrainians have not done a magnificent job in holding the Russians off for so long.
    1
  21594. The virus has no sense nor power of reason and yet it manages to outwit these conceited buffoons at every turn.
    1
  21595. I'm surprised anyone is surprised. It is entirely cleat the pandemic response has been stage-managed with the over-riding objective of making obscene profits for drug companies - and with no regard for the consequences.
    1
  21596. And in the meantime Johnson can be blackmailed into introducing some proper right-wing Conservative legislation. Lovely!
    1
  21597. These fires are as nothing compared to what they were. According the the US Department of Agriculture an average of FIFTY million acres of forest were burned a year in the 1920's and 30's, gradually diminishing until from the 1970's onwards around eight million acres were burned. There have been slight increases this century - not because of "global warming" but because insane and conceited environmentalists have interfered with tried and tested fire reduction methods.
    1
  21598.  @AndyM_323YYY  Has it crossed your mind that this was what you were SUPPOSED to think? What actually happened was that the Ukrainians threw themselves into battle and sustained considerable losses in doing so.
    1
  21599.  @Writeous0ne  Despite the "nonsense" we are in broad agreement, I think.
    1
  21600.  @AndyM_323YYY  Yup.
    1
  21601.  @AndyM_323YYY  The fact is we just don't know. The Oryx site is outwardly quite convincing, but I have my doubts. You are quite right in that Russia is traditionally insouciant about losses of men and materiel though. Have they miscalculated this time, however? The next few weeks should provide the answer. If all they have ever wanted is Donbass and Crimea, then it's hard to see how this ambition will not eventually be met as things stand at present. It will need Ukraine to bring up far more forces than it appears they have to prevent it.
    1
  21602.  @mjbcswitzerland  You're probably about right - although I doubt very much that he had much faith in the first option.
    1
  21603. Because they are true. The multi-trillion dollar mining industry in Eastern Ukraine is largely owned by Russians and the whole area is far more Russian than "Ukrainian.". Trump's predecessors have aided Western companies in trying to take this industry away from its Russian owners. Russia was forced into the grim necessity of war in order to prevent this. Instead of throwing away hundreds of thousands of lives in a bid to obtain these resources by force, Trump plans to get America a share through negotiation.
    1
  21604. Biden made the white supremacist allegation BEFORE he was *President.
    1
  21605. Naah. They came over on a rubber dinghy.
    1
  21606. With Big Pharma on the board.
    1
  21607. Ah, the Wold War. Slavonic hordes invade the Sussex downs!
    1
  21608. The chances of Ukraine pushing the Russians out in the near future are close to zero. The long-heralded counter-offensive can only result in losses of men and materiel which the Ukrainians can ill-afford.
    1
  21609. Your figures are bonkers. And so-called long covid varies enormously with age. A study currently conducted using 45,000+ participants and access to 1.2 million anonymous GP records shows that debilitating symptoms still occurring after three months affect just 1.2 % of people in their twenties, rising to 4.8% for those in middle age.
    1
  21610.  @johnh9449  I cannot follow the reasoning in the first part of your statement, but since your last statement is provably false I shall not bother to try to unpick the convolutions of the first part.
    1
  21611.  @johnh9449  Sorry, I didn't get the notification of your last two posts and have only just come across them by accident - and I am neither a troll nor am I embarrassed. Your conclusion that long covid affects 1 in 5 people regardless of age is clearly wrong and that is what I was referring to. The ONS figures are of course extrapolated from a simple unchecked survey involving 313,216 respondents. Given that probably it is mainly those who believe themselves to be suffering from long covid who are likely to respond the figures must be treated with care. The ONS itself draws attention to the drawbacks of this method: "This analysis is based on self-reported long COVID. Self-reported measures are subjective and reflect systematic differences between socio-demographic groups in terms of their likelihood to report symptoms given an underlying level of severity, as well as differences in severity." The ongoing survey being conducted by evidence-based medicine group ZOE paints a somewhat different picture. Their results are based on 45,000+ screened participants and access to 1.2million anonymous GP records. Not unexpectedly they find that long covid, as defined by life affecting debilitating symptoms, is experienced on a linear age pattern, as is the case with severe symptoms generally and deaths. They find that 1.2% of patients in their 20's are suffering from the condition, rising to 4.8% in those of middle age. As for your projected cases and deaths I'm not quite sure where you have got this from. Are you extrapolating yourself or has the ONS or some other body done it? It seems to be taking a great deal for granted to me. Simply because rates are doubling every nine days doesn't mean this will be a consistent curve -although of course it may well be. In the week ending June 7 there were 46,825 confirmed cases in the UK. Three weeks later, on the week ending June 28 there were 118 deaths. If one were to crudely assume that most (although not all) of these deaths had occurred from among those 46,825 cases ( allowing time for the infection to develop and the patient to die) this would give a death to case ratio of around .25%. Assuming 100,000 cases a day, as gloomily predicted, this would lead to 250 people dying on the day three weeks following. Once again though these relationships may change drastically in a short period of time. If I have got this all wrong please feel free to tell me - I may be embarrassed, but I will be grateful for any correction!
    1
  21612.  @johnh9449  Tim Spector seems to disagree with you. Here is the relevant broadcast. The information I referred to begins at around 7 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pngE6i3C4vM&t=462s I imagine much of this confusion arises from how people define symptoms. Not being able to taste the Marmite on your breakfast toast may be annoying but it shouldn't stop you going to work. I think the stricter definition should very much be applied. All infections and traumas take a time to clear up, but I hope that one good thing that might come out of this mess is a greater understanding of why a minority of victims of pathogens suffer such long-term consequences.
    1
  21613.  @johnh9449  Thanks. The Zoe document is of course some nine months old and based on a very small sample. I think its findings may have been overtaken by events. Purely in passing do you not find in interesting how left-wing people tend to maximise the impact and extent of the disease while those of the right tend to minimise it? I do.
    1
  21614.  @johnh9449  Yup. It depends what levels of discomfort and inconvenience people are prepared to put up with in the general run of things, I guess. Personally I believe the road to hell is paved with good intentions and in the final analysis lockdowns will prove to have been a huge mistake and masks and social distancing pretty pointless. The death rate in 2020, with two covid waves, was 10.2 per thousand as opposed to the 9.4 predicted and I reckon that many of the deaths in the second wave were due to victims being weakened due to lockdown-induced lack of treatment for pre-existing conditions. Shit happens and it often turns out that tinkering with ineluctable destiny can do more harm than good. The Great Barrington Declaration hit it on the head for me and now that vaccines are at least providing some protection for the elderly and vulnerable that is the quickest way out - and very possibly even the least damaging in the long run. But then of course I'm very right wing!
    1
  21615.  @johnh9449  I have no time for Johnson either, but a manslaughter charge is pushing it. He's no scientist and has been saddled with a bunch of advisors some of whom are pretty suspect, to say the least. I don't think SAGE had a single epidemiologist in its ranks at the start. They are a odd bunch of placemen, computer geeks and communists, most connected to Imperial College in one way or another and have never represented a broad swathe of opinion. Dithering has certainly been the problem but attributing 100,000 deaths to it is in no way reasonable. You're the mathematician, not me, but the curves seem to go their own sweet way and I can see no direct impact from either lockdowns or masking mandates. The number of viruses is so huge that as long as someone is within reach to be infected they are going to be infected and if they are weak enough they are going to die. Trying to hold the tide back only has a slowing down effect as far as I can see, with no long term effect on casualties. Things may even be made worse since delays give new variants time to take a hold. The UK had a large population of very elderly people standing by due to very mild flu seasons, and it has been they who have caught it. The largest single category of deceased has been males over 90 I believe. I suppose I am one of your swivel-eyed loons. The dreadful effects of lockdowns, both at home and in the Third World, far, far outweigh the possibility that they might have given a number of very old people a few more months of existence. More children and young people in Africa and elsewhere are dying or are going to die due to malnutrition, TB, malaria and so on than the unknown quantity of British OAPs who will be spared to sit looking at TV while attended by strangers for a year or two more. No, not a good deal in the general order of things.
    1
  21616.  @johnsevern739  No. Just stupid.
    1
  21617.  @zephyr8072  You've got bots on the brain. Assuming you have one, that is.
    1
  21618.  @zephyr8072  You've got bots on the brain.
    1
  21619.  @tony_w839  That decent, well-meaning people are being subtly coerced into a process leading to the eventual Islamification of this country.
    1
  21620.  @zephyr8072  Do you know what a brain is?
    1
  21621.  @zephyr8072  Beep boop? So YOU are a bot then??!
    1
  21622.  @zephyr8072  Are you going to run out of Russian first names before long?
    1
  21623.  @tony_w839  The Islamist conspiracy has been going on for more than a thousand years. It's mind control.
    1
  21624.  @zephyr8072  Try reading a bit of Dostoevsky for further inspiration. It might do you good.
    1
  21625. Have they doctored all the videos as well?
    1
  21626. The West IS weak. History will doubtless show that America's chaotic withdrawal from Kabul sent the first signal that the gig is up. This equally chaotic and ill-considered proxy war in Ukraine is further confirmation.
    1
  21627. Why though? Just why? Only warmongers and arms dealers are coming out on tops in this situation Which one is our worthy general?
    1
  21628.  @boink800  Different bloke
    1
  21629. Who said that?
    1
  21630.  @APW554  The "free world" isn't free and nor does it have the capacity to defeat Russia .
    1
  21631. The virus is present in such huge numbers that it is a statistical certainty that all viable variants must exist. This means that there are variants in existence ready to take advantage of every opportunity offered to them. Such as lockdowns and border controls which, unless imposed before the virus has taken hold, only extend the problem. I think this may be being realised at last - and not before time either.
    1
  21632.  @atomiccritter6492  Try thinking it through.
    1
  21633. Where can I buy one of these moral compasses? Do they have them on Amazon?
    1
  21634. I am.
    1
  21635.  @JTMaster  Of which, of course, the Ukrainians have not captured a single one?
    1
  21636.  @wolfgangemmerich7552  So Ukraine does have any captured drones?
    1
  21637.  @cosmicwakes6443  Which is which?
    1
  21638.  @cosmicwakes6443  Masks are totally useless against covid, the burqa, on the other hand, serves its purpose of repressing unseemly lust. Both allow nasty bullies to punish people who won't wear them.
    1
  21639. Probably is.
    1
  21640.  @ow3wells  True enough. I was just sticking up for the British. First nation to condemn and police the slave trade, founders of Liberia etc.
    1
  21641. They need the eastern parts as a land bridge to Crimea. In the event of a proper peace and international recognition of Russia's right to Crimea and Donbass there might be a chance they will be given back.
    1
  21642.  @cyclewisconsin105  At the cost of considerable losses to the Ukrainian army - which was the plan. If Putin wanted to take Kiev he would do what he did in Mariupol and what he is doing now on the Southern front. But he didn't want Kiev. He just wanted to draw the Ukrainians into battle on Ukrainian soil, and was prepared to sacrifice thousands of raw troops and tons of old armour to achieve it. That 40km long column was just bait.
    1
  21643.  @GARDENER42  No really much of an argument, is it? Could you perhaps consider the possibility that the "facts" you have been fed and swallowed so greedily might not be facts at all - but simply propaganda?
    1
  21644.  @GARDENER42  So your experiences haven't prejudiced you in any way then? The very fact that you believe I am instructed by the Kremlin clearly illustrates your blinkered view of the complexities of the situation in Ukraine. Do you have any idea of what Putin's demands are, for instance? I'd really like to know.
    1
  21645.  @It1nt  But surely the Russians would still be targeting important sites such as power stations, munitions factories etc with the same result? So why a hospital? I'm not suggesting for a moment that they would hesitate to bomb a hospital they knew it was being used to house a military target, but as far I am aware there is no suggestion of that in this instance.
    1
  21646.  @andrewbrock4636  I'm not sure that it has.
    1
  21647. @SomethingBlonde-oc7sc They don't do it very well then. In World War II the British and the Americans killed thousands of German civilians every night for several months.
    1
  21648.  @It1nt  There seems no tactical reason for them, for one thing. I fully accept that civilians are going to get killed but if Putin really wanted to target civilians directly in order to bring the country to its knees the number killed would be far, far greater than it is. Secondly Ukraine has a good record for turning such events into PR exercises and considerable doubt hangs over several of their claims. It is a nonsense to pretend that Russians are evil demons and Ukrainians are angels. They come from the same stock and their behaviour has been equally reprehensible in many instances.
    1
  21649.  @It1nt  There seems no tactical reason for them for one thing. If Putin wanted to bring Ukraine to its knees by terrorising civilians he would kill them by the tens of thousand. The numbers we hear about are entirely consistent with missiles going astray - both incoming and those designed to bring them down. Also Ukraine is very good at PR and question marks hang over many of their claims. I do not think Russians are any better or worse than Ukrainians, quite frankly. UN reports on the situation of the start of the war back in 2014 record horrifying incidents against civilians committed by both sides. Demonising Russia is simply a way of justifying Western support for something which is basically a quarrel between two countries with a very intertwined history.
    1
  21650.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  You are rather making my point. In Syria they razed cities to the ground. They are not doing that in Ukraine.
    1
  21651.  @It1nt  I imagine they are designed to reduce the ability to respond to strikes by destroying things like fire-engines. And naturally enough, yes, people are going to get killed.
    1
  21652.  @It1nt  Are you suggesting they can't use bombers in Ukraine? What exactly is stopping them? (Honest question, by the way)
    1
  21653.  @thomaslunde5014  If Russia wanted to target civilians tens of thousands would be dead. Those who have died have done so as victims of strikes on legitimate targets. The numbers involved prove this.
    1
  21654.  @It1nt  OK, but why is Ukraine constantly begging for more air defences then? You may be right, but I tend to think that not sending the bombers in is a deliberate act. Plenty would get through and, as we know, the Russians are careless about losses. If you read the essay Putin wrote before the invasion he makes it very clear that he regards the Ukrainians as being the same people as the Russians and wishes them no harm. He regrets their wish to turn their face to the West, and will not prevent them. But they can't have Donbass and Crimea. He regards these territories - with some justification - as being essentially Russian and their being included in the new country of Ukraine back in early 90's was a mistake. There is still a chance that the future will see Russia and a smaller Ukraine resuming reasonable relations. Mass civilian casualties would be a barrier to that.
    1
  21655.  @It1nt  Then why is Ukraine constantly asking for more air defence systems? I'm sure Russian bombers could get through, even with substantial losses and, as we know, Russia isn't scared of losses. No, I'm pretty sure that Putin was being honest when he said in his essay on Russia/Ukraine relations published shortly before the invasion that he regards the Ukrainians as being the same people as the Russians and that while he regrets their decision to turn to the West he will not stand in their way - but they can't take Donbass and Russia with them. That's all this war is about: maintaining Russia's hold on the vast mineral riches of Eastern Ukraine. Putin doesn't want to crush Ukraine. He just wants Kiev to give back to Russia territory which he believes to be essentially Russian.
    1
  21656.  @It1nt  So why are the constantly asking for more air defence systems? I think Russia could easily blitz Ukraine , even if sustaining great losses. But I genuinely believe Putin doesn't want to. It's not that kind of war. (This is my fifth attempt at replying to you, by the way. YouTube deletes my more detailed reasoning.)
    1
  21657.  @It1nt  I'm afraid I'm not much up on the nuts and bolts of military hardware, but I have read Putin's essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published before the invasion and I believe him when he says that they are essentially the same people, and he wishes them no harm. This war seems to me to have been largely concerned with reducing Ukraine's military capabilities in order to protect Russia's commercial interests in Eastern Ukraine. It is not a war of conquest, as such. Large-scale civilian casualties would not be appropriate in this context - but it might well be that, as you say, that this is not attainable anyway.
    1
  21658.  @It1nt  Putin is pragmatic, not emotional. Ukraine has a large Russian population, concentrated mainly in the East, where their immediate forebears were imported to work the mines and industries. The people they replaced were mainly Tatars, not Ukrainians. The colonialism has already happened, but Russia is reluctant to see its fruits disappear into the pockets of Western companies. Families quarrel, and this war is an example of that.
    1
  21659.  @It1nt  You make some very valid points. As far as the Imperial and Soviet symbology is concerned these -like the oft-quoted "Kiev in three days" - are designed to encourage the troops more than anything. Yes, the family quarrel has got very much out of hand, but it is difficult to see how either side could have backed down once the compromises of the Minsk treaties were abandoned. Although there is a cultural element to this war it is, like all wars, mainly concerned with the ownership of resources - and the resources involved are pretty huge. Donbass is sitting on several trillions of dollars in gas, coal, iron and rare earth minerals. The area has been exploited by Russians - not Ukrainians - ever since salt was found there back in the 16th century. Even after Ukrainian independence these resources were generally channelled through Russian interests. The prospect of them being nationalised and then coming under EU or American or Black Rock control was more than Russia could reasonably be expected to accept.
    1
  21660.  @It1nt  You make some valid points but sadly, once again, the insane YouTube algorithm takes exception to something in my response. But I will keep trying.
    1
  21661.  @It1nt  The Soviet and Imperialist symbols - like the oft-quoted "Kiev in three days" were designed to encourage the troops into believing they were taking part in a national crusade.
    1
  21662.  @It1nt  Although there are some cultural elements in this war it is -like most wars - mainly concerned with control of resources. And the resources in this instance are huge with Donbass sitting on several trillions of dollars in coal, gas, oil, iron and rare earth minerals. The discovery of half a million tonnes of lithium ore around Mariupol may well have brought matters to a head.
    1
  21663.  @It1nt  The mineral extraction industry in Eastern Ukraine is and always has been primarily a Russian concern. The threat of it being nationalised and its profits taken over by foreign interests was more than Russia could reasonably have been expected to accept.
    1
  21664.  @It1nt  The family quarrel could, I think, have been settled without bloodshed if the terms of the Minsk treaties had been adhered to. Regional autonomy for the two Donbass republics, allowing them to continue to trade with Russia, would have prevented the grim necessity of war.
    1
  21665.  @It1nt  The Minsk compromise would have been a viable solution, but it clearly did not fit in with Western ambitions. Tragically, there is every chance that Russia will gain by force more than it asked for peacefully and hundreds of thousands of people will have died to no purpose. There is a very real sense in which we are the bad guys here.
    1
  21666.  @It1nt  The point is that Russia does not agree that Donbass and its mineral wealth actually belongs to Ukraine. They say that giving the new country of Ukraine the same boundaries as the former SSR was a huge mistake. As long as the Kiev government allowed Russia to continue to exploit the resources there was an uneasy peace. Ukraine joining the EU and allowing foreign companies to take over was more than Russia was prepared to put up with. It's not that Russia wants more minerals. It wants to keep hold of those it already has - and which generations of Russians have laboured to extract from the earth.
    1
  21667.  @It1nt  No treaty last forever and the Russia of today is not the Russia of 1993. The Budapest accords were signed by a drunkard in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet empire in circumstances which have radically altered since then. There is nothing about the 21st century which makes it any different to any other century in this regard. Putin has attempted for more than 20 years to peacefully redress the inbalances created by Budapest. The Minsk Accords were designed to do so and would have provided a viable and workable solution to the problem. Sadly though the notion of removing billions of dollars a year from the Russian economy has provided too great a temptation for Western agencies who have shamefully staged a proxy war costing thousands of lives in a vain attempt to realise their ambitions.
    1
  21668.  @It1nt  The Treaty of Windsor is an exception to the general rule though! Just think how many thousands of treaties have failed or been abandoned since then. Thirty years is a pretty good run, in fact. As far as your second point is concerned yes, there is a bit more to this than money I suppose - although I think that the final balance sheet, assuming Russia wins, will put them in a greater profit than if they had meekly agreed to give up their mining interests. There is the matter of national pride to consider. Ever since the collapse of the SU the West has put continual pressure on the Russian Federation to accept a subsidiary role in world affairs - to accept US dominance in fact. This Putin has refused to do. The notion of giving up Donbass to largely American interests and allowing Ukraine to becoming yet another NATO outpost was a red line he would not allow to be crossed. And I think the US and the West were very wrong and really very immoral to attempt to do so.
    1
  21669.  @It1nt  Attempt number 2! Damn YouTube. The Treaty of Windsor is an obvious exception. Think how many thousands of treaties have been broken or abandoned since then. Thirty years is a pretty good run. It's more than just money, I think - although if Russia wins it will almost certainly recover its investment in the war. There is the question of national pride. Ever since the collapse of the SU the Russian Federation has been under pressure to bow the knee to America. Moving in on Donbass and attempting to bring Ukraine into NATO was just a step too far. A line was crossed which should not have been crossed. This dreadful war is the result.
    1
  21670.  @It1nt  Attempt No 3. What happened to free speech, YouTube? The Treaty of Windsor is an exception. Think how many thousands of treaties have been broken or fallen by the wayside since then. I don't know, but I think Russia will come out on top financially if it wins. That aside, there is the question of national pride to consider. Ever since the collapse of the SU the Russian Federation has been put under pressure to bow to US hegemony. It has refused to do so. Losing Donbass to foreign interests and having Ukraine join NATO would have been an unbearable humiliation for Russia. more.....
    1
  21671.  @It1nt  Forcing Russia and Ukraine into conflict is the truly immoral act in this whole shameful business. Setting one tribe against another and writing treaties which cannot help but be broken is a technique developed by America when they were used to commit genocide against the original inhabitants of their land. These techniques have been employed in the present situation, I'm sad to say. As ever the motive is the acquisition of wealth and resources belonging to others.
    1
  21672.  @It1nt  Does America have the right to tell other countries what they can and can't do? They seem to have considerably more experience of it that the Russian Federation. In fact, setting one tribe against the other and writing treaties which are doomed to fail have been part of the armoury of that great nation ever since they were used to help exterminate the original population of the land. Russia does not want all of Ukraine. As you rightly say, that would mean a permanent state of civil war. Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are being rebuilt with an investment that far exceeds anything they ever got under Kiev. It will now take a great deal and a great deal more bloodshed to prevent them returning to permanent Russian rule. As to the economic and demographic consequences - they remain very much to be seen. We are at a watershed in human affairs. American hegemony is under threat and new alliances are being created. Who knows what the world will look like in twenty years time?
    1
  21673.  @It1nt  YouTube continues to block my replies to such an extent that I cannot reply meaningfully to your points. Bit like being in Soviet Russia, really.
    1
  21674.  @It1nt  America seems to spend far more time telling other countries what to do than the Russian Federation does.
    1
  21675.  @It1nt  Russia does not want Ukraine. It just wants its borders to be realistically set, and not in accord with the borders of the former SSU which was, of course, a Russian construct anyway.
    1
  21676.  @It1nt  I think $10+trillion under the ground in Donbass will soften any financial blows. In any case, Russia is a criminal enterprise and nobody not in the know has any idea how its economy actually works.
    1
  21677.  @It1nt  Pride may be an immoral reason to hurt people, but then so is greed to possess what others have worked for over the centuries.
    1
  21678.  @It1nt  Setting one tribe against another and writing treaties designed to fail have been techniques employed by America ever since they were used to help commit genocide in the Indian Wars.
    1
  21679. Craig Simpson Hedge funds get a lot out of it by trading in carbon emission permissions. Globalist/ Marxists hope to get a lot out of it because the only way strategies like the Green New Deal can be imposed is through autocratic, undemocratic control from a centralised unelected bureaucracy.
    1
  21680. Imagine if Putin took out, say, a medium sized US city with one nuclear missile. Would the Biden administration respond in kind or call off the war in Ukraine pretty quickly? What do you think?
    1
  21681. These policies were applied in Germany in the early 1930's with great success.
    1
  21682.  @gaza2322  I was actually being sarcastic, so historical accuracy doesn't really enter into it.
    1
  21683.  @annalieff-saxby568  Absolutely. And it makes me feel better.
    1
  21684. This comments section is full of gung-ho armchair warriors who have never in their lives seen a shot fired in anger. Sadly, Washington and the Pentagon are full of them too.
    1
  21685. I keep hearing that Trump lied throughout the debate. Can someone please give me a list of the lies he told? Or just one or two them would do.
    1
  21686. I'm afraid taking bribes is not covered.
    1
  21687. Western hegemony is fucked. Get used to it.
    1
  21688. Racism and misogyny are entirely natural reactions. They cannot be suppressed; they merely have to be controlled.
    1
  21689.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Perhaps neither is cowardly. Perhaps both are. But I refuse to allow you to bully me into filling in your form. You have done this before. Do you make up forms for a living by any chance?
    1
  21690.  @errorswillmultiply1697  Gosh. Are you actually a bot??You sound like one.
    1
  21691.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I think you do yourself an injustice. Attempting to force others into making moral decisions based on your own precepts is a somewhat more advanced function than the equipment you describe would perhaps be capable of.
    1
  21692.  @errorswillmultiply1697  How on earth do you make that out? I asked a straight question. You, on the other hand, insist on restricting the argument by offering two options and nothing else.
    1
  21693.  @errorswillmultiply1697  I didn't offer one option at all. I asked a straight question. I don't need a book on formal logic to define what a straight question is. It's a question which invites an answer. And you haven't.
    1
  21694. The West made the mistake of believing US "Intelligence" and we are now in this mess way above our heads. A victory for Trump and common sense might be the only thing to save us from World War III.
    1
  21695.  @KIA-MIA-POW  How do you know?
    1
  21696.  @KIA-MIA-POW  So you rely on the intelligence which led to the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal? And you believe that Putin will not exercise the nuclear option?
    1
  21697.  @KIA-MIA-POW  Well at least you listen to Jordan Peterson!
    1
  21698. Martin Wilson Spread the word!
    1
  21699. Not so much. A recent poll says that 39% of Americans believe the election was fixed - including some Democrats!
    1
  21700. Good money after bad.
    1
  21701. I think there is an agency where you can get dimwitted military men and failed university lecturers.
    1
  21702.  @cdes68  Can you get them to open supermarkets and fetes, do you think?
    1
  21703.  @boink800  Do troll farms actually exist?
    1
  21704. This isn't a court case. It's a botched assassination. The victim has every right to yell.
    1
  21705.  @gregc.5684  Not when it's a stitch-up.
    1
  21706.  @debralucas9519  Penis actually. He played the piano with his.
    1
  21707.  @doviebruder1285  That too - but the border is not as clear-cut as we are supposed to believe. Ukraine is largely Russia's creation and compromise was possible has not America installed Zelensky and provided him with an army to settle the matter.
    1
  21708.  @deborahfreedman333  The Ukraine which existed before Russia was the Viking culture in the Dnieper valley, which not only existed before Russia, but which actually gave it its name. Modern Ukraine, however, is a much larger entity and was created by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and indeed by the Soviet Union.
    1
  21709.  @bonnie7898  How is a country a sovereign country when a tenth of its area is fighting to break away? And the term is pretty meaningless anyway.
    1
  21710. Very well said - although with Trump a the helm there is even a chance that America, Britain and Russia could all be friends together. Now wouldn't that be nice?
    1
  21711. Ryan Baker I am not allowed to watch comedy shows because I laugh in all the wrong places and in an inappropriate fashion. This spoils the enjoyment of others.
    1
  21712. Ryan Baker You make me sad. There are many people at Wickam Hall I spend time with. There is a recreation room and a TV room and a general lounge. Now I am at my grandfather's house for the weekend, but he is sleeping at the moment.
    1
  21713. Ryan Baker Thank you. There is a Visiting Psychologist at Wickham Hall but my condition does not require her intervention. Even when my parrot died she said I was bearing up well.
    1
  21714. chris mclaughlin I do not quite understand Is greta another word for bottom? I very much hope not.
    1
  21715. chris mclaughlin Thank you. You did not answer my question. It doesn't matter though because I think now that you were making an analogy. Although not a very nice one. It is also interesting because it was an anal -ogy. Words can be very strange sometimes.
    1
  21716.  @korolev-musictobashbrexitby  I was thinking more of not being a literal-minded, humourless, unimaginative lefty.
    1
  21717.  @EricWenders  I have a different impression - but I must say I do find some of his actions hard to explain.
    1
  21718.  @tomvanaarle2622  I dunno where you got your degree in psychiatry, but you ought to ask for your money back.
    1
  21719.  @EricWenders  I think he's actually LOOKING pretty good. He's lost weight and seems very cheerful, if tired from time to time. I don't know enough about economics to be able to decide firmly what this strategy is exactly supposed to achieve, but I think it is totally wrong to put it down to stupidity, or attention-seeking or anything like that. That's just TDS showing through.
    1
  21720.  @EricWenders  As far as I can see there is little intention of making these tariffs permanent. They strike me as being little more than scare tactics. Once victims are sufficiently rattled he will lift or modify them. I am reminded of Soros and his use of reflexivity to manipulate the markets. This could be something like that, although on a much grander scale.
    1
  21721.  @EricWenders  As far as I can see there is little intention of making these tariffs permanent. They strike me as being little more than scare tactics. Once victims are sufficiently rattled he will lift or modify them. I am reminded of Soros and his use of reflexivity to manipulate the markets. This could be something like that, although on a much grander scale.
    1
  21722. Finding a defence against drone swarms has to be a major defence priority. Something better than acres of netting!
    1
  21723. Is she on the warpath?
    1
  21724. At least they weren't voting this time. Not enough of them, anyway.
    1
  21725. So all we need is another free and fair election to get rid of it. (I wonder how many Labour MPs would take a bunce to quit, or at least call for a vote of no confidence.)
    1
  21726. By the time it gets there and is set up and Ukrainians are trained to use it Russia will have bombed Ukraine into near oblivion. Furthermore, knowing the Patriots are on their way can only induce Russia to speed up the carnage. Another own goal by this utterly inept administration.
    1
  21727. Obama was just a front man for the Washington Mafia. Now he's being trotted out to carry the can for their failed conspiracies.
    1
  21728. Thank Christ we've got a Conservative government in power to deal with this - should it actually happen of course.
    1
  21729. What's hateful about pointing out that our police force has somehow got hand in glove with Muslim extremists who want us all dead?
    1
  21730. I think he'll just hand them what they've conquered at the time.
    1
  21731. Admirably put.
    1
  21732. A clear and well thought out plan that could lead to disaster. Let's hope not.
    1
  21733. It's the other way round.
    1
  21734. They are both pragmatic men. Friendly relations between the two countries can only be good for trade and world peace.
    1
  21735. @wavemaker54 The idea that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons for security assurances is a myth. It never had any to give up, and when it allowed Soviet weapons stationed on its territory to be removed it was part of a complex series of negotiations in which such assurances played a relatively small part. Trump knows that Ukraine cannot win this fight, so he's not sending good money after bad and is, in fact, siding with the winner in order to recoup some of America's losses. This is eminently pragmatic. You have to realise that you have been subjected to years and years of programming by Trump's enemies and all you are doing is repeating your lessons in a Pavlovian response. Have a biscuit.
    1
  21736. @wavemaker54 The idea that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons for security assurances is a myth. It never had any to give up, and when it allowed Soviet weapons stationed on its territory to be removed it was part of a complex series of negotiations in which such assurances played a relatively small part. Trump knows that Ukraine cannot win this fight, so he's not sending good money after bad and is, in fact, siding with the winner in order to recoup some of America's losses. This is eminently pragmatic. You have to realise that you have been subjected to years and years of programming by Trump's enemies and all you are doing is repeating your lessons in a Pavlovian response. Have a biscuit.
    1
  21737. @wavemaker54 The idea that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons for security assurances is a myth. It never had any to give up, and when it allowed Soviet weapons stationed on its territory to be removed it was part of a complex series of negotiations in which such assurances played a relatively small part. Trump knows that Ukraine cannot win this fight, so he's not sending good money after bad and is, in fact, siding with the winner in order to recoup some of America's losses. This is eminently pragmatic. You have to realise that you have been subjected to years and years of programming by Trump's enemies and all you are doing is repeating your lessons in a Pavlovian response. Have a biscuit.
    1
  21738. @ Ukraine had no nuclear weapons.
    1
  21739. @wavemaker54 You are living in a children's picture book fantasy.
    1
  21740. Before then.
    1
  21741. Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage both strike a chord in the hearts of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of disaffected and vilified people who now constitute the British working class. There is nothing vile about their ideologies.
    1
  21742. The difference is that Russian oligarchs already owned most it it. Russia has been mining this area for centuries. It was the prospect of Ukraine nationalising the mines and selling them off the the Americans which caused Putin to invade, in order to prevent it.
    1
  21743.  @TrickyBoyREAL  I don't get you. You can say that about almost anything!
    1
  21744. Why do you believe these figures so unquestioningly? Ukraine is losing and this is clearly a smack in the face for the US and NATO. Nobody knows what the true figures are but there is one thing you CAN be sure of: anyone involved in the West is going to lie about them.
    1
  21745. Absurd. The population of the Russian-occupied areas is mostly Russian - and patriotically so.
    1
  21746.  @buschtaxi75driver55  Morning. Ready for the fray? Mind you, the sheepies on this channel are growing increasingly sheepish and less inclined to do battle. I'm off to CNN for a bit.
    1
  21747. The only fair thing to do is compare like with like. Someone should get hold of or recreate the old equipment and measure today's results against those of the past. After all the "actual" temperature is a thing in and of itself. Its gradation is an artificial construct.
    1
  21748. Venerable Bede. Venerable.
    1
  21749. Remind me how many cities there are in Ireland with overcrowded populations of frequently multi-generational families. (82% of the UK population over 16 are fully-vaccinated, by the way.)
    1
  21750. Does this mean they will keep covid going forever? Otherwise the elderly and disabled will be replaced as time goes on.
    1
  21751. @cjjk9142 Hitler was planning to invade Britain Putin isn't.
    1
  21752.  @sqweege6432  But after weeks of stalemate the Russians are now breaking through Ukraine's main lines of defence. They are clearly working to a new plan which Ukraine is having difficulty in responding to.
    1
  21753. The Russian troops are known to be starving. These children will doubtless be eaten.
    1
  21754. Strategic value is no longer a major consideration. The foolish attack on the bridge has given Russia the excuse to launch a blitzkrieg.
    1
  21755. The Yanks discover panto! Family fun from now until February!
    1
  21756. He also seems to think Libya is "next door" to Syria.
    1
  21757. Redthirst It's purely academic question now, thank God. I suppose the idea of replacing capital ownership with bureaucracy is at the heart of my objections; although I regard such novelties as intersectionality and positive discrimination with utter scorn. Labour's pro-Muslim, anti-Jewish prejudices are another factor. The fact that its policies are often based on some half-arsed principle of virtue signalling niceness rather than pragmatism is worrying too. Just because an idea makes you feel warm and fluffy inside doesn't make it a good idea as such.
    1
  21758. Hoxton Dave I also get the impression that the BBC hierarchy is somehow very YOUNG as well as foolish. It seems to be run by spoiled brats for the most part. There are also probably too many women occupying positions for which genitalia is an irrelevant qualification.
    1
  21759.  snooky12  Always sticking his umbrella in the wrong keyhole as they say. He was better on bumholes than sex, I reckon though. Lots of anxiety focussed down there.
    1
  21760.  @wandah9468  America is attacking Russia, not the other way around. Russia is defending itself, and America will almost certainly come off worst in the end.
    1
  21761.  @marcopalazzo9349  So you want Europeans to actually DIE??!!! What's the point when all those noble Ukrainians are dying for us.
    1
  21762.  @sergeyb8  Russia doesn't even want Ukraine, let alone the world! America has been using bogeyman threats like this for years to justify business expansion. It astonishes me that there are still mugs like you who fall for it.
    1
  21763.  @simmorg290  It is a total myth that Putin wants to recreate the USSR. He knows full well that it wouldn't work. America, on the other hand, uses this bogeyman to justify its own imperial expansion. This war is going to result in a major re-alignment of global economics, certainly. Europe and America will be hurting at the end of it. Russia, on the other hand, will join the other BRICS countries and a host of other emerging economies to end Western hegonomy forever.
    1
  21764.  @ottoabramishvili8375  Of course it will. Putin doesn't even want Ukraine, just Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  21765.  @dbcooper6543  There is no threat. There is no intention of conquering foreign lands to reinstate the Soviet Empire. This is just a bogeyman trotted out by the West to justify its own conquests. Such alliances as are being formed are a direct result of emerging economies responding to American hegemony. America has constantly used warfare to advance its commercial interests, and is now getting a taste of its own medicine. The tragedy is that it is Ukrainians who are dying on its behalf. Even worse, they are dying in vain.
    1
  21766.  @simmorg290  He never said it. He did a couple of TV interviews in which he said it would be wonderful for Russia to regain its former glory -then added that it was an impossible dream. The second bit was of course cut for Western consumption. A hundred years? Make it ten. These things happen very suddenly and the Ukraine war is speeding thing along quite nicely.
    1
  21767.  @Lucas-wn5wm  What line is that?
    1
  21768.  @oldpalmcity  Could happen!
    1
  21769.  @wandah9468  Mere fripperies!
    1
  21770. @Ryan Russia has no imperial ambitions in Europe.
    1
  21771.  @heinzweiss1735  No real similarities whatsoever. The situations are entirely different.
    1
  21772.  @lennardschneider6847  NATO is just America's bitch. At its behest NATO countries have bombed and invaded everywhere from Pakistan to Libya and all under this laughable pretence of being "a purely defensive alliance." How can you fall for such crap?
    1
  21773.  @heinzweiss1735  And an apple looks a bit like an orange, but it isn't one. Hitler was a in his young middle age, and immediately after coming to power embarked on a declared policy of re-establishing Germany in the wake of its defeat in the Great War - and wiping out the Jews. Putin is an old man who has been in power for twenty years without showing the slightest sign of wishing to re-establish the Russian/Soviet empire. Like Hitler, he has used the presence of his nationals in a neighbouring territory to justify military action, but there the similarity ends. (And the Russian army isn't exactly the Wehrmacht, is it?!)
    1
  21774.  @jonye7511  Seems that way.
    1
  21775.  @a.a.7416  There's no point judging this conflict by losses. This is a war of attrition. The last man standing wins, and unless the West keeps pumping more and more billions into Ukraine - and even providing troops - the last man standing will be Russia.
    1
  21776.  @a.a.7416  I think your thinking is far more wishful than mine! The only thing that is certain in war is that nothing is certain. All one can do is weigh up likelihoods and this instance it is clear that without extensive and continuous assistance from other countries, Ukraine faces defeat.
    1
  21777. One big difference is that the Suffragettes has reason on their side. Man-made climate change is just a scam.
    1
  21778.  @johnkitching2248  You can get scientists to say anything you like if you make it worth their while. And fossil fuel companies are among the biggest investors in this marvellous, multi-layered con-trick. They know a good thing when they see one.
    1
  21779.  @johnkitching2248  Fossil fuel companies are among the biggest investors in this wonderful con-trick. And you can get scientists to say almost anything if you treat them right. Look at Covid.
    1
  21780.  @7171jay  I don't think that will even be necessary. If Russia does decide to respond there will be no need to move troops away from the front line. They might give up on Kharkiv, and thus free some Ukrainian forces to help repel the Russian advance in Donetsk I suppose, but even this is doubtful. More likely is that the Ukrainians will be left without support and be forced to retreat. Even if they stay, possession of this area will be of little benefit in any forthcoming peace negotiations.
    1
  21781.  @7171jay  Those are the fields that matter. Everything else is a sideshow.
    1
  21782.  mrb.9822  Of course he CARES. This is a bloody nuisance as far as he's concerned.
    1
  21783.  mrb.9822  It makes him look nothing of the sort. This was a very bizarre thing for Ukraine to do. The border is virtually undefended and all the Ukrainians are doing is rumbling along shelling towns and villages that have no strategic value.
    1
  21784.  @stephenhill545  Are they going to turn it back on?
    1
  21785. Wouldn't it be funny if Australia's apparent defeat of coronavirus had nothing to with masks and lockdowns, but was due to immunity built up by exposure to an earlier milder and virtually undetectable strain? I'd laugh anyway.
    1
  21786. I do wish Phil would give up his crystal ball.
    1
  21787.  @corsojames  They get reported over here about once a month. The threat is permanent if we step over the line.
    1
  21788.  @whoisme678  What I said is entirely true- otherwise YouTube wouldn't allow it! (I've been accused of taking money from Russia in the past, but never by the Japanese until now.)
    1
  21789. Can Trump get a fair trial ANYWHERE considering the constant barrage of lies and vilification directed against him for the past several years? No jury can be unbiased, nor any judge either. And it is channels like this one which are mainly to blame.
    1
  21790. At least the Russians will get the man they want - unlike in the US in 2020.
    1
  21791. The initial model upon which all man-made climate change models are based was dreamed up in 1942 by a professor from Serbia. He did his best but he got it wrong. Earlier, in 1919, Albert Einstein got it right when he said the atmosphere was stable and self-regulating. Carbon in the atmosphere does not retain heat. Heat passes through carbon molecules in about one third of a second. The greenhouse effect does not exist. All those millions chanting and waving banners might as well be demanding the sun falls out of the sky.
    1
  21792.  @nuclearblackhole  True enough! I was fool enough to believe it at the time!
    1
  21793.  @alanbellas513  I think you're wrong. The problem for Russia was that NATO had created a large Ukrainian army post 2014 and the Russians suspected, probably rightly, that it was to be used to try to retake Crimea and Donbass. The SMO can therefore be seen as a pre-emptive measure designed to destroy this army on Ukrainian soil, rather than meet it by defending the disputed areas directly. The Russians have kept all the territory acquired in 2014 and are now extending it to include all of Donbass. The Ukrainian army is substantially depleted also - so Russia is winning at this point and only a very substantial further input from NATO can alter that situation in any way.
    1
  21794.  @michaelmorningstar8645  The government didn't. Some military commanders did to encourage their troops. See how easy that was?
    1
  21795.  @BigDickMcdick  This seems an utter comic-book fantasy.
    1
  21796.  @michaelmorningstar8645  No. Should I be? You are wrong and I am right.
    1
  21797.  @michaelmorningstar8645  Okay then. Direct me to anywhere where Putin or any senior Russian government official has set a time limit on the success of the invasion. I'd be grateful if you could.
    1
  21798.  @gailcolthart2211  He didn't Show me where.
    1
  21799. ​ @zhanezar  I didn't say it was OK for the CIA to do it in 80s -although it was. Russia has no incentive to kill US troops today, however, since the geopolitical position is so vastly different. I simply do not understand your 911 analogy, try as I may.
    1
  21800.  @alexandertrekker6328  So what? If that expansion constitutes a threat it can be objected to. NATO is a protection racket. Nations join it for the same reasons why shopkeepers pay off gangsters.
    1
  21801.  @akylrysgal6242  What are you TALKING about!!?? The West spent around $40 BILLION on arming Ukraine after 2014. The US doled out $27billion alone. Ukraine got a spanking new ,well-equipped army with which to carry out US strategies in the area.. Russia invaded in order to destroy this army - which it has now just about done.
    1
  21802.  @MadDragon76  It isn't done enough - and the US and NATO keep re-supplying it. It's putting up a tremendous fight, but once US/NATO realises they're not getting a return for their money and cut back supplies it's going to have a hard job resisting any further.
    1
  21803.  @MadDragon76  This is true, but does America in its current financial and geopolitical position have the incentive to continue supplying Ukraine?
    1
  21804.  @janedoe3915  Russia didn't cause it. The West did.
    1
  21805. That wouldn't leave many people out on the streets.
    1
  21806. The end of the dollar as the world's reserve currency will bring a ray of sunlight into the affairs of developing nations. Ever since the end of World War II, when the USA appointed itself the arbiter of all things (incidentally by the same process ensuring further vast profits for its commercial enterprises) conflict and disharmony have disfigured relations between countries. We don't need this any more. America lost in Afghanistan. It lost in Vietnam. It lost in Korea and now it is going to lose in Ukraine. The shape of the world is changing. We can make it change for the better by denying America its role as policeman. Donald Trump, for all his faults, recognises these facts and deserves out wholehearted support.
    1
  21807. But Russia doesn't WANT to conquer Ukraine!! When are people going to realise this?
    1
  21808. I'm doing the opposite - for a similar reason. Trump 24!
    1
  21809.  @emm_arr  Fascism no longer exists and has not done so for more than eighty years.
    1
  21810. Not the case. Putin has said that Ukraine can do what it wants - but it must be a smaller Ukraine, with some parts in the East hived off and returned to Russian control.
    1
  21811. Islam and a tendency to paranoia make a dangerous combination.
    1
  21812. The integrity of the US election process? It's a joke and always has been.
    1
  21813. Ukraine did it as a PR move.
    1
  21814. Matthew Hackett Fifty years is a long time to be predicting disaster - and just too much of the latest "evidence" is proving to be false. Natural disasters have not increased in number or intensity, in fact in terms of loss of life and financial impact such events are at an all-time low. There have always been droughts, hurricanes and forest fires. Environments have always changed. For reasons I can only guess at we are currently being subjected to a torrent of news items about the effects of climate change in Africa. This is crap journalism of course, not crap science, but the insane allegations have not been disavowed by the very many supporters of the AGW theory. Predictions about polar bears have been proved totally wrong. Scare stories about Lake Chad, the Mala Valley and the Victoria Falls are equally absurd. If you AGW supporters want us lay people to take you seriously you must try to put a stop to this sensationalist fearmongering -and call out Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion for the opportunistic frauds that they demonstrably are.
    1
  21815. Matthew Hackett I was much taken with your idea that I should visit the Marshall Islands so I looked up the tourist board site. It looks to be quite a wonderful place for those who like that sort of thing, with no signs of any loss of land due to increased sea levels. The pictures show some hotels very close to the beaches. I think I'd prefer the Mississippi Delta for my visit. Here there has been considerable land loss, but apparently it is due to the unintelligent construction of levees, resulting in the prevention of the historical build up of sediment flowing down ole man river. mississippiriverdelta.org-coastal-crisis/land-loss Information on Category 5 hurricanes seems to show that, like the rest of us, they have their ups and downs, good years and bad years. The only major blip, as far as I can tell, was that a considerable number occurred some 15 years ago. There were none at all between 2008 and 2015. One presumes hurricanes existed for many, many thousands of years before we arrived on the scene to catagorise them so their behaviour over the past 100 years can have no statistical relevance. Once again, no proof of AGW in the real world of experience. What can be going wrong? (What on earth were you doing studying this stuff in 1978, by the way? You must be nearly as old as I am - in which case you should know better.)
    1
  21816. Matthew Hackett There is no correlation between levels of atmospheric carbon and increased surface temperatures that can be shown in any records- other than an apparent increase in natural C02 emissions some several hundred years AFTER solar-forced increased heating. The only place where C02 causes increased temperatures when subjected to infra-red radiation is in laboratory experiments and in computer models based on those experiments. Studies of the ACTUAL atmosphere indicate that the so-called greenhouse gasses have a regulatory function and C02 levels play a very minor part in the immensely complex and poorly-understood mechanisms which govern changes in climate. The sunbathers on the beaches of the Marshall Islands are entirely safe. The Mississippi Delta will disappear unless a replacement drainage system is implemented. Venice, built as it is on wooden piles sunk into the mud some 700 years ago will continue to sink into the sea. Find something else to worry about.
    1
  21817. Matthew Hackett I don't think the "pollution" of the atmosphere by humanly-produced greenhouse gasses has any great effect on climate change, What worries me more is the very real pollution of the surface environment by poor industrial practices - and it worries me too that so much energy and resources are being diverted to what is potentially a mythical problem which, even if it did happen to exist, seems incapable of resolution anyway. Climate goes through cycles. We are emerging now from a cool period (the Little Ice Age) which itself followed a period which, towards its conclusion, was probably hotter than today (The Medieval Warm Period).The very fact that climate alarmists seek to eliminate these well established events - confirmed by proxy data and anecdotal evidence - adds to my suspicions that an immense fraud is being perpetrated.
    1
  21818. Matthew Hackett I simply don't agree with these figures. They are just the result of computers being programmed on the assumption that AGW exists, rather than with empirical data to see if it does. Think about it. The only way you can tell if the sea has risen is to look. There are plenty of old photographs of local scenes to compare with present day circumstances. What about sedimentation?What about tectonic plate movement? Mount Everest rises by 3.5" a year due to tectonic movement. You can measure that and you don't need a computer to do it. This is just part of the fire and flood scare stories created by the misapplication of computer technology. Sea levels probably are rising, but at a much slower and more consistent rate than this. If, as you say, the Marshall Islands are at zero, then where were they in 1900? Eight inches below sea level?
    1
  21819. Matthew Hackett I've just done a quick bit of checking and the UK Government's risk assessment panel quotes the IPCC as estimating a 20cm rise from 1901 to 2010. So they believe it and faced with this I think I believe it possible too. It's only 1.77mm a year.after all. They also say that the IPCC estimates of the rise this century range from 25cm to a metre! Since the IPCC is a somewhat suspect body in my view and its bottom range projections generally come the closest to reality I'll take the 25cm as favourite. Given the scenarios outlined in my previous posts why do you think it is that the fearmongering always goes to the extreme edge of the scale? I'm quite into the Marshall Islands thing, although I don't like hot weather much. I'll see if can find those satellite images. Not too sure about the Florida waterfront. Isn't Florida a sort of sandspit more or less? Just as likely to be like Venice and sinking rather than being flooded.
    1
  21820. Matthew Hackett Not a distraction but a possible explanation for the real causes of the climate crisis phenomenon. If I am right we need do little. The biggest problem I foresee is that while much of the rest of the world will enjoy a Mediterranean-style climate for a while the tropics could become very uncomfortable indeed - unless of course a new Maunder Minimum intervenes as Professor Zharkova seems to think it might. If I was younger I would emigrate to Greenland and start farming. What will happen to the world's economy, based not on gold but on the falsehood of carbon restrictions, I cannot possibly imagine. If the science is correct after all and atmospheric carbon does indeed cause an exponential and chronic rise in temperatures then there is nothing else for it but to give up and accept our fate with as much fortitude as possible.
    1
  21821. The Eurovision Song Contest is about the only thing Ukraine's going to win. Kharkiv, like Kiev and the entire first phase of the war, was designed purely to distract and pin down Ukrainian forces while the main Russian objective of securing and extending Donbass was carried out. Very soon Russia will set a front line, dig in and defend it. Ukraine will need lots and lots of heavy weaponry to dislodge them. Providing it will bring NATO and the US dangerously close to the brink of Armageddon. Already sensible voices in Congress questioning the vast expenditure involved and MAGA victories in the midterms will hopefully put paid to this mad adventure once and for all.
    1
  21822.  @chriszenko3598  They'd do a better job that the Secret Service and the FBI.
    1
  21823.  @davidprimeau3368  And there is no reason why they should not be allies now.
    1
  21824.  @chriszenko3598  Might be a good idea, although Trump is a bit harder to fake, I think!
    1
  21825.  @taefravis  There are no comparisons. These analogies are for the weak-minded and the ill-educated.
    1
  21826.  @taefravis  What's Hitler got to do with any of this? Putin is not Hitler. It would be difficult to find two men who are less alike.
    1
  21827.  @realsimonwest  A monkey eats nuts for the same reason a cow eats grass. Doesn't make a cow a monkey.
    1
  21828. Before they are transported and brought into operation Russia might well have bombed Ukraine back into the Middle Ages. We should be doling out doses of common sense, not missiles.
    1
  21829. Where's the mystery? They are finalising details of the forthcoming attack on Kiev.
    1
  21830. Not so much greed as resentment that resources they had developed over centuries were being sold to a foreign power by a corrupt Ukrainian government.
    1
  21831.  @davidmurphy563  Roubles are a good investment at the moment. It has been one of the highest performing world currencies this year. I am actually writing this in my study in the gatehouse of my estate in rural England and require no payment. I love classical music, but am not at all fond of Wagner. But that's enough about me. I'd like to know what has made you into such an ignorant moron.
    1
  21832.  @luckygjv872  Baa! Baa! It's YOU doing that!
    1
  21833.  @ninaotan7811  I hear a grating noise. It is the bottom of a barrel being scraped.
    1
  21834.  @bonnie7898  As ever, one needs to decide what information is accurate, what is propaganda and what is uncertain. The Western media pumps out just as much misinformation as Russia's. We are being sold an entirely inaccurate and incomplete picture.
    1
  21835.  @ninaotan7811  These are symptoms of schizophrenia. I don' know what point you are trying to make, but they are restricted to an individual. If several people - or many thousands - hear a noise or voices you can be certain they are real.
    1
  21836. Germany is making up for lost time by helping to secure peace. This war hysteria has to stop.
    1
  21837.  @MazzaEliLi7406  Black people are no more or less racist than white people. Some black people even hate other black people.
    1
  21838. It's the quality of the minerals and ease of access which makes those in Ukraine so desirable. Plus , of course, your point about pollution is valid. Norway will have higher standards than Ukraine, I daresay.
    1
  21839. Aren't you confusing the Russian Federation with the former Soviet Union?
    1
  21840. @ So when has the Russian Federation ever infringed these borders, as you claim?
    1
  21841. Michael RCH You guys and your "peer reviews"! Destroy the foundations of society and society will crumble. You don't need scientific studies to prove that. It's obvious to anyone whose brain hasn't been fuddled by propaganda.
    1
  21842. Volker Siegel If only it were that simple. In laboratory experiments carried out on the earth's surface carbon does indeed seem an integral part of a process which traps or reflects infra-red radiation. In the actual atmosphere, however, the process appears to be part of a system whereby the atmosphere is maintained in a state of thermodynamic stability. Carbon absorbs IR for about one third of a second before disseminating the heat in various directions aimed at maintaining that stability. There is no one scrap of evidence to suggest that these old-school experiments bear anything other than a peripheral relation to actual reality.
    1
  21843. Volker Siegel You seem to be agreeing with me, although I presume that English is not your first language and my interpretation could be wrong. The climate alarmists appear to believe that all IR is reflected back by the greenhouse effect, which is clearly not the case. AGW has become a very serious political issue. Fear of self-inflicted Armageddon is being used to manipulate people in the most vicious and cynical way. I do hope you realise this and will do whatever you can to help correct people's misapprehensions.
    1
  21844. Volker Seigel I am convinced - and your English is readily comprehensible, by the way. The climate alarmists ,especially the unscientific ones, do not seem to know about Rayleigh scattering. Their view is that ALL IR is retained in the atmosphere. Do you have a view on what proportion of reflected heat is retained and whether or not increased carbon levels cause an increase in heat? I wonder if you are aware of the recent studies by M and R Connolly of Dublin, Ireland, by the way? Their researches, using data from weather balloons, seem to suggest that the procedure you describe is part of a regulatory process, and the directions in which carbon emits IR photons is determined by the needs of the moment, as it were. In other words there is a kind of thermostat in operation.
    1
  21845. What have you gor against Russia, anyway?
    1
  21846. Why didn't she just bang on the ceiling with her broomstick?
    1
  21847. Very well said. Children continue to suffer due to political convenience.
    1
  21848.  @18890426  There seems to be a race at the moment between Gatos, Soros and China to see who can spread the most money around to buy the loyalty of media outlets and other useful entities. China winning of course. They own huge chunks of Canada and Australia already.
    1
  21849.  @18890426  I've got some notes somewhere which I'll try to look out but they might be at my other house. Try Avi Yemini or Sky News Australia for Chinese influence there and Rebel News for the same in Canada, Gates' donations SHOULD be a matter of public record. As for Soros - well, he hides behind a series of facades. Google him and read the stuff that doesn't describe him as a philanthropist. I'll try to get back to you. Happy hunting.
    1
  21850. Does he though?
    1
  21851.  @SL-sd3sg  Yes, but who exactly is doing all this?
    1
  21852.  @boink800  I don't know what they are any more than anyone else does.
    1
  21853.  @wesker911  If that shower vetted them they must be wrong - which of course they are.
    1
  21854.  @boink800  My biased opinion is that these figures are plucked out of thin air. And that's a fact.
    1
  21855.  @johnrussell3961  Paranoia junkies live in hope of the next fix.
    1
  21856.  @stephenthomas3085  You are entirely correct. It really is the little guys who refuse to be intimidated, it seems. If we are wiped out (and I suppose we will be one day) it won't belong before most traces of us are lost - tin cans and microplastic debris on the forest floor will be about it.
    1
  21857.  @atomiccritter6492  They invariably do so.
    1
  21858. They do say that when news of the American rebellion in 1776 reached our shores one Friday the civil servant who received it put the letter in his desk to deal with when he got back after the weekend.
    1
  21859. Were you listening? Ukraine is all Putin wants.
    1
  21860. WE really have to ask how useful all these restrictions were anyway. Obviously the people who imposed them realised they were a con.
    1
  21861.  @annoyedaussie3942 "Properly" can only mean 100% and rigidly enforced. Even then, as soon as any restrictions are lifted the virus rushes in to take over. Lockdown lite, as you put it, can arguably mean an actual increase in the number and severity of cases since the restrictions make unproven and often inaccurate assumptions about how and by which routes the virus spreads most effectively.
    1
  21862.  @annoyedaussie3942  In my view the last thing we want to do is get rid of Omicron. You Australians are extraordinary fortunate. You couldn't have stayed under the blankets forever and now that covid has entered in numbers it is in the form of Omicron -which really is little more than a common cold. Hospital stays are brief and really just precautionary and the fatality rate is tiny. What immunity it gives to any possible future variant is obviously unknown; but the signs are good. It seems to provide immunity against Delta for one thing.
    1
  21863. I'm scared anyway.
    1
  21864.  @boink800  I don't think there's a direct causality, no. What's your excuse?
    1
  21865.  @boink800  Having an interesting exchange of opinions and ideas can be fun too. Ever tried it?
    1
  21866. It doesn't matter. They've already got two heads and eat their own mothers according to the Western media.
    1
  21867. If leftwing idiots can blame Trump, than Trump can surely blame DEI policies. Both are probably wrong, but there's far more chance that Trump is closer to the truth.
    1
  21868. Are you really such a simpleton?
    1
  21869.  @FranzBieberkopf  He has many black friends, as well at least one black niece. He is NOT a racist. He is anti-Islamist.
    1
  21870. How many Democrats does it take to win an election? 64 million voter, ten million corpses and ten people who know how to operate Dominion voting machines.
    1
  21871. Calling them "women" is clearly an insult to women who have transgendered into men - but still have a cervix. (The estimable Dr Stella Immanuel, by the way, has offered to visit CNN in order to cast out the demons which have so clearly possessed the news presenters. She could do it too!)
    1
  21872. Utter garbage. The conman's spiel is wearing thin.
    1
  21873. Except they're not NK soldiers, but Russians from one of the Russian oblasts on the Mongolian border. Just look at their faces.
    1
  21874.  @SL1PSTAR  Actually, I don't care if they are or not.
    1
  21875. This is so weird! I cannot abide UK media because it always seems to biased towards the Left! I have to go down under for UK news - to Sky News Australia, one of the few MSM channels that seems to have escaped socialist indoctrination. And if the BBC is so biased towards the Tories why do they now want to stop the licence fee?
    1
  21876. This is entirely predictable. Having annexed these areas, the Russians can now claim they are defending their own territory, rather than attacking the territory of an enemy. This entitles them, in terms of military law, to use far greater force. We can expect a massive bombardment of all annexed territories in the Donbass region now under Ukrainian control.
    1
  21877.  @DrMcMoist  Around 70% of the Donbass region is under separatist control and the entire area has now been declared to be part of Russia. That's annexation.
    1
  21878.  @SourGravity  Err but the US did not back a Ukrainian attempt to reclaim Crimea then, did it? It has been the threat of powerful military intervention in Donbass which has prompted Russia's reaction. If Ukraine invades Crimea we can expect an escalation of bombardment, probably centred on Odessa.
    1
  21879. Islam is a medieval religion. Little wonder that medieval practices have been imported to our shores.
    1
  21880. Why should we when reasonably fit 40-year-olds can shake off the bug quite readily and go on to help provide a cordon of immunity around the more vulnerable?
    1
  21881.  @YouD0ntSay  You obviously don't realise that practically no-one under the age of 40 has died of covid in this country. Around four-fifths have been over 80. Go to figure 2a in this official government document if you don't believe me. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-reported-sars-cov-2-deaths-in-england/covid-19-confirmed-deaths-in-england-report
    1
  21882.  @magoniaciv3308  The idea that more infections equals more mutations is disputed by some, given the fact that the virus exists in such astronomically huge numbers that all viable versions must have already existed several times over. So what happens to give a new variant the chance to take a hold? A change of circumstances is what. Such as occurs when lockdowns are introduced.
    1
  21883.  @YouD0ntSay  Did you not manage to find the graph? Practically no-one under the age of 40 has died of covid in the UK and those few that have died almost invariably were suffering from a pre-existing severe illness. Vaccinations will certainly reduce the severity of symptoms and may help a few older people survive. These are the facts; not unintelligible waffle such as you have been spouting.
    1
  21884.  @YouD0ntSay  Of the small number of people under 40 who have died most would almost certainly have died quite soon anyway. Against this we must weigh the fact that vaccinations are by no means 100% effective, Around 8,000 vaccinated people a day are currently testing positive. Catching the disease and recovering from it offers something very close to100% immunity. The more people who become immune the more difficult it is for the virus to find routes to the more vulnerable people who may die. Therefore to reduce the number of deaths the more fit, healthy young people who get the disease and recover from it the better. Mass vaccination of people under 40 merely gives the virus more time and more room to play with and at the end of the day more people will die. What does realising this make me? A realist, that's what.
    1
  21885. Get well soon. You realise, of course, that mask wearing - while more or less totally ineffective against covid 19 - has kept at bay the many larger pathogens which afflict us. Those who chose to follow this trend will now find their immune systems severely compromised and may expect severe and prolonged infections this winter.
    1
  21886.  @damienroberts934  . There seems to be considerable disagreement about the effects of the drug levels but everything else you say is absolutely spot on.
    1
  21887.  @editor4578  Don't be such a simpleton.
    1
  21888.  @hellothere1656  These drones are just a tiny, tiny part of Russia's missile capability. They're the equivalent of chucking pebbles.
    1
  21889.  @hellothere1656  Of course they're not. This is just what you've been told. Russia has the largest missile armoury in the world and, unlike the West, they don't throw their old stuff away. They can't have used up more than a tenth of their capacity so far.
    1
  21890. Kharkiv is a sideshow. Russia doesn't want it particularly, other than somewhere to tie up Ukrainians. The real war is happening to the south-west where Russia is doggedly pushing through Ukraine's defences on its way to the Donbass border.
    1
  21891. Sadly, greed beats envy as an economic driving force. All we can hope for is to impose restraints on capitalism, not to replace it.
    1
  21892. .. as opposed to arms caches and women in hijabs? Sounds like a good deal.
    1
  21893. A recent study claims the lockdowns in Europe have killed more people than they've saved. Insurance companies are now trying to create indemnity policies against getting ill from covid, or the consequences of passing it on to others. Goldmine.
    1
  21894. It doesn't matter so long as more Ukrainians are killed in the process.
    1
  21895.  @dpelpal  It could have very bad implications for everybody. Russia has a buffer though, with its existing policy of selling undercut oil to China and India.
    1
  21896. All Russia wants is an end to American hegemony and persecution. What's wrong with that?
    1
  21897. Anyone who thinks this is true cannot possible have a brain in the first place.
    1
  21898. Nothing the US does isn't known to Russia within weeks.
    1
  21899. The USA is more likely to disintegrate than the Russian Federation.
    1
  21900. Putin is winning though.
    1
  21901. @John Hill It's worth it -even if your only getting a couple of likes here rather than a couple of hundred!
    1
  21902. Why shouldn't anyone support Russia in this conflict? They have considerable justification for their actions.
    1
  21903.  @waynegazard5038  Russian labour and Russian investment developing the mineral resources of Donbass for generations.
    1
  21904.  @Pikaling3408  If these pathetic and irrelevant historical analogies are all you have to go on, you might as well pack up and go home. All Russia wants are those bits of Russia which were mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine when it was created in 1991.
    1
  21905. I daresay we must be grateful for this past Prime Minister for drawing attention away from the crimes and peccadillos of the present incumbent.
    1
  21906.  @slappyfun  Right the second time. These advantages are very small and make no difference in the general run of things, but if say, a lockdown is introduced, than a variant which perhaps survives for a little longer, or reproduces more quickly and efficiently, will get to those victims who are available and so the variations which enable it to do so will be passed on to succeeding generations.
    1
  21907. I think Zelensky must have missed a payment.
    1
  21908. Foot in the door instead. Do not underestimate this man.
    1
  21909. LastBref I must bow to your wisdom. The country does seem divided . however. Mahyar Tousi, a UK youtuber and the son of Iranian refugees, has a different view. Check his channel if you like.
    1
  21910. He will not be allowed to win. The crooks who rule America from behind closed doors will see to that.
    1
  21911.  @CaptainCologne  Compared to what the CIA get up to every day that's negligible.
    1
  21912.  @CaptainCologne  He might well do so. It's a question though of balancing human frailties against the cynical abuse of power which has characterised American governance for so long.
    1
  21913. It's the idiot students at Harvard who are the true fascists - denying free speech, being anti-Semitic and supporting violence for political ends.
    1
  21914. @Captain-l-12p Trolls are entitled to their opinions. So, yes. And it's true.
    1
  21915. @Captain-l-12p Neither statement is verifiable.
    1
  21916.  @dglenday8705  This is a novel idea. Surely though the EU has rejected peace talks at least as much as the UK has?
    1
  21917. Been there lately, have you?
    1
  21918.  @gordonho3828  No. but I have friends there who send me reports. A couple have their own YouTube channels too. Try Sam's Russian Adventures.
    1
  21919.  @kentalanlee  What decline?
    1
  21920.  @JanMorsø  Eastern Ukraine is sitting on around $13trillion of gas, coal, oil and rare earth minerals. The mining industry there has been going for well over 200 years. It was developed by Russia with Russian money and using Russian labour. The area was only incorporated into the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine as a matter of administrative convenience. Even after Ukraine became a country in the early 1990's these resources continued to be used to benefit Russia, as well as Ukraine. The greed comes into it when Western, mainly American, entities set their sights on syphoning this wealth away from Russia into their own pockets. They have financed a war in which tens of thousands have died in order to do so. They have failed but profits from arms sales will help to soften the blow. For more than ten years Russia has sought to find a peaceful solution, with granting the area autonomy and thus able to continue its relationship with Russia becoming the aim. This was denied and instead the West has financed a Ukrainian army to pursue its commercial interests. You do not occupy the moral high ground.
    1
  21921.  @kentalanlee  So this decline is the result of America's proxy war in Ukraine, is it? You should be proud.
    1
  21922.  @kentalanlee  So this decline is the result of the US proxy war is it? You should be proud.
    1
  21923.  @patverum9051  Nonsense. You just have a psychological need to believe such things in order to justify the hatred for Russia which has been inculcated into you.
    1
  21924.  @joebloggs1756  This certainly doesn't fit in with the experience of those I know who have been there and who live there. It's a big country and some rural areas may be primitive by other standards. Certainly corruption is rife, but this is just a way of doing things which is inherent in many countries - in the US it is done more subtly that is all. I think you have a deeply ingrained psychological need to believe these things because your government needs you to hate and despise Russia because Russia has been allocated the role of "enemy" in a culture and an economy which needs a permanent enemy for its inhabitants to focus upon in order to survive.
    1
  21925.  @dwanemarsh4378  So this decline is the result of the war in Ukraine, right? A war which was forced upon Russia by the West?
    1
  21926.  @dwanemarsh4378  So this decline is the result of a war which Russia was forced into, right? It is the result of standing up against US imperialism and refusing to become yet another American poodle?
    1
  21927.  @patverum9051  You have to believe this in order to feel justified and safe, that's all.
    1
  21928.  @w.reidripley1968  Do you not see that the very fact that you believe me to be some sort of paid agent of Russia totally undermines whatever limited credibility you have as an undereducated American?
    1
  21929.  @w.reidripley1968  What forty-five roubles? The fact that you believe me to be some sort of paid Russian agent reveals how utterly misguided you are.
    1
  21930. America is now officially a banana republic.
    1
  21931. Common sense is creeping in. What a wonder!
    1
  21932. Well, it can be argued that they DID start it by applying to join NATO and by wanting to sell Russian assets to America. Even if they didn't start it, they certainly provoked it.
    1
  21933. And a good thing too.
    1
  21934. @srlind2835 What on earth leads you to this pessimistic conclusion? America is threatened by destructive forces within which must be curtailed, whereas in Russia controls over behaviour are becoming increasingly relaxed. There is every hope that a happy medium will be achieved in both nations.
    1
  21935. @srlind2835 This obsession with GDP and demonization of Putin masks the real situation in Russia, where a thriving black economy means that the standard of living is far, far higher than we are led to believe in the West. Very few Russians are "struggling with poverty" any more than their counterparts in Western countries. I suggest you access some of the many blogs and YouTube channels put out by Russians, and indeed by Westerners who have gone there to live.
    1
  21936. @ GDP is meaningless in a country with a black economy larger than the one which appears on the books. The Russia people are enjoying a lifestyle unlike any they have ever previously experienced. You are living in an anti-Putin bubble. Just visit some of the YouTube channels put out by ordinary Russians, or even Westerners who have gone to live there.
    1
  21937. @srlind2835 I don't need my perspective broadening, thank you very much. What about the World Happiness Index. Have you tried that? Russia simply is not the hell-hole that it suits Western warmongers to portray it as.
    1
  21938. So the bodies have been undisturbed by ravening street dogs, passing vehicles, rats, crows, troops and civilians for two weeks, is that it? And the proof is date stamps on a satellite video? Yup. I can buy that.
    1
  21939. A somewhat false analogy. Tommy and his supporters ARE the far right. Reform are basically middle-class ex-Tories who won't vote LibDem because they are too lefty.
    1
  21940. This is becoming increasingly mad. Putin is quite sensibly allowing the Kursk situation to more or less stagnate while he concentrates on the prime objective of gaining all of Donbass. What the Ukrainians are doing in Kursk is pure theatre - and if they round up loads of inexperienced Russian conscripts, so what?
    1
  21941. Victims who have brought victimhood upon themselves by supporting terrorist extremists.
    1
  21942.  @Cherish1056  Ukraine was very much a junior partner in the USSR.
    1
  21943.  @Cherish1056  Every little helps! The fact is that Russia and SA remain big buddies,like it or not.
    1
  21944.  @deanbarnett8538 As indeed does the US and its acolytes.
    1
  21945.  @jeckjeck3119  Russia's treaty proposals offered in December are a matter of public record, as are Ukraine and America's rejection of them.
    1
  21946.  @jeckjeck3119  Not at all. If you can be bothered to look them up you will realise they present a very preferable alternative to a bloody and needless war.
    1
  21947.  @jeckjeck3119  You are coming across as something of an innocent little thing, you know.
    1
  21948.  @jeckjeck3119  Pretty much. That and falling for American and Ukrainian ones.
    1
  21949.  @RedPhroggz  There's a way to go yet. The Kozak deal -as far as one gathers - simply didn't come up to scratch, largely because it made no provisions for the immediate implementation of Minsk 2 with regard to Donbass, nor recognition of Crimea as part of Russia. One can only speculate, of course, but I get the feeling that it was Ukraine's military build-up post Maidan which worried the Kremlin most. The threat of attempts to retake Crimea and bring Donetsk and Luhansk to heel were enough to get the tanks rolling. The plan was to destroy Ukraine's new army, whatever the cost. The jury is still very much out The West sems to be suffering the economic impacts of the war more than Russia is suffering from sanctions. Unless the West pumps in even more weaponry - and even troops - then Putin may well achieve both his military and political objectives. .
    1
  21950. This entire situation has been created by war hawks in the Biden administration strutting their stuff in the interests of personal advancement. Putin has made it clear that if push comes to shove he will wipe their surrogates off the face of the earth. And he will.
    1
  21951. Craig Dillon How about if carbon doesn't cause global warming at all? Just an idea - but there's good science to suggest it doesn't.
    1
  21952. uK8cvPAq It's called science based on empirical data, not on corrupted computer models and false premises. And I'm not a bot. I'm a paid Koch brothers shill. So there.
    1
  21953. If Ukraine did this in order to draw the Russians into open warfare, then they have failed. What supply lines they have remains unclear. At this rate they can can going thundering around the countryside to their hearts content until their vehicles run out of fuel. However embarrassing this bizarre exercise is for Putin, that seems to be about the full extent of the damage thus far. If the Ukrainians have other plans, such as attacking fully-guarded targets, then they ought to think about getting started pretty quickly.
    1
  21954. These are not just hospital deaths. Deaths at home and in care homes are included. Just so you know. Figures for deaths within 60 days are available, but show little significant increase.
    1
  21955.  @ThePurityControl  Have the ONS suddenly removed care home deaths from their figures? As you will see from section5 of the latest report (below) they are clearly included. The 60 day figures go up and down, but I'm not quite sure what relevance they have. It's rather sordid playing this more than/less than game though, don't you think? It's bad - but not as bad as some are trying to make out. Perspective is needed. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15january2021#deaths-registered-by-place-of-occurrence
    1
  21956.  @ThePurityControl  It's already hard enough to put into perspective the relevance of a death within 28 days. Generally of those deaths around 80% are recorded as Covid 19 being the underlying cause. Death within 60 days of a positive becomes even more of an abstraction. Your 9,000 is swallowed up immediately. But as I said, this is an unwelcome situation enough, why do people want to make it seem worse than it actually is? The deaths have overwhelmingly occurred among the elderly and the frail. Children and young people have thankful been spared. Even in terms of the death toll itself 2020 was no worse than 2003 and far far better than any year in the preceding century. What is important is that the government has dealt with this situation very, very badly indeed.
    1
  21957.  unitedwestand  I suppose you must mean all the people in his country who have occupied the jobs his policies have created? Or those in foreign lands where threat of war has been reduced by his diplomatic deal-making strategies? Perhaps even those several thousand gay couples who are now legally married thanks to legislation he caused to be introduced. He has made tens of thousands of people miserable right enough. Brainwashed loons such as yourself .
    1
  21958.  @richardmarsh4993  I didn't understand much of that. I don't watch Fox News and I don't know who Chris Wallace is. What can I say? Do you make a habit of being this wrong about everything?
    1
  21959.  @richardmarsh4993  You could always try.
    1
  21960.  @richardmarsh4993  OK! As long as mine can be dislike syndromes too!
    1
  21961. The Tories are fully aware of the fact that child abuse is endemic in public schools and in the Church of England - both of which are pillars of the Establishment. Fear of exposing this as Labour seeks to extend the remit of any investigation into the Muslim rape gang scandal is what has led to their reluctance in this area.
    1
  21962.  @rmdomainer9042  Russia cares about losses about as much as it cares about gaining territory. As long as the ratio stays within whatever bounds have been set, Russia will continue to expend its resources on a process of attrition. The object of the exercise is to retain Crimea and Donbass and to make them secure by ensuring Ukraine has insufficient force remaining to attempt to retake them. This has now largely been achieved. Western observers, expert or average, make the basic mistake of thinking this war is a kind of game, where you gain points by taking territory or restricting your losses. It is not. It is about ensuring Russia survives as a nation in the face of continued Western aggression.
    1
  21963. How about the billions of roubles Russia has spent on revitalising Crimea since annexation?
    1
  21964.  @CyberBeep_kenshi  Why don't you just clutch your pearls and faint instead?
    1
  21965.  @APW554  Who cares what the UN says? Crimea is Russian.
    1
  21966.  @appstratum9747  Despite all this, Crimea has only a very tenuous relationship with modern Ukraine. As for elections and referendums, you must know as well as I do that such niceties are irrelevant in countries as corrupt as Ukraine and Russia. If Ukraine conducts them, Ukraine wins. If Russia conducts them, Russia wins. As for population, the same reservations must apply. All one can say is that between 60% and 70% identify as Russian, depending upon who is in charge at the time of the census. Ukrainians come second and Tatars and the rest come third - though not by much. I defend my use of the blanket term "Turks" to cover previous ownership of the land - but in any case all of this history is scarcely relevant to the present problems. The situation as it stands now is that the government in Kiev has been seduced into turning the nation's resources over to Western agencies. This Russia cannot be expected to allow. It needs Sebastopol as a base for its fleet. It feels entitled to continue to be the channel through which the immense mineral resources of Crimea and Donbass flow. It cannot permit Ukraine to be an armed outpost of a declared enemy - NATO. These concerns are entirely reasonable and must be addressed. Putin has made sincere attempts to do so. In his essay on Russian/Ukrainian relations published in the summer of 2021 he makes his position clear. His peace proposals of December of that year provide a realistic compromise and if they had been heeded this dreadful war would not be taking place. Indeed, there are strong indications that Ukraine was prepared to do so, but agents of the West persuaded otherwise - simply because the US and Europe still has its eyes on the estimated $13trillion of gas, oil, coal, steel and rare earth minerals in Crimea and Donbass. The horrible truth is that the nationality of the inert materials lying beneath the ground is far, far more important in the overall scheme of things than the nationality of the people walking about on top of it.
    1
  21967.  @jeckjeck3119  And after that they also voted to join Russia, It isn't votes which count, but who counts the votes.
    1
  21968.  @paulgibbon5991  Since I am a 74-year-old Englishman living in Berkshire, this is hardly likely.
    1
  21969.  @twink276  No. It WAS Turkish. Now it's Russian.
    1
  21970.  @everTriumph  There have never been many Ukrainians in Crimea. It was transferred from one Soviet Socialist Republic to another in 1954 purely for reasons of administrative convenience. The fact that it became part of the newly-created country of Ukraine in 1991 was clearly an error which has now been corrected. The fact that there was little or no resistance to annexation and that the Ukrainian armed forces transferred their allegiance almost to the man clearly illustrates the point.
    1
  21971.  @evaluateanalysis7974  They weren't Ukrainian nuclear weapons. They were Soviet (ie Russian) nuclear weapons which were stationed there.
    1
  21972.  @evaluateanalysis7974  I'm not quite sure of the point you are trying to make. Ukraine "owned" nothing without the permission of the Supreme Soviet. The missiles could only be fired from Moscow since no-one in Ukraine had the codes.
    1
  21973.  @evaluateanalysis7974  Of course not - but when it ceased to exist what exactly did the Ukrainians actually own in terms of military hardware? We seem to be at cross purposes. I don't understand what point you are trying to make.
    1
  21974.  @evaluateanalysis7974  Treaties don't work like that. Budapest is dead in the water- like thousands of other treaties before it.
    1
  21975.  @l4zrh4wk  So are all politicians.
    1
  21976. AS time goes on, I am more and more convinced that this is a false flag operation, designed to give Russia an excuse to launch air attacks on Kherson and Odessa, Latest news from Russian sources is that the bridge is already functioning more or less as normal.
    1
  21977. Look, Russia is winning the war on the ground. There can be no doubt of that. Ukraine is drained of all hope in this regard. So why continue with this nonsense? Ukraine's only hope of survival is via Western-supported economic pressure.
    1
  21978.  @rogerwilco5918  They are winning on the southern front - where it counts. It's taking so long because the Ukrainians are fighting back very, very well.
    1
  21979. Doesn't sound much of a basis for negotiation.
    1
  21980. On the contrary, Reform members can call for a vote of no confidence in their leader, and influence policy decisions far more readily than members of the Labour Party.
    1
  21981.  @peterrear2864  They can make their views known - and reject a leader if 50% of them call for a vote of no confidence.
    1
  21982.  @chriswhittaker5075  He's only been a politician for five years. Some of these others such as Biden have been on the take for fifty.
    1
  21983.  @simonb4757  But not as important. I think it quite likely that the Russians have had relatively little interest in the progress of the ground war in Ukraine, other than its effectiveness in mopping up Ukrainian resources. They seem to have deployed quantities of relatively untrained and poorly-supported troops in antiquated armour and are cynical enough to accept the consequent losses. I believe that the sole Russian objective is and always has been to secure effective control of the gas and steel resources in Donbass, with perhaps a hold on Kherson in order to protect water supplies to Crimea. The next phase seems to be aerial bombardment of civilian targets. The attack on the bridge and the annexation of the four Eastern provinces gives them a spurious legal justification for this. I imagine the endgame will be fortification of Donbass resources, security for Crimea and the replacement of the US-backed Zelensky regime with one amenable to these situations. It remains to be seen whether or not the people of Western Ukraine will be sufficiently intimidated by the coming blitzkrieg to be persuaded to accept this scenario.
    1
  21984.  @d.b.2215  It is estimated that Russia has used about 10% of its armament so far -and most of it down the cheap end.
    1
  21985.  @simonb4757  You could well be right. I am playing devil's advocate here, you realise. Having said that, I genuinely don't think Putin ever had the conquest of Ukraine in mind. His intelligence system can't be THAT bad. I imagine he did his sums and realised that simply to occupy Donbass and await the expected US-backed Ukrainian attack there and in Crimea might result not only in defeat but in the destruction of those very resources he covets. Russia is notoriously profligate with men and materiel, as well as having a notoriously incompetent army. To throw a great quantity of expendable resources into the fray would make sense under such circumstances. And quite frankly I don't think Putin gives a toss about what opinion people have about Russia's military prowess. Gaining Donbass and standing up to US expansionism is far more important to him.
    1
  21986. Chris D You did.
    1
  21987. Chris D You said wrong things.
    1
  21988. Chris D Isn't it?
    1
  21989. Trump is an honest imperialist, not a mealy-mouthed Democrat. He will make a simple cash offer.
    1
  21990. The law is already broken. It has been shattered by being turned into an instrument of political repression.
    1
  21991.  @Spearca  Not so. Russia is resisting the spread of American imperialism via the spread of NATO. Zelensky has foolishly allowed his country to get on the front line. Ukrainians will die. Not Americans. It is always the way.
    1
  21992.  @paul7TM  No. YouTube does. YouTube hates everybody.
    1
  21993.  @RazorMouth  She is clearly of Russian descent. You can tell from the way she speaks. There are numerous accounts of civilians in Mariupol being imprisoned underground in this way - and videos of them being released by Russian soldiers after weeks of captivity.
    1
  21994.  @RazorMouth  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lsoV_6ZCZc&t=70s Old ladies cemented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfTEgC4kIw&t=32s Lancaster shelter rescue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY Azov shoots refugees
    1
  21995. @E KL I am not aware of these quotes or their context.
    1
  21996.  @sylviahutchison5203  Her mother is dead and she knows it, so it's pretty unlikely. What make you think she was lying anyway?
    1
  21997.  @sylviahutchison5203  She wasn't abducted, she was rescued. And she's Russian anyway, you can tell from the way she speaks. Half the population of Mariupol is Russian and they have been very badly treated by the Ukrainians in recent years. They locked them up in cellars during the siege to stop the Russian forces attacking their positions. And shot them if they tried to escape.
    1
  21998.  @sylviahutchison5203  That's pretty firmly established isn't it?
    1
  21999. Sounds like America.
    1
  22000. But these people were Muslims! Modern police thinking insists they can do no wrong!
    1
  22001. As predicted, this much vaunted American military aid seems far less significant than advertised. All it can achieve is to extend this bloody and needless war without in any way affecting the eventual outcome. Perhaps that's all America wants though. Their oligarchs and corrupt politicians are still making money in various ways and even if they don't get their hands of Ukraine's vast mineral wealth for now, they can comfort themselves with the thought that they might be able to start another war sometime in the future.
    1
  22002. Loyalty to one's country is essential in the military But why do so many of our military leaders have this pathetic loyalty to a foreign nation?
    1
  22003.  @thomasd4738  Why not? You clearly are.
    1
  22004.  @ClarenceK-p2s  There is no evidence that Russia wants to do any more than protect its borders from US aggression and keep control of the mineral-rich and largely Russian heritage Donbass and Crimea. The bogeyman of Russian designs on Europe is just a cheap trick used by the US to justify its own expansionism and warmongering.
    1
  22005.  @only1kingofsing  No point at all other than to boost arms sales.
    1
  22006.  @davidsummer8631  This is a complete nonsense. Putin knows that this is merely a romantic notion, and one which can never become a reality. It is merely put forward by the West as propaganda to distract from their intention to extend the America empire by taking over the vast mineral resources of Donbass.
    1
  22007.  @garagenigel  What's left of it will be. Even so it won't stand much chance against continual artillery and missile attacks.
    1
  22008. Trump did nothing wrong.
    1
  22009.  @gordonstrong5232  I think you're wrong there. Most of the looting and and vandalism is being done by very young people. Probably more so than with similar behaviour by BLM supporters during their George Floyd protest season. The British white working class feels just as oppressed by the police and society in general.
    1
  22010. The brainwashed ignorance displayed in this comments thread is truly depressing. What are these people going to do when they learn the Western media and politicians have been lying to them for years? It'll be like the Trump victory all over again with weeping on the streets.
    1
  22011. And how many of your teachers were right-wing Conservatives?
    1
  22012.  @twocvbloke  The internet does give the opportunity for discrimination though, which education generally does not. And it certainly strikes me that the majority of teachers these days are left-wing and liberal, rather than libertarian. My children and grandchildren are filled with the most absurd nonsense which I am happy to correct, often much to their amusement.
    1
  22013.  @twocvbloke  At least you can pick and choose on the internet. At school you have to believe what you're told - or at least pretend to!
    1
  22014.  @twocvbloke  If you receive a decent liberal education you should be largely able to make reasoned judgements on the things you pick up on the Internet. If, however, you have been unfortunate enough to have undergone a process of reward conditioning carried out by idealogues, this will not be so easy.
    1
  22015.  @unworthy42  What about the 8+ million Russians living in Ukraine? Where do they go?
    1
  22016.  @richardkey1678  It is the official figure from the 2001 census, and you are the uninformed fool. Modern Ukraine was largely built by Russians, especially the industrial and mining areas of Donbass. People identifying themselves as ethnic Russians represented 17.3% in that census, but the concentration is much higher on Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
    1
  22017.  @arjan2777  This figure is based on the 2001 census in which 17.3% of the population identified themselves as being of Russian ethnicity and heritage. The percentages are much higher in Crimea and Donbass. Crimea is majority Russian.
    1
  22018. So now Macron has decided to kill babies in the womb as well as sending people to Ukraine to be killed by Russians? I hadn't realised France had such an overpopulation problem.
    1
  22019. I disagree. It adds to the atmosphere. Richard should make better use of his hands though. He should slam his fists on the table from time to time and possibly tear up documents and chew them. He could even chew the carpet if he really wanted to make a point.
    1
  22020. What would happen to the rouble if -say - Russia gained victory and a good peace settlement in Ukraine, establishing its continued control over Donbass? Would the rouble then shoot up in value? Would now be a good time to invest in roubles if gambling on this possibility?
    1
  22021.  @mohhie  I was thinking more of a situation where the war was actually over and Donbass (and Crimea)was either acknowledged as being Russian or granted autonomous status, as per the Minsk Accords.
    1
  22022.  @jabloko992  This is not correct. Donbass is sitting on trillions of dollars in mineral wealth and the population which has remained - and is coming back - are generally Russians and fully supportive of the Russian regime. A programme of rebuilding is already under way and Mariupol is being rebuilt as a bright, modern city - as will the rest of the area once the war is over. Sanctions are at last beginning to bite, but Russia is largely self-sufficient in food and continues to gain considerable income from the export of gas, oil and grain to countries who aren't half-way up America's jacksie.
    1
  22023.  @ryltair  The people living in the new apartment blocks seem quite pleased, according to their vlogs, and they look pretty good from the outside. Russian building standards are actually quite high. they make excellent nuclear power stations and the Moscow Metro is a sight to behold, now with several new stations recently opened. Credit where credit is due, I think.
    1
  22024. @ If you can't see it, you can't get it.
    1
  22025.  @rogerwilco5918  It's a phenomenon beyond explanation.
    1
  22026.  @rogerwilco5918  It's just as though the news editors of this show trawl around until they can find someone to say the most ridiculous things, and then interview them without any form or actual editing. There is no coherence. The sequences are cut and interleaved and repeated and often reappear in different videos under different headings. And, then to cap it all, they put out a thumbnail with a heading that often bears little resemblance to the content, and invariably with a picture of either Trump or Putin of which they seem to have an inexhaustible collection. As I say: weird. And getting weirder as their contentions of the past fall apart.
    1
  22027.  @rogerwilco5918  Pick any one.
    1
  22028. A return to the hereditary peerage would solve all these difficulties.
    1
  22029. I gather entry forms for a new version of Fantasy Island are now available.
    1
  22030. Misinformation is everything the government doesn't agree with. Didn't you know that?
    1
  22031. He's their guy. America is no longer a democracy.
    1
  22032.  @Gorbyrev  And how do you know Medicins Sans Frontieres were not being used by anti-Russian propagandists? Both they and the Red Cross are suspected of being vehicles for CIA infiltration and propaganda. Russia gains nothing from incidents such as these.
    1
  22033.  @Gorbyrev  Not all by any means, but atrocity propaganda is widespread in war. I would certainly say that most accusations are fabricated, especially those involving children and people in hospitals. The Ukrainian Azov Battalion and other extreme anti-Russian elements in the Ukrainian army already have an appalling record, at least equal to that of the Russians. Under stress, especially if fuelled by alcohol and/or drugs, most troops are capable of unspeakable acts, but cold-blooded bombings of civilian targets of no strategic importance is more rare, other than for propaganda purposes when the other side can be blamed. They are more often accidental, as was the case with the RAF bombing a hospital in Kosovo during that conflict.
    1
  22034.  @Gorbyrev  And the dead Ukrainian civilians, until five weeks ago, were all killed by Ukrainians. And you can't ignore history. The creation of Ukraine as a country in 1991 was a disaster for Crimea and Donbass. Both areas have a strong preference for ridding themselves of government from Kiev. That Russia should wish to aid them in doing so is only natural. That it should come to war on this scale was totally avoidable and it is Zelensky's conceit and stupidity and utter willingness to allow his country to be used as a pawn by the US deep state which has caused it to happen.
    1
  22035.  @Gorbyrev  Russian support is equivalent to what the Americans would call "military advisors". I make no comment on the Malaysian airliner incident. America and Britain, of course, have been utilising their special forces to train the Ukrainians.
    1
  22036.  @Gorbyrev  Crimea was "taken" with hardly a shot being fired. Half the Ukrainian army went over to the Russians within hours. Crimea IS Russian. Around 68% are of Russian descent and less than 16% are Ukrainians.
    1
  22037.  @Gorbyrev  Not with you. Sorry.
    1
  22038. The UK variant has developed as a direct result of lockdowns. It has evolved to combat them. There are certainly vaccine-resistant variants out there. Unless herd immunity is reached pretty damned quickly we are in serious trouble.
    1
  22039. @El Chupacabra I am fully aware that viruses are not sentient. They do, however, exist in such astronomical numbers that even at a low rate of mutation a variant will inevitably occur which is marginally more swift and efficient than other strains. When there is a readily available pool of subjects this does not bring any special advantage. When the pool of subjects is reduced - via lockdowns - there is competition and the slightly more efficient strain gets in first, reproduces more quickly and so grows in number to become the dominant strain. Therefore the UK variant has developed as a direct result of lockdowns. It has evolved to combat them.
    1
  22040.  @xponen  Interesting. I was under the impression that the variant was one of many tens of thousands of random mutations, but one in which a slight alteration to the protein of the spikes made them more swift and efficient in the business of penetrating cells. In the normal course of events this brought no particular advantage but when the pool of available subjects was reduced due to lockdowns it enabled this variant to come to the fore. I find it hard to imagine how a virus can "learn" anything while infecting cells, but there must be something in it. I will look it up. Thankyou.
    1
  22041. @El Chupacabra I hear what you are saying but I would contend that the numbers of the viruses are so incomprehensibly vast that practically all physically possible mutations must already exist. Where there is no competition such mutations gain no particular advantage, There's plenty of territory to go round, as it were. When the territory is reduced -via lockdowns - this small advantage is sufficient for the slightly more efficient strain to establish dominance. This strikes me as a clear illustration of evolution at work. Those organisms which adapt most readily to altered circumstances are the ones which survive and breed. In such a situation attempting to reduce the number of potentially harmful mutations by restricting the number of transmissions strikes me as something of a fool's errand. The mutations are already out there. They only need an altered circumstance in order for their particular characteristic to bring them advantage.
    1
  22042. @El Chupacabra Because there's plenty to go round. The rather crude analogy I use is to imagine a vast rolling plain packed with zebras. There are lions and cheetahs about but both do equally well because all they have to do is pop out for a few minutes to nab a zebra. Suddenly the god of the zebras removes most of the zebras, just leaving a few small groups to wander around the vast rolling plain. All at once the cheetahs have an advantage. They are faster than lions and even faster than the zebras when it comes to that all-important final burst. They get their dinner and the lion doesn't.
    1
  22043.  @cloudpoint0  Thanks for the information. You obviously know what you're talking about. Until now I've been led to believe that immunity meant just that ie if your vaccination has been successful or you have had the disease and recovered from it then it would be very exceptional for you to fall victim. And herd immunity means that if sufficient immune people exist then the virus can find few routes to non-immune subjects and thus nearly dies out. So if a vaccine resistant (or natural immunity resistant) variant exists, then there would be very little we could do to prevent it from spreading. Is this indeed the case?
    1
  22044. @El Chupacabra Thankyou. It has been an interesting conversation. Obviously we are in disagreement on a number of points and will remain so - but that is only natural. Sleep well!
    1
  22045. None of this is necessary. Take heed of the words of these two wise and wonderful women, both experts in their field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peaRgEOF7zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZqTs_YNJk
    1
  22046. Where do the communists come in?
    1
  22047.  @mnomadvfx  How about if the mansion had been owned by some badass muti-millionaire black rapper and he and his crew came out with guns blazing? Now that WOULD have been a story!
    1
  22048. Mr Boliao98 Spot on! Judicious investment in the cap and trade carbon futures market can produce substantial dividends. Buy them when they're going cheap and sell them when the latest nonsensical scare story sends the price sky-rocketing! And the mugs think it's all about saving the planet! Teeheeheehee!
    1
  22049. Presidential candidate Joe Biden can be sued. And the wrongful death lawsuits (if any) are going to be very difficult to prove, considering the NG verdicts.
    1
  22050.  @C_mao  He issued a campaign video talking about white supremacists which showed a picture of Rittenhouse. That's enough. As for OJ Simpson he only got off because he was black and famous. Everyone knew he was a guilty as hell. Aside from that the parents who sued him haven't seen more than a few thousand dollars of the millions they were awarded.
    1
  22051. Wow! Did we watch the same event??! Trump's utter contempt for these race grifters was a beautiful thing to watch!
    1
  22052. No it isn't. It was the warmongering Dems who made all these promises, not Trump.
    1
  22053. Three very sound political decisions.
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  22054.  @markwelch3564  The Right is very divided, but some sort of coalition of interests is possible, and perhaps sooner rather than later.
    1
  22055.  @byroncharles6092  It was clear he had to be restrained. He was a very big guy behaving crazy. Chauvin was using an approved technique. There is no reason whatsoever to believe he intended Floyd´s death.
    1
  22056.  @byroncharles6092  I´m kinda hoping the defence will try it out using guys of similar size to Floyd and Chauvin. The big guy has to be drug free though - otherwise he might die.
    1
  22057.  @byroncharles6092  He point is that without the quantities of drugs in his system Floyd would almost certainly not have died. There is no evidence that Chauvin intended to kill him. The fact that Floyd was actually trying to swallow his stash in the back of the patrol car adds to the self-harm defence. Manslaughter is as far as this should go and in a fair trial even that ought to be hard to prove.
    1
  22058. It's always been a war between Russia and NATO, with the poor bloody Ukrainians being conned into fighting and dying on NATO's behalf - or on America's behalf to be entirely accurate.
    1
  22059.  @Faluzeer  Not far off.
    1
  22060. Putin is winning. Trump just wants him to win more quickly and get this dreadful mess over and done with.
    1
  22061. Such as?
    1
  22062.  CRIPPLED BEEF  He never said it. A total lie.
    1
  22063.  CRIPPLED BEEF  He was asking a question, not making a suggestion. The speaker before him, a Homeland Security official has used military speak, saying "inject" not in the sense of sticking a needle in your arm but in the same way I might say I'm injecting a little common sense into this conversation. He also used the term "disinfect" in the sense that army people say they are going to "disinfect" an area of enemy personnel. This confused Trump, who asked for clarification in a somewhat inept way. A bit of clever editing and the myth is born that he was promoting injecting or drinking bleach and disinfectant Of course he wasn't, but all's fair in love, war and politics I suppose. Irradiation by ultra-violet can destroy some bacteria by the way, but not coronavirus alas. What CAN destroy coronavirus however, or at least prevent the little buggers from reproducing, in our old friend hydroxychloroquine. Trump was right about that. A recent clinical study of over 8,000 patients in Belgium has shown it reduces death rates by almost a third. Just so you know.
    1
  22064. I hope Trump loses his temper and reduces Biden to a slavering, brain-frozen wreck. Is this very wicked of me?
    1
  22065. There are an estimated 20,000 foreign troops fighting for Ukraine. Many are Poles. The misapprehensions of these ignorant country boys might well be confirmed when they get to the front line.
    1
  22066. @Philosophy_First Oh I quite agree. But it might not be so obvious to a Russian soldier when he discovers his opponents are all speaking Polish.
    1
  22067.  @Blanka1100  I quite agree. But this might not be quite so clear to the Russian soldiery.
    1
  22068. The right wing of the Tory party want to see the back of Boris even more than Labour might. He is largely regarded as a pussy-whipped traitor and the Telegraph is in on the kill. He's a stubborn bastard though, and it's going to take some doing.
    1
  22069.  @MarvinWestmaas  Crimea is far more Russian than Ukrainian, both ethnically and historically. Sanctions are having just as much effect on the West as they are in Russia, where the shops are full and energy cheap. Russia is not bombing civilians. It is crippling Ukraine's energy networks in order to restrict its military capabilities and also to make the civilian population think very hard about supporting the present regime. I agree, of course, that this war is about the mineral resources of Donbass as much as anything. The fact is, though, that these resources were exploited by Russia and Russians from the very start and ever since independence they have been exploited by Kiev and various Ukrainian oligarchs very much to the disadvantage of local people.
    1
  22070.  @LureThosePixels  This war has been going on since 2014 when Ukraine attacked Russian inhabitants in Donbass. Ukraine is a "sovereign nation" in name only. It is an artificial construct, created from the fallout of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
    1
  22071.  @セ千尺丂セ  Not all of them. Only those destined to be cannon fodder.
    1
  22072.  @thomasb5600  Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were colonised by Russia from the 18th century inwards. Their populations are largely Russian. The Russian army is certainly pretty crap but it is probably a mistake to dismiss it entirely.
    1
  22073.  @thomasb5600  So you surely admit the difference between the history and ethnic make-up of the Eastern and Western parts of present-day Ukraine, which is itself entirely a construct of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union?
    1
  22074.  @MarvinWestmaas  The Russian populations of Crimea and Donbass result from several events, the last of which was increased industrialisation of Donbass by the Soviet Union. This scarcely counts as invasion. In fact both these areas were inhabited only by a very small population of various nomadic tribes until developed by Russia (and a Welshman too, as it happens.) It wasn't Ukraine's nuclear arsenal, it was the SU's (ie Russia's) arsenal that was located there. The agreements which took place after the collapse of the SU were deeply flawed and the compromise, ie setting up buffer states in Donetsk and Luhansk as per Minsk would have been preferable to the present mess. This is a war between two sets of oligarchs and NATO's involvement in it is utterly disgraceful and only demonstrates the corruption that lies at the roots of this organisation and the American body politic. Russia has no wish to confront NATO, other than to prevent it threatening its territorial integrity.
    1
  22075.  @MarvinWestmaas  Kaliningrad has been Russian since the end of World War II and the German population has been largely removed. This is another of those absurd analogies which liken Putin to Hitler and the situation in Ukraine in 2022 to that in Northern Europe in 1939. I have not been in Russia myself, but reports suggest that there is plenty of food on the shelves and, unlike Ukraine and much of Europe, there are no worries about freezing to death this winter. Russia seems to be forging fruitful relations with China, India, the Middle East and various countries which resent having been bullied by America for so long. This war will undoubtedly result in a major re-alignment of powers which may well ultimately destroy American hegemony and even cause the dollar to cease to be the world's reserve currency. Resentment of Kiev's corruption and incompetence in administering Donbass and Crimea seems widespread. Wages and living standards have dropped dramatically. This, being a war between two sets of oligarchs, the populations seem to be divided between which gang will treat them best. On the whole though it seems likely that a win for the Russians will bring an end to bloodshed quicker than a drawn-out attempt by Zelensky's puppet regime to retake Crimea and suppress the rebellion in Donbass.
    1
  22076.  @MarvinWestmaas  For many years Russia and Ukraine have been in competition for the title of most corrupt country in Europe. And while it is true that Ukraine has slipped down the list of late, this is largely because it has taken on board the more sophisticated techniques suggested to it by its new master, America. It is still run by crooks, and billionaire Zelensky is one of them. We can only hope that America and other arms suppliers will realise that much of what they send him is being sold on the black market for profit and that he is no longer a sound investment.
    1
  22077.  @MarvinWestmaas  This is true. But what of it? That was a thousand years ago.
    1
  22078.  @daydays12  Putin has managed to hold together one of the most volatile and hard-to-rule countries in the world for more than two decades. It is no mean achievement. I'm not quite sure if he has ever said what you claim about Ukrainian not existing but, although hyperbolic, there is a grain of truth in it. Ukraine, as an independent country, is a very new thing. Modern Ukraine is almost entirely the creation of Russia. This is not to say, of course, that it should not have independence, but its boundaries need more realistic definition and Russia can hardly be blamed for resenting having its creation stolen from under its nose.
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  22079.  @daydays12  Who invaded Donbass in February 2014? And if you expect people be truthful in times of war then you are probably an even bigger fool that I suspect you are.
    1
  22080. Not much evidence of that in this comments section.
    1
  22081.  @juanas1989  What communists?
    1
  22082.  @pgabrieli  I didn't say Russia controlled them, merely that they are Russian. Much of them West of the Dnieper are under Ukrainian occupation art the moment.
    1
  22083. For many people the pandemic wasn't a health crisis - it was a gravy train. The effects of their greed and our stupidity will be affecting our health and our pockets long after covid itself has faded into memory. This woman is just a bit player in the whole sick, scandal. The big drug companies have trousered trillions and, thanks to lockdowns and mask mania, severe influenzas and other infections will end up killing easily as many as covid did.
    1
  22084. The Ukrainians and their Western allies could well be walking into a trap, both militarily and in terms of international law.
    1
  22085.  @foilhat1138  Well, at the minute Russia isn't getting torn to shreds and Russians aren't faced with the prospect of a freezing winter with no heating. It is things like this which tend to concentrate the mind.
    1
  22086.  @foilhat1138  It must have been because the Ukrainians were raining missiles on their heads.
    1
  22087. What simple precautions do you have in mind? Nothing has worked so far. Vaccination can mitigate severity, as indeed can proper diet and general health. Preventing infection is, however, well-nigh impossible.
    1
  22088. So all you have to do is to make a few fake charges? Ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?
    1
  22089. Yes. I know several Old Etonians who are the most fabulously brave and intelligent people I have ever come across.
    1
  22090.  @HectorHectorious  If you means the difference between Jews and Aryans I would say that Aryans (as embodied by the Nazis) had an urge to destroy or enslave all other races whereas Jews are quite content to have them as customers.
    1
  22091.  @HectorHectorious  The Nazis wanted to destroy or enslave everybody. Jews just want us as customers.
    1
  22092.  @HectorHectorious  (6th attempt) The master race treated other races as inferiors to be enslaved or destroyed. The chosen people treat other people as potential customers.
    1
  22093.  @2eddietheeagle  Neither.
    1
  22094.  @j.m.9703  What?
    1
  22095.  @defcreator187  NATO threatened Russia as described and also, along with the EU, threatened to deprive Russia of the vast mineral wealth of Donbass to which it feels entitled, since it was developed and exploited by Russia and Russians. Putin proposed a treaty in December last year but it was scorned. So he invaded.
    1
  22096.  @eduardorodriguez1484  They're actually worth listening to. He makes more sense than most American politicians.
    1
  22097.  @dro355  While the NATO nuclear threat is only part of Russia's motivation I don't think Ukraine can be held up as a beacon of democracy, not the US as a shining example of decency, clean living and fair distribution of wealth. I don't think Russia has cities of the homeless and their daily drug overdose rate probably doesn't match America's. Riots are also very much frowned upon. as are mass shootings. Russia may be ready for a less autocratic form of government some time, but it is a very volatile place and needs a firm hand, if only to keep its oligarchs under control. Ukraine has its oligarchs too, of course, and this war is mainly a turf war between these two set of gangsters, with America shamefully backing one gang under the usual banner of "democracy," Hypocrisy, more like.
    1
  22098.  @grahamjones7371  Ukraine never had nukes. They were Russian nukes, stationed there. And Ukraine is neither free nor a true democracy. Like Russia it is an oligarchy and NATO and the US are backing one set of gangsters against another because they want to lay their hands on the vast mineral wealth of Donbass. Russia has no wish to invade anybody. This is very much a last resort.
    1
  22099.  @vercoda9997  There can be no justification, but war crimes are committed on both sides. It's the way these people are. Ukrainians provided notoriously cruel prison guards both for Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia. Between 2014 and 2017 hundreds of separatists in Donbass were imprisoned and tortured and Ukrainians now regularly shoot Russian prisoners. They almost certainly treat collaborators with extreme severity. To imagine that Ukrainians are saints and Russians are devils is clearly ludicrous. They share common ancestry in many cases and both were subject to the corrosive bestiality of Communist rule.
    1
  22100.  @oleksii000  There's no genocide or racism here. As gangsters say: "It's purely business." Russia has put up with two waves of NATO expansionism towards Moscow. This is a turf war and the US and the EU moving in on Ukraine was a step too far. The nuclear aspect only plays a part. It's mainly about getting first pickings on the vast mineral wealth of Donbass. I just don't see why we should be expected to take sides. We're being conned.
    1
  22101.  @damianeadie510  The USSR was Russia. Ukraine was Russia. Without Russia, Ukraine would not exist. The Budapest Memorandums were a con, just as the Minsk Agreements were a con. Budapest was signed by a drunk in the confusion following the collapse of the USSR and Russia mistakenly believed the treaty would mean no further eastward expansion by NATO. Russia even wanted to join NATO because it believed the collapse of the USSR would mean peace with the West. They hadn't fully understood the mentality of American warmongers. Various amendments to Budapest have failed, notably Minsk which it has now been admitted were a ploy by the West to allow time for NATO to create a new Ukrainian army -to retake Crimea and Donbass, at the very least. Putin put forward a series of entirely reasonable proposals in December last year which were scornfully rejected. His decision was therefore to invade in order to protect Russian interests. This war is was Made in America by people who will not suffer in the slightest from its consequences. We will.
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  22102.  @hb9145  The nuclear arms issue is just part of the picture. It's all a game of bluff, but the threat of Armageddon must be considered real for it to work. ANYTHING which affects the delicate balance of power is significant. More significant though is that after America engineered the coup which displaced the sitting Ukrainian president it set about creating a powerful Ukrainian army. Destroying this army is Putin's main objective. Preventing Ukraine joining NATO is very secondary.
    1
  22103.  @oleksii000  NATO is a defensive alliance whose members have been involved in numerous invasions, coups and interventions in the affairs of other nations since its inception. It exists primarily to prop up the arms industry and to provide career opportunities for American and member state generals. Modern Ukraine was created by Russia. It was made a country by Russia. Its borders are the borders of the former Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic and a very large number of its inhabitants are Russian, especially in Crimea and the southeast.
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  22104.  @damianeadie510  Try saying it out loud, surname first. Nothing random there.
    1
  22105.  @regu6582  It was the threat. It gave Putin an excuse to take on and try to destroy Ukraine's new NATO funded army.
    1
  22106.  @lol-iv1ft  Ukraine is just a step too far for Russia. Russia and Ukraine have a pretty unique joint history.
    1
  22107.  @antiquegeek  Pointed at America.
    1
  22108.  @freddieclark  Prove them then.
    1
  22109.  @LucasJasche  On paper, sure, Ever heard of false flags?
    1
  22110.  @kirtjackson1830  He just wants Donbass and Crimea.
    1
  22111.  @1man1bike1road  For now. Anyway Putin only has problems with NATO. Bad haircut is the same.
    1
  22112.  @MrDontclickthislink  That's what you say. Clearly Putin has a different take.
    1
  22113.  @madyogi6164  Anything which affects the balance of nuclear war has to be taken seriously. Anyway, it gave Putin one of several excuses to take on Ukraine's new NATO funded army, which presented an immediate threat.
    1
  22114.  @kenlompart9905  Then why the big army? America wants Ukraine to take back Crimea and Donbass. Putin wants to keep them. Where's the BS in that?
    1
  22115.  @dandansen571  The rouble is now stronger against the dollar than was before the invasion. And I'm on a keto diet, so I don't eat potatoes.
    1
  22116.  @ashleylittle6776  Obviously. But Russia was just taking back what it considered it already owned. This is a turf war between sets of gangsters and I don't see why anyone else should get involved.
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  22117.  @DaleHartley Putin wants to rebuild the Russian empire like he wants a hole in the head. All he wants is to keep Crimea and Donbass, and Ukraine flirting with NATO and the EU has given him just cause to take military action. The nuclear situation is a power game of bluff. NATO missile bases in Ukraine would obviously strengthen NATOs hand.
    1
  22118.  @DaleHartley  NATO members have invaded and interfered with many, many more countries than Russia has. It exists primarily as a market place for arms dealers and to provide career opportunities for generals, It needs an enemy in order to justify is existence and even though the Russian Federation has shown no territorial ambitions it has been cast in this role. It has even tried to join NATO itself on at least three occasions. The dustbin still awaits NATO, though perhaps for different reasons.
    1
  22119.  @Bitchslapper316  So Russia should just let a third be created? Anything which affects the balance of nuclear threat is dangerous.
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  22120.  @damianeadie510  Ukraine joining NATO, offering the possibility of nukes being stationed there, is enough to spook Russia. Really though it provides a convenient excuse for Russia to try to destroy Ukraine's NATO-financed new large army in order to secure Crimea and Donbass. I think you are being a little premature in calling the SMO an "epic fail." Its objective was to deplete Ukraine's armed forces, and it has succeeded in this. It is now a war. Putin just said so. I have no idea, and nor do you, what resources remain for each side but I imagine Putin has a few cards up his sleeve.
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  22121.  @damianeadie510  Are you unfamiliar with the concept of analogy?
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  22122.  @audio323  (Sigh) it was merely an analogy!
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  22123.  @audio323  Don't you get it? Use your imagination for heaven's sake. It's an analogy. Do you know what an analogy is? It's not meant to be taken literally.
    1
  22124.  @oleksii000  There was no annexation. Modern Ukraine was created first by Peter the Great and then by Catherine the Great. It was a Russian province. In 1917-19 various Ukrainians tried to give somewhere called Ukraine independence, largely with the help of the Germans. They failed. THE Ukraine, or Little Russia, became a Soviet Socialist Republic. It only became a country when the USSR wanted an extra seat on the UN. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea have large Russian populations because the original Tatar inhabitants didn't take well to to mining and factory work, so were shipped out and replaced by Russians. There is a divide in Ukraine. Very many Russian people in Crimea and Donbass don't want to play second fiddle to Kiev and the Western half of the country. Neither does Russia want to see the vast mineral wealth of Donbass being syphoned off to America and Europe, believing with some justification that it was created with Russian sweat, not Ukrainian. There are rights and wrongs on both sides, as their always are, but you can't expect Russia to stand idly by while Ukraine forms alliances with rival powers.
    1
  22125.  @bonnie7898  So did Brezhnev and Yeltsin. Putin didn't like being treated like a kid asking permission. He wanted to be welcomed with open arms. Perhaps he should have been ,eh?
    1
  22126.  @carolekjellander8917  Anything which gives an advantage to the enemy upsets the balance of nuclear threat. In any case Russia has a special relationship with Ukraine. It removed its missiles from it back in 1992, and the idea of NATO replacing them 30 years later would be humiliating. The nuclear situation is a side issue though. America and the EU want to get their hands on the mineral wealth of Donbass and has equipped a large Ukrainian army to achieve this. The SMO was an exercise designed to considerably reduce this army, not to conquer territory as so many people seem to believe. The SMO is now over and the real war begins.
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  22127.  @DaleHartley  Examples of what precisely?
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  22128.  @YesItsReallyKeith  Be more specific.
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  22129.  @carolekjellander8917  Southern England. I am not Russian. I merely believe they have a case and that it is a tragedy that diplomatic solutions to the existential problems created by American and EU ambitions in Ukraine have been rejected. This war could have been avoided.
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  22130.  @cecaju9516  So what? They all have the potential to be America's bitch.
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  22131.  @freddieclark  Sarcasm from idiots is most unbecoming. By what stretch of the imagination did the missiles become the property of a country which didn't exist?
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  22132.  @carolekjellander8917 Russia is not after Donbass' mineral resources. It already has them. And all countries fear humiliation. Quite clearly NATO created Ukraine's army in order to retake Crimea and those parts of Donbass under separatist/Russian control. This is a turf war between gangsters. Western Ukraine would like be run by oligarchs in league with America and the EU. Many in Crimea and Donbass prefer the Russian ones. Their preferences are secondary, however. Diplomatic solutions having been rejected, these matters will be settled by force of arms.
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  22133.  @DaleHartley  I'm not whining. Just saying it is how it is.
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  22134.  @DaleHartley  Every weapon sold in every actual and potential conflict involving NATO and the careers of every NATO general.
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  22135.  @bonnie7898  And by comparison, here is a list of invasions, coups, and interventions by NATO members since the break up of the Soviet Union. Iraq (twice) Rwanda Yugoslavia Nepal Afghanistan Liberia Ethiopia Guinea Bissau Phillipines Venezuela Syria Iran Libya Colombia Haiti Ukraine Yemen Palestine Perhaps Putin has the right to be arrogant. Perhaps he is entitled. Perhaps if NATO didn't need to keep Russia as a perpetual enemy in order to justify its existence then perhaps we wouldn't be having this war.
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  22136.  @bonnie7898  Perhaps NATO didn't really want Russia. Perhaps its status as villain and enemy needed to be retained.
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  22137.  @bonnie7898  To control the Ukrainian economy and reap the benefits of Ukraine's immense mineral wealth. By way of evidence I cite the US organised Maidan revolt, which overthrew a government opposed to joining the EU, plus a long series of associations between US politicians and energy companies run by Ukrainian oligarchs, notably Ifor Kolomoisky who engineered the elevation of his boy Zelensky to the presidency. And of course the financing of a large Ukrainian army. to say nothing of starting this war.
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  22138.  @carlosamador8294  They weren't Ukraine's nuclear weapons. They were Soviet nuclear weapons which Russia took back.
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  22139.  @sonia7blue  Close enough.
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  22140.  @colinhead8118  I suppose you must be referring to the Budapest Accords of 1991/92, a deeply-flawed treaty which has been subject to numerous attempts to overcome its inadequacies ever since. It now ranks with the Versailles Treaty of 1919 which created the Second World War twenty years later.
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  22141.  @sonia7blue  Agreed, America does not commit atrocities towards its neighbours. It travels overseas to commit them, or pays other people to commit them on its behalf. The peaceful defensive alliance is actually the sales division of the arms industry and the US military/industrial complex and became utterly redundant with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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  22142.  @freddieclark  You speak as the collapse of the Soviet Union was an overnight event. It wasn't. It was a lengthy and complex process and part of that process was the removal of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine as the newly emerging Russian Federation greatly feared Ukraine associating itself with NATO. Without their removal Ukraine could not have become a "country". Budapest was agreed in haste and, at the time, was thought to be a reasonable compromise. It had many faults, but the idea that there was even the remotest chance that those Soviet (ie Russian) missile could be replaced by American ones thirty years later is just too much for Russia to take.
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  22143.  @colinhead8118 Putin is right to be concerned about the West's takeover of Ukraine for a whole host of reasons, national security being but one of them. You people seem to imagine that geopolitics on this scale is some kind of kid's game where you say: "Yahboo to you, naughty Russia. You are breaking the rules. Go back to square one." There are no rules other than the rules which govern winning and losing. Economic interests pre-dominate, but when these cannot by regulated by treaty and diplomacy then the usual alternative is war.
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  22144.  @timeames2509  Returned to its original ownership. Crimea is Russian and was only stuck on to Ukraine in 1954 for reasons of administrative and logistical convenience. Ukraine can't be blamed for wanting it back, but Russia can equally not be blamed for not wanting to let them. So what does it have to do with NATO?
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  22145.  @freddieclark  But the missiles still didn't belong to Ukraine, they were officially in the possession of the CIS. Even before the collapse Ukraine had no operational control. Russia controlled the codes needed to operate the nuclear weapons through the Russian command and control system. How then could they in any sense be described as Ukrainian? As to Ukraine's status as a country, although it was one of the states which ratified the CIS in 1991, making it a Founding State of the CIS, it chose not to ratify the CIS Charter as it disagrees with Russia being the only legal successor state to the Soviet Union. Thus it has never been a full a member of the CIS and thus its claims to be a sovereign nation are very much open to question, even today.
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  22146.  @colinhead8118  Not a particularly constructive comment, if I may say so.
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  22147.  @PJ-om2wq  Is it a sovereign nation? What does that even mean? Even if it is, a neighbouring country has every reason to become alarmed if its neighbour forms an alliance with a foreign power which has never shown anything but enmity towards that country, and which has spent billions on creating a huge army and arming it. It is Russia's business. Bigtime.
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  22148.  @carolekjellander8917  This is sheer nonsense . The Russian population has been there for many decades, and some for much longer. In the 2001census 17.3% of the population identified themselves as of Russian ethnicity. The percentage is much higher in Crimea and Donbass, where it was mainly Russians who sweated in the mines and factories to exploit and develop the area's mineral wealth. Crimea is majority Russian. For eights year Ukraine has been shelling Donbass and at least 8,000 civilians have ben killed, including many children. UN reports will confirm this, as well as giving accounts of rapes and tortures carried out by Ukraine's notorious Azov Brigade and other quasi-autonomous military units. These facts are readily verifiable by a simple Internet search. Ukraine was clearly preparing to step up this campaign in Donbass, the prevention of which is one of the reasons which persuaded Russia to invade.
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  22149.  @carolekjellander8917  Your argument may be questioned when the minority population is concentrated in one area. There was a strong opposition in Donbass to joining the EU and a strong feeling that the area's mineral resources were being exploited by Western Ukrainians, based in Kiev. Discovering the actual percentages involved is impossible, since Ukraine is an extremely corrupt country and a stranger to democracy. Civilian deaths in the Donbass war are thought to be 8.000. Military deaths on both sides bring the number up to around 14,000. I do not question the fact that the creation of the two independent Donbass republics was fomented by Russian agitators to some extent, nor that the Russian military trained and supplemented the republican armies. The Russians have learned a thing or two from the CIA over the years. All the same, Donbass' wealth was created by Russian sweat and you can't really blame Russia for wanting to keep a hold on it.
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  22150.  @carolekjellander8917  I enjoy watching Youtubers from Russia, including native Russians and Americans and Brits who have moved there. It's quite an education. You should try it. It might prevent you from this continued confusion between Soviet Russia and the Russian Federation which seems to persist in your mind. I wouldn't mind living there at all. It is, of course an oligarchy, as indeed is Ukraine, but this is just a somewhat more piratical and less regulated version of capitalism. Do visit "Anna in Russia". She is doing her Christmas shopping in the huge and splendid mall in her home city in Siberia. She just did a video in which she fed herself and her husband for the weekend on the equivalent of less than five dollars. Clever girl. Not a secret policeman in sight either.
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  22151. Bolton's desperate desire be Putin's enemy is far, far more dangerous.
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  22152. Anyone who has been unfairly persecuted by the law in any form. And that's plenty.
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  22153.  @Stratsfinest  Have you been asleep for four years?
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  22154. Surely an essential part of the exercise is to discover which of the two is the better and more amusing liar?
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  22155. The trouble is we have grown so used to judging ourselves by how nice we are that we have lost sight of those things which have enabled us to be nice in the first place. America should give refuge to all Ukrainians who ask for it, since this tragedy is almost entirely that country's fault. We're running out of room and thousands of Hong Kong Chinese are on their way, to whom we do owe an historical responsibility. Welcoming Ukrainian refugees might make you feel all warm and fluffy inside. but that's about it in terms of what future generations may come to think of you. They're going to have lots of other stuff to worry about.
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  22156.  @rocketscience4516  Then you could feel all big and manly in that exiting fascist way as well as all warm and fluffy inside.
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  22157.  @rocketscience4516  The people you mention were, of course, entirely unmotivated by anything resembling self-interest. What you have to realise is that our very ability to offer succour to the world's refugees is due to the fact that our forefathers created a rich and powerful country through the exercise of force. We no longer have the resources to maintain our position in the world and those resources are diminished with every refugee we welcome. This is very sad, but that's the way it is. We simply didn't plan for the increase in population resulting from mass immigration. Phil suggests that future generations will look back on any disinclination to welcome refugees with shame. This may be true. It is just as likely though that future generations, cold and hungry and under the yoke of some foreign power, will look back and curse us for our misplaced generosity.
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  22158.  @johnrocks5678  Will the UK offering sanctuary to Ukrainian refugees rectify anything though? It would really just be a gesture.
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  22159.  @rocketscience4516  At least you are making my departure voluntary now instead of wanting to drag me off by force. That's a step in the right direction! Idealism and pragmatism are often in conflict. The point I am desperately trying to make is that the former is generally a luxury created by the considered exercise of the latter.
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  22160.  @Yeknodathon  You still haven't read the Johns Hopkins meta-study have you? Or the latest research on Ivermectin from Sweden and Hong Kong. My tinfoil hat is now very fashionable. What were once dubbed conspiracy theories are now emerging as just conspiracies. You must hurry to catch up.
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  22161.  @rocketscience4516  Seems so.
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  22162.  @johnrocks5678  True enough. But why should everyone be crawling over each other to supply this comfort? This tragedy is America's fault and America should be supplying redress. A British person's sole reason for doing so must be the sense of self-gratification it might provide. If that's what rocks your boat why not adopt a few starving children from the Third World. There are plenty of those about.
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  22163.  @Yeknodathon  Seems you've already shut the door on quite a lot of things - including the ability to think for yourself. No wonder you scorn it.
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  22164.  @rocketscience4516  It's a three-bedroomed cottage actually. Used to be the gatehouse but I let the main house out to a drug rehab charity. If your Ukrainian is a junkie they might find a place for him.
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  22165.  @fredplat467  Confirmed by facts and history. Just try checking. Any errors will be corrected, I promise.
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  22166.  @johnrocks5678  A certain amount pf placing the blame is rather necessary, don't you think?
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  22167.  @Yeknodathon  I'm staying where I am mate. An Englishman's home is his castle and I've even got the crenellations.
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  22168.  @fredplat467  I'm not talking about crumbling under debts as such, merely the effects of suddenly increased population. The UK's population has increased more through immigration than birth in recent years and this simply hasn't been planned for. Of course a few thousand Ukrainians won't make much difference as such, but we have to put a stop to the idea that the UK is a natural destination for refugees. The Ukrainians are America's problem and responsibility, and the EU's to some extent. As to past history, it is generally true that movements of large numbers of homeless populations are a feature in the decline of Empires. A recent example would be the partition of the Indian sub-continent. What we are seeing now is the beginning of the collapse of the American Empire and this is already having an effect on the movements of large numbers of poor people, particularly from places like Haiti and South America. Unless Russia is stopped now the phenomenon will spread to Europe. It is very doubtful that he can be stopped through force of arms, so concessions are the only answer. If these are made there is every chance that Ukraine will be swiftly stabilised and the vast majority of refugees will be able to return in safety.
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  22169.  @Yeknodathon  I can't see him. Has he gone to one of the other cottages on the estate by any chance?
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  22170.  @Yeknodathon  That's out of the question with my bad leg.
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  22171.  @rocketscience4516  Perhaps you have stayed in my ancestral hall then. What a thought! You mention green pens. Do you know I have actually received letters written in green ink? They are not a myth.
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  22172.  @Yeknodathon  I've told you. I'm staying put. I'm cleaning my 12 bore even as we speak.
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  22173.  @Yeknodathon  Even that is out of the question at the moment. Things usually improve after a week or so of bed rest and healthy doses of malt and painkillers, but even then I will be disinclined to depart' I'm going up on the roof now to check my lines of fire. I warn you and your Uber driver that I'm a very good shot, especially when I'm stoned.
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  22174.  @fredplat467  There us nothing to correct. As far as figures are concerned cast your mind back to 2013 when the UK welcomed immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria. Around 13,000 were anticipated. There are now close on half a million of them. The same will happen if we allow unfettered Ukrainian immigration. Is this OK? Some may think so. I do not. Ukrainians certainly wouldn't if the boot was on the other foot. Many of them are fiercely nationalistic to the point of Nazism. As to Britain's responsibilities vis a vis the Empire we have done all that can humanly be expected of us. British Asians are to be seen everywhere and we will dutifully accommodate British Hong Kong Chinese when the need arises. The UK is not part of Europe. The term is a mere geographical convenience and does not describe a social of political entity.
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  22175.  @rocketscience4516  In fact not. I was a newspaper editor in an earlier incarnation and my paper covered an area where the NF was just taking off. My critical editorials aroused several green-ink letters addressed to "The Snake With The Pen." Not much changes
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  22176.  @rocketscience4516  In fact I actually met their author and I'm pretty sure he wasn't an hallucination. A delegation of NF supporters turned up at my office and we had a bit of a ding dong about this and that. He was a smallish bloke in his sixties, ex noncomm in the artillery as I recall. (I told you I don't live in the Old Hall but in the gatehouse. It does have crenellations though.)
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  22177.  @rocketscience4516  You're really starting to get me worried now! I don't recall the lion incident though.
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  22178.  @fredplat467  That was really quite poetic. Well done.
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  22179.  @talesofcanterbury42  Just cynical.
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  22180. You heard him say this did you? Or was it something put in your head?
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  22181.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  Its only threats have been attempts to prevent the West taking over its strategic and commercial interests, as in Ukraine . What other European nations has it threatened or attacked?
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  22182.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  Whatever moral judgements may be made the fact is that Russia can not and will not allow its economic ties with these countries to be broken. America is on the constant look out for new markets for its products and new sources of raw materials and Russia is simply preventing America from muscling in on its territory. If the stakes are high enough, as in Ukraine, Russia is prepared to go to war over the issue.
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  22183.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  I don't think Russia has any desire or intention of invading them.
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  22184.  @ozyrob1  Which is why NATO would be foolish to try to press it any further.
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  22185.  @ozyrob1  Russians are no more gangsters than Americans. In fact America has bullied an coerced far more countries than Russia has. Russia's position on Ukraine is a very valid one and it has spent at least twenty years trying to ratify it peacefully. If Ukraine had been left to its own devices instead of agreeing to become another US poodle a peaceful solution would have been found and tens of thousands of mostly young men would not have dies for no other purpose than to attempt to advance American commercial interests.
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  22186.  @nhjhbmkuy7173  Russia agrees. The Russian Federation under Putin has given up all claims on Poland and the Baltic States.
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  22187.  @ozyrob1  But Russians are not gangsters. Putin has spent twenty years trying to sort out the Ukrainian situation peacefully. He has been forced into grim necessity of war because of continued Western interference in the relationship between the two countries.
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  22188.  @ozyrob1  There has been very little gangsterish about Russia's efforts in Ukraine. Putin has spent twenty years trying to find a peaceful solution to the anomalies that exist and has only been forced into the grim necessity of war by continued Western interference.
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  22189.  @jimmyclark9595  Not as simple as that. Ukraine's highly profitable mining industry is Russian - paid for and operated by Russians. Russia doesn't want to see it handed over to Western companies . The invasion is a last-ditch attempt to prevent this.
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  22190.  @jimmyclark9595  It is merely protecting its interests.
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  22191. What do you think Putin wants to do in Europe? He's having a hard enough job taking back those bits of Russia mistakenly handed over to Ukraine.
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  22192. It is impossible for Trump to have a fair trial. There can be no-one in America who has not been subjected to the constant barrage of hatred churned out against him by this channel and others like it. Therefore there can be no one in America qualified to sit on a jury and treat him impartially, as required by law.
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  22193. They just won't be told though, will they?
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  22194.  @brentwilbur  I hope you are right. But this delusion is the essential feature of something which is both a religion and a vast money-making enterprise .This is a particularly resilient combination.
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  22195. Instead of scurrying about trying to make up the shortfall of weaponry caused by America's imminent abandonment of the war they started, these piddling little nations should make a name for themselves by brokering a peace deal.
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  22196.  @MROJPC  The writing's on the wall, "mate" . This war (which America started) is not proving to be a sound return on investment. The new congress will, with luck, decide to cut the nation's losses and, very regretfully, step back and allow its European vassals to carry the can.
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  22197.  @michaelmayo3127  Your innocence is breathtaking.
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  22198.  @tuga9999  You are falling victim to the most absurd propaganda. Even if what you say is true (and it very probably isn't) the idea that Johnson is Putin's "puppet" is sheer fantasy. He and his chums may have got a few spiffing holidays out of the Russkies, and a few crates of top-notch champers, but Britain remains firmly in the pocket of the good ole USA. Even now you are doing their bidding -without even knowing it.
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  22199.  @jeffsuter344  It's not a talent contest or a beauty contest, it's world politics. There's been an illegal bloody civil war going on in East Ukraine for eight years, financed by the US and featuring Ukrainian soldiers trained by the US and Britain. Putting a stop to that makes Putin's invasion quite legal, and even if it doesn't who cares? It's time the West stopped messing with Russia. They weren't a threat -but they are now.
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  22200.  @Dash8Q400Channel  I don't know. Nor do you. And it's got nothing to do with the present situation anyway.
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  22201.  @tuga9999  Keep supping the bourbon Carlos. Or do you prefer dry martinis?
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  22202.  @1050cc  Talking of children Google The Alley of Angels. It records the names of some of the Donbass children killed by the Ukrainian army over the last eight years.
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  22203.  @annishilcock4587  Are you kidding!!???
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  22204.  @jeffsuter344  Who hates the West? It's lies and stupidity I hate.
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  22205.  @jennifermackinnon6982  Reality is that Crimea is part of Russia and Donbass will be better off as two independent republics. Zelensky is a sock puppet with charm. That's all.
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  22206.  @Mark-Haddow  The truth of a concerned citizen, actually.
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  22207.  @DarkRoomAmbience  I only want the killing to stop. A victory for Russia is the quickest way to achieve it.
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  22208.  @vincentvargas923  They've been attacking the people of Donbass for eight years and have killed more than ten thousand of them.
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  22209.  @GriotDNB  Can you not deal with the concept that someone might not think the sun shines out of Zelensky's ass without being paid for that opinion?
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  22210.  @kasper7297  The rouble is now worth more against the dollar than it was at the start of the invasion. You'll be wiping your ass on dollar bills before this over.
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  22211.  @Mark-Haddow  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uUfXjKaho
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  22212. As a Brit I have to say that the American obsession with wanting to send each other to prison all the time seems almost like some form of pathological illness.
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  22213. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uUfXjKaho
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  22214. All political parties have their buffoons and extremists somewhere down the line. Calling people from Pakistan by diminutive of their name or joking about using boat-borne illegal immigrants as target practice is just banter, and far less serious than supporting Hamas terrorists or banning the use of certain words.
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  22215. What a grim world of fantasy you live in. Only around 25 children under 18 in the UK have died with Covid, at least half with complex multi-health issues.
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  22216.  @burtonschrader2  Children were never at risk and vaccinations ensure that symptoms in adults are reduced in severity. The more people who get infected in these circumstances the better. Each case is another step towards herd immunity.
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  22217. What a stitch-up! Meanwhile Biden gets away with decades of bribery and corruption. America stinks. Good job it's going down the tubes!
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  22218. Brian Brian The use of fossil fuels puts clothess on your back, bread in your mouth and provides the computer you are using. If you want to live without fossil fuels go naked into a desert and take it from there.
    1
  22219. This is about more than hypocrisy. The Government knows full well that most mitigation measures are near-useless and only trotted out to give the peasantry the illusion that something is being done. Do you really think they would risk their own lives and wellbeing otherwise?
    1
  22220. Later today (Oct 5) Putin will announce that, following the official incorporation of the three Donbass republics into the Russian Federation, the current incursions by the Ukrainian armed forces will be treated as an invasion of sovereign territory in terms of international law. The consequences could well be dire.
    1
  22221. But he's right. Many European countries - and the UK in particular - are heading down the road to Soviet-style totalitarianism,
    1
  22222.  @bigkdog5091  You have no idea what Trump is like. All you have is the result of years of denigration by the media.
    1
  22223.  @tomfreeman650  Very sensible of him.
    1
  22224.  @oxymoron5167  A deep-seated personality disorder which might be confused with courage?
    1
  22225. CautionCU Actually oil comes from the remains of plants and animals which existed long before the dinosaurs. Not such a fun idea, but there we are. We're not living in a sad part of human history by the way. The climate crisis is about as real as the dinosaur story. So cheer up!
    1
  22226. Thomas Allen I really have no idea. My current mission is to attempt to persuade people to reject the terrifying, unhealthy and ultimately evil money-making scam called the climate crisis. It was the absurd excuse for veganism I was attacking. You have already met my autistic grandson and his parrot. May I congratulate you on your dogs and your crops. You seem to be very much one of the good guys if I may say so.
    1
  22227. @ It's not about geography, it's about geology. The fight is about ownership of the mineral wealth of Eastern Ukraine, mined by Russia for centuries and now brought into sharp focus by the discovery of large quantities of high grade lithium. This is now mostly under firm Russian control, which was the object of the exercise. As for Kursk, it is an irrelevant sideshow. Russia is not wasting resources on trying to kick the Ukrainians out when they will have to give up the little bit they have left as part of the peace settlement.
    1
  22228.  @Interglacial_optimist  Ownership of resources is generally the prime reason for most wars - although in Gaza's case this is probably outstripped by Israel's desire to avoid constant attacks by heavily-armed Islamist fanatics.
    1
  22229. @ I don't watch Fox news - apart from the occasional clip. I read books.
    1
  22230. This is another climate crisis scam. Coral goes through lengthy life cycles and always has done. Relating one aspect of this cycle to totally artificial guesswork on historic temperatures serves no purpose other than to attempt to reinforce the scam. In passing we can note that the coral reefs around Bikini Island were utterly destroyed by atom bomb testing in the 1950's. They are now fully recovered.
    1
  22231.  @enjoyyourday5870  Much the same thing!
    1
  22232.  @DrumToTheBassWoop  Not by forgetting them. By not repeating them.
    1
  22233.  @DrumToTheBassWoop  I hope not. Then it really would be time to ship in a few AK15s. Incidentally I'm putting the idea about that we should replace Edward with a statue of George Floyd, just to see the reaction. Want to join in? Might as well have some fun before the counter-revolution kicks off.
    1
  22234.  @DrumToTheBassWoop  It's difficult isn't it? I am an elderly white person and I have no respect for BLM whatsoever. It exists merely to foment resentment so that intersectionalist Marxists can have the necessary victim group needed for identity politics to work. They have a vested interest in keeping BAME people oppressed and angry, and while the George Floyd incident was as terrible as it was it in no way indicates system racism the US. And there certainly isn't any such thing in the UK. It breaks my heart to see so many people fooled by this divisive strategy. Things are getting better all the time. Shit like this just makes it worse. And its cynical and deliberate too. I think the BLM supporters can have their little victory with George - or with his statue at least. Give a dog a bone. In the meantime those who can be saved must be saved gently by pointing out to them the absurdity of their position - hence my teasing suggestion about replacing Edward with George. Hopefully it will make people think.
    1
  22235. I think I prefer apathy to Marxist globalism.
    1
  22236. Abominations all! Only a trawl through alternative media enables one to unearth an approximation of the truth. The MSM worldwide only does propaganda now.
    1
  22237. Dave Lastname: There was actually a time when real reporters tried to dig out the truth, however uncomfortable. Nixon was brought down and the Vietnam war ended by such people. There are many other instances. Nowadays all journalists seem to be career-conscious toadies.
    1
  22238. She's a diversity hire who's not all that black, she's apparently slept her way to the top and she seems to be drunk quite a lot of the time. Just the sort of person the Western world needs at this crisis point in the history of civilisation.
    1
  22239. Git Mulhaney The hand? Can't say I do. Please enlighten me!
    1
  22240. But there IS credible evidence of fraud - or at the very least many entirely plausible indications that it may have taken place. There is certainly enough for PROPER journalists to start asking questions instead of toeing the official line like this. But then the BBC doesn't do journalism any more, does it? Shameful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wXRFXUGw0 Michigan voter fraud https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-11-election-data-analyzed-votes-switched-biden-software.html# Software scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCyluVHODJQ “Karen!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2csAMtKqcY Judicial watch 1.8mill ghost voters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw4aErwego Video compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4KWrP1oRs Dominion/Soros link
    1
  22241.  @christianevanherck6023  These are surely responses to continuous threats - not provocations.
    1
  22242.  @daviddogsbody  How is this provocation? It might show a certain contempt, but it was purely co-incidental that these people happened to be here when they were whacked.
    1
  22243.  @ashroskell  You are living in a world of media-induced paranoid fantasy. It is sadly only too common among persons of limited intellect.
    1
  22244.  @michaeldunham3385  Facts - but in what way are they provocations? It's not as though Russia had spent $100 billion on equipping an Irish army to invade Wales. These people just happened to be here when attempts were made to whack them.
    1
  22245.  @stephengillott9435  Nonsense. It has bumped off a couple of its own people who were hiding here, but it was nothing personal. They haven't set up nuclear missile sites in neighbouring countries, or spent billions on creating a proxy army to invade us.
    1
  22246.  @Blanka1100  It's only human. But it is very, very aware of the horrors and failings of the USSR.
    1
  22247.  @millmoormichael6630  I must award you a point. I hadn't thought about breaching air space - but then again, everyone seems to do that, don't they? As to the rest - we shall see.
    1
  22248.  @bakeredwards  This is a childish view. Russia does what it has to do in order not to be swallowed up by America - which increasingly seems to want to swallow everybody and everything. Any imminent implosions will come from that direction. This time America has bitten off more than it can chew. It is due for a very severe case of indigestion, or even possibly a fatal heart attack.
    1
  22249.  @edwinstubbs2118  You are still confusing the expansionist USSR with the Russian Federation. The complexities of the 2014 Maidan riots and their consequences clearly illustrate the expansionist tendencies of the US and the defensive responses of the RF. Ukrainian crooks and American crooks were combining to take Ukraine's resources away from Russia. Fair enough, you might say, but this ignores the fact that those resources were developed and manned by Russians, and also that their viability and profitability had plunged dramatically since being taken over by the new government in Kiev A Russian puppet was replaced by a succession of American puppets after 2014 and Russia sought to protect its interests by various means, including marching unhindered into Crimea and by supporting and co-ordinating the separatist movements in Donbass. Instead of then listening to Russia's very reasonable peace proposals, the West chose to use the Minsk ceasefire treaties to spend further billions on creating a large , well-equipped army with which to invade Donbass and Crimea. This war is a consequence of that decision. You may of course choose to live where you like, but your "single most prosperous period" only applies to a relatively small proportion of the human population and is, believe me, coming rapidly to an end unless something can be done to halt America's megalomaniac desire to rule the entire world.
    1
  22250.  @stephenhill545  A sure sign that Russia not imperialist then.
    1
  22251.  @stephenhill545  As symbols of the British Empire are all over Britain.
    1
  22252. ​ @gilh3947 You're the fool. Russia is merely attempting to safeguard its long standing interests in the face of continuous Ameicsn aggression.
    1
  22253. Simpler to turn it off, wouldn't you say?
    1
  22254.  @mitchrodee  Spoilt for choice, really.
    1
  22255. That would be because masks are more or less totally useless.
    1
  22256.  alex kennedy  Too messy. What right do the ignorant bastards have to argue about anything anyway? They should just do as they're told or face the consequences.
    1
  22257.  alex kennedy  But he is not a socialist - or any kind of ist except possibly a narcissist. In his very, very interesting book "The Alchemy of Finance" he makes this quite clear. Having suffered under both fascism and communism he will have nothing to with either of them. What I mean to say is that he is not , I think, motivated by idealism or a moralistic desire for change. As you say, I think he does what he does more or less for the fun of it. Toying with the world is an expression of his genius - and he is a genius, of that there is no doubt. As I expect you know he wanted to be a philosopher, but was rejected by the academic establishment and so turned his discoveries on the concept of reflexivity to practical use, initially to making money in vast and improbable quantities and latterly towards establishing himself as god on earth. He may also want to lever the yuan to short the dollar before he dies -who knows? No. I think he is far too intelligent to be a socialist. PS. Thanks for the link. God, this guy is such an enigma!
    1
  22258.  @eduardocajias5626  Soros is impossible to fathom. I think he may be one of the most intelligent people ever to have lived and there is no way of telling what he is playing at. The only thing you can be sure of is if you think you know, you are wrong! (I have actually grown to quite like Donald Trump. It was an uphill struggle but he has been so maligned and falsely accused that he has aroused my sympathy, and indeed my admiration to a certain extent. Soros is several million times richer and cleverer, but the Donald really is a man of the people. He has considerable cunning and fortitude and is really just an ordinary guy who was born into riches and has done what many other ordinary guys would have done in his position. That's why ordinary guys (and gals) like him so much.)
    1
  22259.  Nelson Mendes  Way, way behind the times mate. That was the result of studies where huge doses were given (probably deliberately) in order to pretend hydroxychloroquine was dangerous, and therefore could not be considered a rival for the highly expensive treatments being pushed by Big Pharma. Hydroxychloroquine costs around 50c a dose, Here is the current position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro
    1
  22260.  Michael o'donnell  Yes it does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro
    1
  22261.  @someoneyouknow525  Of course not you twat. Get a life.
    1
  22262.  Jack Richardson  The dose has to be right, Most studies were done using huge doses administered far too late - just to make sure it DIDN'T work and looked as though it was dangerous. In fact it's a lifesaver. Literally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro
    1
  22263.  Jack Richardson  Could have been cut by a third if Big Pharma hadn't engineered a campaign to bad-mouth it - helped of course by the media and the Dems.
    1
  22264.  Jack Richardson  Because not enough people are taking it.
    1
  22265.  @MAXlMUS  Who needs Europe? Russia pumping and shipping oil out East, where the real money is. The Black Sea fleet was still there last time I looked.
    1
  22266.  @repletereplete8002  Could be. On the other hand the armies of the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have held off the Ukrainian army for eight years and now that the Ukrainian army has been decimated the chances of success are considerably lessened.
    1
  22267.  @MAXlMUS  I was thinking more of still launching missiles to help destroy Ukraine's infrastructure.
    1
  22268. @Alexei Smirnoff I agree with much of what you say. As is usual in wars the final results will depend upon the resources available to both sides. These are unknown quantities, except to the very highest authorities on both sides. I cannot agree with your final sentence though. It seems to me that the West is tiring of continuing to throw so much money and so much hardware in Ukraine's direction. These things are not done out of kindness or high moral principle as we poor mugs are led to believe. They are done with a view to future profit and there comes a stage when the likely benefits will not compensate for the original investment. I believe we are now at this stage. Without extensive resupplies from the West, Ukraine has little chance of winning in the south-east, I think. Depending upon available resources Russia could take the whole of Donbass and secure Crimea and Kherson south of the Dnieper. This will be far from a symbolic victory. It will be all Putin ever wanted in the first place.
    1
  22269.  @israelromero728  It's still money. And it's still fuel that Europe isn't getting and it's lots, lots cheaper than American LPG.
    1
  22270.  @alanbellas513  Your analysis is somewhat emotional and partisan. The West's economic measures against Russia are not only proving to be largely ineffectual, they are backfiring. No-one is doing well out of this, but Russia is doing no worse than anyone else. In fact, taking the long view, it could well be on its way to helping construct a whole new distribution of power in the world which will leave the American, dollar-based bloc floundering. China and India, along with dozens of other developing economies, are keen to free themselves from American hegemony and this war could well provide the opportunity. Putin, far from being mad, is eminently sane and although he has taken a gamble, America's constant attempts to belittle and undermine his country have left him with little option. Furthermore it is clear that he has preparing for something like this for years. Companies have been set up all over the world to provide undercover access to materials officially sanctioned. Other companies within Russia have immediately sprung up to provide local, ersatz versions of Western products. And we're not just talking MacDonalds and Starbucks. Factories are producing matching spare parts for all kinds of Western machinery. They are very expensive at the moment, but they are there. If this is the final battle between Russia and America there is every chance that Russia will win.
    1
  22271.  @MAXlMUS  Many more.
    1
  22272.  @jordizee  Not when it can open new markets in China and India. Which Russia is doing even as we speak.
    1
  22273.  @alanbellas513  It's not like that at all. The whole balance of world power is changing. The West is crumbling into decadence and stagnation, as all empires invariably do. History shows us that this happens very quickly. America has overstepped the mark in attempting to syphon Ukraine's riches from Russia and will pay the penalty for it - and probably sooner rather than later.
    1
  22274.  @ultonian63  Heavily-armed? And in any case it doesn't matter. Russia has no territorial ambitions other than to retain its economic hold on Ukraine. The reason it has acted so precipitately is simply that it needs to quash any possible alliances between Ukraine and both NATO and the EU.
    1
  22275.  @ghostlightx9005  I'm interested in this 40 year estimate from "the Kremlin" . Do you have a source?
    1
  22276.  @1450JackCade  I don't see it that way. Russia is forging new relationships with China and India by supplying them with gas and oil. China and India are expanding economies, along with the Pacific rim countries and developing countries in S America and Africa. A new world is being created in which the ascendancy of Europe and America is finally halted.
    1
  22277.  @ultonian63  It isn't a question of "right", it's a question of protecting one's own interests.
    1
  22278.  @keithwoods7735  We'll see.
    1
  22279. And all so unnecessary. Why are we continuing to prolong this war by supplying the incompetent Zelensky government with weapons? Give Donbass independence. Stop sanctions on Crimea. Stay out of NATO. Just face up to reality and the madness ends.
    1
  22280. This "lock 'em up" syndrome really does demonstrate how primitive Americans actually are.
    1
  22281. Trump has no chance of winning. The Deep State will see to that.
    1
  22282. @Don Doodat "Cognitive dissonance"? You forgot the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Instead of trying to be smart, just take a moment to ask yourself who benefits from this war. Putin certainly doesn't, much less the people of Ukraine. The beneficiaries are that "cabal of warmongers" in Washington who have engineered the whole scenario from the start. By supporting Zelensky you are supporting them and the Ukrainian oligarchs who pull his strings. This is a war between villains, not some kind of battle between good and evil. The swiftest and most rational way to end it is to grant the more modest of these villains his not unreasonable demands.
    1
  22283. Objective analysis from Michael Clarke???!!! Is it just Ukraine that confuses him? (Trusting the US to sort things out though is less and less of a viable option.)
    1
  22284.  @vihuelamig  I don't think we are too far apart. I think that being born here, especially if your parents were too, gives you extra privileges, and the mundane tasks you describe may just as well be done by alien immigrants who might well go on to higher and more rewarding things if they are intelligent and hard-working enough. As far as Trump is concerned it strikes me that there enough drugged-up non-contributors littering the streets over there to occupy all his efforts for some considerable while.
    1
  22285.  @derekmulready1523  New immigrants for the most part. As I said, we need foreign workers for many jobs. The trouble with the Brexit we got is that it got rid of some valuable aspects of the arrangement while retaining several dubious ones.
    1
  22286. Whatever you may think about Trump there is no doubt that he is the victim of a far greater evil. He has done no more than many, many other businessmen and is being persecuted for political gain. The fascist Left is shamelessly utilising justice systems in both America and Britain in order to attempt to silence conservative voices.
    1
  22287. It is because there are so few of them Up until June there were 53 confirmed re-infections in England and fewer than ten in the other UK countries.
    1
  22288.  @landsgevaer  Even this figure is uncertain. With PCR tests showing a 1 in 14 false positive rate, either of the two positives could be incorrect. The number is just too small to have any meaning. The fact is the drug companies want to make it look as though you can get re-infected easily. It's quite astonishing how many people believe this.
    1
  22289.  @landsgevaer  The number of reinfections is included, although not as a separate category. It is simply not statistically significant. Drug companies are mendacious beyond belief. Any information which may reduce their profits is suppressed. The idea that natural immunity is superior to vaccinated semi-immunity is obviously something which falls into this category. Covids and influenzas differ greatly- which is why it has been so difficult to create anti-covid vaccines. I am not an anti-vaxxer, it's just that their role in this instance seems to be limited and could even be counter-productive in the long run. We are already seeing case numbers falling in some countries and US states where vaccine take-up has not been high, which is indicative of this.
    1
  22290. If the effects of sanctions are only going to be similar to those of Brexit, Putin has ever justification in ignoring them.
    1
  22291.  @ab-ym3bf  The effects of sanction compared with effects of Brexit. The key word here is "effects."
    1
  22292.  @jiversteve  But imposed due to a reasoned response.
    1
  22293.  @jiversteve  You can if you like, but these minor inconveniences (such as they are) would not prevent me from going to war should I think it necessary.
    1
  22294.  @justinjewell8329  Just a bit bored - and this channel has been quite a rich source of amusement in the past.
    1
  22295.  @brianharris7243  No. A tightrope walker.
    1
  22296. Karma
    1
  22297. Kemi Badenoch is a goddess. Won't it be wonderful when Britain's first black woman Prime Minister is a Tory!
    1
  22298.  @JO-tg6xm  So race and skin colour are more important than common sense and intelligence then? Far from having "sold out", Kemi Badenoch and others like her are defending their identities as thinking, responsible human beings from the vile attempts to categorise them purely by race.
    1
  22299.  @JO-tg6xm  Are black and brown people not allowed to be entitled then?
    1
  22300.  @davidharris5736  The life experience of many black and brown people in the UK has been a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to fulfil their potential in a country where racism is so rare.
    1
  22301. ​ @deeestuary Why would he? In fact Russia has suffered 30 years of provocation by America.Turning Ukraine into an armed camp on Russia's doorstep was a step too far.
    1
  22302.  @sylviahutchison5203  Simply not true. NATO has pushed steadily Eastwards, America has consistently backed anti-Russian movements in Chechnya,Georgia and Ukraine with its usual garbage about 'freedom and democracy' while really just expanding its commercial interests. Ukraine was offered every chance to come to a sensible agreement, but the Zelensky government has been bribed into shedding Ukrainian blood on America's behalf. A tragedy and a disgrace with which we should be ashamed to be associated.
    1
  22303.  @andrewashby70  Generally it does. Lying is often a political necessity but Boris has made too much of a habit of it. Your suggestions would replace debate with authoritarian diktat. Not a good idea.
    1
  22304.  @andrewashby70  Lloyd George was one of Britain's most successful politicians - and he lied through his teeth half the time. (He too was a notorious womaniser.) Many others have trod the same path - perhaps most. It is a matter of survival and necessity. The trouble with Johnson is that he is a ham. He is spoiling it for everybody else and Butler has seizes upon the moment with surprising acumen. It's a shame she's such a lefty. If she could get rid of some of her high ideals she might be of use in a future Labour government - if such a thing is ever to exist again, of course. As for the rest - who checks the fact-checkers? Who goes round rapping knuckles when the House brays its disapproval?
    1
  22305.  @andrewashby70  The Tory lead in the polls is increasing week by week - despite Johnson, or even possibly because of him! What I find maddening is not that Parliamentary procedure is what it is, but that Johnson should abuse it. It cannot be allowed to continue - nor will it be. There seems to be a feeling that Johnson is cracking under pressure and has lost the plot. Butler has caught the mood and has done herself proud in the process. Such a pity she is caught up so much in the idealistic pseudo-Marxist woke nonsense which is currently dragging her party down.
    1
  22306.  @garagenigel  A bit of creating accounting, that's all! He's a wide boy - no doubt of that. But this doesn't necessarily detract from his capabilities in other directions.
    1
  22307.  @GreenMachine-u3n  He made a couple of rookie mistakes. Having laboured in that vineyard myself for a good many years I realise that his enthusiasm has outweighed his reason. The point, though, is that the truth lurks somewhere between his version of events and that presented by the voice of authority. The original incident was nothing more than a playground brawl in which a self-appointed arbiter of decency punished the immigrant lad for what was seen as poor behaviour. There was nothing racist in this, as all seem now agreed. The difficulty lies in deciding just how bad - if at all - the immigrant lad's behaviour was. Robinson, in his enthusiasm, has taken on board an extreme version in which his sources have tarted their accounts up in such a way as to undermine the truth of his narrative. He should have checked, checked and checked again - but he didn't. The story was too good.
    1
  22308.  @GreenMachine-u3n  I did mean "creative accounting". Tommy Robinson is a Very Naughty Boy, of that there is little doubt. All the same, he does represent a generally unrepresented section of the community and allowances should be made.
    1
  22309.  @GreenMachine-u3n  I think TR is pretty clever. What do you mean by "you people", by the way? The phrase has an awful suburban ring to it.
    1
  22310.  @GreenMachine-u3n  The section that is the largely ignored and largely white working class. The vineyard I laboured in was journalism.
    1
  22311.  @billpugh58  Totally untrue.
    1
  22312. @ What sort of exchange, Mr Kissinger? The land Ukraine holds in Kursk is well-nigh worthless.
    1
  22313. If Ukraine granted Russia's entirely reasonable demands the war could be over in a second. But America isn't having any. They've bought this war and they want value for their money.
    1
  22314.  @EbenBransome  The slaves daily bless their chains.
    1
  22315. The simple fact is that the Democrats and their media lackeys are scared shitless of losing the black vote, without which the Democrats could not survive. More and more black people are realising that the Democrats have a vested interested in keeping them poor and "on the plantation" and that any ambitions they may have to better themselves will be side-tracked by policies which substitute subsidence level support for opportunity. It's going to take a while to ship in enough immigrants from South America to round up for ballot harvesting purposes, so the Dems and the media scum are committed to a pretence of concern for black people's "rights" - which do include the right to rob, murder and take drugs and to vilify any agencies of order which seek to prevent them from doing so.
    1
  22316. You've been eating too much fish. It does funny things to the brain.
    1
  22317. One thing Putin has in common with vast numbers of Americans is that he doesn't give a fuck what CNN says about ANYTHING!
    1
  22318.  @dickhardpicard  He's got good reasons for doing what he's done.
    1
  22319. What question?
    1
  22320. Actually illiterate as well as politically illiterate.
    1
  22321. This is a very interesting scientific paper Subramian and Kumar "increases in covid 19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States". European Journal of Epidemiology.
    1
  22322. Soros has funded the election campaigns of incompetent mayors and DAs all over the country. He is a very, very clever man. Why is he installing fools in positions of power?
    1
  22323. With so many Blacks and Latinos seeing sense and jumping ship, the Democrats obviously need a new injection of poor and underprivileged ballot-fodder.
    1
  22324. The enemy lies within: with the fools who think "woke" means liberty when it actually means eventual enslavement to Communism.
    1
  22325.  @taefravis  This is not what he is being charged with however. He is being charged under the Espionage Act, which is plainly ridiculous. Sorting out personal papers from official ones may well have led to technical breaches of the Presidential Records Act. But there is no provision for prosecution under this Act and so Trump's enemies are trying to link such potential breaches on to the Espionage Act - which ain't gonna work, or at least didn't ought to. The whole thing is a complete stitch-up as must be obvious to anyone with half a brain.
    1
  22326.  @Calvito-  I am not a troll nor Russian. I am a concerned British citizen fearful of seeing my country being dragged into a needless war. Quarrel, yes. This is an argument over mineral rights which could have been settled relatively amicably if the US and its allies had not interfered with an eye to laying hands on the mineral wealth of Donbass. Threat to Europe? No. No way. Why should the Russian Federation wish to emulate the errors of the Soviet Union? Putin is far too sensible for such adventuring and has clearly said so. Look at the trouble he's having taking back a tiny corner of Ukraine. How can you possibly imagine he has either the will or the capability needed to invade Europe???
    1
  22327.  @emm_arr  If that's obvious to you then you are a fool - because I am not. Is your case so weak that you cannot comprehend that someone might disagree with you BECAUSE THEY DISAGREE WITH YOU???
    1
  22328.  @janickpauwels3792  How about you get out of the world that was and the world as it might be and look more carefully at the world as it is? All Putin wants are the mineral resources in Crimea and Donbass to which - quite justifiably - he feels Russia is entitled. He was happy to obtain them by peaceful means but has been forced into war by Western intransigence. It is extremely doubtful that he has any further ambitions, but if he does we must meet them as they come and not allow their remote possibility to colour our behaviour. (I didn't vote for Brexit, but I support it now simply because the EU's global political ambitions have been a major factor in sparking this bloody and needless war.)
    1
  22329.  @emm_arr  Idiot. You're the troll and I'm falling for it!
    1
  22330. Except he never said any such thing, you credulous fool.
    1
  22331.  @Deathadder90  I think this is more serious than previous incursions, and is apparently carried out by actual Ukrainian armed forces rather than cowboy nutters. But I really can't see what effect it can have on the progress of the war.
    1
  22332.  @pierrerochon7271  No, just an old guy sticking pins in maps.
    1
  22333.  @deusduran4901  Possible.
    1
  22334.  @TyllerBoom  I guess so. I suppose the Ukrainians might think they can gain some small concession by returning what parts of the oblast they hold, but they won't get much for it. If anything, this shows that Ukraine is demonstrating that the war is coming to an end, which would be good news all round.
    1
  22335.  @TyllerBoom  True enough. I suppose this may be a sign that Ukraine is realising that peace negotiations must come soon. Which would be a very good thing.
    1
  22336.  @frederiquesmith3070  What's so courageous about allowing yourself to be exploited as a political pawn?
    1
  22337.  Adriano Celentano  There is no democracy in Ukraine. In 2014 they "voted" to stay with Russia. Both votes were shams.
    1
  22338. jones 1351 Our great grandchildren should be entering a period of rapid cooling if past historical patterns are maintained. How much the effects of long established solar cycles will be mitigated by increased atmospheric carbon levels remains to be seen. Not much in my view. They are but a fart in the vast storm of influences created by the motions of the sun and the planets as we speed through space.
    1
  22339. jones 1351 I think it's rather disingenuous to say "for profits". Industry needs the profit motive to survive, but its objectives are to provide energy, goods and services. I seen only circumstantial evidence that the gun is loaded at all -or even that it exists. So far increases in global temperatures seem entirely in accord with recent historical norms - Roman Warm Period, Dark Age Cold Period, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and so on. These fluctuations occur within cycles of greater fluctuation and are solar and cosmically forced. I am not saying that increased man-made atmospheric C02 does not add to warming, but so far its effects seem entirely subsumed by natural processes. I am deeply disturbed by the blatant manipulation of data employed by the climate alarmist lobby to further their agenda. What is more I can see clear financial and political motives for continuing this wicked charade in which so many decent people have been caught up. I do not deny climate change, but I strongly dispute that anthropogenic emissions have anything like the impact being so widely claimed.
    1
  22340. Loly Perez I don't quite see what you mean. I have a point of view and an opinion which I have expressed. I am willing to consider contrary arguments however. This is a good basis for civil discourse - as long as people are intelligent enough to understand the principles involved.
    1
  22341. Loly Peres Rational discussion and debate.
    1
  22342. Read. Consider. Sign. Share https://gbdeclaration.org/
    1
  22343. They say you you shouldn't judge people by their appearance. I guess it must just be a coincidence that Fauci looks like a devious little sod.
    1
  22344. The idea that Putin is bent on "world conquest" is an utter absurdity put forward by Western media and politicians to justify the West's utterly unjustifiable interference in the relationship between Ukraine and Russia.
    1
  22345. @CJ Lite Oddly I came to a completely different view! I think it must depend on what preconceptions one has in the first place.
    1
  22346.  @sardo.numspa  Those "few fields" are sitting on top of trillions of dollars in mineral wealth, which is why they are so heavily defended.
    1
  22347. I suppose providing time and safe routes to enable civilians to leave is part of this Cunning Plan?
    1
  22348.  @arctic_haze  I think not. A million or so have left already and the rest are free to leave. Putin just needs to secure control in order to be able dictate terms.
    1
  22349.  @aasphaltmueller5178  I would rather have thought it would slow them up, but I'm sure you are right. Do you have any historical precedents you could direct me to?
    1
  22350. Not necessarily excessive deaths since the death rate from all causes is now below the 5-year average and the gap between cases and deaths is widening. The current strategy could lead to up to 600 deaths "with" covid a week, but the number of people recovering could be up to 70,000 a week which would lead to rapid herd immunity and it would all be over.
    1
  22351. Dan Snikliw That's odd. At most demonstrations it always seems to me that the Left are far more expensively catered for, bannerwise. George Soros is quite rich I believe.
    1
  22352.  SPQSpartacus  No. The word is "Gotcha!"
    1
  22353. Sadly, I don't think its over yet. I watched the whole Cummings press conference and came away convinced that he was being honest and truthful and had indeed done no wrong. Leftists however are still insisting he was out having fun - or even up to some skullduggery or the other. They simply cannot understand the logic of his making sure his eyes were OK for driving. They live in a simple almost childish world governed purely by slogans and prejudice. I think they have been so fired up by their KGB-like masters they would be quite prepared to drag this poor man from his home and string him up. The role of the media in all of this has been utterly despicable. No surprises there of course.
    1
  22354. Plus the pingdemic
    1
  22355.  @DieFlabbergast  I agree with you totally. The repetition is never exactly the same and it is only too easy to draw parallels where none really exist. Broadly speaking though, empires follow similar patterns wouldn't you say? They over-expand and then contract more quickly than can be imagined by those present during their final decades.
    1
  22356.  @normangoldstuck8107  The America Empire is not territorial, I agree - but American influence exists in very many more corners of the world than those which fly the Stars and Stripes.
    1
  22357.  @rolexomegaspecialist9411  The signs are all there...
    1
  22358.  @analoguesoul4594  That too.
    1
  22359. Sheer genius.
    1
  22360.  @PAUL-em4tj  Some are!
    1
  22361.  @marisabenson1222  Not at all.
    1
  22362.  @Londonmale89  I'm 76, so watch it!
    1
  22363. This is more like Mariupol, I think.
    1
  22364.  @eduwino151  Point taken.
    1
  22365. THIS IS INSANE DRIVEL.
    1
  22366.  @JeroenvanHaren  I think you're wrong. I think Putin will end up gaining slightly more than he asked to be ceded peacefully - and many thousands will have died to no purpose.
    1
  22367.  @JeroenvanHaren  Very doubtful. Russia will probably end up with something very similar to what it asked for before war broke out. And many thousands will have died to no real purpose.
    1
  22368. This legislation is mostly peaceful.
    1
  22369.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  Visit Anna from Russia (among others) Fresh fruit and veg, unsealed in plastic, plus homebaked bread in great variety, are far more commonplace in Russian stores than in the US. And you won't find beggar/junkies trying to tap you for change on the way out either.
    1
  22370.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  three times cheaper in Russia though.
    1
  22371.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  OK for Mr Average - but what about the poor saps on minimum wage?
    1
  22372.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  Simple on paper -but this isn't a graph. It's about how ordinary people at the bottom of the pile feel about their day-to-day lives. America is screwed in this area. Russians, on the other hand, after enduring decades of horror and privation, are now enjoying lifestyles which compare very favourably with those of their US equivalents.
    1
  22373.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  You continue to be unduly influenced by doctrinaire statistics. Who defines the "poverty line"? The "quality of life index"?? What nonsense! In rural Russia many homes are without sanitation or running water. This is because they would simply freeze up in winter. Yet people go on living entirely happy lives and if they don't they can move to a city. This isn't a competition other than to point out that America is in a state of social and economic decline, whereas Russia is increasingly self-sufficient. The fact that people are surviving the sanctions blitz proves this quite clearly. As to GDP we have to realise that Russia is institutionally corrupt, and probably always will be. The black market economy is greater than the one which features in official balance sheets. We are approaching a post-American world, so get used to it. The Soviet Union collapsed with great suddenness. I firmly predict the same fate for the US, if not this decade, then certainly in the next.
    1
  22374.  @BlenderGamerFreaq  This isn't about graphs and statistics. Who defines the "poverty line"? What on earth is "quality of life index"?? Russians are now incomparably better off than they were in the 1960's whereas the reverse is true for Americans. These trends are going to continue as the US sinks deeper into debt and degeneracy while Russia joins with other independent nations in creating a world free of America's rabid commercialism.
    1
  22375. As with the removal of covid restrictions Johnson is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The Ukraine crisis is entirely of America's making and we can be thankful that large financial contributions from Russian oligarchs are preventing the UK getting even further up the yanks' arse than would otherwise be the case.
    1
  22376.  @matthewjohns1758  It didn't belong to Ukraine before 1783. It was part of the Ottoman Empire and the Russians took it from the Turks. It never belonged to Ukraine until Russia tacked it on in 1954, and even then it was still run from Moscow -as indeed was the whole of Ukraine until 1991.
    1
  22377.  @paulbaker9879  So we might as well give up having a government then?
    1
  22378.  @annewalden3795  But Trump's policies will reduce the price of groceries within months. Wait and see.
    1
  22379.  @TheCrimsonS4ge  It has also fulfilled its purpose in killing thousands of Ukrainians.
    1
  22380. kurtilen Solar cycles and their implications are still far from fully understood I'm afraid. It is just another example of climate science conceit to say that they are.
    1
  22381.  @stevie-ray2020  How sure are you that you are intelligent?
    1
  22382.  @JohnSmall314  This is a curious combination of pessimism, false logic and absurd analogies. Shutting out the virus from the word "go" will have an effect. But once it has taken a hold there is no stopping it. Lockdowns etc merely slow down the process. Once they are relaxed the disease just catches up. In the meantime variants are developing which can circumvent the mitigation measures. Your notion that Omicron developed in rural S Africa is interesting, but one wonders why it has become so prevalent in the most densely populated cities without surrendering its close resemblance to the common cold. Future variants may well be in the offing, but given the wide spectrum of immunity likely to be created by Omicron it is doubtful that they will be any more harmful. The trend in viruses is inevitably towards increased transmissibility and fewer fatalities, as expressed in the long-established Smith's Law of Declining Virulence.
    1
  22383.  @transient_  Wave dollars under noses and left or right doesn't enter into it.
    1
  22384. The worst thing to fear is fear itself. If you are young and healthy you will almost certainly be ok. Nobody dies and you have around a one in a hundred chance of suffering long term. This could range from severe disability to just feeling pretty rough most of the time. This will gradually pass, though it may take many months in the worst cases. If you are older you should consider vaccination. This will reduce your chances of becoming ill and also reduce symptoms if you do. Even though the infection rates seem high they represent only a very small percentage of the population as a whole. Luck and the numbers are on your side.
    1
  22385.  @redrick8900  And to their own civilians?
    1
  22386. Do we? The tests carried out on mass groups with no restrictions showed no transmissions. The Delta variant has come in from India via relatives visiting British homes etc and seems to be following largely domestic routes.
    1
  22387.  @ab-ym3bf  The first.
    1
  22388. Well that's the Dems fault for plotting to take his money off him.
    1
  22389. Victims armed with billions of dollars of US and NATO weaponry.
    1
  22390. Instead of compensating people for the effects of on and off lockdowns, money should have been spent on acquiring and training ICU nurses. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that lockdowns do little if anything to reduce death rates - but they do buy time to allow you to build up sufficient resources to care for borderline cases and put them back on the road to health. It wouldn't matter if these trained nurses spent nine months of the year arranging flowers and making Tic Toc videos, they would be a cheaper and more efficacious option than lockdowns.
    1
  22391.  @saoirsehaslonglegs2313  Nothing against nurses There just aren't enough of them trained to ICU standards, that's all.
    1
  22392.  @saoirsehaslonglegs2313  None taken, I assure you.
    1
  22393.  @AlfaGiuliaQV  Then why block evidence contradicting false claims?
    1
  22394.  @allanedwards1036  Why did you do this? Unless you are over 80 or suffering from diabetes or some other debilitating illness getting covid is no worse that the flu, especially since the omicron variant became dominant. You have allowed yourself to be brainwashed into an act of utter foolishness, I'm afraid. In avoiding this illness you have probably damaged yourself considerably.
    1
  22395.  @allanedwards1036  You really didn't need to have done that.
    1
  22396.  @allanedwards1036  I'm pleased for you. Personally I did my best to ignore the whole thing and I survived too!
    1
  22397. The alliance between left-wing loonies and Muslim fanatics is truly terrifying. Between them these two groups have got just about everything wrong that could be got wrong -and they want to shove their views down our throats, by violent means if they feel like it.
    1
  22398. Mask don't stop you getting it. They just reduce the chances of you passing it on if you've got it already. And not by much either.
    1
  22399.  john tash  It's chaos. Conspiracy or cockup? We may never know.
    1
  22400.  @hamkon  Good analogy.
    1
  22401.  @michaeldunham3385  That's what he ultimately wants. He was quite willing once for Donbass to have some spurious independence, but it is now too late for that.
    1
  22402.  @michaeldunham3385  But Putin never tried to take Kiev, as I think I have explained before. If he wanted to take take Kiev he would have bombarded it first and attacked it using elite troops, as he did when taking Mariupol. Instead he merely sent a convoy of largely ancient armour and largely inexperienced troops up the main road in order to draw the AFU into a series of battles in which he was quite willing to cynically lose a considerable portion of the aforesaid old armour and new troops. He doesn't want Kiev, or any of Western Ukraine for that matter. He knows this would involve an endless and unprofitable civil war. What you call dishonesty is simply a rational assessment of the situation, free of the prejudices instilled in so many minds by the actual dishonesty of Western politicians and media.
    1
  22403.  @alanolley7286  Neither is true. There was no intention to take Kiev as such. The paratroop loses were relatively few.
    1
  22404.  @rockbutcher  Up to them. And I only made half a dozen videos, hardly loads. (Anyway, the fact that I got hardly any views rather contradicts the idea that nobody is interested in my opinion, since so few people know what my opinions are.)
    1
  22405. Does this idiot warmonger REALLY want to start World War III???
    1
  22406. And we are doing SO WELL with the present crew!
    1
  22407.  @GG-ml3vr  No .America did.
    1
  22408. This really IS an insurrection. The MAGA Republicans are risking all to break the Uniparty stranglehold. Trump is playing both ends against the middle, of course.
    1
  22409. If Trump does manage to regain office I hope he devotes some time and energy to prosecuting all those who have lied, cheated and manipulated the law in a vain bid to do him down. Orange jump suits all round.
    1
  22410.  Yorkshire Tea  True on all counts.
    1
  22411.  George Smith  If we were to go and beat the pompous sod to death with an iron bar would it be counted as Coronavirus-related do you reckon?
    1
  22412. It is a total myth to suggest that Russia has any intention of invading Europe. NATO is little more than a glorified protection racket which needs this myth to justify its existence. Creating a European army is not only going against the tide of history - it is potentially suicidal.
    1
  22413.  @susannehartl3067  Russians often talk nonsense when drunk. Putin has made it quite clear that while reclaiming the Empire might be a fine, romantic notion it is neither practical nor even desirable. Been there. Done that. Got the T shirt.
    1
  22414. @ That's just talk. Putin has made it quite clear that while re-creating the Empire might be a fine, romantic notion it is is in no way practical or desirable. The trouble the Russians are having simply trying to claw back Donbass rather proves the point.
    1
  22415. I doubt any serious political leader takes a blind bit of notice of this silly organisation. It's all for show.
    1
  22416. How many of these cases have there been? I'm all on fire to know.
    1
  22417. Democrats need poor people.
    1
  22418. Whereas America goes out of town to loot and murder
    1
  22419.  @Blanka1100  Not at all true. Russia has done with empire. Been there. Done that. Got the tee shirt. Those military actions taken by the Russian Federation since its inception confirm this. Georgia and Chechnya and now Ukraine were within its sphere of influence and had been heavily invested in. Russia was not, understandably, willing to see them go over either to the West or to the Islamic State. In all cases the answer has not even been military occupation, but merely the creation of buffers states. This is not expansionism. It is good housekeeping.
    1
  22420.  @WangAiHua  You are still confusing the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union. The invasion of Ukraine is a pre-emptive measure designed to prevent Ukraine's NATO-financed army from taking Crimea and Donbass. If you were at all aware of the background to this unfortunate state of affairs you would know that torture, rape and murder kicked off in Donbass in 2014 when Ukrainian Nazis (real ones) were unleashed on the civilian population there.
    1
  22421.  @localcitizen1923  How do Russia's action measure up then?
    1
  22422.  @lacosa24x  America has bombed far more schools and hospitals than Russia ever has.
    1
  22423.  @tesladrew2608  It doesn't have to. It's done it with Ukraine.
    1
  22424.  @bonnie7898  That's one way of putting it. You have to ask yourself, of course, why the pro-Russian elements were there in the first place.
    1
  22425.  @ganeshiyer9672  Funny word "annexation." There are any number of learned articles and encyclopaedia entries on "Texas Annexation" and " Annexation of Hawaii" , which you say never occurred.
    1
  22426.  @ganeshiyer9672  Russians moved to Donbass and Crimea long before the Soviet era. They currently outnumber Ukrainians by around seven to one in Crimea and the industrial cities of Donbass. Around three million of them have indeed left Donbass over the course of the war, but they will be returning to their homes and livelihoods once Ukraine is defeated.
    1
  22427.  @ganeshiyer9672  The Russian army is indeed, notoriously incompetent. I am British, so I can say this without fear or favour. They do, however, tend to just keep on coming. Putin has been very fortunate though in dining in a Moscow restaurant where the owner, by some bizarre twist of fate, has turned out to be something of a military genius. These factors, along with a sizeable reserve of Chechen mercenaries, should give the brave but foolish Ukrainians a run for their money. The tragedy is that it is all so unnecessary. Putin's peace proposals put forward before the war were easily the best solution to the problems. It is only American greed and contempt for human life which have prevented their application.
    1
  22428.  @Blanka1100  Budapest was a deeply flawed treaty and Putin didn't sign it. Yeltsin did - and he was drunk. Putin has spent 20 years trying to find a peaceful solution. The last was the Minsk treaties - which Ukraine merely used to buy time to build up its army. Russia isn't very good at treaties. America is. They've been using them to steal land ever since the Indian Wars.
    1
  22429.  @Blanka1100  No treaty lasts forever, and bad ones especially so. They have to work and be practical, and Budapest wasn't. America wants to get its hands on the immense mineral riches on Donbass. That's the beginning and end of it. To do this it has fomented revolution in Ukraine, installed a puppet leader and spent billions and billions of dollars on providing Ukraine with a large up-to-date army. Putin is no pussy, and he's far, far too patriotic to put up with it. America has made yet another serious error of judgement in provoking Russia. Ukraine is suffering on America's behalf and it's utterly shameful.
    1
  22430.  @Blanka1100  Ukraine is suffering because its leaders have been bribed to sell its resources to America. Russia is fighting back to retain control of those resources which it paid for, and which Russian people have laboured for generations to exploit. The "cheap gas station" is in fact at the forefront of a large-scale rebellion against American conceit and bullying. With allies such as China, India, Iran, Saudi and many more resentful countries Russia, at this very moment, is hastening an inevitable historical process which will lead to the eventual collapse of the American empire.
    1
  22431.  @Blanka1100  No country is Russia's master.
    1
  22432.  @Blanka1100  I'm sure Russia and China come to mutually beneficial arrangements. China and India have kept Russia well supplied with banned goods in return for cheap oil, and it now looks as though China will do the same with weaponry. I think we place too much emphasis on the importance of GDP. Russia is run largely by criminals, don't forget and the black economy is more important and more vibrant than the one which shows up on the books. Yes, the Russian army is pretty crap by most standards - but there's a lot of it and its shortcomings are made up for to some extent by mercenary forces such as Wagner and the Chechens.
    1
  22433. You lefty bedwetters just won't give up on this will you?
    1
  22434. Tom c You sound very angry, You should try to get richer if you can. I think that is what is the matter with you.
    1
  22435.  Corvus Glaive  He could very easily have said he was going to remove his belt and done it slowly. You can't get out of the fact that it was his uncooperative attitude that caused the situation to escalate. He could have had a gun and the officers could have joined the ranks of those shot in the course of duty every year.
    1
  22436.  @dawny4468  George Floyd? So this army lieutenant was off his face on drugs and rolling about on the floor was he? I didn't see that. Apparently he had a missing licence plate, but whatever the reason it doesn't matter. His behaviour led to a reasonable suspicion that he was up to no good. What else could the officers have done?
    1
  22437.  @ADifferentBias  But the Russian invasion force didn't fail embarrassingly. And are you REALLY prepared to take the risk base on nothing more than idiotic Western propaganda??
    1
  22438.  @unpaintedleadsyndrome  They do the same in Ukraine, where all opposition is banned. And it's civil disobedience which gets you jailed or fined in Russia- not contrary opinions You've been listening to propaganda!
    1
  22439.  @unpaintedleadsyndrome  Ukraine has been trying to invade the independent Donbass republics since 2014. And it arrested opposition leaders and closed down opposition TV stations before the current invasion even began. And civil disobedience is easy to define. It means rioting in the street which in Russia earns you a $150 dollar fine for a first offence and imprisonment if you do it again. Quite right too.
    1
  22440.  @kneedeacon2309  No. It's a game called "Get Cummings" And he won.
    1
  22441. The so-called Palestinians were given their chance and turned it down - many times. They wouldn't even be there if it wasn't for the Zionists turning a chunk of desert into a proper country.
    1
  22442.  @sohailafridi66  That would depend upon the circumstances. If someone gave me a house and furniture and I responded by going to their house and throwing stones at it and screamed that I wanted to kill them all, I would expect some sort of comeback. The only reasons "Palestinians"are there is because in the last century thousands of Arabs came from Syria and Jordan to take advantage of the agriculture-based civilisations being developed by the Zionists.
    1
  22443. Or at least the permanent threat of it.
    1
  22444.  @SL-sd3sg  I think Trump's going to rescue it in time.
    1
  22445. @ I think Trump will rescue it just in time.
    1
  22446.  @_wanted_outlaw3007  I was referring to anyone who believed him as being ignorant and ill-informed. The man himself obviously says what he's told to say - from simple self-preservation.
    1
  22447. Western Ukraine can join Europe - but the Russianised areas in the East and Crimea
    1
  22448.  @MosmMAli  It is now part of Russia - as was the case in fact between 1873 and 1954 and in practice between then and 1991 when it was mistakenly included in the new country of Ukraine.
    1
  22449.  @ashleylittle6776  Because the UN is irredeemably corrupt.
    1
  22450.  @Alex-vs8px  What benefits? The ones we pay them?
    1
  22451.  @Alex-vs8px  Some do. Some don't. Overall though the effect on the economy and services is negative.
    1
  22452.  @Alex-vs8px  It's swings and roundabouts. Something as important as this needs to have been managed far more carefully than it has been. We are descending into chaos because false ideology has superseded rational assessment.
    1
  22453.  @Alex-vs8px  It's a question of balance, as I said earlier.
    1
  22454.  @heinedenmark  and now he's making a fortune as a professional warmonger.
    1
  22455.  @heinedenmark  He runs KKR Global Institute which is an arm of a giant global investment company. Petraeus' job is stirring up wars and generally interfering in the affairs of other countries in order to manipulate the stock prices of various concerns which become involved. He can make millions overnight just by starting a rumour.
    1
  22456.  @heinedenmark  No he's not. He's just ensuring the share prices of US arms manufacturers go up. He's been doing this for years, both as an army commander and as director of the CIA.
    1
  22457.  @heinedenmark  Which of course will have to be replaced. Think on. A glowing report of their performance in beating the beastly Russkies will send share prices soaring. And that's just part of it. His company can manipulate the currency and hedge fund markets with just a few hints and rumours and make millions overnight.
    1
  22458.  @StreetsOfRage2  I would love to take your advice but sadly I am bedridden following a riding accident and am, in any case, far too old and cynical to take much pleasure from the activities you recommend. I prefer doing crossword puzzles and taunting fools on the Internet.
    1
  22459.  @heinedenmark  You aren't exactly a sophisticated thinker, are you? It doesn't much matter to arms manufacturers who wins the war, much less to global investment companies. The weapons used will still have to be replaced. A win for Russia will encourage re-armament on a grand scale. It's already having to be done to replace depleted stocks in America and Europe. The war will in all probability result in Russia holding on to Crimea and part of South East Ukraine, because that's all it wants. American war profiteers like Haliburton will then be able to make billions from the American taxpayer by clearing up the mess in the rest of Ukraine, as they've done in Iraq.
    1
  22460.  @heinedenmark  Ukraine can keep its homeland. Russia has no use for it. It only wants Crimea and Donbass, and perhaps a few other bits and pieces. It 'll probably get them too.
    1
  22461.  @heinedenmark  Well you don't seem to be making much sense so far. What do you trade in? I'm English, since you ask, and I neither know nor care what my IQ is.
    1
  22462. Instead of blaming industries we should blame the scientists. They have been wrong about everything, despite the billions they spend. A properly financed independent inquiry into the climate alarmists' methodology and assumptions is long overdue.
    1
  22463. Kurt Bolter Keep telling em! It's like beating your head against a brick wall but we have to hope the truth will win in the end.
    1
  22464. End? It needed never to have begun. Russia and Ukraine could have settled this dispute without bloodshed if the idiot Zelensky had not been bribed by Western interests greedy to lay their hands on Ukraine's immense mineral wealth
    1
  22465. A clear illustration of the utter folly of imposing restrictions. The virus builds up and when the restrictions invariably fail it breaks through in a tidal wave to infect vast populations with no natural immunity.
    1
  22466. I remember Harold Wilson risking all to keep Britain out of Vietnam. Now we have US arselickers like Blair and Johnson.
    1
  22467. The River Fox, Wisconsin.
    1
  22468. How about the buffoons who let highly flammable undergrowth build up, neglected the national forests and forced farmers to abandon long-established prevention policies?
    1
  22469.  @ab-ym3bf  What a pompous ass you seem to be.
    1
  22470. @What a pompous child might say, really.
    1
  22471. Climate change begins at the northern extremities of the planet and works its way southwards via slow-moving ocean currents. This was well-established long before the present hysteria. This is because climate change has nothing to do with carbon emissions and everything to do with cosmological influences, only a few of which are even partially understood.
    1
  22472. It's tough for the civilians locked in cellars by the Azov Battalion for weeks to prevent the Russian bombing. It's tough on the families of the hundred of civilians the Azovs amuse themselves by using as sniping practice. Why are we expected to back this gang of psychopaths?
    1
  22473. The fact that Boris seems thoroughly pussy-whipped is just another of his many failings and weaknesses.
    1
  22474. The earth and its atmosphere are pretty much a self-regulating mechanism which can take almost everything thrown at it - including a species which digs up long-buried carbon and sets fire to it. The earth is warming sure - but entirely in accord with millennia-old patterns which mean that sometime soon - by which I mean some time in the next three or four hundred years - a peak will be reached and a new cold period will rapidly ensue. It is only mankind's vanity which assumes our activities to be so important. The carbon we release into the atmosphere does not stay there for more than the twinkling of an eye and nor does it form some sort of blanket holding in heat. Albert Einstein postulated as long ago as 1917 that the atmosphere is and must be self-regulating and this is surely the case. The experiments upon which the current man-made climate hysteria are based were carried out in the early 1940's by a Serbian physicist who could not replicate the atmosphere in the laboratory (who could?) and who concluded from his experiments that the "ideal gasses" which Einstein used in his thesis have no basis in reality. They do, however, and the conclusions reached by this troublesome Serbian are as false as his experiments were tainted. Atmospheric carbon does not retain heat. Heat passes through it in less than one third of a second. Only in laboratory conditions do carbon molecules prevent the escape of solar energy. We are safe from everything but our own high opinion of our significance in the order of the cosmos.
    1
  22475. How much they protect others is a matter of considerable dispute. And make no mistake, Johnson is going for herd immunity here. The more healthy young people who get infected and recover the better it will be.
    1
  22476.  @bnipmnax  It's possible -but unlikely - that it could be breached but it would only be a temporary inconvenience.
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  22477. This is utter shameless BBC bollocks. I have just watched Anna from Russia do her Christmas shopping LIVE on her YouTube channel. I strongly advise paying her a visit to get an antidote to this trash.
    1
  22478. The percentage of children dying from covid is too small to be recorded in UK countries other than England, where 32 children under 19 have died.
    1
  22479. No it isn't. It's a war with the option of surrender.
    1
  22480.  @tomvandersteen5880  Yes, you should. Tolerance and free speech are absolutes. Everyone should be allowed to say anything they like, unless it presents an immediate physical threat.
    1
  22481.  @fredplat467  No. It's what people who are sick of being ruled by fascists and crooks hope.
    1
  22482.  @fredplat467  No that's what people who are tired of being ruled by fascists and crooks hope.
    1
  22483. Farage himself has raised money for the RNLI.
    1
  22484. She should not have resigned. Her offence was based on avarice and jealousy (her phone wasn't apparently as up-to-date as those of some of her fellow-workers), contempt for the law (she faked a mugging), disregard for the convenience of others (she tied up police time in pursuing a fictitious crime) and sheer stupidity. (She later used her old phone which was detected by her employers.) As I say, she should not have resigned. Avarice, jealousy, contempt for the law and sheer stupidity are characteristics which make this woman supremely qualified to serve in our present government.
    1
  22485.  @anglonorse2943  As I said, she should not have resigned. He character and personality are well enough suited to a career in politics, whatever party she chooses to support. I will say though lusting after a more up-to-date 'phone does strike one as being a bit infra-dig.
    1
  22486.  @emm_arr  That's why she did it. He colleagues had been given better phones and she thought if she could get rid of her old one, she'd get one of the shiny new ones. It worked too.
    1
  22487.  @anglonorse2943  I don't think you have to be very clever to guess her motives. It is a view which is widely circulated entirely credible.
    1
  22488.  @emm_arr  Why else?
    1
  22489.  @adamlea6339  It's in the court case, She was charged with fraud through misrepresentation, the allegation being that she had pretended her phone was stolen in order to get one of the shiny new ones. She pleaded guilty. The question of whether or not a mugging actually took place remains moot. It was the way she got her new phone that was the subject of the charge.
    1
  22490.  @emm_arr  It was in the court case. She was charged with fraud through misrepresentation. The offence was the way in which she had acquired her new phone - through dishonestly claiming her old one had been stolen. Her motive was greed for a new phone. What else?
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  22491. What they have in common is a strong desire to crush America as soon as possible.
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  22492. Trump just ain't bovvered. Watching the Democrats drown in a swamp of their own deceit and ineptitude must be even more fun for him than it is for the rest of us.
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  22493. Taking Donbass and keeping Crimea are all Putin ever wanted. They are modest and reasonable demands and had he got them by negotiation this bloody and needless war would never have happened. As it is, he will probably get them anyway and a quarter of a million people will have died to no purpose.
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  22494.  @outrageouslycasual6819  While Zelensky throws away twice as many. Where's the sense?
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  22495.  @Splodnik  Until very recently ALL of Ukraine was part of Russia, that's worth mentioning your fairy tale.
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  22496.  @outrageouslycasual6819  Another bloodthirsty armchair warrior, I see. No-one knows the true extent of casualties, but seeing that Ukraine started with an army of between 300,000 and 600,000 and is now having to recruit old men and young boys it's quite easy to see that they have lost at least as many as the Russians and probably at least half as many again. But aside from playing this distasteful game, there is no way Russia is going to be beaten by Ukraine. Russia will never be beaten. Ukraine can't do it alone and if NATO invades in force it will result in nuclear war, and that will be that. On the other hand if Ukraine concedes that Crimea is Russian (which it is) and grants Russia access to the mines and factories of Donbass (largely owned and operated by Russians) then the war is over in an instant.
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  22497. @Mij Nosnibor And Ukraine has never occupied Crimea.
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  22498. @Mij Nosnibor Zelensky plays the piano with his.
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  22499.  @outrageouslycasual6819  There are no signs of that at present.
    1
  22500.  @outrageouslycasual6819  Tell you what, why don't you put on your tin hat and go over there to do your bit for freedom and hypocrisy?
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  22501.  @outrageouslycasual6819 I'd stick to playing childish computer games if I were you.
    1
  22502. @Mij Nosnibor I'm English. and I weep for the world.
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  22503.  @outrageouslycasual6819  The fact that you are wrong about me shows a lack of intelligence which obviously extends to your ridiculous opinions in more important matters.
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  22504.  @outrageouslycasual6819  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHoorzB6pzY
    1
  22505.  @outrageouslycasual6819  This war has been caused by American meddling, as have been most wars over the past eighty years. Some comfort may be drawn from the fact that the failure of its plans will take that benighted country one step further down the road to its inevitable collapse as the world's major power.
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  22506.  @outrageouslycasual6819  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM
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  22507. And a good job too. Omicron will end the pandemic far more quickly and safely than Big Pharma's jungle juice.
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  22508.  @ww5302  Absolute crap. Putin isn't Hitler and this is 2022, not 1939. All Putin wants is border security, not to conquer the world!
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  22509.  @ww5302  Putin is on record as saying that while restoring Russia to its former greatness would be a wonderful thing, it is clearly impractical. Which it clearly is. They weren't Ukraine's nuclear warheads -they were Russia's which happened to be stationed there. More recent broken promises are those broken by Ukraine with regard to the situation in Donbass.
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  22510.  @caractacus22  Surely the point is they're all a bunch of crooks -and whether they're Russian crooks, Ukrainian crooks or American crooks they aren't worth dying for.
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  22511.  @paulgibbon5991  Nobody quite knows at this stage. The only thing that really matters is that it should end as quickly as possible.
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  22512.  @Gray_ninja  So you'd rather be dead then?
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  22513. Of course more aid causes more casualties. How could it be otherwise? The only way to stop casualties is to surrender.
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  22514.  @jl8217  As stated. More aid prolongs the war with bloody consequences. Ukraine should surrender -or at least ask for terms. The longer this goes on the more Russia will ask for.
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  22515.  @rmdomainer9042  Such historical analogies are childish and pointless. They have no relevance to the present situation. If Ukraine surrenders now Russia will almost certainly allow Kiev to form a government of its own choosing, as long as it concedes the territories required by the Russians - which are essentially Russian territories and only mistakenly appended on to the new country of Ukraine some thirty years or so ago. To carry on means risking Odessa and access to the sea.
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  22516.  @rmdomainer9042  I try to avoid analogies wherever possible, but since so many people are so ill-educated it is a temptation I sometimes fall into. Can you be more specific?
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  22517.  @rmdomainer9042  They are the nation which defeats Ukraine on the battlefield. This grants certain privileges, added to which modern Ukraine is anyway largely a Russian construct, which implies further constraints. Putin has made it entirely clear that, however regrettable it may be, Ukraine can leave the family it was bought up in and co-habit with Uncle Sam. But it can't have the $13trillion of goodies under the soil of Donbass and Crimea and it can't let Uncle Sam poke his nasty weapons through the garden fence. (See what I mean about analogies?)
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  22518.  @rmdomainer9042  You seem to make the common mistake of assuming there are rules to this. I have explained the differences in the various situations. Each situation has to be judged on its merits. In this situation if Ukraine were to surrender now it would avoid further bloodshed and the consequences would be far from terrible. None of these other analogies has any relevance.
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  22519.  @rmdomainer9042  Russia has no genocidal intent . It regards Ukraine as a misguided son or brother, who has been seduced by the shiny things offered by America and the EU. Putin has said in many articles and interviews that he must allow Ukraine to succumb if it wishes. But it can't take Donbass and Crimea.
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  22520.  @rmdomainer9042  This particular pig would very much like to know what effect the Montreaux Convention would have on any determined Russian attempt to take Odessa. I think your schoolboy explanation might provide me with some amusement.
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  22521.  @rmdomainer9042  I would be fascinated to know what effect you imagine the Montreaux Convention might have on a determined Russian attempt to take Odessa. I am positively squeaking with excitement at the prospect.
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  22522.  @rmdomainer9042  I asked you first. I was just wondering how restrictions on access through the Dardanelles could have any major affect on whatever plans Russia might have to remove Odessa from Ukrainian control. Please elucidate.
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  22523.  @rmdomainer9042  Why is a navy required? You like analogies, I know, so why don't I mention Singapore? In any event, this does not cover the question you raised about access through the Dardanelles being restricted due to this obscure and ancient treaty, the name of which I forget. I was anticipating some assertion that it would prevent Russian vessels coming to assist from other parts of the world where they may be stationed or operational.
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  22524.  @rmdomainer9042  Russia left that area of Kherson north-west of the Dnieper because it had no strategic value. If it turns out that it now has strategic value then efforts will be made to conquer it. Whether or not this is the case is actually questionable. It can be circumvented easily enough.
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  22525.  @rmdomainer9042  What on earth is "Russian Stronk" ? Must I look it up?
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  22526.  @rmdomainer9042  It isn't a fine navy and never was. One of Putin's major problems is dealing with a corrupt and inefficient military hierarchy on both land and sea. The tremendous effect of drone technology has added to the equation. Until such time as effective counter-measures can be found the role of surface warships in modern warfare is called very much into question. And that applies to everyone who has a navy. Which Ukraine doesn't.
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  22527.  @rmdomainer9042  Cotton on to what? This is all pretty obscure and, as I said earlier, Russia left Kherson city not because it wasn't able to hold it, but because it wasn't worth the expenditure of resources necessary to do so. The Montreaux Convention is, at this stage of the game, even less relevant than it might have been in 2022. Why do you keep bringing it up? Do just like the way it rolls off the tongue?
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  22528. Top marks! You actually know some stuff! But the point I was making that Britain made the error of anticipating invasion from the sea when it came finally from overland. The importance of naval superiority was over-estimated then - as I'm sure you must agree- and I think you are over-estimating it now. (Are there any milk cartons with history lessons on the back of them, by the way? )
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  22529.  @rmdomainer9042  It only has strategic value if you want to cross the river. At the time Russia left it, Russia had no desire to cross the river. If at some time in the future Russia wishes to cross the river then Kherson may possibly have strategic value. Joking aside, what is so difficult to understand about this?
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  22530.  @rmdomainer9042  I don't think you can forget about a push to the West - in whatever form - once Russia achieves its main objective of taking and securing the whole of Donbass. This was my original point. Putin has striven to overcome the difficulties presented to his political ambitions by the corruption and inefficiency of his armed forces. If needs be he will, in all probability, continue to overcome these difficulties if a decision is taken to continue on to taking Odessa. A more sensible (and less bloody) decision though would be for both sides to settle on a new status quo and agree for Odessa to remain ostensibly on Ukrainian territory, but with a Russian presence, as was the case pre 2014.
    1
  22531.  @rmdomainer9042  I don't think it did. You may have knowledge of detail which I have long forgotten, but the fact remains that Singapore fell because defences were concentrated on repulsing an invasion from the sea, when in fact it came from overland. How and where the invading force was supplied may be of significance in that instance, but surely not in the case of a potential Russian attack on Odessa.
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  22532.  @rmdomainer9042  Kherson is Russian. So is most of Ukraine, if you want to look into these matters in detail. And we haven't ruled out either a naval landing or a major land push. Russia's armed forces may be incompetent by Western standards, but they tend to get the job done in the long haul.
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  22533.  @rmdomainer9042  I still can't get my head around the concept if "Russia Stronk" but your description of the Russian army is pretty accurate!
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  22534. It is a Europe-wide problem created not by Brexit but as part of a major shake-up of the gas supply industry created by the completion of Russia's latest gas supply pipeline which ought to lead to significant price reductions in the coming months. Prices are going up so that supply companies will still see a profit when these reductions come on line.
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  22535. Why? To give space for its own disinformation and lies?
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  22536. Off the planet as usual. The deal was dependent on a May deadline, after which all bets were off. There was supposed to be air cover to prevent Taliban troop movements. If the plan had been followed through as agreed the Americans - and us - would have been out of there months ago with no casualties. We could have taken the 80,000 or so Afghanis whose lives are now forfeit with us too. Do you not realise the immense damage done when fools like you fall for an advertising campaign? Orange Man Bad indeed. Many Americans are beginning to realise what they lost in Donald Trump when they allowed him to be replaced with a senile stooge.
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  22537.  @buffalohunter3952  How can he bear the slightest blame? The plan he and his advisors had agreed took full account of the vagaries of the Afghan temperaments and was shored up with substantial bribes and threats. It would almost certainly have worked. We will never know because Biden abandoned it, resulting in the predictable chaos and agony we are now experiencing. Why is Trump self-censoring his web pages etc? Quite simply he knows full well that if he does not do so phrases will be taken out of context in order to create a false narrative for brainwashed, psychotic anti-Trumpers such as yourself that Biden's catastrophe was in some way his fault.
    1
  22538.  @buffalohunter3952  No. Only Biden is to blame. The only question is whether this earth-shattering fiasco is the result of simple incompetence or part of some long-term global strategy of which Biden was the unwitting dupe.
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  22539. Russia is winning hands down, and no amount of propaganda will alter that fact.
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  22540. Why are Tory leaders such total tossers?
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  22541. Would a nuclear strike in Ukraine necessarily mean a nuclear response from the West though?
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  22542.  @V01DIORE  Would NATO risk that? Boots on the ground would incur the possibility of further nuclear strikes on troop concentrations. I think it likely that ANY nuclear action by Russia would cause a major rethink by the West. Even the possibility should cause wiser heads to slow and reduce military support for Ukraine. Indeed, there are signs that this is happening already. Despite many protestations to the contrary, this war is not proceeding in the way the West intended and there is every chance that, however regretfully, it may be necessary to throw Zelensky and his crew to the dogs.
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  22543.  @SerBallister  And if Russia chooses to destroy this advance with tactical nuclear weapons, what then?
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  22544. More lies and distortions from the BBC. There is a difference between "the Far Right" and Nazis. There are real Nazis in Ukraine, especially in the military - and they would scorn the ballot box as a route to power. Their activities in suppressing separatists on Donbass are well-documented as is their use of civilians as human shields in the present conflict. Citing "Nazism and drug addiction" among the Ukrainian hierarchy as reasons for the invasion might be crude and simplistic in Putin's part, but not a bit as crude and simplistic as this BBC rebuttal. Yet again the complexities of world affairs have to pass through the filter of an adolescent "woke" agenda before the British state media considers them fit for public consumption.
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  22545. Russia's victory is inevitable and Trump and Musk, as sensible, pragmatic men, both know it. Their chief task now must be to let down gradually the many idiots who have been conned into believing that this war has been a moral crusade, rather than just another sordid squabble over money.
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  22546.  fckYTcensorship  No. It's just given a few billion dollars to the poor Ukrainians to do the dirty work for it.
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  22547. Shh. They're painting themselves into a corner.
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  22548. Do we sit down with Russia and start talking sense or wait till the last man's dead?
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  22549. @duncan hackett Was Trump's father an oligarch?
    1
  22550.  @emm_arr  But it is true. One man's misinformation is another man's objective truth. To attempt to define the truth by the law is a process fraught with danger. It can very rapidly lead to totalitarianism.
    1
  22551.  @Lindafoy11  But how can anyone possibly know that for certain?
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  22552. Unbelievably huge. Will leave you alone if you leave it alone. Can it be real? It can. It's the MAGA march in DC - consisting of several hundred far right extremists according to our wonderful BBC.
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  22553. Mario Quade One of Bojo's few faults is that he fully supports the climate change agenda and remains firmly committed to zero Co2 emissions within thirty years. I hope he's just kidding.
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  22554. Mario Quade Good job so many people disagree with you!
    1
  22555. Mario Quade I am not super filthy rich, nor do I especially wish to be. I do however believe that super filthy rich people are better qualified to govern than snivelling quite rich people who are jealous of the super filthy rich. I don't know what newspapers you read or TV stations you watch but part of my pleasure in today has been to watch the Lefty urban elite journos squirm as they realise just how much ordinary people have rejected their supercilious assumption that they know better than we do. Ordinary people (and we don't really like being called "working class") have at last woken up to the fact that the Labour Party has deserted us completely. Like African Americans we have realised that the party that claims to represent our interests has no understanding of our true nature or aspirations. We are cartoon characters they believe they can patronise at election times. They think by trotting out decades old cliches and showing us a picture of a little boy on a hospital floor we will rise up in anger and unlock the gates of power to their idiocies. How wrong they are.
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  22556. Sunak is the stalking horse. Buffoon Boris must go - but the identity of the next Prime Minister will come as a surprise to many, I am sure.
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  22557. Mariupol has been destroyed by the Ukrainians as much as by the Russians. Ukraine's propaganda needs proper examination. There are two sides to this story.
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  22558. Harry is even dimmer than his dad.
    1
  22559. And victory will provide that consent.
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  22560.  @FortoFight  I even acknowledge this possibility - which is why, as you know, I invariably cite expert sources which support my instinctive beliefs.
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